Imagine that you’re driving down a road, and suddenly a reckless driver cuts you off.

You get a jolt in your stomach. You slam on the brakes before you even realize what happened. Your heart rate speeds up, your pupils dilate. Your attention is jerked fully to the present moment.  You curse under your breath.

Then you start to mutter insults at the driver. Who does he think he is? Did he win his driving license in a lottery? He must be stupid and ugly and have a small paycheck.

You get more angry as you realize how easily that could have turned into an accident. You could be dead in a ditch right now, and your friends would be waiting to hear from you. Sitting at home, wondering what happened to you… and it would take days for them to find out! And all for a jackass like that!

You decide that just honking isn’t enough, and instead speed to up to pull alongside the reckless driver, to flip him off and give him a piece of your mind…

And let’s leave the story right there.

Yes, I know you probably wouldn’t react exactly like that, you wise rational you. But bear with me, because we’ll use this story as an illustration of how many people react in all sorts of situations – conflicts, heated arguments, sporting fans getting out of hand, and more.

Today, we’re going to unravel exactly what happens in your body and brain in those few quick seconds after you are cut off by a reckless driver.

You will learn the fascinating cascade of physical processes in your body that occurs when you get angry – anger is a physical reaction, just as much as it is an emotional state. You will learn how anger increases and perpetuates itself, much more than the initial stimulus deserves. And finally, you will learn how to cut off unnecessary anger at its roots, and enter a much more resourceful (and healthier!) state of mind.

But let’s start at the beginning.

The neurophysiology of anger

The following section is a little technical, but I personally find it fascinating, and wanted to share. If all the technical terms make your eyes glaze over, feel free to skim over them, and take away the main points. There are chemicals in your body that get released in your body when you’re angry, and they explain all the physical symptoms you feel. They are also responsible for shifting your attention in a direction that perpetuates and increases the anger.

Let’s follow the story of you being cut off by a reckless driver, step by step.

To understand exactly what’s happening in your body, I’m going to introduce a few technical terms.

The part of your body that’s responsible for regulating your emotions, and most other physical processes is called the Autonomous Nervous System (ANS).

The ANS has two main branches – the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). In general terms, the PNS is in charge of relaxation and all your rest functions, like breathing (when you’re not paying attention to it), digestion, or blinking. The SNS, on the other hand, is responsible for exciting you and getting you energized – gathering the energy you need if you want to run quicker, or jump farther.

Your stress response to danger (real or perceived) occurs and perpetuates through the SNS and something called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPAA) of your hormonal system. The two are anatomically distinct, but so intertwined that it makes best sense to describe them together.

(For an idea where these lie in the brain, check out this image of the stress response anatomy, thanks to Google Image Search. I can’t include the image directly for copyright reasons.)

Okay, phew! That’s most of the confusing dry terminology out of the way. And now for the exciting stuff!

Let’s get back to you being cut off by the reckless driver.

The first thing that happens when the car cuts in front of you is that your amygdala (an inner part of your brain responsible for assessing threats) recognizes the car as getting dangerously close to you, based on your past experiences.

This immediately fires off your SNS/HPAA system on alert mode. You also slam on the brakes before you’re even consciously aware of the threat, since that’s your learned response to an obstacle appearing in front of your car.

In the meantime, your body prepares to fight off a physical threat. Because the stress systems in your body evolved in a time when you faced sabre-toothed tigres and other threats that you could only handle by physical means (like fighting or running away), your whole body is designed to prime you for that. Fine motor control and logical thinking go right out the window.

The following happens pretty much all at once:

• Your thalamus (part of your brain) sends a signal to release norepinephrine, which gets your brain on alert mode and shunts blood to large muscle groups, so that you can hit harder or run faster.
• This sidelines reproduction and digestion, which is why chronic stress can lead to constipation and indigestion.
• Your hypothalamus stimulates your pituitary gland, which in turn sends a signal to your adrenal glands to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and cortisol, the two so-called “stress hormones”.
• Epinephrine increases your heart rate (to supply more oxygen to muscles) and dilates your pupils (to let in more light).
• Cortisol suppresses the immune system to reduce inflammation from wounds. This is why chronic stress makes you more susceptible to illness.
• Your SNS/HPAA system stimulates the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that scans incoming information from all your senses, pattern matching them against your past experiences, looking for threats. The more stressed/angry you get, the more activated your amygdala becomes, and the more likely you are to see things negatively, and react to them strongly. When you were cut off by the angry driver and your SNS/HPAA system kicked in, this primed you think of all the negative things that could have happened, which only makes you feel more angry and stressed, and further stimulates the whole SNS/HPAA system. Anger feeds on itself.
• As all your primal flight-or-fight systems kick in, the relative control of your pre-frontal cortex (the logical, rational part of you) decreases. Which is why when you’re angry, you’re more likely to do and say stupid things that you will regret when you calm down. Like driving up next to a reckless driver and flipping them off.

And all this in a space of just a few seconds.

But while this all seems like an inevitable cascade of events in your body that you have no control over, you can affect it. You can cut off the anger right at the start, before it starts feeding on itself, and let it dissipate and die down.

Much like when you’re walking through a forest, and get startled by something touching your foot. Out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse something long and curvy, your amygdala pattern matches it as “possibly a snake”, your SNS/HPAA system kicks in and you jump away (and if you’re like me, let out a startled yelp). All of this before you even consciously realize what happened.

Then your slower mental systems come into play, analyze the shape on the ground in more detail, and you realize that it was just a stick, not a snake. You assess the situation as non-threatening, and start to calm down. It will take some minutes for your heart rate to return to normal and for your mind to be able to wander calmly again, but you don’t go off flying into reckless rage. The anger/stress cycle doesn’t have to feed upon itself. And you can react like that even in situations where there is a real threat, like a car cutting you off.

How to cut off your anger at the roots

Once again, let’s go through the case of you getting cut off by a reckless driver.

The first time, we simply let the events run their course. The second time, we slowed things down to unravel exactly what’s happening at a neuro-physical level. This time, we’re going to follow the events again, but at a crucial point, we’re going to interject, and change your reaction!

So, let’s say you’re driving down the road, and suddenly a reckless driver cuts you off.

Your amygdala recognizes this as a potential threat, and fires off the SNS/HPAA system to get you mobilized for action. You slam on the brakes to get to a safe distance from the car.

You realize the immediate threat has passed – and this is the point where you can step in and cut off your anger that’s threatening to boil up.

Buddhism talks about first and second darts of suffering. The first darts are direct physical and emotional pains that you can’t avoid, like the pain when you stub your toe, or the emotional pain when your loved ones are threatened. The second darts, on the other hand, are things you inflict upon yourself – it’s pain that comes from the way you choose to think about things. (Granted, when you have spent decades thinking a certain way, it doesn’t seem like much of a choice – but getting offended at somebody writing “shit” is still much more of a choice than feeling pain when you stub your toe, which you literally cannot avoid.)

Some people might disagree, but I believe getting cut off by the driver in our story constitutes a first dart. Your flight-or-fight system kicks in, your heart rate speeds up and you get primed to react to a threat – and all that before your conscious mind even registers what happened.

But any anger that comes after that is a second dart. If you mutter insults at the driver, those are second darts of suffering you throw at yourself. If you imagine all the bad things that could have happened to you – again, you’re inflicting bonus suffering upon yourself, on top of what actually happened.

You can choose to avoid throwing those second darts at yourself. How?

Luckily enough, I have just the magic antidote to anger for you…

Empathy – the antidote to anger

Empathy is when you imagine what it’s like to look at the world through another person’s eyes.

This is useful in all sorts of situations – business deals, friendships, games of chess, you name it. But more than anything, it’s insanely useful as a direct antidote to anger.

