Author: signordal

5 Quick Steps to Change Any Behavior

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You’re reading 5 Quick Steps to Change Any Behavior, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

As a zoologist by training, I developed the Emotional Mastery techniques found in my new book Change from Within from studying wild animals. Out of this research, and the main way this work differs from other self-help philosophies, is that I don’t believe our thoughts control our behavior. Our belief systems, often unconsciously, are our true behavioral dictators. Our thoughts (like our words) are good indicators of our beliefs, but if you just focus on changing how you think without addressing the underlying beliefs, your efforts will only be a surface “band aid” solution, and the unhealthy behavior will eventually reassert itself.

If you want a genuine long-term fix for unhealthy behaviors, you have to change the underlying beliefs that are triggering your actions. Thankfully we have a built-in guidance system for uncovering our belief systems. How we feel. Our emotional body is like a weather vane for all of our beliefs. Change how you FEEL and you will change how you behave.

Unfortunately, we spend years in school being taught to think and never one lesson in how to feel, which leaves us at a disadvantage when it comes to empowering ourselves emotionally. The following steps will show you how to flex your emotional muscles so you can start to see long term results, and change from the inside out.

Here are 5 quick steps to transform any unhealthy behavior by changing the underlying emotional hooks:

1. Start by paying attention to how you feel. Before, during and after the behavior, what was your emotional state? If this is an old pattern, you will probably struggle to stay conscious of how you feel before or during, but afterwards think back on your actions. How does it make you feel? Write it down.

2. Go below the “surface” emotions you wrote down, to identify the underlying insecurity. For example, say you feel like an idiot or are embarrassed by your behavior, the root insecurity might be “I feel like a loser” or “I feel I’m not good enough”. To get the most out of this process dig deep and be brutally honest about your insecurities.

3. Say out loud “I accept I feel … “ and name the insecurities from step 2. Contrary to what you may think, acceptance doesn’t make things worse; it’s simply the honest acknowledgment of where you are at. In order for this Emotional Mastery process to work, we have to be in true acceptance. (Refusing to accept how we feel is like walking into the emergency room and refusing to tell the doctors where it hurts, but still expecting them to make us better.)

4. Look for the gifts or wisdom of feeling this insecurity. As I say in workshops “every negative emotion has something positive to teach us”. If you’re really struggling with this step, how are you a better person for knowing how it feels to experience this? Hint: are you more compassionate? Understanding? Patient?

5. Stop beating yourself up for your behavior and start thanking this part of you for trying to make you a better person. This disempowering behavior is actually teaching you to be more compassionate, understanding, patient, etc. Once we see it as a gift instead of a curse, we get into appreciation, one of the highest vibrational states we hold.

Congratulations! You’ve just transformed the emotion attached to your unhealthy behavior from self-abuse to appreciation, aka self-love. There are two schools of motivation: one of abuse and one of encouragement (another aspect of self-love). Which one do you think gets healthy, long-term results? Only after processing the underlying emotional hook of the insecurity into a positive, can we then “pre-pave” an empowering and healthy course of action. In your mind’s eye now visualize how you wish you’d behaved instead. Get really specific and pay attention to how you would feel as you played out this new behavior. When a similar situation arises in the future (and it will) you can then start practicing your empowering, healthy new action.

If you want to understand and practice this transformational process in more detail, read Change from Within: A Journal of Exercise and Meditations to Transform, Empower, and Reconnect.

You’ve read 5 Quick Steps to Change Any Behavior, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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mikenudelman:Trump is shrinking two national monuments cherished…

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In Merkel’s Crisis, Echoes of Weimar

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The recent setback to coalition talks in Berlin has heralded Germany’s most intractable political crisis in modern times. The deadlock created after the Free Democratic Party quit talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc and the Greens has left only what the major protagonists have previously ruled out as unacceptable alternatives: for the chancellor to try governing with a parliamentary minority, and for the Social Democrats to agree to enter a “Grand Coalition” once again; or for Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to call new elections. Germany owes its difficulty to the results of September’s election for the Bundestag, in which a party of the nationalist far right won seats for the first time in decades.

