Don’t Take Anything Personally

Posted on December 3, 2018 by admin

The second agreement Don Miguel Ruiz covers in The Four Agreements is “Don’t Take Anything Personally”. Like the other agreements, this one is simple to explain, difficult to practice, and powerful in its effects. 

Ruiz says that whatever someone else does to us is because of how they are, not because of how we are. With this empathetic mindset, it’s easy to give other people the benefit of the doubt and avoid being hurt by what they say or do. I should say that it’s easy to do this after practicing it for a while and making it a habit. Some people may be able to switch their thinking in an instant, but I find that incredibly difficult. It’s easy for me to avoid taking anything personally if I’ve been in that mindset for a week or more, but it’s difficult if I’ve spent a long time taking things personally. 

When I’ve been in the wrong mindset for a while, I can misread what someone else does and think it’s about me when it really isn’t or think it’s negative even if it’s actually meant to be positive. Since I read The Four Agreements, I’ve gradually realized how often I take things personally, especially when I’m not paying attention. Breaking away from that habit and going through times of mental peace remind me how much better it is to live that way.

However, it’s so easy to slip back into old patterns of thinking without even realizing it. Once I’ve done that, I usually only notice it once it’s started causing problems for me. I’m going to try to break that habit by working on each of these agreements every day and perhaps focusing on a particular one if I feel drawn to it. I know from experience that the wisdom in The Four Agreements can provide a great deal of peace and personal freedom as long as I live by them, so that’s my plan. If you’re in a similar situation, I recommend getting the book and using its wisdom to improve your life. Thank you and I’ll see you next time. 

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The Benefits of Stretching

Posted on December 2, 2018 by admin

I’ve long been interested in physical fitness. I enjoy lifting weights, playing sports, running for short distances (mostly during sports), juggling, dancing, and so on. However, one area of fitness that I’ve mostly neglected is stretching. Although I’d heard people talk about it for years, it wasn’t until within the past year that I decided to look into it. And boy am I glad I did. 

Stretching is important for just about any athletic activity. If you are too inflexible to go through the full range of motion on a particular lift, stretching will increase your range of motion. Loosening up tight muscles can allow you to move around more comfortably, naturally, and, in some cases, safely. Stretching can even improve your posture and relieve pain if done regularly and correctly. The best time to stretch can vary from one activity to another, but stretching properly and at the right time makes a huge difference in athletic activities as well as in general life. 

Since I began stretching, I’ve mostly focused on stretching out my lower body. This article from The Art of Manliness has some great advice that I’ve used to loosen up my hips. In addition to using the advice in that article, I’ll spend at least a few minutes sitting down touching my toes (or trying to touch them) to stretch out the muscles in my legs. Although I also want to work on stretching out my upper body, I think sitting makes my lower body tighten up more easily and need extra attention, so I primarily focus on lower body stretches. 

Before I started stretching regularly, I thought flexibility was something you either had or you didn’t. I never believed that I could get more flexible by working consistently at it, but that’s exactly what’s happened. In addition to increased flexibility and the other benefits I mentioned above, stretching has given me quick fixes to relieve occasional joint pain (especially when my neck starts bothering me) and provided me with a way to relax and be present when I start feeling overwhelmed. Taking some time out of my day to stretch helps keep my thinking positive and prevent negative thoughts from arising. I have a long way to go and a lot of work ahead of me, but I’ve already seen several benefits from stretching and I’m excited to see what else it does for me. 

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Review of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Posted on December 1, 2018 by admin

Have you ever wondered why some people are so skilled at selling, organizing, or otherwise getting those around them to agree with them? Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist, had those same questions and spent much of his career studying the things that get you to say “yes”. The answers to his questions came in the form of his most well-known book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. 

Influence covers six of what Cialdini calls “weapons of influence” that skilled persuaders use to get you to say “yes”. They include reciprocation, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. He gives each “weapon” its own chapter and includes several examples of it in use. Some of his examples include how members of Hare Krishna use flowers to get donations for their organization, the way location played a fatal role in the Jonestown Massacre, and the reason one man paid four hundred dollars for a one-dollar bill.

Something I greatly appreciate about Cialdini is that he discusses the importance of using persuasion ethically. His reason for writing “Influence” was to point out the various ways that you can be persuaded to do something you’d rather not and give you some tools to effectively resist that unwanted influence, which helped him overcome his tendency to say “yes” to anyone and everyone. There are plenty of people who see persuasion as a way to rip others off and push them around, so it’s refreshing to see someone advocate using it properly.