Empathy does not mean condoning a person’s behaviour. You can look at a mugger, or a bully, and imagine what must be going through their heads, while still disapproving of their behaviour.

But looking at the situation through their eyes completely changes how you react emotionally. Your mind naturally creates an us/them separation towards people you don’t like. It puts you up and puts them down, dehumanizing them. In extreme cases, this leads to things like the holocaust.

Empathy breaks this process, because when you look at a situation from another person’s perspective, it makes them part of “us”. You can see that their behaviour makes sense, from their perspective – even if from your (obviously vastly superior) perspective, you can see that they’re not behaving optimally.

Further, empathy uses different brain circuitry from anger. And by activating your empathy networks, you are naturally sidelining the pathways in your brain that assign blame, put others down, and do other things that fuel your anger.

If you want, you can even try throwing in some compassion with your empathy. (This is what Buddhists suggest, though I find that empathy generally does the trick by itself.). Don’t just imagine what the situation is like from the other person’s perspective – but also sincerely wish them the best in life.

So when you get cut off by a reckless driver, don’t start thinking he’s an utter idiot who was born with half a brain. That will only make you feel angry and suffer more than you have to.

Rather, imagine what must be going through his head, to drive him to behave like that. Maybe he’s in a huge hurry, which you can empathise with, and feel some compassion for him – because surely he must be feeling very stressed if he’s in such a rush. Or maybe he hadn’t even realized he cut you off – in which case you can feel compassion for him, because his life must be hard if he’s so oblivious that he doesn’t even realize he cut someone off.

And just like that, your anger dissipates. You feel the first dart of suffering, because there’s no way to avoid your stress networks kicking in when you get suddenly cut off. But you avoid stressing yourself any more than necessary.

Now, using empathy instead of anger doesn’t mean that you give up your rights to defend yourself. But you can do so in a calm, rational fashion, rather than flying into a fit of rage, and letting the situation control you instead of the other way around.

I actually had a chance to practice this myself just a few days ago.

In the middle of the night, I got woken up by a buzzing mosquito. I flailed my arms around to chase it off, and tried going back to sleep. But it kept coming back, always waking me up from the brink of sleep.

I felt the first dart of suffering – getting my sleep interrupted repeatedly. But I also piled on more suffering – I was angry at the mosquito! What an annoying little bugger! Why couldn’t it realize it could just go and suck some blood off my arms! I would be fine with that, but noooo… it just had to keep flying around my face and waking me up!

Then my self-awareness kicked in, and I realized how ridiculously I was behaving. So instead of fueling my anger, I imagined what things must be like from the mosquito’s perspective. It couldn’t know that I wouldn’t mind it too badly, if only it stayed away from my face. It simply did what it was designed to do – fly around, looking for sources to blood to suck on. And as I empathized with what was going through the mosquito’s head, I felt my anger dissipate.

Then, in the morning, I found the little bugger and killed it.

Empathy didn’t stop me from standing up for my own needs. It just helped dissipate my anger – which wasn’t doing anything useful anyway, and was only keeping me from getting back to sleep.

A quick summary

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this post, so I wanted to summarize the main points:

• Anger is a cascade of physical processes in your body.
• Anger feeds on itself, by making you look harder for negative information, and by making you think more negatively of everything you perceive.
• You will inevitably feel some anger/stress in your life as a response to “first darts” of suffering – things that hurt you directly, whether physically or emotionally. But most of your anger comes as a response to “second darts” of suffering, and can be avoided.
• Cutting off your anger doesn’t stop you from defending your interests. To the contrary, by remaining calm, you can think more clearly and take more effective action to ensure your needs are met.
• You can cut off your anger right after the first darts hit you, before you slip into the feedback loop of throwing more and more second darts at yourself. This is the best spot to interject, since the more your stress response gets activated, the less conscious control you have.
• Empathy (and its cousin, compassion) is a direct antidote to anger. Use it any time you feel yourself getting angry.

And that’s all for today.

Take a few moments to think about situations where you might generally respond with anger, and imagine yourself responding with empathy instead. Let the whole scenario unfold in your head, in plenty of detail, seeing it through your own eyes.

This primes your brain to respond with empathy when such a situation arises in the future, rather then defaulting to your usual way of handling the situation.

And if, the next time a stressful situation like this comes up, you find yourself automatically reacting your usual way and getting angry – that’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it afterwards. It takes time to change your learned reactions to situations.

But if you keep at it and practice reacting with empathy rather than anger, you will soon find yourself feeling less stressed, and reacting more clear-headedly in tough situations.

And finally, if you have a friend who you think would benefit from the information in this post, do pass it on! Word of mouth is the best way to get useful information to people who need it.

Related posts:

1. How to Eliminate Creative Blocks
2. The First And Second Darts of Suffering
3. The Secret of Super-effective People – Weekly Review

Imagine you have a broom lying flat on the floor.

For some reason, you decide to stand the broom upright on its tip, with the brush in the air. (Don’t ask me why, you’re the weirdo that decided to do this.)

So you keep the tip on the ground, and start lifting the brush part of the broom.

At first, you’re supporting nearly the whole weight of the broom. But as you get it closer to being upgright, more and more of the weight starts being supported by the broom itself.

And then you get the broom vertical, and it supports itself nearly completely by standing on its tip. You just need to nudge it gently now and then to keep it balanced.

This is analogous to forming habits. When you first start forming a habit, or take action that isn’t habitual, it takes lots of mental energy. But as you form a habit, it becomes easier and easier, until in the end, it takes nearly no mental energy to maintain. Just gentle nudges.

If you’ve read my post about Energy Management, then you already know why that is so damn useful. Your mental energy is an extremely valuable, limited resource.

And habits allow you to save a ridiculous amount of attention and energy, by automating behaviours that have a positive impact on your life!

Read on below to find out how habits work, why they’re so useful, and how to form new habits effectively.

What is a habit, exactly?

A habit is a behaviour you do nearly automatically.

If you brush your teeth every morning, that’s a habit.

If you jog for half an hour every morning, that’s a habit.

And you know something is a habit when it has become so established in your life that it takes less mental energy to do it than not do it.

Note that I’m talking about mental energy here. Going for a half-hour jog takes plenty of physical energy. But if you’re so used to it that you do it automatically, it will take you less mental energy to put on your shoes and go to your usual running spot, rather than break the habit and have to think of something else to do instead.

Why habits are so useful

Imagine that you have a dozen big changes you would like to make in your life. Like establishing the habit of jogging for half an hour every morning.

But you have a limited amount of mental energy. You could probably consciously do about three of the things you would like to change in your life. (And some days would be busier than others, and stop you from doing even that much).

If you didn’t establish any habits, you would always have to pick which three of your desired changes you want to do on any particular day – and they would take up all the spare mental energy you have.

Or you could approach things differently.

You could focus on just one your desire changes for a month. Make extra sure you do it every day, until it becomes so automatic and habitual that you don’t need to think about it anymore.

Then, once your first habit is established, you could start on a second one.

If it took you roughly 30 days to establish a habit (this tends to be a good guideline for daily habits), in just a year, you could establish 12 positive habits!

Yes, the start would be a bit slower. You would only be doing one of the positive changes you want in your life, rather than trying to maintain several at once.

But if you take the time and care to establish positive habits, they will make far more of a difference in your life in the long run. They will free up your mental energy ho keep making changes and improving your life!

And that’s why forming habits is so damn useful. Because an established habit takes nearly no mental energy to maintain and frees you up to focus on making further positive changes!

How to form a habit

The best method I’ve ever come across for forming habits is the 30-day trial, so I will focus on that here.

The idea is that you focus on a change you would like to make in your life, and make sure you do it every single day for 30 days straight. If you miss even one day, you start over from the beginning.

