Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Tips

The Model: our emotions transcend “nature red in tooth and claw”

[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.] Two days ago we covered a few examples of emotional cycles. Some are obvious, like hunger when low on food and thirst when low on water. Other motivations and emotions aren't as obvious, like to avoid being shunned by a group or other social behaviors. Some are complex,…

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September 5, 2011
The Model: emotional reward differs from the emotion that brought it about
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

The Model: emotional reward differs from the emotion that brought it about

[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.] Yesterday's last example illustrated an important distinction I left implicit so far: the feeling of reward or punishment is independent of the emotion that brought it about. This distinction helps you understand the Model and bring about the emotions and reward you want independent of the situation you're…

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September 4, 2011
The Model: examples of emotional cycles
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

The Model: examples of emotional cycles

[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.] In our Model, each emotion you experience manifests itself in the emotional cycle of the model. Example 1: let's consider an example of hunger in the Model. Say someone puts a mango in front of you (environment). You see it and expect it to taste good (perception/belief). Since…

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September 3, 2011
Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

The Model: where emotional cycles came from

[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.] We've presented all the elements of the Model, barely scratching the surface of what it all means or how to use it. Let's start by understanding where our emotions come from. We don't have our emotions for the fun of it. Our emotions motivate our behavior. Each emotion…

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September 2, 2011
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

The Model: reward, happiness, and pleasure

[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.] Two days ago we first saw the complete Model. Now we'll begin discussing it. First let's clarify the central points of pleasure, happiness, and reward. At this level of simplification, the Model distinguishes between pleasure, happiness, and reward, though outside the Model they overlap more than in the…

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September 1, 2011
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

Dropping friends who bring you down can hurt, but improves your life

Today I'll take a short break from my thread on the Model to share advice to a client with a common problem: he has grown and changed and a former friend hasn't. The former friend now holds him back. He wants to move on, but doesn't know how. His description of the situation described incident after incident of counterproductive behavior from the friend (and him accepting it), only briefly mentioning what held them together -- their music (also going out to meet girls together). I felt the musical success had more long-term value, so I started there. First, congratulations on the success with the music, sax, and rapping. Practicing your passions will improve your life more than anything. Music will be with you forever. Guys…

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August 31, 2011
The Model: adding reward
Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Models / Nature / Visualization

The Model: adding reward

[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.] So far the Model comprises cycle of environment, perception (subject to belief), emotions, and behavior. Its last element represents how it regulates itself: reward. When this Model refers to reward, it means emotional reward, not something like financial reward, treats for dogs, or food pellets for lab animals.…

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August 30, 2011
The Model: adding belief and perception
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: adding belief and perception

[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.] Our Model so far comprised a cycle of your environment, emotions, and behavior. We're still building. We don't develop motivations based on our environments directly. The limitations of our senses mean we never know the full story of anything. The limitations of our memory and mental processing power…

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August 29, 2011
The Model: adding emotions
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: adding emotions

[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.] Yesterday began the Model with the foundation of understanding yourself as someone who exists in an environment and behaves within it. Unlike many simpler life forms, people don't merely react reflexively. I don't know how bugs and lizards live, but they don't seem to reflect much on their…

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August 28, 2011
The Model: environment and behavior
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: environment and behavior

[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 we'll see the first part of the Model. It comes from evolution in general and the burgeoning forefront scientific field of evolutionary psychology. Let's start with your behavior and environment. Like all life, you exist in an environment and you behave in certain ways within it. You…

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August 27, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: why

[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.] Why create a model? To know yourself better despite your complexity. Every system of self-improvement, at least that I know of, has some concept of increasing your self-awareness, your knowledge of yourself. "Know thyself." Modeling the part of you that creates value, importance, and meaning helps you understand…

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August 26, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: models in general

[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.] Before talking about the Model in particular, let's talk about models in general, a fundamental and incredibly useful concept in its own right. I've covered them before in this blog from several perspectives. Models are simplified representations of something for a purpose Models are simplified representations of something…

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August 25, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

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.] What goals do we have in life if not to understand what makes life good and how to make our own better? By good I mean by the values of the person living that life -- not by some abstract standard. I want to distinguish the following from…

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August 24, 2011
Awareness / Blog

The Model — introducing my model for the human emotional system

[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 will be posting an extended series on the Model -- my model of the human emotional system, which is at the foundation of most of my posts here on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and improving your life. It will cover the most useful and valuable ideas you will…

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August 23, 2011
The most effective self-awareness exercise I know
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / My Favorite Posts

The most effective self-awareness exercise I know

Know thyself. Every system of improving your life has some concept of increasing your self-awareness. But what is self-awareness? People with low self-awareness, who could benefit from it most, tend to understand it least. The self self-awareness is aware of refers to something different than, say, knowing you have ten fingers and breathe air. Experience increases self-awareness best. I wrote below the most effective exercise I know of to increase your self-awareness. I often assign this exercise to my clients, usually as the first. This exercise increases your awareness of how your mind works, in particular a part of it that influences your perception of your environment and how you react to it every moment of every day. Mental chatter (or self-talk, internal monologue, or…

7 Comments
August 18, 2011
Blog / Leadership

How to stop boring everyone you meet

Some people ask the same boring questions of everyone they meet. They are so stuck in their ruts they don't see what they're doing. They guide conversations to small talk they've heard before and don't care about, then wonder why people aren't more interesting. By far the most boring, in my opinion, is So what do you do? You've asked it. You've been asked it. You've answered it too many times to count. Maybe at a trade show or networking event this question could be interesting. Any other time you are treating them as an employee before than as a person. Worse, you are telling them your prime identity is as an employee, before as anything else. Why would you expect them to connect with…

