anecdote Archives - Joshua Spodek

“Why does the universe exist” and why I prefer living life to philosophizing about it

A reader contacted me and suggested I read the book "Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story," by Jim Holt. The author writes for the New Yorker among other things, which implies I'll enjoy his writing. The book promised to explore the question why the universe exists as opposed to not existing. Why being and not nothingness. I borrowed the book from the library. I hadn't considered its main question much before, so it got me thinking about why the universe exists. It's an interesting question that twists your mind just to think about it. Once you posit that the universe exists with the laws of physics we know, I can see how the Sun, Earth, life on Earth, and humans followed from…

November 5, 2013

Blog

Insensitive, compassionless people

This blog talks a lot about beliefs and how you can create your own. I don't always talk about the limits to what skills creating beliefs can give you. If your mind can't accept a belief, it won't work for you. For example, maybe I'd be happier if I believed I could fly, but I have too much evidence to the contrary. I just can't believe it. Sometimes a belief works great until some experience stops you from believing it any more. Then your life gets worse. Sometimes someone does something so outside your beliefs that you can't hold it any more and you lose all the reward it brought you. It sucks. When I started graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, I found…

October 15, 2013

Art / Blog

Some things come naturally, some don’t.

My mom grew up on a farm in South Dakota -- the kind where she and her siblings had to walk through snow up to here miles to a one-room schoolhouse. I can't imagine growing up on a farm like that. Her little sister, my Aunt Ellen, visited recently. I don't remember the details of Ellen's learning music growing up, but here's my understanding. She got a hold of a cheap guitar from somewhere, got a record player, and figured out how to play the guitar playing along with records until her fingers bled. I'm pretty sure my grandmother made them all learn music since my mom plays the piano, but I'm pretty sure Aunt Ellen taught herself guitar alone. I don't remember the details…

October 6, 2013

My first public presentation

I've come to enjoy giving presentations, but no way did I start this way. I was mortified to speak in public only a few years ago, well into my thirties. How did I grow and develop to love public speaking? The same way as anyone. Experience. In my life experience means failing and getting back up again. It means overcoming embarrassment and anxiety, risking being laughed at, acting like I know what I'm doing when I don't feel like I do, hoping they don't notice my fear, ... you know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's just me, but I think the quintessential fear of putting yourself out for others to evaluate you is to feel like when you were picked on as a child.…

October 2, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom

Goenka and 10-day meditation retreats

Two days ago a guy named Satya Narayan Goenka died. Who was Goenka and why should I care? First, I'll mention how I found out about him. I had no experience with meditation when a longtime friend I hadn't seen in a while suggested I try it. The idea made no sense to me because meditation made no sense to me. I didn't know or care about it to that point in my life -- somewhere around 2006. But my friend knew me a long time and I valued her perspective. I decided to try a ten-day meditation retreat, I guess like jumping in the deep end -- these retreats allow no talking, reading, writing, etc for the first nine days. You can leave if…

October 1, 2013

Oops! Haha … did I say four miles? … Uh, I meant seven.

Oops! Haha … did I say four miles? … Uh, I meant seven.

I didn't mean to write yesterday's post onÂ starting with emotion on exercise, food, and habits. I meant to contrast how I like to exercise with how people who don't exercise seem to and then to tell today's story. People who don't exercise seem to characterize it as torture and dislike it. I see it as fun and rewarding. Sometimes it feels like torture, but only when I know the feeling of exhaustion to follow that I know I'll appreciate more than I dislike the torture. I love being fit. Today I'll share a funny story about it. Context Living by the Hudson River means I can run without having to stop at traffic lights in Hudson River Park, which the city has slowly been improving.…

September 27, 2013

Blog / Education / Leadership

An example of effective, understated leadership

I wanted to share an example of effective leadership I once saw. When I was in graduate school, Columbia was considering its policy on allowing the military to have programs like ROTC on campus or not and held hearings anyone in the university could attend to speak their mind. I attended one.Â The President of the university, Lee Bolinger, ran the event. I had strong feelings about risking militarizing the campus and entered expecting to feel critical of the school and to leave outraged. Instead, I left impressed with Bollinger. I could only conceive then of leadership in the form of command and control so I expected he would try to "lead" participants to an intended outcome. Instead, he acted mostly to moderate. More than anything…

September 25, 2013

Blog / Entrepreneurship

“Getting the hang of” working in big companies taught me to keep starting companies

I know some people like working in big companies. They like the feeling of stability, the benefits, the uniformity, I guess. Regular readers know I prefer small companies, especially having co-founded one. Why? Because of big company culture. One incident cemented this perspective for me. I'll tell you the story that made me not like big companies. You may feel I extrapolated too far. Maybe. What turned me off from big companies Co-founding my company was my first experience in business. Before that I was a graduate student. I ran the company as CEO as best I could. Eventually it was no longer a start-up and needed different skills than I had and someone else became CEO. I went to work at a friend's company.…