This method works insanely well because:

• It’s a lot less daunting than establishing a habit for an indefinite amount of time. You simply commit to keeping it up for a month, and then re-evaluate once the thirty days are up, and decide if you want to keep it or not.
• It gives you a specific goal to aim for. And if you do it right, also a specific way to measure whether you have done your habit each day, or not.
• It keeps you focused. If you didn’t set a specific number of days, chances are that you would get distracted and forget about your half-formed habit once the initial novelty wears off, before the habit is established enough to hold up by itself.

And so, here is the step by step process to establish a habit through a 30-day trial:

1. Pick a habit you want to establish

Most likely, you already have some ideas for habits you want to establish. The most common habit people want to establish are regular exercise and waking up earlier.

Or, if don’t have any clear ideas, you can always check out what other people are doing – for example, see my personal development experiments.

2. Figure out your underlying motivation

Why do you want to establish your habit?

Make this crystal clear in your mind, because this is what will keep you going through the harder stages of forming a new habit.

For regular exercise, your motivations might be looking good, having more energy, or becoming stronger and more fit. Or a combination of all three!

Figure out what motivation behind your habit speaks personally to you. And then, if you want to kick your motivation up a few notches, use the pain and pleasure principle. Just close your eyes, and imagine how your life will be different when you establish your new habit. Take the time to feel all the good feelings that will come with the changes. And then, if you want, you can also take a few moments to imagine what your life will be like if you don’t establish your new habit – sometimes, this will be a painful image, and give you an extra kick of motivation to get started.

3. Pick a specific way to do your habit that’s easily measurable

If you simply want to “exercise more”, that’s a wish, not a goal. Make it clear and specific, so that you always know whether you’re on track, or not. (If you’re familiar with the “SMART” goalsetting method, this is the Measurable part.)

Instead of “exercise more”, you could, for example, decide to jog for half an hour each day. Or go to the gym 5 times a week for at least an hour.

Sometimes, you will find that the clearly measurable goal isn’t exactly the same as what you’re trying to achieve. For example, when I set up my 30-day trial of eating consciously, I thought carefully about the best way to measure that. Eventually, I settled for “not eating in front of my computer, or while reading a book”.

While this might sound very far from “eating consciously” to you, for me, this definition correlates very strongly with eating consciously, and it’s easily measurable. So even if your habit is a bit tricky to measure, make sure to find a way that you can always clearly say, at the end of each day, whether you achieved it or not.

4. Carry out your habit for 30 days

Yay!

5. Re-evaluate to decide whether you want to keep the habit, modify it, or drop it completely

If you find out that your habit isn’t really working for you, or that it doesn’t bring you what you thought it would (see step 2), feel free to modify or drop it.

Some tips for establishing habits more easily

The above is the general pattern for establishing habits.

But along the way, you’re likely to come across some pitfalls. From my personal experience, as well as the experience of others, I’ve gathered the following tips to help you establish your new, exciting habit more smoothly:

• Strongly consider establishing a daily habit rather than an intermittent one

A habit that you do every single day is much easier to maintain (and harder to forget!) than one that you do intermittently.

So, for example, if you want to wake up early, then wake up early every single day, including weekends! It might sound easier to give yourself time to sleep in on the weekends, but this only makes your habit harder to establish.

• Focus on one habit at a time

When you’re first starting a habit, you’re pumped and excited. Of course you can handle that habit! Hell, you don’t want to wait a month to start establishing a second habit, you want to establish them all right now!

Your enthusiasm will fade long before the 30 days are up. If you try taking on too much, you won’t be able to keep up long enough to make the habits firmly entrenched – and you’ll end up establishing no habits at all.

• Pick a specific time or circumstance to link with your habit

If you want to exercise for 30 minutes every day, it will be a lot easier to keep up the habit if you carve out a specific chunk of time you devote to it every day, rather than fitting it in willy nilly, when the fancy strikes you.

Things come up, and if you plan to find a quiet slot sometime during mid-afternoon, you might find that one day, several things come up and your quiet slot just doesn’t appear.

Setting a regular time will not only make sure you fit your habit into your day, it also starts to establish a connection in your mind, much like Pavlov’s experiment with dogs established a connection between ringing a bell and having food, simply by having them happen together repeatedly. Soon, just being in your chosen situation (or it being a specific time of day) will remind you to do your new habit. And that’s exactly where you want to be!

A great thing you can try is to attach your habit to something that’s already a part of your daily routine. For example, when I did my self-reflection experiment, I often did it just after brushing my teeth in the evening.

• Get a friend to keep you accountable

This isn’t for everyone, but getting a friend to keep you accountable is a great way to make sure you don’t forget to keep up your habit.

So, for example, you could agree to always check in with a friend at the weekend, and tell them what progress you’ve made on your habit during the week.

Yeah, I know I keep going on about forgetting. That’s because…

• Plan ahead to make sure you can keep it up for 30 days

Let’s say you want to establish the habit of waking up at 6 a.m. every day.

So you start your 30-day trial, and everything is going great – except you completely forgot that in two weeks, you have a sleepover party at a friend’s place. There’s no way you’ll be waking up at 6 in the morning the day after.

Plan ahead. It’s up to you how to deal with such situations, but I’d recommend that you simply wait to try to establish a habit until you can keep it up for 30 days without a huge obstacle in your way. The first 30 days is an especially vulnerable period for your habit, and you want your foundation to be as solid as possible, to establish a strong habit.

Speaking of which…

• If you don’t succeed in keeping up the habit according to your plan, start over

If you plan to exercise daily, but there’s one day two weeks in when you don’t get around to it – starting counting from day 1 again.

Yes, this hurts, especially if you’re getting close to finishing your 30-day trial.

But in my experience, to establish a solid, lasting habit, you need to make sure the foundation has no cracks in it. Otherwise, the habit will crumble apart when you stop paying close attention to it.

So, if you mess up your 30-day trial, start over! Don’t worry, you haven’t failed. It’s normal, and the bunch of days you got in will only make your following 30 days easier. But don’t cheat yourself by thinking it doesn’t matter. You deserve only the strongest, most lasting habits!

The anatomy of a 30-day trial

We’re drawing to the end of this article. But before the final summary, I wanted to give you a quick overview of what you can expect from your 30-day trial to establish a new habit:

Days 1-7 – the early days: You’re all excited and pumped up to start your new habit. Things go along smoothly, and you’re happy that you’re doing something to improve your life.

Days 8-14 – the tough days: Your initial enthusiasm has worn off, but your habit is nowhere near established yet. This is the time when you will need the most willpower to keep up your habit, if it’s something that takes some effort to do (like exercise). But funnily enough, this is not when you’re most likely to screw up.

Days 15-25 – the calm days: Your initial enthusiasm has completely worn off, and your mind is mostly focused on other things going on in your life. The habit is partly established, which can lull you into a false sense of security. This is when you’re most likely to simply forget. Take the time to give yourself extra reminders.

Days 26-30 – the final days: Your trial is nearing its end. By now, your habit is pretty well established, and you just need to work out the occasional kinks. You’re getting excited as the end of your trial approaches. Hopefully you’re planning a little celebration for when you hit day 30!

Summary of establishing new habits

As usual, this is a lot of stuff to cover in one go, so I’ve prepared a summary sheet for you.

You can see it either as the image below (click for a larger version), or you can grab it as a PDF file for printing out.

And now over to you.

By now you’re probably just itching to try out these new ideas on a habit you’ve wanted to tackle for a while!

Hell, if you’re like most people, you’re probably thinking of a dozen different habits you’d love to establish, and can’t decide what to go for first.

