Beliefs affect your perception, illustrated with wine

An article that came out the other day illustrated how beliefs affect your perception. The result is so relevant to the Model, I couldn't help but break from the series on the Method. Apparently people in training to taste wine can't tell a white wine dyed red tastes the same as an identical except un-dyed white wine. In fact, they taste different flavors in the wine. The study may cover undergrads, but they probably know more about wine than you do. In 2001, Frederic Brochet conducted two experiments at the University of Bordeaux. In one experiment, he got 54 penology (the study of wine tasting and wine making) undergraduates together and had them taste one glass of red wine and one glass of white wine.…

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How to make persistence pay off more effectively

A couple people emailed me today's long New York Times article Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?. One pointed out that it echoed my post that English and romantic languages reflect the difficulty in deciding in the root -cide. On choosing The article reports research in choosing. This blog emphasizes not mere research but applying it to improve your life. I love reading research, but enjoying learning pales in comparison to applying it to improve your life. The article points out people choose less effectively after a while. Great. So what? It didn't mention my first thought. This finding reinforces that persistence pays off -- but the article implies persistence pays off better if you persist for a while in the moment. It gives examples…

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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…

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Are you being judgmental without realizing?, part III

The past two days covered the how we can be judgmental without meaning it -- first with clearly judgmental language, then with implicitly judgmental words. Today let's look at exercises to change. My normal first step for change is to start by building awareness. In this case, changing builds awareness so much and the exercises are so easy (they don't involve anyone else), I recommend just starting with the change. There are two exercises that you can do separately or together. They sound trivial, but if you're diligent, you'll find yourself catching subtle behavior all the time. You'll be amazed at the little things you say and how you start thinking differently. Exercise 1 The first exercise is to replace judgmental language. With what? Usually…

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The value of looking for solutions over looking for problems

Some people look for problems; others look for solutions. The problem, to me, with people who look for problems is that they can get good at it. When you're with them, you may find yourself surrounded by problems you never would have found otherwise. What I like about people who look for solutions is that they find them. When you are with them, you tend to enjoy yourself, unaware that problems even came up. They may not even be aware "problems" existed in the first place because they made them fun. Personally, I have less and less time for people who look for problems. I fill my life increasingly with people who look for solutions. It's a better life for me. Imagine you're approaching a…

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When polarizing helps

Here's another lesson from my stylist friend besides how fast even significant personal change can be, possibly obvious to people more stylish than me. He told me a major goal of how you dress is to polarize. At first polarizing sounded counterproductive. Polarizing in a discussion breaks down communication. Why would I want to polarize? Why would I want to repel people? He explained further. Many people dress to fit in, meaning they don't polarize. If you have a job where you have to fit in, dress to fit in when you're there. But if you dress to fit in you don't say anything about yourself. Dressing to polarize repels some people but attracts others. If you dress to express yourself authentically and genuinely the…

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One way not to be manipulated

If you know what you love and you do things you love, you may not be able to succeed by other people's measures of success, but you'll know you'll never look back at what you did with regret. It's difficult to imagine looking back and saying, "Darn, while everyone else was [doing whatever they do], I wasted all that time doing things I loved." If you don't know what you love or even like or don't like, the best you can hope for is to be lucky in what you choose to do bringing you reward. Or don't choose, if you end up blowing in the breeze through life. Even if you enjoy what you're doing while you're doing it, you won't know if you're…

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How much can you take responsibility for someone else’s emotions?

A friend posted on another forum about "feeling weighted" about a few recent relationships in which women felt hurt afterward. Since he had asked for advice, I gave him some, copied below. Sorry it's out of context, but that forum is private. Some background: this response came after a couple posts stating and clarifying the issues. Not everything resonated with him, but he said he found the two paragraphs preceding the summary and the summary helpful. Also, re-reading it now after a few weeks, I'd soften it a bit, but I'll post it verbatim. I hope the perspective is helpful to others. I'm not sure if I've written about my phrase "Don't look for blame, but take responsibility for making things better to the extent…

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When values collide I

I'll get back to my series on creativity soon. A post I put on one of my online communities seemed relevant here. If anyone here has comments, I'd value them. I just finished reading Making It All Work, David Allen's book after Getting Things Done. Then cleaned almost a meter of old books off my shelf that were dead weight. Feels great! I remember this community having some GTD aficionados. I have a question for you. I came across a few things that I couldn't figure out what to do with -- too valuable to throw away but not worth anything on their own. The two examples that come to mind are my high school diploma and my last remaining marathon medal. Also some old…