September 24, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

My start with emotional intelligence and self-awareness

You don't have emotional intelligence, you were born with it, or you developed it. If you developed it you started sometime, like I did. If you don't have it, you can start too. Here's my start. I don't pretend I'm the world master of emotional intelligence, but I've come a long way and I know anyone else can. I hope sharing the story motivates others. Context Before business school I had barely heard of the concept of emotional intelligence. Since I contrasted emotions with rationality, I considered them irrational and weird, not something to learn about or focus on. Since I connected emotions to feelings, music, art, and romantic comedies, I didn't connect them to behavior. Nor for that matter did I connect behavior to…

September 23, 2013

Blog

The benefit of blocked cable

It's Sunday afternoon. If you didn't know I like watching football. So why am I writing instead of watching? The more relevant question is why I used to watch -- not just football, but anything on TV. When I moved into my apartment almost fourteen years ago I plugged my TV into a coax cable already installed. For some reason, it worked. No cable box, no nothing. I didn't pay for anything, but I got cable quality transmission for regular broadcast channels plus a few cable channels. As long is it was there, why not use it? I had ideas of stopping watching, but having it there made it so easy. So I watched. In time I decreased watching a lot, mainly to nature shows…

September 18, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Leadership / Nature

Healthy food mostly replaced my unhealthy food. Here’s how.

How can you expect to lead others if you can't lead yourself? This post, like most of mine, is about leadership. If you can't lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others? If you don't understand your emotions and motivations and how to create the ones you want in yourself, how do you expect to do so with others? Alternatively, the better you can lead yourself, the better you can lead others and, for that matter, yourself the next time. Since most of us want to eat differently than we do and others are constantly trying to motivate us to eat like they want us to, eating is a great place to learn leadership skills. Who do you want leading your eating habits, you…

September 16, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

One of the most important lessons I learned in business school didn’t come from a teacher and it applies everywhere in life

I wrote before about "Business school's first major lesson: how to resolve ethical dilemmas." Today I'll talk about another important lesson I learned in business school, also within the first couple weeks, also applying in many places in life I would not have expected from a vocational school. Context First I have to note my mindset before starting business school. I considered the most relevant parts of my life that I'd co-founded a company and I knew more math than probably anyone in the school. I thought business school would be a fun experience filling in a few gaps of how to make spreadsheets and learning some networking skills. What happened One of the major cores of business school is knowing how a business runs…

September 9, 2013

Awareness / Blog

An essay on money, part 2

Today being Labor Day makes it an interesting day to think about money. I've noticed my post "An essay on money" gets almost the most number of hits of all my posts so I re-read it periodically. (Speaking of money, today is the also the last day to get the early discount on my awesome seminar on September 21 and 22 -- "Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence" so sign up now and save money!) My mom pointed out we never went on welfare when she read that essay, just that they gave the food out on our block without checking because the neighborhood was so poor. We loved the food I now wouldn't touch because the bread was so sweet and white and the…

September 2, 2013

Blog / Fitness / Tips

Just showing up can be the best strategy: One of my life’s greatest moments

Do you have a great passion? Something you devote several hours a day four to six days per week for twenty years? Something where pain and injury makes you like it more? If you have something like that, you'll know what playing Ultimate Frisbee meant to me. If not, you'll have to imagine. And I hope you some day build yourself a passion for something like I did for Ultimate. Anyway, toward the end of my competitive playing career I played on an elite team with some of the best players to have played the sport. I learned a lot from how I made that team. In late summer of that year I was looking for a team to play with. A friend said he…

August 31, 2013

Art / Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Another awesome success — Museum Hack and Nick Gray

An awesome side benefit of writing daily is that awesome people find you. Recently a guy wrote to tell me he liked my writing and invited me to participate in what seemed like a crazy project, but turned out to be one of the most awesome things I've done in New York City in a long time. And I've done a lot of awesome things in New York City. It's an amazing entrepreneurial story too -- the kind we love, which is why I, who endorse entrepreneurship and believe opportunities are everywhere, am sharing it with you. He started doing something that he enjoyed, for fun and personal challenge, and shared what he loved and got good at (another example of how "Sharing what you…

August 27, 2013

More benefits of burpees

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. 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.] Ten days ago I wrote about running around eight miles for my first run in about three months after hurting my ankle -- "Soreness and exhaustion feel great!". Three days later I ran a nine-and-a-half mile run. Even having run marathons before, I consider those runs long and big jumps from no running. I'm surprised I did them. I keep asking myself what kept me in shape enough to do them. The best I can think of is burpees. Besides burpees,…

August 26, 2013

Insults describe the person giving them more than the person receiving. How you can learn from yourself when you insult.