That’s a great place to be in! So take some time to think it through. Make a list of the habits that excite you the most. Then think about your motivation behind each of them, and really take the time to feel how your life would be different with each of those habits.

When you’ve got a habit whose benefits get you pumped even more than all the other habits you could focus on instead – go for it!

Follow the steps outlined above. Set up a 30-day trial, and focus on keeping up your habit during that time, as it becomes established and automatic in your mind.

And when you’re done with that one, you can tackle another habit. And another one. And watch how your lives changes firmly for the better, 30 days at a time!

And… that’s all from me for today. In the next installment of Personal Development basics, I’ll cover the link between your mind and body, and how they influence each other much more than most people realize. It will be up sometime in the next few weeks, whenever I manage to cover the whole topic fully and clearly.

Until then – establish some kickass habits, and above all, have fun!

Related posts:

1. Energy Management – Personal Development Basics
2. My Personal Development Experiments – June Update
3. The Snowman Theory of Personal Development

In Buddhism, they talk about two “darts” of suffering.

The first dart is direct physical or emotional pain, like when you put your hand on a hot stove, or your loved ones are threatened. You will sometimes inevitably feel those, as part of being alive.

But then there are the much more numerous second darts – suffering that you impose on yourself.

For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, the immediate pain causing you to jerk back your hand to save yourself is a first dart. But if you then go into an angry monologue berating yourself (“You clumsy fool! You hurt yourself again! You never learn to pay attention to what you’re doing with your hands!”), that’s additional suffering you pile on top. There is no anger at yourself inherent in the situation – you could just as well calmly accept that you burnt yourself, and make a note for the future to avoid making a similar mistake. You just threw some extra second darts of suffering at yourself.

Even worse, most second darts actually come when there are no first darts around – or even as a response to positive circumstances!

If you worry and fret about things that haven’t happened yet, or if you imagine that people are talking bad things about you – then you are throwing second darts of suffering at yourself without any first darts being around at all.

Or you might get a compliment… and immediately start thinking that the person just wants something from you, or that you don’t deserve it – bam! Second darts of suffering coming straight at you, in a positive situation!

For the rest of today, notice how your negative emotions arise. You will find that the vast majority of the time, you are not being directly hurt, either physically or emotionally. Rather, the pain comes from the way you think about things, and get yourself all riled up.

In which of those situations are your negative emotions doing anything useful at all? Would you maybe be better off without them?

Related posts:

1. Using Intention Instead of Suffering

I first met Benny Lewis back in 2008, at my first ever meetup of Esperanto speakers.

We were both just starting to learn the language. Yet he was the guy who you would always see speaking to others, improving the little esperanto he knew by actively practicing it.

Since then, he’s applied the same concept (learning by talking) to learn Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, and currently Mandarin Chinese.

He travels the world while he learns new languages, and documents his progress for everyone to see at Fluent in 3 Months. He’s also doing a great job helping other people learn languages, by testing out and sharing all possible language-learning tricks, but also by helping people rediscover that the best way to learn a language is by speaking it.

And so I was thrilled when he agreed to let me interview him for my Interviews With Passionately Alive People series!

Below is an audio of the interview we did, which you can also download as an mp3 file (11:57).

And until you get the chance to listen to that, here’s a quick text interview we did as well!

…

1. Tell our readers a little bit about yourself. What exactly do you do?

I like the puzzled look on people’s face when I tell them “what I do”. I always answer the question with I’m a professional language hacker!

I’ve been on the road for most of the last 10 years and have picked up languages through immersion. In recent years, I’ve been blogging about it and my readership has grown immensely (over a quarter of a million visitors per month on my site). I packaged my best advice for language learning in my Speak from day one multimedia course, which I don’t even advertise strongly (there are no big banners linking to it on my blog), but enough of my readers support me through that, that I can focus the blog entirely on sharing my story and best tips. So learning the language and sharing that adventure is “what I do”!

2. How did you get into language learning in the first place?

My background is actually in electronic engineering! After graduating, I moved to Spain to work as an intern and loved the culture. Unfortunately, I had always done poorly in languages in school, so I didn’t think it was possible for me to really pick up Spanish. Despite this I tried hard and studied every day. Even so, six months later, I still didn’t speak it! I only had the basics.

Then I changed my approach and ditched my pessimistic attitude and excuses, and focus on studying, and spoke the language. It was filled with so many mistakes, and the lack of vocabulary meant that I had to use so many work arounds… but communication was definitely possible! I was able to use the language with people. I built upon that, making speaking the focus of my learning approach, rather than a “some day” end-goal. I see this as the most efficient way possible to learn to speak a language, and am trying to encourage the world to try it too.

3. You say anyone can learn a new language quickly and easily. Can you expand a bit on that?

Actually I don’t remember ever saying anyone can learn a language easily . This is one issue I have with many courses; they encourage laziness, and the easy way of learning a language: click a few buttons in our software, sit in a class and let the teacher do all the talking, listen to a podcast while you do the dishes etc. These are all “easy” ways to learn a language. I prefer an efficient way. Putting yourself out there in front of a native is HARD – it’s scary! But when you do that you are forced to improve quickly.

It’s like learning to ride a bike or play the piano. The only way you will improve in either of these is if you sit your ass down on the piano stool or bike saddle and get busy. All the preparation in the world won’t change the most important thing you have to do.

When the focus is on speaking, and you do this frequently, then you will learn quicker.

4. What are youcurrently working on?

While I have indeed taken on several non-European languages, I haven’t invested time to become fully fluent in one yet, so it was time that I took on the biggest language in the world: Mandarin Chinese! I am currently one month into the mission, and forcing myself to speak for at least three hours a day with natives [note from Vlad - this was back in February. He's three months into the mission now]. It’s tiring and I feel like an idiot most of the day, but I’ve made more progress than most expats here have in years. Not because I’m smarter, but because I’m willing to put my ego on the line and sacrifice friendships that I may have with English speakers, to make sure that all of my socialising is in Mandarin.

Within a few weeks, my dedication to this difficult task of keeping the conversations in the language, will mean that I’ll be way more confident in speaking with people! I’m not sure if I’ll reach precisely fluency in just 3 months, but I definitely won’t be far from it, and I’ll have achieved so much more than most do in 3 months because I was willing to put real work in, instead of learning the language passively or just taking it easy in a comfy chair all day long with a book and podcasts.

5. What would you say to a person who asks you about living a more passionate life?

I think most people’s main issue here is that they think far too much. I have a policy of not overanalysing such things. If you want to live a passionate life, stop reading all about it, and do something about it. Make mistakes, but get out there and do it in the real world. It’s the best possible way to learn and make progress.

…

That’s all for now, and if you want to know more about Benny, feel free to check out his blog.

Related posts:

1. Niall Doherty – (Interviews With Passionately Alive People)
2. How to Feel Passionately Alive Every Single Day
3. Meeting New People Made Complicated

When you were a child, you learned to use a toilet, tie your shoelaces, and eat without spilling food all over yourself*.

These are basic life skills.

But much like these external skills, there are also basic internal skills, to do with managing your mind. Skills that are fundamental to your happiness and success in life.

Skills like making and breaking habits, handling emotions, or, as we will cover today, managing your mental energy.

Ideally, you would pick these up during your childhood, or be taught them at school. Unfortunately, that doesn’t usually happen, and many people go decades without getting even moderately proficient at some of the fundamental life skills.

That’s why I’ve decided to step in, and put together a detailed series of articles on this topic.

The post below clocks in at over 3,000 words, so you might want to leave it until you have the time and energy to read it and assimilate it fully.

Are you ready to become a master at managing your energy? Then read on.

*Actually, as I’m writing this, I’ve got breadcrumbs all over my t-shirt and my lap. Hmm, maybe I missed that life lesson…

Energy Management

“If only I had more time.”

