Freedom

After ten days with no internet, phone, reading, writing, or talking

Awareness / Freedom / Nature

After ten days with no internet, phone, reading, writing, or talking

The last ten days' experience was challenging and rewarding---too much to cover fully, so I'll just put some highlights. Top benefit 1: time without distraction Few vacations give you undistracted time like ten days without internet, phone, reading, writing, talking, or almost any obligations. This retreat gave that, though it was not a vacation. It was work. You know your world distracts you. Sometimes you can tune some of it out. Some people can escape it for some time, but even getaways to the beach, camping, or remote islands tend to have obligation and people you have to talk to. Interacting with people, as much as I love it, takes a lot of attention. At home it's hard to get more than a few minutes…

May 12, 2014

Ten days with no internet, phone, reading, writing, or talking

Awareness / Freedom / My Favorite Posts / Nature

Ten days with no internet, phone, reading, writing, or talking

If you didn't know, I spent my past ten days at my second ten-day mediation retreat. Here are old posts on it for your background: Vipassana Meditation Goenka and 10-day meditation retreats These retreats have no internet, phone, reading, writing, or talking. You sit still for about ten to twelve hours a day. Because writing here is one of my SIDCHAs and I don't want to deprive readers of my material (and I had a backlog of post ideas I'd meant to catch up on for a long time) I wrote the past ten days' posts before leaving and scheduled them to come up on time. I wanted to speculate on what I might get out of the retreat before going on it to compare…

May 11, 2014

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership

Binary thinking that ruins your life

Another coach emailed me about my posts about the bankrupt concepts of introversion and extroversion, which he described as That binary thinking you highlight is the bane of my working life! People who escape from that kind of thinking discover great freedom in their thoughts, which they usually use to create better lifestyles, relationships, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. They also find great tools to lead others. People who don't escape from it tell you how wrong you are in thinking you don't have to be so miserable. Bizarre thinking, but that's what happens when you're stuck thinking that way. Anyway, I realized some of what I wrote could help people who read me regularly here. I know what you mean about binary thinking. At some…

April 21, 2014

Explore and expand your boundaries and those of people you lead

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership / Models / Visualization

Explore and expand your boundaries and those of people you lead

Exploring and expanding your boundaries and horizons creates freedom and comfort in your life. Doing so can be challenging---"getting out of your comfort zone," as many put it---but creates results and emotional reward. The more experience you have in it, the more you can lead others to do the same, creating freedom and comfort in their lives. I'll illustrate the process with some simple diagrams. I find visualizing would-be complex things simplifies them and makes them easier to do. First, consider a diagram of the things you do, as illustrated below. As I've illustrated it, the light-colored center is where things are easier---that is, the center of your comfort zone, bounded by the dashed line. I colored it darker farther from the center, indicating that…

April 15, 2014

Awareness / Freedom

Memories and getting rid of stuff

Moving back into my apartment after renovations, I've been unpacking things packed for a year or two. I packed some of those things fourteen years ago when I moved here and it seems I packed some of those things before then. I've tried to come up with definitive conclusions on dealing with old things that connect with memories, but haven't. I'm getting rid of stuff, but it's harder than I expected, so I have just some thoughts on the process of getting rid of stuff... What are these memories for? If something I saved is my only access to some memory, then what do I lose if I lose it? I'm not going to miss it. I have a bunch of old letters and notes…

April 13, 2014

Awareness / Freedom

Home!

'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free 'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come 'round right. -- "Simple Gifts," Joseph Brackett If you've seen me in person over the past four months you know I've lived that time away from home, during renovations. Four months or so away from home isn't long, but in November my contractor told me he'd start Monday after Thanksgiving and could finish the project by…

April 7, 2014

Freedom / Leadership

Op/Ed Fridays: Bloomberg’s most infamous legacy?

