nature Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Joshua Spodek

A model that answers all of life’s most important questions

Awareness / Exercises / Leadership / Models

A model that answers all of life’s most important questions

[This post is part of a series on â€œMental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.â€ If you donâ€™t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where youâ€™ll get more value than reading just this post.] Answering all of life's most important questions is a tall order, but if you've read this web page long, you know the value I put on the Model, my model for human motivations and emotions. The Model forms the foundation of what I consider the best way to view and live life. A modelÂ that answers all of life's most important questions: The Model If you haven't read my series on the Model, I wrote about it at length. I put a…

April 30, 2013

A model to find the best in someone, including yourself

Art / Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Leadership / Models / Tips

A model to find the best in someone, including yourself

[This post is part of a series on â€œMental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.â€ If you donâ€™t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where youâ€™ll get more value than reading just this post.] Today's belief helps overcome a challenge in helping someone's growth. It also helps you shine as a leader or mentor. When you lead or mentor someone or work to improve yourself, it helps to track progress, but you often can't. You can for external things, like how fast they run 100 meters, how they scored on a test, how much they increased revenues, etc. When you develop someone as a person, you can't always see the development externally. Especially with important…

April 23, 2013

Exercises / Leadership / Models

A model to rid your life of guilt and blame in favor of getting things done

[This post is part of a series on â€œMental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.â€ If you donâ€™t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where youâ€™ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you get that guilt and blame don't help your life but you can't stop yourself from blaming others sometimes and feeling guilty other times? Do you wish you could get over feeling guilty for things you can't change? Do you want to stop getting into arguments and losing friendships over blaming them? Today's model almost completely removed my habit of blaming others and of blaming myself, which led to guilt. I wrote about this topic at length about two years…

April 16, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Models / Nature / Tips

A model to free yourself from being categorized

[This post is part of a series on â€œMental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.â€ If you donâ€™t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where youâ€™ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you like being judged and put into a box? Do you like being told you can't change things about yourself that limit you from living the best life you can? Do you like it when these categories have no scientific basis? Personality traits, types, and dispositions are models that I don't find helpful. A model to free yourself from being categorized: personality types and traits have little to no validity I'm sure people will attack me on this belief. When…

April 13, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Nature / Tips

A model for stress that calms you down

[This post is part of a series on â€œMental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.â€ If you donâ€™t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where youâ€™ll get more value than reading just this post.] Does the world stress you out? Do people and things cause you stress? Do you get even more stressed at your helplessness to reduce how stressful the world is? Do you get even more frustrated and depressed at your bad luck that you had to be born at a time when the world was so stressful? Would you be glad to know you can decrease all that stress? No medicine required. You don't have to change anything except your beliefs. But…

April 8, 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…

March 17, 2013

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Nature / NorthKorea

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Visiting a flower show in North Korea led to being in a building overflowing with North Korean soldiers (including, as a group of guys will notice, cute female ones), and flowers. They named some types after their leaders, so they have a lot of Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which they arrange into shapes of North Korea around small models of important places, like where Kim Il Sung was born and such. You can also hear the over-the-top North Korean music. Sometimes I held the camera low so as not to call attention. I hoped to catch some of the times the cute female soldiers looked at us and giggled, but they were more discrete than I was quick with my camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWpYyVh4dQ

March 5, 2013

Video: On the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea

Nature / NorthKorea

Video: On the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea

Here I talk about the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea -- at least of the parts the government let us see. It was early Spring and North Korea is pretty north, so there weren't many leaves on the trees yet. And whatever your feelings about the government or people, the land, flora, and fauna remain the land, flora, and fauna and it's hard not to appreciate the beauty of nature. We had just had a barbecue lunch in a park near Pyongyang. Maybe in Pyongyang, I'm not sure because they didn't give us any maps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTE7y4SALL4

February 26, 2013

Blog / Leadership / Nature / Tips

Responsibility and accountability: expect stagnation without them

The other day I saw a post for a headline that caught my eye "On Scale of 0 to 500, Beijingâ€™s Air Quality Tops â€˜Crazy Badâ€™ at 755" because I was just in Beijing. I remember early one evening looking up in the sky and seeing a low flying airplane. Actually, I only saw its lights in the smog. I got confused looking at it because it looked close, so I expected it to appear to move fast. But it was moving so slowly I figured it had to be very far away. Then I realized why it didn't look like it was moving. It wasn't. It was the light at the top of a building a couple blocks away. The smog was so dense…

January 19, 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…

January 12, 2013

Nature versus Corporate (slideshow)

Nature versus Corporate (slideshow)

Here are the same pictures as from the previous post in a slide show, randomly ordered. Funny, I was thinking about the questions I asked. They feel like leading questions, but reading them, they seem open-ended. I guess you can tell my values. I could have asked questions about market share, returns on investment, competitive strategy, and so forth to get different pictures to rank higher. Things have different values in different contexts.