People say that all the time. And then they go on to spend time watching TV, browsing the web aimlessly, and doing nothing much at all.

You probably do this yourself.

Think about all the things you would love to do.  The skills you would like to learn. The projects you want to start. The books you want to read. The people you want to spend quality time with.

Then think about how much time you spend on activities you could do without. Like most TV-watching, or browsing the web aimlessly.

Really, take a few moments to consider it.

…

Done?

Now, let me tell you a secret. You’re not doing anything wrong.

There’s just one other hidden variable I haven’t mentioned yet. Your mental energy levels.

The reason most people spend time watching TV and browsing the web without a clear goal isn’t that they don’t have goals and ambitions. They simply run out of energy, and the best thing they can do with their time is spend it in a mildly fun manner.

Most people don’t realize that. And so they don’t take the next logical step – question how to best manage their energy levels.

What if I told you that you don’t have a fixed amount of energy each day?

That you can increase your energy levels? That you can use your energy more efficiently? That you can recover your energy quickly in the middle of a day, and catch a “second breath”?

Think of all the goals you have that you don’t find the energy for right now. All the things that interest you, but you don’t spend time on them because your work and other commitments use up all your energy.

Would it be worth paying a bit of attenion to how you manage your mental energy, if you could get the energy to spend time on all your interests, on top of getting all your commitments done?

Take a few moments to honestly answer that question. Because energy management does take a bit of upfront effort, and changing some of your habits.

But it makes a big difference in the amount of energy you have available each day to spend on things you would love to do.

If you think this is worth making a few changes to your daily habits – then read on.

The 3 elements of energy management

Energy management comes down to three main elements, all working together. Unfortunately, most people barely have a handle on one of the three elements, if that.

We’ll dig into each of the elements in more detail in a second. But to summarize, they are:

• increasing your overall energy levels

You don’t have a fixed “daily energy quota” that’s assigned to you at birth. It changes with your lifestyle and how you handle your body. And no matter how efficiently you use your energy, if you have very little to begin with, you can’t get much accomplished in a day.

• using your energy effectively

Since mental energy is a precious, limited resource, it makes sense that you would want to use it effectively. Unfortunately, most people’s use of their mental energy is akin to trying to put marbles into a cup by throwing a fistful of them into the air, and hoping some will land in the cup.

• recovering your energy quickly

And finally, you have more than just the night’s sleep to recover your energy. You also recover it at various rates during the day, based on what you’re doing. And mastering energy recovery can easily give you twice as much energy to get things done with, over the course of a day.

A camping analogy

To make the difference between the three elements of energy management crystal clear, I’ve got a little analogy for you.

Imagine that you’re camping in the wilderness, and have a limited amount of water with you.

Would you rather have a 2-litre bottle, or a 10-litre canister? Because that’s the difference of having high overall energy levels, and low.

Next, you want to drink some water. The difference in how effectively you use your energy is like the difference between simply drinking from your water canister… or drinking while spilling water all over yourself and getting more water on the ground than in your mouth.

And finally, as you use up your water, you will want to refill your bottle. Unfortunately, most people’s approach to recovering their energy reserves (except for night sleep) is the equivalent of unscrewing the bottle cap and hoping rain will refill the bottle. Extremely slow and not very effective.

You’d be much better off constructing a funnel to fill the bottle faster, or even finding a spring to refill it more often than just once each night.

Now let’s dig into each of the three elements in more detail!

1. Increasing your overall energy levels

Your mental energy levels come down to getting good nutrition to your brain, as well as having an effective supply of oxygen and glucose.

So yes, I’m going to talk about your body, because this part isn’t about mental tricks. No matter how effectively use your water supply, if you have a small bottle, you can’t fill it up more than full.

Increasing your overall energy levels comes down to three main things:

• Fitness/exercise

When you’re fit, you have a more effective supply of blood to your brain, and everything that blood carries.

Now, I’m personally no big fan of gyms. I find them dull. But I always find ways to go on long walks, or go biking, or play some team sports with friends.

Whatever your preferred way of exercise, find something you enjoy (once you try it a few times, you will enjoy exercise. Really.), and do it at least 3 times a week.

As paradoxical as it sounds, exercise doesn’t make you tired. It gives you more energy overall, and more high-quality time. Exercise doesn’t take time, it gives you time.

• Quality diet

By diet, I mean what you eat. Not restricting your caloric intake.

Diet is one complicated topic, and I couldn’t cover it properly in a blog post twice the length of this one, never mind a few paragraphs. But some of the best advice I’ve seen on quality diet can be summed up in seven words:

Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

This comes from the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. By “eat food”, he means avoiding overly processed foodstuffs. Stick to foods that even your own great-grandmother would recognize as food, and you will go a long way.

The point of eating is not only to get energy, but also get all the nutrients your body needs to build itself effectively.

I have one more trick to help you recognize foods that are your personal high-energy foods. They vary from person to person, which is why I can’t give you a list to follow. But you can recognize them yourself with a quick exercise:

Eat a food. Wait 30-60 minutes. Notice how you feel.

Do you feel clear-headed and energetic? You ate one of your high-energy foods.

Don’t? Then you didn’t.

Give this exercise above a try. It’s honestly one of the best ways I know to recognize foods that leave you energized and ready to tackle the world.

If you want to dig deeper into the topic of quality diet, I’d highly recommend you check out the book I linked above.

• Quality sleep

I wasn’t entirely sure where to put sleep, since it’s both a part of your overall energy levels and part of recovering your energy quickly.

In the end, I think it belongs in both.

Quality sleep leaves you well rested, and energized for the day ahead. I think you know the feeling – ready to take on the world, at least for a couple of hours! Okay, you might not feel this way right the moment you wake up – but if this feeling kicks in some 30-60 minutes after waking up, you’re good to go.

Quality sleep comes down to the three following elements. (Writing this feels a bit like Inception, but I promise, this is the last time I break down yet another sub-topic into three bits):

1. Good sleeping environment

A good sleeping environment is dark, quiet, and not too hot and not too cold.

If your sleeping environment is regularly only half-dark, it might be worth investing in better curtains, or an eye-mask. (I personally hate eye masks and prefer to cover my eyes with a rolled-up t-shirt when sleeping somewhere light. But I hear they’re great especially when you’re traveling and need to sleep sitting up.)

As for noise, you can get a bunch of earplugs ridiculously cheaply off amazon. This is one of the most cost-effective purchases for improving the quality of your life. I make sure to always carry a few pairs of earplugs when traveling, or when going to a concert. (As a bonus, most earplug sets come in individually wrapped pairs, so you can offer some to your friends. They’ll love you if you end up having to sleep in a noisy environment.)

And finally, I’m pretty sure having your sleeping place the appropriate temperature is self-explanatory.

2. Long enough sleep at regular times

As much as I’d love to believe a regular sleep schedule doesn’t matter (since mine is often rather erratic), a regular sleep schedule has been shown to lead to better rest, since your body gets used to the time you sleep.

Funnily enough, the reason people working night-shifts often end up sleeping not-too-well isn’t because daytime is a bad time to sleep. Any time is fine, if you do it regularly. But they tend to sleep in noisier, lighter environments (see above), and even worse, sometimes get disturbed by other people!

3. What you do before sleep

What you do right before falling asleep has a big impact on the quality of your sleep.

Avoid eating large meals, or consuming stimulants. And just as importantly – avoid screens in the hour or so before you go to bed. Although you might have experienced falling asleep at the TV yourself (or do it regularly), it leads to shallow, low-quality sleep.

Sitting at a computer before bedtime is also likely to push back the time when you go to bed, because the flickering frequency of a computer screen has a stimulating effect on the mind. Read a book instead, or talk to someone, or do a bit of meditation.