This week I came across the news that The city of New York has agreed to pay $18m to settle a civil rights claim from hundreds of protesters who were rounded up and detained in overcrowded and dirty conditions after they rallied outside the 2004 Republican National Convention. For those who don't remember, the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, shortly after the Iraq Invasion, faced protests by hundreds of thousands of people---a sizable portion of American voters, certainly of voters near New York. According to the article, "Hundreds of thousands marched against Bush and the war in one of the largest expressions of public dissent against a president." But New York City was led by a Republican Mayor, Governor, President, and police…

March 28, 2014

Computer problems are difficult but teach you resilience

Despite getting lucky that my computer dying ended up with a simple solution (turns out you can put an old hard drive into a different computer and it works fine), seeming to lose something important, which my computer has become to me, helps you realize what's important and what isn't. Losing a computer used to paralyze me with fear. Now it's a problem, but not debilitating. Things might change if I completely lost it, but worst case scenarios don't seem to happen that often. The fewer things that destabilize you the better.

March 23, 2014

Motivating Rejections — The Series

Awareness / Freedom / Tips

Motivating Rejections — The Series

Welcome to my series on turning rejections into motivations. Click on the Table of Contents entries to the left to read the posts in the series. I've learned to view what many people call failure as experience and lack of failure as not experimenting enough. If you avoid failure absolutely, I would guess I would sound annoying to me. Not that I'm special in this way. The entrepreneurial community celebrates failure, at least among those who learn from it despite the pain. So do sports and plenty of other places. A major part of my failures come in the form of rejections. Like many of my failures that turned into great learning experiences that led to great successes, many rejections renewed passions in me to…

March 18, 2014

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership

Overcoming childhood anxieties and fears: nerd and geek are just elements of your style

I don't know about you, but a lot of people see me as nerdy and geeky. Growing up, the labels intimidated and debilitated me. Athletes seemed to get more attention and respect. I associated doing well in science and math with being made fun of. Since I did well in those subjects I hid my ability and didn't make a show of it. When I started college I took a couple science classes, but mostly chose humanities. I felt like a lot of people avoided science and math because they were socially less acceptable. It seemed like a lot of people who took math and science lacked social skills. In junior year, after taking a year off from school, I finally decided I liked physics…

February 20, 2014

The Joshua Spodek Ten

A longtime reader and friend told me a way he put together to make himself feel better, going back to my 2009 post, "Less, please". He said "You know how I get to feel better when I'm feeling down? You have your burpees and SIDCHAs. I do my Joshua Spodek Ten. Whenever I feel down, I set a goal of getting rid of ten things." He described that he had lots of stuff, but had been getting rid of and working to avoid acquiring things since "Less, please" and had gotten good at it. More importantly, he realized a way to make himself feel better, through less clutter and stuff, however much he thought getting any one of the things would improve his life when…

February 17, 2014

Awareness / Freedom / Nature / Tips

Improve your life by rejecting mental models that inhibit freedom, joy, and other reward

On another forum I got into a dialog about the mental models of introversion and extroversion I found relevant, given my posts here. My goal on treating the mental model of the one-dimensional introversion-extroversion is deeper than examining this one mental model. It's to show how much people can confuse mental models with actual observations. Without that confusion you can reject models that inhibit you. They see the mental models of introversion, extroversion, and the spectrum between them as parts of reality independent of their perception. They are only as real as people perceive them. So was the impossibility of breaking a four-minute mile. So was the idea that angels flapping their wings made the Earth go around the Sun. Someone described themselves as introverted…

February 15, 2014

Awareness / Freedom

Op/Ed Fridays: the news forcing its irrelevance on us

If you read this page, you know I consider the government's spying one of the greatest threats to freedom we face. Even wars we enter with some intent to stop some day, but I don't see anyone who wants to increase the spying acknowledging any intent to scale it back. It looks to me a one-way increase in the executive branch's power at the expense of the other two branches', one of the major risks the founders tried to guard against. They were rebelling against the tyranny that results from unaccountable centralized authority. Even if you don't agree on my perspective, you probably agree the issue is important enough for people to discuss. Even if you don't agree you'd value discussing it, you probably agree…

