Awareness / Blog

The shells we put around ourselves

As children we start defenseless. I don't mean physically, though we start physically defenseless too. I mean kids don't protect themselves from being emotionally hurt or having their identities challenged. Kids say things we adults recognize we would catch in mental filters before speaking. What mental filters? Everybody knows what I mean. As we get older we learn to protect our vulnerabilities. We learn protocol and manners. We learn how to behave in certain situations to meet social expectations. Doing so rewards us with getting the results we wanted. With a cost, though. Some examples: When we meet a girl or guy we like we play it cool and don't let on. We don't tell a friend about a shortcoming. We don't tell anyone we…

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October 26, 2013
Blog / Creativity

Reject every belief in my book but learn to create your own before adopting mine without learning that skill

People are emailing about my awesome new book everyone should read, ReModel: Create mental models to improve your life and lead simply and effectively. Several people said they found a concept in the Introduction particularly meaningful, creating enthusiasm to read the rest of the book. I communicated that concept twice, first writing: I'd rather you learned to create your own beliefs and forgot mine than didn't learn the skill and adopted all my models. Later continuing: As valuable and helpful as my beliefs are to me, they are a minor part of this book. The major point is what they illustrate—that you can create and choose your beliefs. Again, I'd rather have you reject every belief in this book but learn to create better ones…

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October 23, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Tips

You tell me what you do best. I’ll tell you what you do worst.

Today I'll cover an exercise I do in my seminar and when I address a group of professionals. You can do it while reading this post. It teaches you about Yourself Self-awareness Teamwork, especially team building I can cover it in a few minutes or can use it to discuss teamwork, self-awareness, and my experience for thirty-minutes or more. Introduction I start by telling the group "I'm going to ask you to tell me what you do best. Then I will tell you what you do worst." I say it provocatively to get a response and set expectations high. A few people respond incredulously. I point out that someone did the exercise with me. I was equally surprised -- how could someone tell a room…

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October 16, 2013
Blog / Leadership

A book I haven’t finished and why I recommend it

I first met Sebastian Marshall about five years ago in New York City through mutual friends. Though he was just over half my age at the time, I don't hesitate to say I've learned as much from him as nearly anyone -- and I've studied with Nobel Prize winners. He's been a great friend since. We've since met in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and often on the internet. I continue learning from him. I'm amazed and inspired how he keeps developing and producing. I mean to write about his book today, but you have to know a bit about him to give context to his book. [NOTE: I haven't actually spoken to him in a while and am writing this review independently of him. I haven't…

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October 14, 2013
Blog

Three changes you’ll see in your relationships when you change yourself

People resist changing themselves, even clear improvements, for many reasons. One I see a lot, and have felt, is the fear that they'll lose friends. The fear makes sense. The people in your life like you for the you they know. Changing your behavior means you may change things that attract them to you. Changing your environment risks them not leaving the old environments you shared. You could lose friendships. Even if you don't lose them, you might still offend them by changing without them. We don't like losing friends. I call this resistance to change inertia. Other people can cause inertia as much as anything else. Do your changes align with your values more? The most important question about your potential change is if…

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October 13, 2013
Blog / Tips

A reader responds: A Question to Help You Intuitively Prioritize and Stop Procrastinating

I reader emailed me a model he uses along the lines of the models and beliefs I put in my series on beliefs and now my book on the same topic. I'm honored and flattered that he used my format. I recommend looking at your beliefs and understanding them. In his email he described how his belief evolved as he wrote it -- an effect I found too. Just writing them raises your self-awareness, editing all the more. I understood it as soon as I read his name for his model/question, which I expect to adopt and use myself. I suspect it will resonate with others as it did with me. I hope to hear from other readers about their beliefs. Here is his belief:…

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October 12, 2013
Awareness / Blog

Why don’t we ask people we care about how we can be better with them?

Another leadership coach, Marshall Goldsmith, asked a question during a presentation: At your jobs you ask your clients and managers how you can do better. Do you ask your spouse, family members, or other people you care about if you can be a better spouse/mother/father/etc.? If not, why not? Marshall has no problem connecting your professional and personal lives. I hope you don't. This topic is as much about professional relationships as personal. As, for that matter, it is about your relationship with yourself. Before looking at the attendees' responses, consider yours. Do you want to be a better spouse/mother/father/daughter/son/etc for the people you care about? Do you ask them how you could? If not, how do you expect to? Also if not, do you…

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October 11, 2013
ReModel: Create mental models to improve your life and lead simply and effectively
Awareness

ReModel: Create mental models to improve your life and lead simply and effectively

I posted my second ebook on Amazon the other day. Longtime readers will recognize I based it on this spring's extended series on beliefs that became one of my more popular series. You can save the cost of the book by reading that series, but I edited the book to make it worth the cost. It's more polished, with tables and reordering for better continuity. I would only post it if I believed the book would rank among the most useful and effective books you could read to improve your life. I believe it is. I believe reading it will help you learn about one of the most fundamental and important parts of your life, something you experience every moment yet few people notice. The…

