Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

How would you improve the world if you had supernatural powers?

Here's an exercise to see your values from a new perspective. I used to do it all the time until I learned my lesson from it, which I'll write at the bottom. Answer the question "how would you improve the world if you could have a magical wish come true?" and follow through to see if the change would, in fact, improve your life. To clarify, I mean a supernatural change outside of what you normally do to improve your life and world. I submit that it's not as easy as you think. Say you had whatever magical powers to change the world however you wanted. Could you improve the world beyond what you could do without the magical powers? Quick answers people jump to…

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September 22, 2013
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Experience guides us more than philosophy.

Have you noticed that people who behave wildly differently can still base their behavior on the same underlying philosophies? Or that people who behave similarly can also base their behavior on different philosophies? Pick a way people behave and you'll find people saying that behavior comes from any source. For example, among the most peaceful people some base their behavior on being religious, some on being atheist, some on not caring about religion or atheism at all. Some of the most belligerent people base their behavior on religion. Some not. People on the left call Hitler right-wing. People on the right call him left-wing. People who exercise say they do it to relax and feel good about their bodies. People who don't exercise say they…

4 Comments
September 7, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Do you decide rationally or emotionally?

One of this blog's central focuses is self-awareness because I think to improve your life and relationships the best starting point is to know where you are. Know thyself, in other words. Today I want to give you a way to learn deeply about how your mind works. I didn't come up with the idea, but it intrigues me and I'd love to learn other people's thoughts. I think people generally believe they have a voluntary, rational part of their brain that, among its roles, makes decisions. If you're choosing what to order off a restaurant menu, for example, you probably do something like this: You read your options, eliminate those you don't want, consider the ones you do, work through some core decision-making process,…

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August 4, 2013
A few models that don’t improve your life that effectively
Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Exercises / Models / Tips

A few models that don’t improve your life that effectively

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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.] I wrote about The Method being an effective way to improve your life and, when applied to a team, to improve your leadership style. Based on the Model, The Method says that if you align your environment, beliefs, and behavior with the emotions you want, you'll feel emotional reward. Feeling reward means you'll feel motivated to continue your change through to completion. Most people don't know the Model or follow the Method. They use techniques that can work, but generally not…

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May 24, 2013
Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Exercises / Models / Nature / Perception / Tips

A model that explains why your enthusiasm when planning disappears when doing

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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.] Scene 1: You plan something big. You're excited. You know there will be challenges, but you also know you'll overcome them. You will do what it takes no matter what. Scene 2: You started the project but it petered out. You don't know what happened to that feeling of invincibility, but it's gone. What happened? How did you lose your motivation? Why didn't your willpower work? Today's model answers. A model that explains why your enthusiasm when planning disappears when doing :…

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May 20, 2013
Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

My Seminar on Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence and Self-awareness in four evening sessions starting June 17, 6:30pm-9:30pm in New York

I'll be leading the next session of my leadership seminar in New York in June. I'm experimenting as four three-hour evening sessions Session 1: Monday, June 17 Session 2: Wednesday, June 19 Session 3: Monday, June 24 Session 4: Wednesday, June 26 I'll give the same full attention I do for a weekend session. Sign up here. Here's the course description: What You’ll Learn If you don't know how to lead, you can only do what you can do yourself. If you can lead, you can achieve anything anyone else did with a team. Even if you want only to live a quiet, happy, rewarding life you still have to lead yourself. The more you know how to lead, the more you are in control…

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May 18, 2013
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Insight into what you’re good at and why from Evolutionary Psychology

I copied this quote from a book on Evolutionary Psychology without writing the source. Sorry for not giving the source (please write me if you know it), but I find it summarizes the challenge we all face in having a motivational system that evolved to solve certain problems but living in a world with different types of problems. In other words, our modern skulls house a stone age mind. The key to understanding how the modern mind works is to realize that its circuits were not designed to solve the day-to-day problems of a modern American -- they were designed to solve the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. These stone age priorities produced a brain far better at solving some problems than others. For…

2 Comments
March 17, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

Comparing biology and physics from a business leadership perspective

I studied physics to nearly the farthest levels you can at one of the great institutions. Now I study evolutionary psychology more. I've thought about these things a lot. As a practicing businessman and inventor, I look to nature -- physics -- for ideas to create and engineer to bring to market. As a leader I look to people -- biology -- to interact with, team up with, buy from, sell to, etc; in short, to influence. Sometimes I think about the fields and how I interact with them daily, not abstractly asking about the fields or as a researcher but in how I use their domains in my professional life. If you work on sales, you're using biology and psychology. If you invent something…

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January 12, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 5: examples

[This post is part of a series on empathy gaps. 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.] As a final note on empathy gaps, I wanted to note a few examples of empathy gaps -- using them, observing them in others, and observing them in yourself. Researchers normally present empathy gaps as problems. I like to think of them as a part of life like any other. We can use the effect to help us. Teenager egg-carrying exercise I remember a high school assignment for students to carry an egg with them everywhere for a week or a month. Eggs, of course, are fragile, so…

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December 15, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 4: overcoming them

[This post is part of a series on empathy gaps. 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.] Now we are familiar with empathy gaps -- that when you feel one emotion you generally can’t conceive of your motivations when feeling a different emotion. We get how insidious they can be in keeping us from improving our lives. What do we do about them? How do we shield ourselves from them undermining our efforts? I haven't found research on effective techniques (please contact me if you know of any) in avoiding, overcoming, or developing resilience to empathy gaps. I only have my understanding of them and…

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December 14, 2012
One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 3: why empathy gaps make sense
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 3: why empathy gaps make sense