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Spy of the First Person

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The first words of Sam Shepard’s remarkable, quietly devastating last book, written in the final year of his life when he was dying of ALS, let us know what he’s up to: “Seen from a distance.” In Spy of the First Person, Shepard, a restless wanderer trapped in a failing body, squeezes himself through an escape hatch by doing one of the things he’s always done — writing. He objectifies himself, putting distance between his corporeal and mental selves by splitting alternately into observed and observer in order to report on his predicament from afar. One of many searing observations: “The more helpless I get, the more remote I become.”

Shifting between first- and third-person perspectives, the book’s focus is an old man rocking on a screened porch or parked under a tree in a wheelchair. A sort of doppelgänger spies on him, peering through binoculars from across the street, trying to figure out what’s going on: “The baseball cap, the grimy jeans, the old vest . . . Telling stories of one kind or another, little histories. Battle stories . . . mumbling to himself.” The mysterious watcher mentions iced tea, reading, and people coming by all day — a son, a daughter, two sisters — from “deep inside the house” to tend to the man. He notes the man’s mounting unsteadiness on his feet, the progressive difficulty breathing. He observes, “His hands and arms don’t work much. He uses his legs, his knees, his thighs, to bring his arms and hands to his face in order to be able to eat his cheese and crackers.”

The increasingly incapacitated man is trying to figure out what’s going on, too. ALS is never mentioned by name, but he paints a clear enough picture of the disease’s ravages, consistent with neurobiologist Lisa Genova’s more clinically detailed depiction in Every Note Played, her forthcoming novel about a concert pianist suffering from ALS. “They gave me all these tests,” Shepard writes of dismayingly useless visits to a famous clinic in the “painted desert.” He describes the torment of itchy eyebrows and of a monotony barely broken by birds and butterflies. The disease’s encroachment induces both a detachment from his body and a sort of paranoia, reflected in the feeling that he’s under surveillance: “Someone wants to know something. Someone wants to know something about me that I don’t even know myself.” Later, he comments, “I wouldn’t mind answering if I could. It’s kind of interesting to have someone genuinely interested in me.”

In a sense, all writing is a way of stepping away from oneself and taking the long view — and so is acting. In the course of more than fifty years, Shepard did plenty of both, writing more than fifty-five plays and acting in more than sixty films. He wrote about a mythologized West in stormy dramas about dysfunctional families torn by alcoholism, brothers battling each other, and fathers fighting sons. He wrote about abuse, addiction, and those left behind by the American Dream, in works like his 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner, Buried Child, before they became the ubiquitous dark matter of stage, screen, and memoirs. A consummate lone ranger, he ran on his own rogue steam — a persona that made him a natural in roles like The Right Stuff‘s Chuck Yeager, for which he received an Oscar nomination (despite his purported fear of flying). But producing this spare, potent book — on which he completed edits just days before his death on July 27th, at age seventy-three — required the help of his three children, two sisters, and his former lover and lifelong friend, Patti Smith. Spy of the First Person is, among other things, a paean to family.

His previous book, The One Inside, which was published earlier this year, was a muddled, intensely interior mix of dreamscape and memory. It was dedicated to his cherished family support team and featured a powerful epigraph from David Foster Wallace that applies equally to Spy of the First Person: “Why does no one take you aside and tell you what is coming?” This slim posthumous volume is a more coherent, urgent, and moving work of autobiographical fiction. It packs a punch, and not just because we know the circumstances under which it was written, or that it’s his last. There are things Shepard wants to say, and he knows it’s now or never.

Shepard’s man-on-the-wane lets his mind roam where his body no longer can — to memories of sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a condemned building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side nearly fifty years earlier, to migrants waiting for work on a street corner in northern California. Despite having been urged to stay in the present, he confesses that his thoughts are drawn to the past, which “always comes in parts. In fact it comes apart. It presents itself as though it was experienced in fragments.”

Many sentences begin with “Sometimes” or “For instance.” At once elliptical and direct, he frequently addresses his children. “I’m not trying to prove anything to you,” he writes. “I’m not trying to prove that I was the father you believed me to be when you were very young. I’ve made some mistakes but I have no idea what they were. And I’ve never desired to start over again. I have no desire to eliminate parts of myself. I have no desire.” The echo of those four words reverberates loudly.

