Of the five elements in the Model — environment, beliefs, emotions, behavior, and reward — you can voluntarily choose and act on your environment, belief, and behavior. Except to a limited degree, you can’t voluntarily choose your emotions. They react to the other elements. Reward, being a special emotion, also reacts to the other elements. It may seem a cruel twist that the most important parts of the cycle are[…] Keep reading →
The Model: how your emotional system chooses your emotions
on September 24, 2011 in Awareness, Blog, Evolutionary Psychology, Nature[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[…] Keep reading →
The Model: more on the difference between “positive” and rewarding emotions
on September 23, 2011 in Blog, Evolutionary Psychology, Nature[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[…] Keep reading →
The Model: more functional views of emotions
on September 22, 2011 in Awareness, Blog, Leadership, Nature[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[…] Keep reading →
Earth from space, a pale blue dot
on September 21, 2011 in Awareness, Blog, NatureIf you read this blog for unique ideas from me, they don’t come from nowhere. Their deepest foundation comes probably from the beauty I find in nature, a main reason I studied physics, which I consider the foundation of our understanding of nature. A science educator, James Drake, created this video — a time-lapse of publicly available images — a perspective of our world vastly different from our usual perspectives[…] Keep reading →
The Model: what are awareness, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence?
on September 20, 2011 in Blog, Evolutionary Psychology, Nature[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[…] Keep reading →
The Model: reward in more depth
on September 18, 2011 in Blog, Evolutionary Psychology, Nature[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[…] Keep reading →