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The Worst Problem In The World

The Worst problem In The World is two people with different standards who don't realize their standards differ evaluating each other and acting on their evaluation. This is not hyperbole. Think of a recent news headline involving conflict. It was probably a variation of The Worst Problem In The World. Many significant conflicts in the world are either solvable or are variations of The Worst Problem In The World. Many major conflicts  in your life with other people are probably also variations on The Worst Problem In The World. Here's an example: person A is vegetarian and believes eating meat is cruel; person B eats meat and believes people should be free to eat what they want. A's standard is cruelty. B's is freedom. When…

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Choosing what you like is not denying what you don’t

Do you feel if you don't deal with difficult things you're denying or avoiding reality? Does that bring you down or make you feel irresponsible? Does that compel you to do things you don't want to? Here's how to make sure you don't. After a conversation last night, my friend said she looked at enjoying life in a whole new way for the better.Let's start with an analogy. On a corner of Manhattan, dozens of people may pass you in a minute. You could stop and talk to any one of them. It's so diverse, one might be a student, another a dancer, athlete, lawyer, CEO, model, housewife, and so on. If you began a conversation with any about his or her life, you'd get…

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Creating more freedom

The New York Times wrote yesterday about Eben Moglen, whom I wrote about recently. "We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now," he said. "What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been." ... If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy. "It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse," Mr.…

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E-book overload

Typical e-book readers today have a few gigabytes of memory, enabling holding thousands of books.Where did the choice for this amount of memory come from? Am I missing something? What is the value of holding that many books? Even if you were trapped on a desert island you would die before finishing reading them, leaving aside the issue of recharging the battery.On the face of it you could say you never know when you might want to read a given book, so why not have it available. Many books are available for free, presumably everything in the public domain that someone has taken the time to convert.How does having all those books available improve your life? Alternatively, if you had 5,000 books available to you…

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Why are decisions hard?

When you think of deciding, do you think of going toward the choice you decide on? I tend to and I think most others do too.But if deciding is about going toward something we like, why can it be so hard?The -cide in decide is the same -cide as in pesticide, homicide, and suicide -- from Latin, meaning cut or kill. However much we think about deciding as going toward something we like, our language retains the hard part: cutting off or killing something we like almost as much.In choices with obvious differences in value -- like Steven Wright's joke: 'I'd rather be rich than stupid" -- you don't hesitate to cut off or kill the choice you don't like. When differences in values are…

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Tao translations and translators

The Tao Te Ching has influenced and resonates with me more than any other book. This translation is my favorite so far for its accessibility.The translator in this interview said a number of perspectives like I would: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Most other perspectives I have follow from those life-level perspectives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4W8ufwzp50 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58eopl0tQao http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sETgCeOdof0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7lxiwJCj08

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Food

A few years ago I stopped eating partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup. I learned more than I expected from it. The change affected more than my eating habits. I didn't know how healthy they were, nor did I care, since I eat plenty of unhealthy food. The issue was not that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is bad for you. Lots of things are. Nor was it learning that food manufacturers tested it and knew it was worse for you than regular oil. The clincher was that the manufacturers continued to say it was better for you after knowing it was worse. Once I realize their shareholders are more important to them than the people eating their product, I realized I couldn't…

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Discipline

On a scorching August day, running along the Hudson I passed a sign: "Runners: Free T-shirt for Interview." I stopped and agreed to be interviewed. A sports apparel company was interviewing runners for a commercial. They had constructed a small plywood hut with the cameras inside that was air-conditioned. They had me wear a shirt over the one I had been running in to cover their competitor's logo. The interviewer sat facing me just to the side of the camera, clipboard in hand. He perfunctorily asked questions, which I answered, not sure if I should look at him or the camera. The questions were good, along the lines of why I ran, what about it I enjoyed, how running made me feel, how I prepared…

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Less, please

I used to view books like most people seem to. Books reflected who I was, they added to my home, let people know more about me, were good to have for quick reference, etc. I went through an experience that changed that. It started innocently enough. I decided to get rid of only the most useless books I had. The ones I would never miss and had for no good reason in the first place. Looking at my shelves it was easy to figure out those from the ones worth keeping. Actually there were some borderline ones. I decided to be conservative so I kept all the borderline ones. I still got rid of a good portion of my books. Some time later I found,…

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