Shepard’s ability to dramatize a scene with minimal words remains intact, resulting in powerful mini-plays. At one point, his daughter — literally lost in his memories — interrupts, “Wait a minute, Dad, what room? What are you talking about?” She tries to urge him indoors to avoid oncoming rain, but he asks her to push him to the grocery store in his wheelchair, as there’s a whole list of stuff he wants — bananas, sardines, instant coffee. “Dad? Dad? Why do you need these things now? Why all these supplies? You’re not going hunting,” she says, even as she accedes to his wish.

He is heartbreakingly aware that his hunting days are over. Leaving a crowded Mexican restaurant after a lively dinner with his family, he notes that a year ago he “could walk with his head up. He could see through the air. He could wipe his own ass.” Now he’s “a man sitting on shaggy wool with a Navajo blanket across his knees,” being pushed by his hale sons.

And too soon, he’s gone altogether. But he’s left us this extraordinary valedictory work.

 

The post Spy of the First Person appeared first on The Barnes & Noble Review.

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What a view! The blue-green waters of Lake Superior stretch out…

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What a view! The blue-green waters of Lake Superior stretch out from the gray cliffs at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan. Lake Superior is the largest, coldest and most pristine of the Great Lakes. It has the largest surface of any freshwater lake on earth and it is the third largest lake by volume. Storms, snow, fog, humidity, temperatures and wind generated from the lake impact every park ecosystem, causing dramatic seasonal changes. Photo by Gregory Lloyd (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).

Secret To Success: The Two Mindsets You Need To Avoid

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“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.”

– Charlie Munger

For ambitious people, knowing what to do is not always enough. Sometimes, we need to know what not to do.

So, like Charlie Munger, I am going to use inversion and focus on what not to do to be successful. Specifically, I will focus on two mindsets to avoid in order to be successful.

Here’s the secret to success.

Mindset 1: Impatience

I’ve always been impatient.

In a video recorded on my first day of school, I looked as if boredom and impatience were slowly and surely killing me. I was 6 years old then.

In my view, impatience is a very one-sided negative trait.

Let me illustrate.

For most of my life, I’ve quit things that I didn’t like anymore because I got impatient about the speed of progress. Things weren’t moving fast enough.

Like a chimpanzee, I’d jump from branch to branch, hoping to find something that would excite me- something that would energize and stifle the crushing boredom I felt.

That all comes down to impatience.

Because of my impatience, I started two educations and dropped out of both. This was the time I realized that something was wrong.

It was not so much that I realized that impatience was at the bottom of my ailments. It was more on the idea that I needed to change something in my life.

When it comes to studying and getting a degree, things don’t happen overnight.
From this, I learned that things take time.

It might sound trivial but until I realized this, impatience held me back in a big way.

Conversely, patience is a trait you see in almost every successful person if you study their life and work.

Picture-Perfect Patience

A prime example of patience is Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.

sam walton waltermart
Via quotivee

He opened his first store in 1945 and barely scraped by for the next few years. Then, things slowly started improving. After spending five years establishing himself as a retailer, he opened his first Ben Franklin store in 1950. A big move at the time.

Let us dwell on the fact that it took Sam Walton, one of the most successful businessmen of all time, five years before he no longer struggled. We’re not talking about success. We’re just talking about getting to a point where he doesn’t have to worry if his business is going to survive.

After this, he spent the next 12 years building a chain of Ben Franklin stores until he eventually owned 16. This is when he tasted the first modicum of success, 17 years after he started his first business.

This only happens with tremendous patience.

After spending 17 years building his retail business from the bottom up, Walton opened his first Walmart in 1962.

We all knew what happened next.

The point is that one of the most successful businessmen of all time worked his butt off for 20 years in the retail business before Walmart become a success.

Key lesson: If you want to be successful, avoid impatience like the plague.

Mindset 2: Arrogance

Another part of my personality that has held me back in the past is my arrogance.

I consider myself a pretty smart guy and sometimes, that spills over into thinking that I’m better than everyone. I am a master of the universe and don’t have anything to learn because I already know it all.

I’m sure you can see how these behaviors held me back.

It’s not that I disliked other people. I just thought I was better than them.

More intelligent, smarter, better-looking, and pretty much the bee’s knees. Whether or not this was objectively the case — which, most often, wasn’t — is beside the point.