In the relatively short time since I read Influence, I’ve been able to more easily see weapons of influence in action all around me and, when I’m focused, succeeded in saying “no” and meaning it. Cialdini’s ideas have helped me find that sweet spot between being a pushover and being a jerk. Thanks to him, I have a number of life hacks that I can use to politely decline an unwanted offer instead of going over the top in shutting it down. Because there are so many people vying for your time, money, and support, I recommend reading “Influence” so you can have some things with which to counter unwanted influence. This goes double for those of you who, like me, have struggled with saying “no”. At the very least, it’ll be some interesting reading. At most, though, it could be a real game changer for you and the way you see the world. If you do check it out, please let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it.

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Nervous Habits and How to Deal with Them

Posted on November 30, 2018 by admin

How are you breathing right now? Are you taking short, shallow breaths or are you breathing more slowly and deeply? Do your shoulders feel relaxed or are they tensed and pulled up toward your ears? If you’re not using your hands, are they clenched in tight fists or opened and at rest? These are some ways to hold tension and manifest anxiety through the body, as well as some remedies for countering and relieving those signs of stress.

I see a lot of people display signs of stress on a regular basis. They may perform one or more of the actions in the previous paragraph or do something else along the same lines: continuously moving one leg while seated, tapping a finger, playing with their hair, and so on. If I’m not careful, I can slip into one of several nervous habits. My most common ones are pacing, playing with a pen, chewing my lips, and messing with my hands or my beard. I mostly catch myself doing those when I’m struggling to explain something to another person or when I’m having a difficult conversation with them. I don’t know what other people experience while they perform a nervous habit, but I think I’m made worse off because of them and tend to interact more smoothly with others when I avoid doing them. 

As suggested by the phrase “nervous habit”, these behaviors are simply habits, which means that they can be changed if you so desire. Of course, before you can change a habit, you have to be aware of it, and that’s where self-awareness comes in. Self-awareness allows you to notice how you’re breathing, what you’re doing with your hands, how you’re holding yourself, and so on. Bringing conscious attention to your body makes it easier to control your actions and less likely that you’ll slip into a nervous habit. That’s why I’ve found relaxation and presence to be the most useful life hacks for dealing with nervous habits. I can do them both fairly easily while stretching (which I’ve also found aids in the release of tension and helps me relax), so I try to practice them during that time. Lastly, I try to work through whatever may be stressing me out. Once I’ve done that, the stress is either a fraction of what it was before or it’s completely gone. It’s difficult to have nervous habits without stress, so working through stress is a great way to secure long-term relief. 

I think my recent lack of sufficient sleep is a sign that I’m stressing out about something and need to deal with it. As I try to figure out what’s getting to me, I’ll make use of the above life hacks. They’ve consistently worked for me in the past and they’re available to me whenever I want to use them, so I’m sure they’ll help me through this ordeal. If you’re dealing with stress and you want to manage or eliminate it, I hope you find this post useful. Please let me know if you do, and I will see you next time. 

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Learning Like a Wise Man

Posted on November 29, 2018 by admin

There’s a saying that says, “A smart man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” While the saying focuses specifically on mistakes, it could work just as well if it focused on life lessons instead. In either case, those are the two primary ways I’ve learned life lessons. 

I couldn’t even begin to estimate how many bad decisions and poor choices I’ve made in my past. Some of them were the result of inexperience, but I made plenty of them knowing full well that I was acting dumb. I say this not to condemn or denigrate myself, but to give some context for what I’m about to say. When I think about a particular bad decision, I’m often reminded of a lesson it taught me and how that’s made my life better since then. Also, even if I can’t find any valuable lesson, I try to go easy on myself and forgive myself for past mistakes instead of beating myself up over them.

Whenever possible, I try to be like the wise man and learn from other people. Sometimes that means avoiding their poor choices, but other times it means studying their successful strategies. That’s my primary reason for reading so much and trying to learn as much as I can about principles of success. Countless people have lived incredible lives and written about the stuff that works for them; by reading their books, I can glean some useful information that may (and often has) made a positive difference in my life.

There may be some people who have figured out how to learn valuable life lessons purely through observing and studying other people and avoid making their own major mistakes. If there are, I’d like to meet them and find out their secret. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to that point or if that point is even possible, but I can say that I’ve benefited a lot by learning from mistakes, whether they’ve been my own or someone else’s. As I’ve worked more on taking charge of my life, I’ve made fewer major mistakes and terrible decisions. I’ll continue to make mistakes as long as I keep learning new things, but those mistakes are far better than mistakes arising from bad decisions. I hope this is helpful and I will see you in the next post.

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How I Handle Criticism

Posted on November 28, 2018 by admin

Unless you live alone and never interact with anyone else, you’re going to face criticism at some point in your life. Sometimes it’ll be intended to help and other times it’ll be intended to hurt. In either case, it’s important to know how to receive it and what to do with it. Here are some things that help me with both of those.