[This post is part of a series on empathy gaps. 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.] As usual, understanding ourselves better helps us overcome the problems of empathy gaps -- that when you feel one emotion you generally can’t conceive of your motivations when feeling a different emotion. Yet as they fundamentally concern being unable to understand things about ourselves, you'd think they were difficult to understand. On the contrary, you can understand them if you understand your emotional system. Luckily we have an easy way to understand our emotional systems. Empathy gaps depend on your emotional system Also as usual, the Model explains…

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December 13, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 2: research and experiments

[This post is part of a series on empathy gaps. 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.] Yesterday I talked about the effect that when you feel one emotion you generally can’t conceive of your motivations when feeling a different emotion, nor do you realize you can't, also known as empathy gaps. Today let's look at some research and experiments. Sexual arousal A comedian once remarked on the question people suggest you asking before considering unprotected sex, "would you die for it." He said sometimes when you're in the moment, you think you might. Dan Ariely, in his book Predictably Irrational (which I recommend), wrote…

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December 12, 2012
First cherries of spring!
Cherries!
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

First cherries of spring!

If the first cherries of spring don't warrant a post of their own, I don't know what does. Billions of years of evolution led to them tasting so good -- on their side and mine. After all the amazing tropical fruits of Vietnam and China, I like being reminded of how good some local fruit here can taste. Every spring I eat cherries until they make me feel woozy. Then I know I've had enough. Then I usually have a few more.

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May 30, 2012
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Problems at the foundation of economics

My physics training tells me economics views some things in a weird way. In physics, if your theory predicts something to happen a certain way and it happens differently, you say your theory is wrong, at least partly, and you work to improve it. Nature is always correct. You try to get your theory to predict what nature does. When economics predicts people to behave some way and they don't, economists often say the people are biased. Or acting in error or irrationally. A physicist would never say an electron was biased. It's weird when I read some economist saying someone whose behavior violates a theory made an error, was biased, or acted irrationally. From my perspective, the theory needs work. Perhaps the model's concept…

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May 25, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Education / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Psychologists on self-awareness

This quote on self-awareness, from the book Willpower, describes some psychologists' perspectives on self-awareness. I like its perspective. It asks how self-awareness could have evolved and notes the importance of the behavior the mental ability motivates By the way, I recommend the book for its content and engaging writing style, although I prefer the advice and perspective in my willpower series. Read both. (Edit: and my Empathy Gap series. Read all three.) In the 1970s, social psychologists studying subjects in self-conscious situations began to understand why self-awareness developed in humans... When people were placed in front of a mirror, or told that their actions were being filmed, they consistently changed their behavior. These self-conscious people worked harder at laboratory tasks. They gave more valid answers…

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March 3, 2012
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

E. O. Wilson and evolutionary psychology in the New Yorker

The New Yorker has a piece this week on E. O. Wilson and others on current debate in evolutionary psychology and altruism. Online only has the summary, so you'll have to buy a copy, but I expect quality from the magazine. E. O. Wilson published a fictional story on ants I found enjoyable and educational in the New Yorker himself a couple years ago. I saw Wilson speak and got to talk to him briefly at the New York Academy of Sciences. Things I learned from him have affected my views on motivations and emotions as much as from anyone else.

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February 27, 2012
Awareness / Exercises / Nature

Models: an exercise in spotting the model

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Let's do another exercise in beliefs and models. One of the challenges in models is that people act on them without realizing them. If someone else acts on one without realizing it, they will stick with it strongly and may influence you to seeing it from their perspective,…

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January 15, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Exercises / Nature

Models: an exercise in evaluating models

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] I've harped on how the only meaningful value of a model or belief is in how well it helps achieve its goal, not accuracy or if you had it first or anything else. Today's question will illustrate the difference. I'll give you a situation to consider, then a…

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January 13, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Models: examples of the active view

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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 let's look at some examples of applying the active view of models to models you may know or from life. That is, the following examples show how someone created a model specifically not what most people see when they look at the object of the modeling. Jack…

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January 12, 2012
Models: the active view, part 2
Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Models / Nature / Visualization

Models: the active view, part 2

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Having seen an overview of the active view, let's look at it in practice. Let's take a passive view from a post a few days ago -- how you perceive a dog based on your beliefs and expectations -- and make it active. Example 1 First let's look…

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January 11, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Models: the active view, part 1

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Actively choosing and managing your models -- what I call the active view of models -- changes how you experience your world. Since you only know your world through your beliefs and models, changing your models effectively changes your world. You need to know about models -- the…

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January 10, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Models: flaws from experts

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Do you think you have some great models and beliefs that no one can prove wrong? Let's look at some examples of experts declaring things most people at the time probably agreed with. I think you'll find many funny today. Imagine trying to argue with the authority who…

0 Comments
January 9, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Models: why I stress that they all have flaws

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] If I stress one thing about models and beliefs, I stress that they all have flaws. None are internally consistent. All contradict something in the world. To recognize that you can't prove most of the basic ideas you hold as truths can be mind blowing. I'm not trying…

0 Comments
January 8, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Models: the passive view

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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 I'll review the main points arising from simply knowing about that we create models that mediate our interactions with our worlds -- what I call the passive view. Merely knowing about models passively, not what to do with them but just the following points, will help you…

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January 7, 2012
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Examples of models: Mexico city, lack of awareness, and leadership

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Leadership depends on understanding that other people have different models. A leader who doesn't recognize people can have different models will create discord and confusion, as today's example will illustrate. I draw this example from my life. After business school a friend told me her consulting job was…

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January 6, 2012

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