The point is that this line of thinking is so counter-productive that it’s amazing I ever managed to accomplish anything at all.

Arrogance hampered me because it became a substitute for thought. A substitute for learning. A substitute for personal growth.

After all, why would I need to grow when I was already so amazing?

Want to know the worst part?

I was completely blind to it.

I had no idea how arrogant I was.

Let me illustrate.

When I started my first job, I was assigned a mentor. After the initial exchange of pleasantries, we got down to business. I realized pretty quickly that she didn’t have a university degree.

In my mind, at the time, that equated to being stupid. So, I assumed that she was stupid, which affected my attitude towards her as well as the people around me.

Coming straight out of school with this kind of arrogance, I’m sure you can imagine what happened next.

I was ostracized and had to move projects in order to work with other people- new people who didn’t know me.

This time, I tabled my arrogance as much as possible and lo and behold, my experience was completely different. People reacted differently to me. I felt better at work. It was easier to work with others and the quality of my overall experience increased exponentially.

The Humble-Pie Die

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become the richest man in the world?

Obviously, it takes tremendous patience because good things happen slowly. Less obvious is the fact that it requires complete lack of arrogance.

It requires a ruthless focus on learning from mistakes, a continuously expanding network of knowledge and magnificent people skills. These are all skills that would be impossible to attain in the face of arrogance.

Trust me.

So, who is this mystery man who has made a career (not to mention billions) from the humble-pie diet?

None other than investing legend Warren Buffett.

warren buffett
Via achievecentre

Buffett is one of my biggest idols. He is my idol because he combines one of the sharpest minds of several generations with a tremendous amount of humility. And this humility is what has helped him achieve the success that he has.

In his partnership letters, Buffett mostly writes about his mistakes, despite the fact that he wipes the floor with the market every year. His humility has allowed him to learn throughout his life and he has become one of the richest and most successful businessmen of all time because of it.

Key-Lesson: Eat your humble pie every day.

See Also: 4 Things Highly Successful People Do Differently

 

The post Secret To Success: The Two Mindsets You Need To Avoid appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations

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You’re reading How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Here’s a little secret: many, many people find conversation difficult. And the ones that think they find it easy, well – aren’t they the conversationalists who we so often find dull or irritating because they have no sense of self-censorship?

Learning to constructively criticize your own social skills while recognizing the value and pleasure that can come from meaningful conversation is a powerful way of making a big impact on your life, and those people with whom you share it.

What’s beautiful about conversation is that it takes at least two people to have one (unless you’re really in a quandary about something and like to debate things with yourself!). This means that if you lack self-confidence and are hesitant to focus too much on your own conversation game, you can start by reflecting outwards and engaging in chat in more subtle ways. The key to great conversation, after all, is not speaking – but listening. Work on your listening and non-verbal communication skills first, and the art of dialogue will follow.

Listening starts with giving your full attention. That means putting down phones and other devices and making eye contact with the person that you’re speaking with. Think about how babies react to eye contact: it is a fundamental part of conveying trust, attention, and togetherness.

And believe it or not, you need to learn to listen with your eyes. All sorts of statistics abound as to what percentage of communication is visual versus verbal, but a pretty convincing case has been made that 55% of meaning is conveyed by facial expression, 38% from voice tone, and just 7% from the words used. If you’ve been glued to your phone the last few years, just think how much ‘meaning’ you’ve missed out on! Pay close attention to the nuances in someone’s way of speaking, and you will start to make new connections between things they say. Be patient, and don’t expect to reach an understanding as quickly as you might in a simplified online conversation: meaningful dialogue takes time!

Listening also means letting go of your own ego for a moment. It can be easy to become distracted by your own thoughts, particularly when you’re forming an argument to what is being said or you’re excited about a great example you have to share. But while these words are forming in your mind, you’re only giving partial attention to the other person. Don’t be afraid of silences: listen carefully, then let them know that you’re thinking how best to phrase your response, rather than doing so while they’re still talking.

When it comes to upping your own end of the dialogue, you can continue by working with what the other person has brought to the table. Make it clear that you’re listening, and improve your own understanding, by repeating back or rephrasing difficult or unclear ideas that the other person has spoken about, to ensure that you understand them properly. And don’t leap in with your own authoritative ideas – especially when it comes to giving advice – because that isn’t dialogue: it’s didacticism.