2. Using your energy effectively

Now that we’ve covered increasing your overall energy levels, let’s talk about using that energy effectively.

Because no matter how big your water bottle is and how well you can refill it, if you spill half of it on the ground every time you try to take a sip, you won’t get much use out of it.

Using your energy effectively takes a two-fold strategy. Firstly, using your energy on the right tasks, as opposed to burning it on things that don’t advance your goals in life. And secondly, using your energy efficiently during the tasks themselves.

Using your energy on the right things

It doesn’t matter how efficiently you use your energy if you use it on the wrong things. You might have become an expert at worrying over the years, to the point where it takes you very little energy to have each worrying thought – but it’s probably not something you want to be spending energy on anyway.

Most people burn up a lot of mental energy on things that at best don’t improve their life, and sometimes even have a detrimental effect! Worry is a good example of that.

Here are a few ways to make sure you use your energy effectively:

• Annihilate indecision

Indecision is when your thoughts run around in circles, without making any progress towards what you’re trying to make a decision about. It usually happens when you’re facing a large, or complicated decision.

It’s like an acid that burns up your mental energy, because decision making is one of the most energy-hungry processes in the brain.

Click the link above for a more detailed explanation, but basically, annihilating indecision comes down to making every moment you spend pondering a problem counts towards the solution. This means going through the four main steps of decision making – first figuring out what information you need to actually make a decision, then gathering that information, then writing it down so you can see it all clearly in front of you (which frees up mental space for the decision making itself), and then finally making a decision, at a time when you have enough mental energy to handle it.

• Eliminate procrastination

Procrastination is another way to burn up your mental energy (or stop yourself from recovering it), without getting anything useful from it in return.

In general, you want to be always doing something productive, something fun, or something restful. Those are all parts of a happy, healthy life.

Procrastination is none of those things. It’s a way to deflect from things that are hard, or overwhelming, or boring, and make you feel like you’re accomplishing something when you’re not.

I’ve actually put together a 7-day anti-procrastination course some two years ago. I don’t advertise it anymore these days (I’m planning to turn it into a free e-book when I get the time), but it’s still there and full of useful content. If you struggle with procrastination a lot, I suggest you check it out.

But in general terms, eliminating procrastination is reasonably easy. Just notice when you’re deflecting to doing something that’s neither productive, nor restful, not fun. Figure out what’s causing the procrastination. Then tackle the root cause, rather than trying to tackle the symptom.

• Do mentally intensive tasks during your high-energy times

As I mentioned before, you have high-energy and low-energy times during each day. And different tasks require different amounts of mental energy.

Figure out what are the most mentally intensive tasks that you want to get done, and make sure you schedule them during your high-energy times. These tasks include decision making, creative work, and more.

And make sure you do them while your mind is still fresh, before doing moderate-intensity tasks like checking your e-mail!

(If you’re not sure when your high-energy times are, try heatmapping your day.)

Using your energy efficiently during the tasks themselves

Once you’ve eliminated the energy-draining tasks that don’t accomplish anything, it’s time to tackle using energy efficiently during the tasks you do want to get done.

Because even when doing something productive, there is a huge variation in how much energy you use to accomplish it.

Here are 4 ways to ensure you don’t waste energy getting things done:

• Separate creative and focused tasks

There are two main types of tasks you do – creative tasks (like writing) and focused tasks (like editing).

The first requires a broadening of attention, and creating connections between things that aren’t obviously related at first glance. The second requires narrowing down your attention and cutting away unnecessary things.

These two modes of thinking are actually measurably different in your brain, requiring different chemicals to work best. And they’re diametrically opposed to each other.

This means that switching from creative mode to focused mode (and vice versa), takes time and energy. And if you keep trying to switch between the two too often, you won’t be able to enter either of them properly. You will get stuck in in-between land where you can’t get either task done very well, and you will waste a lot of energy on it.

The solution? Separate creative and focused tasks. And get them done in chunks that involve the same type of task, so that you build on the brain chemicals you release to get each type of task done, rather than trying to work against them!

• Write things down

Your conscious mind has very limited space. You can hold a maximum of 4 to 6 items in your conscious mind at the same time, and it takes a lot of mental energy.

By writing down everything you don’t need to immediately hold in your mind, you will free up your mental space. You will see things more clearly, remember things better, and you will save a lot of energy that you can the use to get things done!

• Single-task

Multi-tasking is a myth. Unless you’re trying to do two things that don’t require any conscious attention (like walking and chewing gum), you’re much better off single-tasking.

Multi-tasking is one of those things that feels as if you’re being productive, because you feel very busy, but when you look at the results, you will find that you get much less done, and get tired faster. Focus on one thing at a time when working.

• Get periods of uninterrupted focus

Related to the point above, find a way to get periods of uninterrupted focus.

If you’re doing a task that requires focus, interruptions can easily throw you off for several minutes before you regain your mental state. That’s time when you’re spending mental energy without getting much done.

Yes, some people need to be constantly on alert (like firefighters). But most people can set some time to get uninterrupted work done. Just turn off e-mail notifications, instant messaging, and any other things that might try stealing your focus. And mention to other people that might interrupt you that you need some uninterrupted work time to get stuff done.

It’s worth it. Trust me.

3. Recovering your energy quickly

And finally, let’s talk about recovering your energy quickly once it’s depleted!

This is just as crucial as increasing your energy reserves and using your energy effectively. Because you can either have one burst of quality time in the morning, followed by an on-and-off wave of alternating low-energy and moderate-energy time. Or you can have one burst of high-quality time in the morning, some moderate-quality time, and then recover your energy effectively for more high-quality and moderate-quality time later in the day!

We’ve already covered your core night sleep. But there are two more important ways to recover your energy quickly:

• Power naps

How would you like a way to recharge your energy in the middle of the day? One that makes you feel as rested as a full night’s sleep, and takes only 20 minutes?

Well, lucky you, there is such a thing! It’s called a nap.

The recipe for a successful power nap is very simple. Lie down. Set an alarm clock for 20-25 minutes from the moment you lie down (but definitely no longer than that). Relax.

If you think a nap leaves you feeling groggy and more tired than when you lay down, you’re thinking of a nap where you sleep too long. When you sleep, you go through various sleep phases. Including deep sleep phases, during which your body releases chemicals to relax your muscles. If you wake up during this phase of your sleep, you will feel groggy and a bit out of it, until the chemicals wear off in some 15 minutes.

Deep sleep phases usually kick in around 20 or so minutes after you fall asleep. So the solution to waking up from a nap full of energy is simple – keep it shorter than that!

You might feel slightly disoriented for a minute or two upon waking up, but it passes quickly, and you will be left rested and energized.

Taking a nap this fast might seem tricky at first. But know that even if you don’t manage to fall asleep in those 20 minutes, you will get up rested and refreshed. Just take those 20 minutes to relax and let your mind wander.

With practice, I have personally got to the point where 80% of the time, I get up from my naps before my alarm clock even rings. Sometimes I fall asleep during that time, sometimes I don’t. But I always get up refreshed!

• Taking quality time off

Do you know those times when you have a task to do, but your mind is too tired to do it, so you deflect to being busy without getting anything useful done?

In other words, procrastination?

Yeah, we all know those times. The trouble is, though… procrastination is neither productive, nor fun, nor restful.

You’re busy for the sake of being busy, because it feels like you’re doing something… without actually getting anything done.

Now, I don’t know where this habit comes from. Maybe you learned it at school (I know I did). Maybe you learned it at a workplace that pays you by the hour, as long as you look busy. But in any case, being busy and getting stuff done are two different concepts.

Once you become tired, you can’t get quality work done. But if you keep busy, you won’t recover your energy either!