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October 8, 2013
Blog

Redefining failure

Life has only one finishing line, which is when you die (I hope I didn't break that news to you). Everything else is a part of life -- no more an end to one thing before than a beginning to something else. That view seems inarguable. Whatever happens to you, no matter how much you like it or not, if you haven't died you'll continue past it. So how can anything be a failure? Sure, you can call any result a failure, but you never have to. If it didn't go your way, you still haven't finished yet, so you can still make something of it. Everyone has had things go the opposite of how they wanted from the most successful person to the least.…

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October 4, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom

Goenka and 10-day meditation retreats

Two days ago a guy named Satya Narayan Goenka died. Who was Goenka and why should I care? First, I'll mention how I found out about him. I had no experience with meditation when a longtime friend I hadn't seen in a while suggested I try it. The idea made no sense to me because meditation made no sense to me. I didn't know or care about it to that point in my life -- somewhere around 2006. But my friend knew me a long time and I valued her perspective. I decided to try a ten-day meditation retreat, I guess like jumping in the deep end -- these retreats allow no talking, reading, writing, etc for the first nine days. You can leave if…

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October 1, 2013
Blog / Fitness / Nature

Start with emotions if you want to motivate yourself … or anyone else

I find Americans try to get precise and scientific about food and exercise, in contrast to how incredibly unfit the country is. I write "try to" because I don't think they succeed in being precise or scientific. The term carbohydrate, for example, used to have a specific scientific meaning. I think it still does, but I think in standard American usage it means "bad" or "evil," like the term fat used to. But I don't think people know what carbohydrate means, but it sounds technical. Same with Omega whatever fatty acids, free radicals, and so on. Same with exercise. People throw around terms like anaerobic, cardiovascular, and VO2 max like candy, rarely knowing what they mean. Jargon devoid of meaning. More than devoid of meaning,…

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September 26, 2013
Leadership

Protected: Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness, September 21-22, CBSACNY page

To the attendees of this weekend's leadership seminar, Thank you to everyone for attending and helping make this weekend's class such a great experience. You were as lively, inquisitive, and participative a group as I've seen. I hope you got as much out of it as I did. As promised, here are the slides in pdf format, slightly edited to handle the transition effects. If anything is confusing, please feel free to ask. Please also don't distribute the file, but please share the ideas. If you want more background and many of the topics the seminar covered and don't mind non-professionally edited posts, I listed a few links to topics I posted on here before. Until the seminar comes out in professionally edited book format…

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September 24, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Leadership

My start with emotional intelligence and self-awareness

You don't have emotional intelligence, you were born with it, or you developed it. If you developed it you started sometime, like I did. If you don't have it, you can start too. Here's my start. I don't pretend I'm the world master of emotional intelligence, but I've come a long way and I know anyone else can. I hope sharing the story motivates others. Context Before business school I had barely heard of the concept of emotional intelligence. Since I contrasted emotions with rationality, I considered them irrational and weird, not something to learn about or focus on. Since I connected emotions to feelings, music, art, and romantic comedies, I didn't connect them to behavior. Nor for that matter did I connect behavior to…

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September 23, 2013
Blog / Education / Entrepreneurship / Events / Leadership

Reminder: See my leadership seminar this weekend!

Brought to you by the Distinguished Leaders committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (copying the following announcement from that site): Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence In a weekend, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. While business schools and corporations are increasingly focusing on personal leadership, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as foundations for leading others, many MBAs never had the opportunity to take a formal course in personal leadership. Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD, has developed a two-day weekend workshop in just this area. His experiential course combines advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology with successful business leadership…

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September 17, 2013
Blog / Fitness / Leadership / Nature

Healthy food mostly replaced my unhealthy food. Here’s how.

How can you expect to lead others if you can't lead yourself? This post, like most of mine, is about leadership. If you can't lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others? If you don't understand your emotions and motivations and how to create the ones you want in yourself, how do you expect to do so with others? Alternatively, the better you can lead yourself, the better you can lead others and, for that matter, yourself the next time. Since most of us want to eat differently than we do and others are constantly trying to motivate us to eat like they want us to, eating is a great place to learn leadership skills. Who do you want leading your eating habits, you…

5 Comments
September 16, 2013
Blog / Leadership

I’d rather be rejected for who I am than accepted for who I’m not

I've written before about on opening up, allowing yourself to be vulnerable in business and personal relationships, and the risks involved, mainly to your emotions. Probably the most important one was on my experience that choosing to care about something and to act on that caring means you'll hurt. And the more you care the more you risk getting hurt. I wrote that post, "Leadership, personal development, choosing to care, and emotional pain," on leadership and professional relationships, but you can probably tell the pain of a personal relationship prompted me writing it. I wrote about how horrible I consider small-talk in a potentially productive relationship, especially when you first meet someone in "How to stop boring everyone you meet." Sure, small talk helps in…

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September 13, 2013
Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

People who succeeded despite adversity, part 2

[This post is part of a series on people who succeed despite adversity. 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.] Ask yourself which helps more — having advantages or learning to overcome adversity? I base this series on noticing how many extremely successful people had problems that mediocre people claim hold them back. Sure, many successful people emerged from privileged backgrounds and sure, some social problems keep many people from any chance at success, but if you’re reading this blog you probably have reasonable access to success. I decided to create a list of people who succeeded and some problems they overcame. I plan to…

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September 11, 2013
Blog / Fitness

Do you confuse a reason to do something with an excuse not to?