February 14, 2014

Awareness / Freedom / Humor

Op/Ed Fridays: “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No!”ï»¿

This quote by the actor in the video below reveals such profound lack of awareness, you can only imagine the denial that could resolve the conflict between accepting direct government aid and welfare while decrying government aid and welfare and saying nobody helped him. I don't know if the programs he talked about help or hurt society or him. I don't know his situation. I only know what he said (the context of the whole interview is below): "I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U I'm surprised the video only has around 150,000 views. It seems revealing. Anyway, here's the full interview for context. The clip above comes around 3:40. The interviewer doesn't point out how the actor contradicted…

February 7, 2014

Freedom / Leadership / Tips

How to set your angel free

I wrote on my model for personal development and coaching of setting your angel free based on Michelangelo's answer on how he carved David out of a block of marble: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." My model says that since we feel most natural and people are most attracted to us when we behave free of the constraints and motivations others impose on us, our most effective goal in personal growth isn't to put more stuff on us but to free ourselves from society's impediments. (EDIT: I just referred to this page working with a client and realized I should things like internal insecurities, fears, anxieties, and thoughts of others expectations and judgments to what to…

February 6, 2014

More inspiration from Martin Luther King, especially if you haven’t achieved much yet

Blog / Education / Freedom / Leadership

More inspiration from Martin Luther King, especially if you haven’t achieved much yet

Perhaps the best honor one person can give another is to understand them and continue their legacy. I'm writing today's post to suggest you can do that with Martin Luther King more than you think. Many people believe Einstein got bad grades, but I understand he didn't. Martin Luther King, Jr got bad grades. He started graduate school at a school near Philadelphia called Crozer. Note among his grades -- the grades of one of the premier public speakers I've heard of -- he got a C in Public Speaking one term and a C+ in another term. He also got a C+ in Church Music and a C- in another class. Now look at his college grades. They are hard to read, but you'll…

January 20, 2014

Awareness / Freedom / Tips

The 3 best tricks to get rid of things

Many more people believe in minimalism than practice it. They want to get rid of things but fail at it. I've gotten decent at it and found three things work best. First, some context to understand why people fail. The best first step for solving a challenging problem is nearly always awareness. Context: why people fail to get rid of things When people think about getting rid of things, even if they have a sincere desire to, they get hit with a powerful emotional barrier, usually anxiety bordering on fear based on the potential loss. When considering getting rid of something they think "Minimalism is better than having too much stuff. Getting rid of X will free my budget, schedule, and so on." Sounds great.…

January 16, 2014

Awareness / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

A leadership position doesn’t make someone a leader

Many of my clients tell me they want leadership positions. Come to think of it, many of them are already in what most people would call leadership positions. They manage people, direct them, decide on bonuses, hiring, and firing, and so on. But they aren't satisfied with their current positions. They don't know why. They just think they'll like things more when they are higher on the organizational chart or running a company they started. They misunderstand leadership, confusing a position or title with having control over their lives. The more your role consists of obligations over which you have no control, the less you are a leader and the more you're a follower, no matter how high your salary or vaunted your title. You…

January 13, 2014

Master introversion AND extroversion

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership / Models / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Visualization

Master introversion AND extroversion

Yesterday I wrote about freeing yourself from constraining beliefs. Today I'll expand on creating new beliefs to free yourself from such constraints. I wanted to illustrate at least one alternative to the standard one-dimensional model of introversion and extroversion that I find impedes self-awareness, understanding, and personal growth and development. Many people continue to believe it because they have no alternative that helps their life more. Others rigidly hold on to their old belief because they can't distinguish between the belief and the object of their belief -- for example, telling people who disagree with their view that they don't understand the definition of introvert or extrovert, not recognizing a definition describes a model not people. If you reject the model, those definitions don't matter.…