It can be more constructive to ask questions and tease a subject towards resolution by working with each other’s ideas. That’s why you’re having a conversation with someone else to start with. Open-ended questions (beginning with How, What, or Why and requiring more than a Yes or No answer) are a great way of turning up unexpected information and ideas.

Telling a story is another great way to engage your friend or colleague while making your point – and all without coming across superior. Words, as they say, are given to us to hide our true feelings; a story, on the other hand, while made of words, can convey more complex feelings and concepts through the use of themes and verbal images. We also just love to hear a good story, and have done since our ancestors first sat around the campfire.

This step-by-step infographic from OnStride gathers these ideas and more into one place, so it’s easy to check in from time to time when you feel your conversation skills are lagging. It’s quite normal to be nervous of getting stuck in a conversation you can’t get out of – but just remember, the person on the other end is only human too.

You’ve read How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations

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You’re reading How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Here’s a little secret: many, many people find conversation difficult. And the ones that think they find it easy, well – aren’t they the conversationalists who we so often find dull or irritating because they have no sense of self-censorship?

Learning to constructively criticize your own social skills while recognizing the value and pleasure that can come from meaningful conversation is a powerful way of making a big impact on your life, and those people with whom you share it.

What’s beautiful about conversation is that it takes at least two people to have one (unless you’re really in a quandary about something and like to debate things with yourself!). This means that if you lack self-confidence and are hesitant to focus too much on your own conversation game, you can start by reflecting outwards and engaging in chat in more subtle ways. The key to great conversation, after all, is not speaking – but listening. Work on your listening and non-verbal communication skills first, and the art of dialogue will follow.

Listening starts with giving your full attention. That means putting down phones and other devices and making eye contact with the person that you’re speaking with. Think about how babies react to eye contact: it is a fundamental part of conveying trust, attention, and togetherness.

And believe it or not, you need to learn to listen with your eyes. All sorts of statistics abound as to what percentage of communication is visual versus verbal, but a pretty convincing case has been made that 55% of meaning is conveyed by facial expression, 38% from voice tone, and just 7% from the words used. If you’ve been glued to your phone the last few years, just think how much ‘meaning’ you’ve missed out on! Pay close attention to the nuances in someone’s way of speaking, and you will start to make new connections between things they say. Be patient, and don’t expect to reach an understanding as quickly as you might in a simplified online conversation: meaningful dialogue takes time!

Listening also means letting go of your own ego for a moment. It can be easy to become distracted by your own thoughts, particularly when you’re forming an argument to what is being said or you’re excited about a great example you have to share. But while these words are forming in your mind, you’re only giving partial attention to the other person. Don’t be afraid of silences: listen carefully, then let them know that you’re thinking how best to phrase your response, rather than doing so while they’re still talking.

When it comes to upping your own end of the dialogue, you can continue by working with what the other person has brought to the table. Make it clear that you’re listening, and improve your own understanding, by repeating back or rephrasing difficult or unclear ideas that the other person has spoken about, to ensure that you understand them properly. And don’t leap in with your own authoritative ideas – especially when it comes to giving advice – because that isn’t dialogue: it’s didacticism.

It can be more constructive to ask questions and tease a subject towards resolution by working with each other’s ideas. That’s why you’re having a conversation with someone else to start with. Open-ended questions (beginning with How, What, or Why and requiring more than a Yes or No answer) are a great way of turning up unexpected information and ideas.

Telling a story is another great way to engage your friend or colleague while making your point – and all without coming across superior. Words, as they say, are given to us to hide our true feelings; a story, on the other hand, while made of words, can convey more complex feelings and concepts through the use of themes and verbal images. We also just love to hear a good story, and have done since our ancestors first sat around the campfire.

This step-by-step infographic from OnStride gathers these ideas and more into one place, so it’s easy to check in from time to time when you feel your conversation skills are lagging. It’s quite normal to be nervous of getting stuck in a conversation you can’t get out of – but just remember, the person on the other end is only human too.

You’ve read How to Build Confidence and have Better Conversations, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

>

What comes easy won’t last long…

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