You get stuck in the trap of low-energy, barely-functioning behaviour.

The solution is quite simple, actually. Allow yourself to take quality time off.

When you’re productive and getting stuff done, work. When you get too tired for that, take quality time off. Forget having to look busy. Instead, shut your eyes for a moment, or go for a short walk. Let your mind rest properly, and you will recover your energy much quicker, and will be able to get back to work sooner!

(Yes, maybe you have a job where you can’t take a break when you need it, and have to pretend to be doing something even if you’re too tired to get anything done. That sucks. But here I’m sharing the principles of effective energy management, and they are what they are. You recover your energy much faster by taking a proper break when you need it, rather than the sort of half-break web-browsing procrastination most people take.)

Summary of everything we’ve covered here

I know that’s a lot of content to cover in one go.

That’s why I’ve prepared a nice big summary for you. Either as the image below (click for a larger version), or as a PDF file for printing out.

Most likely, not everything here was new to you. But if there’s something that struck you especially strongly as you were reading above, make a note of it. (Write it down!)

As you look over the summary, do you see some points that you think are especially applicable to you?

Then note them down, and figure out how and when you will next apply them in your life! It would be no good if you read all this information and did nothing with it.

And finally, if you found this post valuable, I would much appreciate if you could share it with others, by tweeting, or “liking” it on facebook, or printing out a lot of the summaries above and duct-taping them together into a fancy shirt to wear at parties, or any other way you prefer. Thanks!

Related posts:

1. Forget About Time Management – RQAW
2. Dispelling the Low Energy Myth
3. Kickstart Your Day – How to Wake up Excited and Full of Energy

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve become less and less mindful of my meals.

I eat quickly, at my computer or while reading a book, or while otherwise distracted.

I do have a general awareness of what I eat. But I sometimes let my diet get a bit too unbalanced, as I favour foods that can be prepared quickly without much effort. (Bread and peanut butter sandwiches, for example).

Enough. It’s time for a new personal development experiment!

For the next 30 days, I will eat consciously. That means I will focus on the food I’m eating, and cut out all distractions like web browsing or book reading. (I will make an exception for social eating and occasional snacking, but more on that in a second.)

I’m starting this experiment, because eating consciously has supposedly all sorts of great benefits! For instance:

• You become more aware of what you’re eating overall
• You listen better to your body, and know what it needs at any particular time
• You chew things more thoroughly, and that saves your body a LOT of effort (most foods are pre-digested by your saliva, and it helps the rest of your digestive system process things quicker)
• As you become more mindful and slow down, you will notice when you’re getting full, and avoid over-eating (I seem to be a lucky bastard with my genetics, since I don’t get fat no matter how much I eat. But over-eating still saps my energy levels, and it’s correlated with dying sooner!)

So, for the next thirty days:

• Whenever I eat alone, I will fully focus on the food I’m eating.
• When eating with other people, I will split my attention between the food and the people I’m with. (Food is an important part of some social situations, and I don’t want to miss out on those just because I insist on fully focusing on my food.)
• I will make an occasional exception for snacking, maybe once or twice a week. (Sometimes it’s just really nice to nibble on some nuts while curled up in bed with a good book.)

Feel free to join in! Then we can compare our experiences, and see what we learned.

In any case, I will keep you guys updated about anything interesting I notice (over Google+ and twitter), and definitely a post a summary of what I’ve learned once the experiment is over, a month from now!

Related posts:

1. My Next Big Personal Development Experiment – Self-Reflection
2. My Next Big Personal Development Experiment – Daily Exercise
3. If You Try Just One Personal Development Experiment This Year, Make It This One

Update: April Fools! I’ll stick with my beardy hairy-chested self, I quite like it. I am planning a new Personal Development Experiment, but I’ll keep that secret for a bit longer. You’ll find out what it is on 12th April!

I often write about the importance of open-mindedness, and considering other people’s perspective in order to understand them better.

But it recently occured to me – I’ve only been considering half the possible perspectives. Men.

Yet there’s so much different that women experience. Attractive women get treated advantageously in all sorts of situations. Or, as James Chartrand of Men With Pens discovered, women often get treated disadvantegously when it comes to work.

And then there’s the whole monthly hormonal cycle. Wouldn’t it be fun to get a perspective on what that feels like?

So with all of those reasons, I’ve decided what my next personal development experiment will be. I’ve already got my doctor’s appointment scheduled for Friday.

I will be getting a sex change to become a woman!

And of course I’ll be keeping you guys updated on what I learn from this interesting new perspective!

Related posts:

1. My Personal Development Experiments – April Update
2. My Next Big Personal Development Experiment – Self-Reflection
3. My Next Big Personal Development Experiment – Daily Exercise

I was recently working with a client who wanted to stop being overly negative.

We came up with a way for her to build awareness of her negativity. A variation of the no complaint experiment. She would wear a wristband, and every time she complained or was overly negative about something, she would switch it to the other wrist. The goal was to keep it on the same wrist 7 days in a row.

We talked again two weeks later, and she was very surprised at how often she had to switch the wristband. She expected about five times a day. Instead, it was only once every two or three days.

It turns out, she was positive and constructive vast majority of the time.

But because she focused on the instances of negativity so much whenever she thought back to her behaviour, it seemed like a huge part of what she did.

Your remembering self and your experiencing self

When thinking about the concept of “self”, people often mix up two separate concepts. Your remembering self and your experiencing self.

Your experiencing self is the you in the moment. You experience each moment as it comes, feel every second of the sun on your skin, or the uncomfortable chair under your bum.

Your remembering self, on the other hand, is the you of your memories. When you think back to what you did yesterday, that’s all your remembering self.

It’s an interesting distinction, because your remembering self will sometimes choose a situation that will lead to more overall pain and discomfort to you, but leave a less painful memory ^[1,2]. It’s because your memory doesn’t work as a sum of all the experience you had. Rather, it picks out key points of an experience, like a short photo album. For a painful experience, you will remember mostly the peak pain and the ending. So adding a bit of mild pain at the end of a moderate-pain experience will produce a less painful memory, even though it increases the total amount of pain you experience!

And when you think about who you are, you are simply sifting through your memories. It’s your remembering self that’s in charge of letting you know who you are, and making decisions for the future (as in the above experiments, where subjects chose to repeat the experience that left a less painful memory, even though it involved more pain overall).

In essence, your memories determine who you think you are, and how you think you behave.

Your focus determines your reality

Getting back to my client, because she always focused so much on the times she was being negative, they formed a major part of what she remembered about her behaviour.

And so to her, negativity and complaining formed a large part of her life. Because that’s what she remembered the most.

And the same applies to you.

Whatever you focus on will form a larger part of your memory of yourself. And because your memory is you, as far you’re concerned, you can literally change your life just by focusing on different aspects of it!

Thinking mostly of negative experiences? Your life will be filled with complaining and worry. Thinking mostly of positive times? You will feel optimistic and resourceful.

How to increase your happiness and positivity

I’m sure you understand what I’m saying, by now. You can increase your happiness and positivity by focusing on the more.

You can try doing a gratitude experiment. Or you can try placing a few memorable objects around your home, and pause to think of a positive memory every time you pass them. Or you can ask yourself questions that will get you thinking of times you acted positively.
In fact, try it right now. Close your eyes, and think of 5 happy experiences from the last few days. Times you felt good and happy.

When you’re done with those, think of 5 times when you reacted positively to neutral or negative circumstances. Times like helping a friend, or being ready to look for a solution to a problem when you hear about it, rather than ignoring it.

And if you make this a regular habit, you will find that you will be more positive and happy. Just by changing your focus.