January 12, 2014

Don’t let rigid or stupid beliefs make you stupid or rigid

Awareness / Freedom

Don’t let rigid or stupid beliefs make you stupid or rigid

Growing and developing as a person means changing. Changing deeply held beliefs is hard. When people talk about getting out of their comfort zones, changing deeply held beliefs is one of the major places. Most people can't do it. They have beliefs they can't get rid of. They don't even distinguish between their beliefs (something inside their heads) and the object of their beliefs (something outside their heads). They confuse the map with the territory. The world is large and complex. As complex and wonderful as our brains are, they can't comprehend everything at once. They didn't evolve to. They evolved to understand relevant patterns. When it latches onto a pattern, sometimes it gets stuck and can't help seeing it. For example, look at this…

January 11, 2014

Fitness / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) series

I'm so swept up by SIDCHAs I made a series for them. Click here for the SIDCHA series. Do you want success or failure? Do you want to lead yourself or to follow others? Do you want a shot at greatness or mediocrity? Do you want resilience from feeling bad when things don't go your way or do you want your emotions to wreak havoc with you when things inevitably don't go your way? The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) is the foundation for success, personal leadership, your shot at greatness, emotional resilience, and more. While a SIDCHA alone may not achieve all those things, it gives you such a strong foundation for them, you'll probably find yourself achieve them. I don't have evidence…

January 2, 2014

After a difficult decision affecting your team: Eisenhower and the paratroopers before D-day

Freedom / Leadership

After a difficult decision affecting your team: Eisenhower and the paratroopers before D-day

Yesterday's clip on Ike deciding whether to risk sending tens of thousands of men into potentially pointless suicide missions with losses up to seventy percent didn't show how he followed up. Those paratroopers were the first wave of the invasion, to jump the night before the amphibious invasion. He decided to send them. What do you do when you decide to send tens of thousands of young men possibly to become sitting ducks--seventy percent of them? Ike had spent most of the months preparing for launch working with Generals, diplomats, the King, the President, and so on. The military chain of command took care of soldiers going to battle. Ike had little fighting experience. But on the night before D-Day, he drove to the paratroopers…

December 29, 2013

Freedom / Leadership

Eisenhower, D-Day, and keeping teams strong while making hard choices

If you think making decisions is hard, how about ones where the lives of thousands of people depend on your choice? Or possibly the free world? I find learning how people succeeded in difficult cases makes doing things well in my world easier. Today's post shows a dramatization of a decision then-General Eisenhower, Ike, had to make in preparing for D-Day. This scene stuck with me since I first saw the movie for a leadership class at Columbia Business School during a unit on decision-making. The context: The clip shows two scenes--one two days before D-Day, the other the next morning. The allies have been preparing to invade Nazi-held Normandy for months and have only one day the moon and tides allow. They can possibly…

December 28, 2013

Blog / Freedom / Tips

Eliminate guilt and blame for good — the series

I wrote a series of posts on "Getting rid of guilt and blame for good." I assembled them into series format so you can read them all at once. Check it out. For reference, the first post begins like this. Do you like feeling guilty or doing things that make you feel guilt? Do you find blaming people improves your life? Not likely. Would you prefer alternatives that don't make you feel bad and do improve your life? Of course. Feeling guilt and blaming others have become rare for me. Life is better without them: I feel better, have more rewarding relationships, have fewer conflicts, and resolve what conflicts I do have more quickly and easily than before. When you understand why you feel them…

December 23, 2013

Eliminate guilt and blame for good — the series

Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Nonjudgment / Tips

Eliminate guilt and blame for good — the series

I neither like feeling guilt or blame nor do I find them helpful to solve problems. While I still feel the emotions sometimes, I feel them far less than I used to. This series describes how to overcome them. I hope the techniques and perspectives work for you. Click on the entries in the table of contents to the left. Note I pulled the last entry from another series, but found it relevant. Goodbye guilt and blame, IGoodbye guilt and blame, IIGoodbye guilt and blame, IIIGoodbye guilt and blame, IVGoodbye guilt and blame, VGoodbye guilt and blame, VIGoodbye guilt and blame, VIIA model to rid your life of guilt and blame in favor of getting things done

December 22, 2013

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