December 20, 2012

Nature versus Corporate

Nature versus Corporate

My post on Variety, choice, the manufactured illusion of it, and creating more yourself prompted more people emailing me about the images than most others. The way all the corporate stuff trying to catch your eye glosses over. I decided to contrast the corporate image with images from nature. I just did three images searches, on "fruit," "vegetable," and "forest," and posted a couple of the images from the first page that resulted. All the images show comparable ranges of colors, levels of detail, and so on. People design the box cereals to attract your eye. The plants evolved their colors, shapes, and such based on evolution. I'll leave it to you to conclude what you will from the different images, but I'll give you…

December 20, 2012

Thoughts on mourning

News from home comes slowly and filtered here in China. I know only the basic facts about the shooting in Connecticut. I saw Obama's first speech on it, but little more. I don't know much of what happened or how the nation is reacting to it, but I know people are dealing with death and grief. In all my communications on the subject, I've found the most helpful this passage from the ancient book called the Zuangzi (spelled Chuang Tzu in the translation below) on the death of a loved one. Chuang Tzu's wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a pot and singing. "You lived with her, she brought…

December 17, 2012

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…

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 canâ€™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…

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 canâ€™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…

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 canâ€™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…

December 12, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness

One of the most insidious barriers to getting hard things done, part 1

[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.] Did you know you undermine some of your best efforts to do challenging things, especially involving personal change? You do. We all do, through an effect that makes sense when you get it, but most people don't realize undermines them. The effect is this When you feel one emotion you generally can't conceive of your motivations when feeling a different emotion. Or more to the point When you plan to do something you feel one set of emotions, often enthusiasm. When you act on them you feel different…

December 11, 2012

Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

You’re an animal

Sometimes when I talk about how I don't eat meat or avoid leather people will comment Josh, you know animals aren't people. If you think they're at the same level as us, you're missing something. They're implying we're more advanced than animals. I respond I'm not elevating them to a higher level. I'm not that impressed with us. I find thinking about us as animals gives me more insight to people and our behavior than considering us above other animals. Yes, I switch topics from eating habits to psychology. Sure, we have frontal lobes, thumbs, a few other unique traits, and what they bring, but every other animal has its unique things too. If I look at our special features not as better but just…

December 6, 2012

Variety, choice, the manufactured illusion of it, and creating more yourself

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Nature

Variety, choice, the manufactured illusion of it, and creating more yourself

Can we all agree processed food is unhealthy garbage? Yet people eat tons of it. I want to talk about one reason. And that reason is not just about cereal. It applies to many places in life. When I was a kid I loved boxed cereal. Didn't everyone grow up eating it? And as a kid you loved sugar cereals. Why not? Before some age you hardly knew or cared about nutrition. Over the years I learned about nutrition, especially how removing everything from a grain but the sugar ruins it. Then adding more sugar ruins it more. Adding some vitamins negligibly changes it nutritionally; it just helps market it to people who don't know better. This knowledge changed my experience walking down the supermarket…

November 16, 2012

Blog / Exercises / Freedom / Nature

The most important parts of any exercise or diet

[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.] Somehow in all my ultimate frisbee, rowing, burpee, running, and healthy food talk, I forgot to mention the most important parts of any exercise or diet regiment -- freedom! You can eat anything you want any time you want. I know I do. I can always do more burpees or run another lap of Central Park to make up for it if I have too many empty calories. You lose craving for things you don't want. In my case, processed foods…

November 8, 2012

Sensationalist reporting

A reader responded to my post a couple days ago that the media always has a motivation to sensationalize stories. Really irresponsible. Lots of rescues of people who should have stayed inside. Two people DEAD because they walked their damn dog & tree fell on them The past few days I've commented on how a storm, while physically devastating, doesn't have to emotionally devastate you. In fact, like any external situation, you can use it to improve your life. From lower Manhattan I've seen people come together, meet neighbors, bond, and so on. I haven't seen any fights or altercations. (As a side note unrelated to the reader quoted above, but to some people: If you believe life is supposed to make you happy no…

November 2, 2012

It’s what you make of it

Following the storm, one of my social circles circulated a series of emails starting with one person saying they hoped everyone was safe, evolving to one talking about their hardships. I responded with No power, no internet, no phone, no water... no problem. They're supposed to restore those things in a week or two. In the meantime I can walk to midtown, like now. I hope you've come to expect such sentiments from me. others responded with things like Josh - Amazing spirit :) While I like the compliment and I appreciate the hardship of the storm's aftermath, I feel people complaining about their hardships and viewing resilience as special miss a major point of life. We had a big storm. Many people have no…

November 1, 2012

Always remember the media wants to sell ads

I watched the news about the hurricane approaching. They had me scared. During the storm I went for a walk. People were out in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. They were walking their dogs, no problem. I'm sure the storm was worse in some places. I just logged on and haven't had the chance to read much news and I hear there was a lot of damage. But I know the news I saw and read before the storm and I know what I saw in the storm and they oversensationalized what hit Manhattan. I'm not naive. I know they have to err on the side of safety. I know their coverage had to cover other areas than just where I live. I know tons of…

October 31, 2012

No power? No complaints.

My rule for posting has been not to miss a day. In the words of my friend who started me writing If you miss one day, you can miss two. If you miss two, it's all over. Words to live by. Our habits define a big part of who we are. I hope people don't mind my back-posting today. Downtown Manhattan is without power, water, internet, etc. The hallways and staircases of apartment buildings like mine are pitch black. Without connections we don't really know what's going on beyond our immediate environment. I'm writing from a connection in mid-town. No one is complaining. In fact, the mood is neighborly, as I see it. Electrical power, plumbing, and internet connection don't make us who we are.…

October 30, 2012

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