(image courtesy of eflon)

Related posts:

1. 5 simple ways to increase your happiness
2. The Masculine Approach to Happiness
3. Hardwire Yourself For Positivity – Introduction

A while ago, I joined two acquaintances in the middle of a conversation.

Neither of them was familiar with life coaching, yet they were clearly discussing core values.

One of them was explaining to the other that she’d been thinking about how she came to value the things she values. It involved a lot of fascinating self-analysis and family history.

I found this especially interesting since I never do this with clients. If you hire me as a life coach, we will work with your present and your future. Digging into the past might be interesting, and you can spend hours like that, but it doesn’t change your life. Changing your life happens in the now.

But thinking about the past is fun, and a great thing to do in your spare time.

And so this friend got me thinking about how my own core values came about.

I started wondering especially about my top core value – honesty. Because I don’t have a huge turning point in my life that would catapult it to the top of my list. (As sometimes happens with values like health.) Yet I clearly know there was a point in the past where I regularly told small lies, and didn’t think about it twice. This is unthinkable to me today.

So I thought about it, and came up with some reasons why honesty rocks.

Please note that I’m NOT saying that honesty is the perfect core value and you should value it highly. Everyone’s core values are different, and your values are brilliant for you, just like my values are brilliant for me.

But I find it fascinating to switch perspectives with people who see things differently. It’s not only interesting, but it also helps you get along better (and feel less angry with) people who see the world differently than you do!

Alright, I’ll kick us off…

Why honesty rocks

As with all core values, the first thing that comes to mind when you ask why one of your core values rocks is – “It just does! Can’t you see?”

That’s what characterises your core values – you find them as valuable in themselves. You don’t need any other reason to follow your values – living aligned with them is reason enough.

But since I’m writing this for the benefit of people who might not value honesty for its own sake, here are some extrinsic reasons why honesty rocks:

• You don’t have to remember as much

When you tell lies, you need to constantly keep track of what you’ve told to whom. And keep this as a separate model from what you hold as being true. It’s tricky and tiring!

When you’re honest and always tell the truth, on the other hand, you don’t need to remember as much.

• You feel more like yourself

When you’re always honest with others, you feel more like yourself. Every lie is a mask you put forward for the world. It’s like being a character in a play – tiring, because you need to suppress your natural urges and responses, and instead do what the character you’re trying to get across would do – rather than just doing what comes naturally.

• Honesty lets you grow stronger personal boundaries

Telling the truth can be tough. It seems easier to just tell a comfortable lie rather than saying something that might be hard for another person to hear.

But the difference between honesty and lying is like the difference between doing courage and always running away from things you’re scared of. By doing courage, you will grow your comfort zone, and soon find yourself taking action that just a few months prior would have paralyzed you with fear.

Similarly, when you always practice honesty, you will be able to both tell and hear uncomfortable truths without flinching. You will help other people grow and develop, and you will build stronger, deeper relationships on that basis. People will trust you.

I could go on all day about honesty, but that’s not why we’re here today. I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about some of your top values!

Your turn

Your turn now. I’d love it if you would leave a comment sharing:

• one of your top core values
• and why it rocks

If you’re not entirely sure what a core value is, it’s something that’s deeply important to you, and can be summed up in one word or a short phrase. To give you a short list of examples (by no means exhaustive), the following can be core values:

Authenticity, Bravery, Commitment, Connection, Creativity, Diversity, Equality, Fairness, Family, Forgiveness, Freedom, Fun, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, Health, Humor, Humility, Honesty, Integrity, Justice, Kindness, Knowledge, Leadership, Love, Nurturing, Open-mindedness, Passion, Peace, Persistence, Positivity, Prudence, Self-control, Significance, Security, Spirituality, Stability, Trust, Wisdom.

Pick one of your top values (by thinking about it, or if a word in the list above strikes you as particularly important to you), and please share it in the comments, along with reasons why it rocks for you!

(If you’re reading this by RSS or e-mail, click through to the blog to read the comments and leave your own.)

Related posts:

1. Critical Thinking Rocks, But Don’t Overdo It! – A Conversation With Ben Seeley
2. Why Acting Win/Win Rocks – Basics of Human Contact
3. It’s Okay to Start Where You Are

Last weekend, a friend of mine went to a flea market.

She got back really excited about some of the things she bought. One of them was this green, ornamented box, about the size of your forearm (though a bit thicker), filled with straw.

“You know how much I paid for this?” she chattered on. “Just 1 Euro!”

My first thought was “Ooh, just one Euro? Nice!”

Quickly followed by “What the hell is this thing anyway? What could it be useful for? Why would anyone WANT it?”

I couldn’t see myself wanting a box like that, because I’d have no use for it, I didn’t find it particularly pretty for decoration, and in fact, for me it would have negative value because it would clutter up my space.

It was probably worth it for my friend (she likes random things like that). But it got me thinking about the difference between effort and value.

My first reaction to the box was that it must have taken a lot of effort to create, and was a bargain at just 1 Euro. But then I took a few moments to imagine owning the box, and realized that it had no value to me. It was just an ornamented box of straw.

These two concepts are easy to confuse, but they are as different as night and day.

What is value, anyway?

Have you ever thought about what exactly is value? What makes something valuable to you, or to another person?

This might be a good point to pause for a few moments and consider it. (I have deliberately not bolded my definition of value below, so that your eyes don’t jump to it straight away, in case you want to first think about it yourself.)

I personally use the following definiton of value:

Value is the amount of positive emotions something generates in people.

If you spend hours of effort on a drawing and give it to somebody who doesn’t like it, it has no value. It took lots of effort, but generates no positive emotions in the person you gave it to.

On the other hand, a simple smile, or a word of thanks can generate lots of value, despite taking very little effort.

Value doesn’t follow effort, or price. There are lots of great cheap, or even free ways to generate value in your life. Like spending quality time with friends. Or giving out free hugs.

Value is separate from effort or monetary price. Keep that in mind.

Effort versus value at work

At school, I was always baffled at how much emphasis teachers put on effort, instead of getting stuff done.

Now, I understand the reasoning to a certain extent. A smart person glides through classes easily while getting good grades, while somebody not as gifted in certain subjects can put in lots of effort and still do worse. And it would be unfair to always punish the person who’s not as naturally gifted, even though they’re doing their best. (Also, it can be argued that school is about teaching kids the discipline to work hard, which can be a valuable skill).

But the fact is, in the real world, nobody cares how much effort you put in. They care about the results you get.

“Hard-working” is a nice trait to have, but “gets stuff done” is a much more valuable description in terms of business.

We’re trained to value people who work hard. We see somebody who puts hours of effort into a task, and think positive thoughts.

But really, it matters whether or not the effort is well-placed. Who’s better – the person who spends 4 hours learning a skill, or somebody who can do the same in half an hour by applying the little-known principles of how your brain learns new skills, and then takes the rest of the time to relax?

We see the second person mostly lying around lazily, but for all intents and purposes, they’re doing better than the first person!

Another place where effort versus value kicks in is the sunk costs fallacy. That’s where you think that how much effort you put into a project in the past has any bearing on whether or not you should continue it.

Yes, it hurts to stop a project after working on it for a hundred hours. But if new things come to light that show you that the amount of work you would have to do to complete the project from this point on is not worth the returns, it’s best to stop. Forget the sunk costs (the effort and money you have already invested that can’t be recouped), and focus only on the future amount of effort and money you would still have to spend.

A few conclusions

After all that, here are the main conclusions I hope you’ll take away from this post:

• evaluate purchases based on their value to you, not on their cost or creation effort
• ignore sunk costs when considering whether to continue or abandon a project
• figure out how to get things done effectively – this often involves thinking outside the box, rather than just working hard

And that’s all. I hope you will use and share these principles, to generate the most value for both yourself and those around you!

No related posts.