3 Comments
August 16, 2011
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

How to stop being so judgmental

Nobody likes feeling judged. We don't like other people feeling so high and mighty as to judge us. I bet you're more judgmental than you realize. Here's how to raise your awareness of it, reduce it, annoy people less, and share more about yourself. I bet you don't realize how judgmental you seem to others, even if you don't intend it. Nor, I bet, do people making you feel judged realize how much they seem judgmental. Why not? Because judgment is in our language. It doesn't have to, but it often is. My exercise on avoiding judgmental words from a few months ago continues to surprise me as it makes me more aware of my own and others' speech. I'm re-posting about the exercise because…

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August 12, 2011
Tips

The tough times of personal change

A client wrote me about frustration with a personal development project he was working on with a mentor in his field. I felt my response applied generally to personal change so I think it may help others. I'm reading two parts to your message -- one is asking for specific advice on your project; the other is about anxiety with the pace of change. I'll address the second part first. For context, I've been working on [a related project] for about four years. I still get frustrated at how much more I have to learn and how after all this time I still feel like some things I've never gotten down. I'd wager even [your mentor] feels the same way sometimes. I've found a couple…

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August 3, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part IV

Wrapping up this series on how to make your life successful using Johnny Depp's example... Anyone can call any part of their life bad and feel sorry for themselves. Depp could have and he almost certainly would not have achieved the success he did nor gotten to do what he loves every day. Anyone can call something positive. Personally I don't buy just calling something positive. I'm not a fan of the power of positive thinking, though I'd choose it over negative thinking if I had to pick one, but that's a false dichotomy. You don't have to pick one and I don't find them different. Calling something positive means something else is relatively negative. What I find most helpful is evaluating things based on…

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July 20, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part III

Here's a view I find helpful, relevant to how Johnny Depp made useful something others would lament. Whether Depp used it or not, I don't know. I don't view things in life -- jobs like telemarketing; tangible things like dogs, cats, and trees; intangible things like ideas; ... whatever -- as good, bad, positive, or negative. They just are what they are -- jobs, dogs, cats, etc. Any value they have comes from how they affect your life. If they don't affect your life at all, they have no value. If they change your life significantly, they have significant value. Even significance only determines the quantity of the value, not its quality. If something changes your life it changes your motivations -- meaning it affects…

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July 19, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part II

Following up yesterday's example of how one person created success out of what others might consider disaster or failure: Johnny Depp used telemarketing to transform a floundering music passion into one the top trajectories in acting today. To people in the rat race, who blindly accept other people's values for themselves, resorting to telemarketing would suck. They'd probably say their lives were disasters and be depressed. People who didn't blindly accept other people's values but still don't understand their own might view resorting to telemarketing as terrible but necessary. They wouldn't like it, but since they had to do it they wouldn't let it get them down too much. People well out of the grind, who think about their values and don't accept those of…

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July 18, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part I

Life has challenges. Successful people succeed anyway -- not because they have easier lives, but for knowing how to handle challenges. They know how to use unexpected or undesired situations to improve their lives. Successful people make their lives great. You can too. In particular, you can learn from their successes. An interview of Johnny Depp on Inside the Actors Studio revealed some of how he succeeded. Depp is one of the great actors of his generation. As one measure of his success, his films have grossed $8 billion. How did he achieve so much success? Whereas some actors were born into Hollywood families or had other easy access, Depp was born in Kentucky with no such access. Here is the part of the interview on…

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July 17, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Nature

Travel and developing empathy

Yesterday's post on developing empathy started with me writing about traveling, which ended up being today's post. Nearly everyone tells me they love to travel. The top reason they give for it is to experience new people, places, and cultures. I get that appeal, but my goals are different. My main goal in life is to continue improving it. My travel goals are to contribute to that goal. Learning about differences doesn't serve that goal so well. My main goal in traveling is to see how similar people are despite their different environments, not to see how different they or their cultures are. I find that finding commonalities improves my life more. This goal comes from applying yesterday's exercise on people in new places. People…

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July 4, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Nature / Tips

Exercise: how to improve your empathy

Here is a mental exercise I like and find effective in learning to empathize and understand people better. It costs nothing and requires no preparation, but it can be personally challenging, but it develops you as a person. The exercise is to see how diverse behavior in others you can explain without relying on saying someone else has different motivations than you do. The more you can explain their behavior, the more you have in common with them, the more you understand them, the more connected you will feel, and the better your life. It can be difficult at first when trying it on people who behave differently than you ever would have but gets easier with practice. Eventually you internalize the skills and instead…

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July 3, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

Solving Problems II: The Dandelion Versus The Burning Building

Yesterday I wrote about an alternative model for solving problems to the prevalent model that you need to find and solve their root causes to be effective. The alternative -- the burning building model to solving problems -- says that if you can think of something that will improve the situation, acting on it will help. If you've used the dandelion model for a long time, you may believe it strongly. You may be skeptical of the burning building model. What if you act and don't solve the problem? Couldn't you make it worse? Won't it just come back later? Every problem is unique so you have to figure out what models apply best, but if you're used to the dandelion model, you'd be surprised…

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June 30, 2011

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