When the topic of meditation came up the other day I heard the same thing I've heard many times before. I'm sure you've heard and said similar thing for similar activities: "Oh, I can't meditate. My mind is too frantic. I wish I could." Maybe you've heard or said it in this form: "Oh, I can't go to the gym. I'm too out-of-shape. I wish I could." or: "Oh, I wish I could organize my life. I'm just too busy. I wish I could" or in the generic form: "I wish I could do X, but I'm too what-X-fixes. I wish I could." Everyone who learned to do X, be it meditating, getting fit, keeping their life organized, or whatever, faced the same challenges and…

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September 10, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

One of the most important lessons I learned in business school didn’t come from a teacher and it applies everywhere in life

I wrote before about "Business school’s first major lesson: how to resolve ethical dilemmas." Today I'll talk about another important lesson I learned in business school, also within the first couple weeks, also applying in many places in life I would not have expected from a vocational school. Context First I have to note my mindset before starting business school. I considered the most relevant parts of my life that I'd co-founded a company and I knew more math than probably anyone in the school. I thought business school would be a fun experience filling in a few gaps of how to make spreadsheets and learning some networking skills. What happened One of the major cores of business school is knowing how a business runs…

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September 9, 2013
Blog / Fitness / Tips

Advice to someone starting a long-term project

Following up yesterday's advice to a client, here is advice I gave to another client who was working on an independent program I've found helpful (again, edited for anonymity). I think what I wrote could help anyone starting a long-term project, especially before you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I'm sharing it here. (Regular readers will note it resonates with the quotes in my post "A master speaks on creative expression," or at least I hope it does.) I'll tell you what I saw in what you wrote that tells me that if you stick with the exercises you will have the success you want. I saw that you are doing the exercises fully, with dedication and discipline. I…

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September 5, 2013
Blog

Everyone has insecurities. Why don’t some people seem insecure?

I think my response to a client's email would be valuable for anyone. I don't think many people make the progress he's making and I think his doing it could inspire others. I know he inspires me. He didn't come to me for personal insecurities or shame. He came to improve his life in other ways. Only once he started making progress there he realized things that he was holding himself back with internal conflict he had avoided facing for years. External success and internal success often build on each other. They often require each other. He wrote: Thank you for all your help!! I cannot express how much I appreciate your feedback and it's motivating to have people much more experienced than I provide…

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September 4, 2013
Blog / Fitness / Tips

Just showing up can be the best strategy: One of my life’s greatest moments

Do you have a great passion? Something you devote several hours a day four to six days per week for twenty years? Something where pain and injury makes you like it more? If you have something like that, you'll know what playing Ultimate Frisbee meant to me. If not, you'll have to imagine. And I hope you some day build yourself a passion for something like I did for Ultimate. Anyway, toward the end of my competitive playing career I played on an elite team with some of the best players to have played the sport. I learned a lot from how I made that team. In late summer of that year I was looking for a team to play with. A friend said he…

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August 31, 2013
Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Freedom

You call exercise torture? I call it glory.

[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.] Emotionally, I don't want to do burpees nearly every single time I do them. As you probably know, I do twenty twice-daily. Starting is never easy. Never. If you think you have a harder time starting to exercise than others, I think you're wrong. I don't think anybody has it easy. Just some people developed skills to overcome the emotional challenges we all feel. Rationally, I want to do them, but my emotions oppose my rational thoughts. I use willpower to…

2 Comments
August 29, 2013
Blog / Fitness

More benefits of burpees

[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.] Ten days ago I wrote about running around eight miles for my first run in about three months after hurting my ankle -- "Soreness and exhaustion feel great!". Three days later I ran a nine-and-a-half mile run. Even having run marathons before, I consider those runs long and big jumps from no running. I'm surprised I did them. I keep asking myself what kept me in shape enough to do them. The best I can think of is burpees. Besides burpees,…

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August 26, 2013
Blog / Models

A model leading to “Nice Guys”

I can't help but comment more on the Nice Guy behavior I mentioned a couple days ago in "The false dichotomy of the nice guy and the jerk and what to do instead." A lot of the guys I coach have what others have called Nice Guy behavior and described problems with it. I don't mean being nice as a guy. I mean how Wikipedia put it in its "Nice Guy" page: When used in a negative context, a "Nice Guy" implies a male who is unassertive, does not express his true feelings and uses acts of ostensible friendship with the unstated aim of progressing to a romantic or sexual relationship. though I would expand the "unstated aim" beyond romantic or sexual relationships to others,…

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August 25, 2013

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