I overheard some people talking about another group as "douchebags" with "popped collars" who called everyone "bro" or "brah." Okay, I get that some people can find others annoying, but to call them douchebags is just mean. You've insulted others for other reasons. People call others losers, sluts, assholes, and so on. More importantly to you, if you've ever insulted someone or thought about it, which covers everyone on the planet, is that the insult says something about you: When you insult someone you evaluate them by your values, which you impose on them. You judge them. You think "I'm better than them" or "I'm right and they're wrong." If they judged you by their values you'd look terrible too. If you considered your thoughts…

August 22, 2013

Blog

Meaningful connections and valuing friends for their values

If you've read my social skills exercises series you know I avoid asking people what they do for a living. Instead I make meaningful connections about what people care about. An interesting side-effect of creating relationships based on what people care about instead of asking the same what-do-you-do-where-are-you-from-how-many-brothers-and-sisters-do-you-have-read-any-good-books-lately questions that get the same thoughtless answers is that sometimes I develop deep friendships with people never knowing what they do for a living. Usually if someone cares anything about their job they'll tell you, but if they don't it may never come up. Or if you enjoy each other's company so much you never get around to business, you never get around to business. People who love how they earn money you don't have to ask…

August 19, 2013

Soreness and exhaustion feel great!

People complain about pain and exhaustion like they're bad, but I find them sometimes the best feelings I know. As you know, I'm registered for this year's marathon. A couple months ago I hurt my ankle and couldn't run for a while. Yesterday I decided to run four or five miles for the first time. I felt great. So great I decided to run along the Hudson River all the way to Central Park, a mile there, and back. Something around seven to nine miles with some good hills. I got home after dark. Today my body is sore. When I'm in shape a half-marathon doesn't leave me this sore, but I'm not in great running shape. While the soreness makes moving hard and slightly…

August 15, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Nature

You probably blow smoke in kids’ faces without realizing. You can stop.

New York City is having the most mild summer I can remember. We've barely hit ninety degrees and that was at least a month ago. Since then we've had cool, spring-like weather most of the summer. The other evening walking with friends, I noticed how loud the sounds of window air conditioners were in the small streets of the West Village. The temperature and humidity outside couldn't have been more comfortable. I could only think the following thoughts about their unnecessarily using their air conditioners: Air conditioners use energy. That energy comes mainly from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels pollute. Pollution makes us unhealthy. Me: With weather this perfect, the air conditioners aren't improving the air for these people. They might as well light up a…

August 13, 2013

When to get rid of things

I've written before about getting rid of stuff and the challenges of getting rid of things you once wanted to keep. You feel like if you once valued something and now don't you'll lose something important. Maybe you should examine your values and how they changed. Slow-going apartment renovations have led me to live with a lot of my stuff in storage following living in Shanghai without much stuff for most of a year. I've enjoyed the freedom of living with less. While I got rid of a lot of junk when I put things into storage, I kept a lot I wasn't sure about. Choosing is hard. Now I look forward to getting things out of storage so I can get rid of a…

July 23, 2013

Blog

Birthdays!

Besides being the forty-fourth anniversary of someone stepping on the Moon, yesterday was the forty-second anniversary of me being born. Future historians will decide which was the more important event, but it went great. I write here about beliefs and practices people can use to improve things, but I like sometimes to share the great things they create, even if just as simple as appreciating a rainbow more than you otherwise would (though that's a part of appreciating things more through awareness, which improves your life at no cost or time). I remember joy of getting hundreds of birthday messages on Facebook, but nothing compares with a party full of new friends and old, good food, good drinks, good music, and nobody in a hurry…

July 21, 2013

120 burpees yesterday! 10,000 burpees at 2×20 per day!

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. 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.] While writing yesterday's post on accepting my friend Dave's challenge to do one hundred burpees in thirty-seven minutes I ate a banana for energy and mentally prepared. Then I turned on my stopwatch, started it, and did ten burpees. At three-and-a-half minutes I did ten more. At seven minutes ten more. By the end I felt good enough to do them faster. After my hundredth burpee I stopped the clock at just under twenty-nine minutes. Coincidentally, Dave happened to text me…

July 18, 2013

Another reason to share your passions

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. 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's post combines a few key things that result from and help create a great life. Having good friends who challenge you Sharing your passions Exercising regularly Accountability gets things done My friend Dave -- the guy I swam across the Hudson River with -- was back briefly from Tanzania, where he's doing development work. I don't have to tell you, the guy lives an amazing life. I told him I had been doing forty burpees a day since November 4…

July 17, 2013

Some things you have to do yourself

At an outdoor concert July 4 I noticed something that, when I said it, sounded like a meaningful life lesson worth sharing here. The VIP section for some reason had fewer port-a-pods per person than the rest of the venue so they kept having long lines. Also, my friends and I were mostly staying in the tent area with the bar to stay out of the hot sun and walking to the port-a-pods meant going out in the sun. I remember saying "No matter how rich you get, no matter how much you can pay for others to do things for you, no one can go to the bathroom for you." That may sound silly or obvious, but I think it has some meaning. Like…

July 12, 2013

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