More than anything else, I’ve found the most beneficial thing for handling criticism to be getting in control of my ego. I do this by focusing on presence, relaxing, and refraining from taking anything personally. There are many life hacks that are great for getting me into a better state of mind for handling criticism. Something that also helps me is remembering times in which I’ve used criticism with good intentions in mind. This makes it easier to give others the benefit of the doubt and see their criticism as an effort to lift me up rather than drag me down. 

After I get my ego under control, I think about who is criticizing me and why they might be doing it. If it’s a close friend who has always been there for me, then I consider their criticism to be intended to help me and I listen to what they have to say. On the other hand, if the criticism is coming from someone who dislikes me or appears to be a result of bad intentions, then I do my best to ignore it. If I’m in doubt as to the motivation behind someone’s criticism, I may ask them about their intentions or, more likely, I’ll just say “Ok” at the time and then forget about it later. In any event, I try to avoid dwelling on criticism that’s intended to hurt and see what I can learn from criticism that’s intended to help. 

I’m no expert at handling criticism but I’ve gotten better at it over time. As I’ve regularly met and gotten to know many new people and continued learning new things, I’ve learned that criticism can be extremely beneficial when offered and received properly. For example, I’ve improved tremendously at swing dancing in the relatively short time I’ve been doing it because I’m always looking for feedback and tips on things I could be doing better. It helps that I’m actively seeking that criticism instead of having it foisted upon me, but even when that happens, I can still handle it better than I used to. I hope you find this information useful. And if you don’t, please feel free to let me know. I can handle the criticism. 

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Review of How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People

Posted on November 27, 2018 by admin

Some of you may remember my review of How to Win Friends and Influence People. If so, then this review will feel like a walk down memory lane. That book is very similar to How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People, which I just finished reading a few nights ago. Dale Carnegie and Les Giblin both poured their extensive knowledge of communication skills into their respective books. Despite their similarities, however, Giblin’s book is worth reading on its own and has some additional insights over Carnegie’s work. 

The title may be off-putting to some people, with the words “power” and “dealing with people” most likely to give someone the wrong impression. Though the book may sound a little devious, the techniques within are intended to be used for positive purposes. Much of the book is dedicated to correcting bad mindsets and habits that readers may have gotten into; this makes it a useful self-improvement book as well as a persuasion book. Speaking of self-improvement, the last chapter contains a self-improvement program that you can fill in and use to track your progress. I’ve seen that in only a handful of books I’ve read, which makes this a rarity on my bookshelf. 

When it comes to the persuasive portions, following Giblin’s advice results in bringing out the best in other people and helping them live up to their potential rather than pushing them around. This is similar to how Robert Cialdini encourages readers of his books to use persuasion in an ethical fashion. For example, I’ve already posted an excerpt from Giblin’s book about the “feeling of importance” that everyone craves and how much more enthusiastic someone becomes when they receive it. So if you’re looking for a book that will help you interact with other people more easily, you’re in luck. But if you want a book that will help you take over the world, better look elsewhere. Or better yet, don’t. Please don’t take over the world. 

How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People is a great book. I probably would have benefited more from it if I’d read it a year or two ago as I’m familiar with most of what it talks about, but it’s always good to have a refresher for this stuff. Whether this is the first book you read on this subject or the latest one, I recommend checking it out. It has a lot of good stuff that will improve your interactions with others and help you out in every area of your life.

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Changing Times

Posted on November 26, 2018 by admin

Routines are comfortable. They are familiar, predictable, reassuring, and they allow you to act automatically and with little thought. The more you can act on habit, the more energy, both physical and mental, you can reserve for other tasks. Most people develop a number of daily routines for each area of their life and could easily bring them to mind with a bit of thinking. 

However, life continually puts you in new situations. Maybe your best friend gets a new job in another state and moves away, preventing you from seeing each other regularly as you’ve done for years. A place you go to dance and have fun can be suddenly shut down. Interactions within the same groups of friends can vary greatly over the course of a year. Some of these changes can be upsetting, but other changes are welcome. There’s a great sense of relief when a loved one wins their battle against a dangerous disease. You could get a new job that you prefer and which pays you more than your previous job. Or, on a simpler level, maybe you discover a better way to structure your daily activities. 

Some people prefer routines and are hesitant to accept change. They enjoy the comfort and familiarity of knowing what to expect in life, which helps them prepare for the future. Other people are more open to change and less comfortable with routines. The unknown and the possibilities therein excite them and interest them more than sticking with what they know. While each side has its merits, focusing too much on either can easily lead to being stuck with the worst of that one and missing out on the good of the other.

