Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, III

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. 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.] Two days ago I wrote at a high level about getting rid of guilt and blame. Yesterday I wrote about understanding others' emotions of guilt and blame. Today, let's look at people's motivations from yet another perspective. I'll introduce a mental model for people's behavior. I'm not proposing the model is right or wrong. Models are always flawed -- the question is how useful it is. Try this model on for size: Everyone does the best he or she can at the time, given…

0 Comments
April 26, 2011
Awareness / Blog

Goodbye guilt and blame, I

[This post is part of a series on overcoming guilt and blame for good. 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 like feeling guilty or doing things that make you feel guilt? Do you find blaming people improves your life? Not likely. Would you prefer alternatives that don't make you feel bad and do improve your life? Of course. Feeling guilt and blaming others have become rare for me. Life is better without them: I feel better, have more rewarding relationships, have fewer conflicts, and resolve what conflicts I do have more quickly and easily than before. When you understand why you feel…

0 Comments
April 24, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

How insults can be calming, liberating, and informative

An insult says more about the insulter than the insultee. People usually look like the insulter is saying something about the insultee. Usually not. An insult expresses the insulter's emotions, directed at what brought them about. For example, if someone is insecure about their body and they see someone with a body they'd be insecure with, they might insult that person to try to feel more secure or deflect others from observing them. I came to that conclusion a while ago and it's amazing how calming, liberating, and informative the change in perspective has been. First, it's calming. When you have the perspective that everyone is responsible for their own emotions, you realize their anger, indignation, impatience, or whatever comes from their beliefs not fitting…

0 Comments
April 1, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

Another way to decrease stress, part II

This morning put me on the receiving end of someone treating me well in what otherwise would have been a difficult situation, revealing why the advice from my first "How do you decrease stress?" post works so well for me. I mis-timed an appointment. I spoke to the guy I was meeting about ten minutes after it was supposed to have started and arrived twenty minutes after that. He was gracious and gave me no trouble about it. I feel indebted to him as a result. Had he done what I used to do -- give me a hard time, look for blame, or probe out how it happened -- I would have gotten annoyed and perhaps justified my lateness, however counterproductively, out of spite.…

0 Comments
March 28, 2011
Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Evolutionary Psychology / Freedom / Tips

My New York Academy of Sciences Seminar

April 5 and 7, 6-10pm at the New York Academy of Sciences I will be giving my seminar on Leadership and Personal Success -- the best seminar you'll ever attend. It's similar to the leadership seminar at Columbia Business School in December, but more science-y and less business-y. Here's the background from the NYAS web page (where you can register): Leadership and personal success through self-awareness and emotional intelligence are popular pursuits outside the scientific community—for example, in business, sports, politics, etc. But why not in science? In part because their literature has shaky and often non- or even anti-scientific foundations. If the practices work, though, they are repeatable and amenable to study. Shouldn't we scientists should be able to understand and apply the material…

0 Comments
March 18, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

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…

0 Comments
March 10, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom

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…

0 Comments
February 19, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

Do you want to win debates or enjoy life?

Do you or people you know get stuck "winning" arguments only to find they've annoyed or alienated people around them? It's hard to do anything about it because when people aren't arguing they tend to feel they don't do it -- that only others do. And when they are arguing they're often least open to exiting argument mode into self-reflection mode. A scene in The Big Lebowski that illustrates the effect perfectly. Here is a version in not such great quality: https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Walther-Glock-freaks-out-at-bowling-alley-Big-Lebowski.mp4 Here's a version with cool typography. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq8mcAd9nlA It's overly dramatic to be funny and has a lot of cursing, but it covers most major points on the counterproductivity of "winning" arguments. People debate issues that can have multiple "right" answers depending on your…

0 Comments
February 1, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Freedom / Tips

An alternative to truth and lies

An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I'll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. --- You wrote about lying as an example of a "bad trait". I'd like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds them to impossible standards that hurts oneself in the long run by creating judgmental emotions and decreasing your ability to influence people who are hurting you. A perspective I find more helpful is that we, like all animals, communicate to influence others to help us in our goals. All animals communicate and all animals deceive…

0 Comments
January 29, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

The empowering relationship between time and priorities

One of the great lessons I learned from my father was that when people talk about how they spend their time, they're talking about priorities. As he put it, "When people say they don't have time to do something, they mean they prioritized something else higher. People have time to do anything. The question is if what they put aside to do something."Internalized over the years, the perspective seems obvious to me now, but it clarifies. If you don't know your priorities you don't know how to spend your time, so you can work long hard hours and achieve little.The main value in the perspective for me is that it enables you to do what you want. Time flows as time flows, outside of your…

0 Comments
January 27, 2011
Blog / Humor

Is Urban Dictionary this awesome for everyone?

Urban Dictionary has the best definitions for my name. I'm too lazy to look up if they make up awesome definitions for everyone, but check out yours in case they do to brighten your day. Here are the first few definitions of Josh: Josh - He is a fun loving guy really funny and can make anyone laugh.He is very quiet at first and seems shy but when you get to know him you will fall in love.He has very good style and always looks handsome.He also always smells really good :) Who's your good looking boyfriend? Oh, that stud muffin? That would be Josh. Josh - Coolest kid in the world, very popular, girls are all over him usually most of the time, loves…

0 Comments
January 26, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How willing are you not to judge?

Many people are quick to say they don't judge. People seem to value not judging others. Come to think of it, I do. People all too commonly say they aren't judgmental when someone else is judgmental about something they aren't. For example, when one person says "Americans are too fat," the other may say "Don't be so judgmental" or, more mildly, "I'm not so judgmental." It's all too common because it's easy to say you don't judge when talking about other people's values that you don't share. It's more difficult when talking about your values. That is, a person who is live-and-let-live about things they don't care about may get incensed or enraged about things that do matter to them. If they think their thing…

0 Comments
January 20, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education / Tips

Unsolicited advice annoys people: how to avoid giving it.

Some people like to give advice. Maybe everyone does, despite knowing how annoying it can be. Sometimes we think we can help so much or don't think of the other person's perspective enough that it feels worth it. We're all used to our thoughts preparing the advice: hoping to avoid stepping on toes, to avoid insulting, and so on. The other person's annoyance is often justified. That is, our advice invites it. We may not think of it explicitly, but when we give unsolicited advice we imply "Your life isn't as good as it could be and I know better than you do how to live it." Who wouldn't be annoyed? Most people think they are living great lives. Since their values aren't the same…

1 Comment
January 19, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Education / Freedom

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

0 Comments
July 23, 2010

End of content

No more pages to load

Newer Posts