There is a balance between routine and change that allows you to get the best of both while simultaneously minimizing their negatives. I’ve developed routines that have improved my communication skills. I work on them in my usual circles but I’ve also found them useful on trips. My communication routines help me relax and feel more comfortable around other people, especially when I first meet someone in a new place, and make me feel that the exchange is going to go well. This makes it easier for me to have the courage to travel more and try new things. Since change is inevitable in life, it’s important to accept it and make the most of it, and bringing in a bit of routine helps out a lot with that.  

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Learning Spanish

Posted on November 25, 2018 by admin

Since February of this year, I’ve been working on learning Spanish. There are many resources for language learning and I chose to use a great app called Duolingo (that link takes you to the web version but there are also links to app versions on the home page). There are numerous benefits to knowing multiple languages and I’ve learned a lot since I began this journey.

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world; if I travel to a place where it is the primary language, being fluent or at least conversational in it would prevent me from needing a translator and allow me to have a much better time. However, I don’t even have to travel outside the US to find lots of people who speak Spanish. There are many native and nonnative Spanish speakers alike in Florida. Some of the customers at my job speak little to no English but are fluent in Spanish, so I could serve them better if I could speak to them in a language we both know. Also, the fact that it’s one of the most commonly spoken languages makes it incredibly useful for business purposes. 

Outside of communication, knowing several languages also benefits your brain. It helps protect you against dementia, keeps you mentally flexible, and gives you more understanding of people who come from different cultures. Learning something new, whether it’s information or a skill, helps keep your brain sharp, and learning another language is great mental exercise. 

Practicing with Duolingo every day has gradually made it easier to read, speak, and think in Spanish. I’m not fluent or even conversational in the language yet, but I’m getting there. While I remembered some Spanish from school, I had also forgotten a lot. Either way, my skills have significantly improved through consistently using the app and I now know more Spanish than ever before, which is exciting and encouraging. Since people who are immersed in a language seem to learn it quickly, I’d like to start having conversations in Spanish where I can. Fortunately I know several people who are fluent in the language and have offered to help me, so I hope to take them up on that soon. I don’t remember what prompted me to start learning another language, but I’m glad I did and I look forward to seeing where this takes me in life. 

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The Magic of Thinking Big: Getting Your Mind to Work for You

Posted on November 24, 2018 by admin

Your mindset affects everything you do, so having the right mindset is essential for accomplishing your goals. The Magic of Thinking Big contains a lot of great life hacks and this excerpt is one of the best. It shows you how to get your mind to work for you instead of against you. Without further ado, here’s how to do that: 

Here is a basic truth: To do anything, we must first believe it can be done. Believing something can be done sets the mind in motion to find a way to do it. 

To illustrate this point of creative thinking in training sessions, I often use this example: I ask the group, “How many of you feel it is possible to eliminate jails within the next thirty years?”

Invariably the group looks bewildered, not quite sure they heard right and thinking they are listening to a real fuzzy-wuzzy. So after a pause I repeat, “How many of you feel it is possible to eliminate jails within the next thirty years?”

Once they’re sure I’m not joking, someone always blasts me with something like “You mean to say you want to turn all those murderers, thieves, and rapists loose? Don’t you realize what this would mean? Why, none of us would be safe. We have to have jails.”

Then the others cut loose:

“All order would break down if we didn’t have jails.”

“Some people are born criminals.”

“If anything, we need more jails.”

“Did you read in this morning’s paper about that murder?”

And the group goes on, telling me all sorts of good reasons why we must have jails. One fellow even suggested we’ve got to have jails so the police and prison guards can have jobs.

After about ten minutes of letting the group “prove” why we can’t eliminate the need for jails, I say to them, “Now let me mention here that this question of eliminating jails is used to make a point. Each of you has come up with reasons why we can’t eliminate the need for jails. Will you do me a favor? Will you try extra hard for a few minutes to believe we can eliminate jails?”

Joining in the spirit of the experiment, the group says, in effect, “Oh, well, but just for kicks.” Then I ask, “Now, assuming we can eliminate jails, how could we begin?”

Suggestions come slowly at first. Someone hesitantly says something like, “Well, you might cut down crime if you established more youth centers.”

Before long, the group, which ten minutes ago was solidly against the idea, now begins to work up real enthusiasm.

“Work to eliminate poverty. Most crime stems from the low income levels.”

“Conduct research to spot potential criminals before they commit a crime.”

“Develop surgical procedures to cure some kinds of criminals.”

“Educate law enforcement personnel in positive methods of reform.”

These are just samples of the seventy-eight specific ideas I’ve tabulated that could help accomplish the goal of eliminating jails. WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.

This experiment has just one point: When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you find the ways to do it.

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