Your mind will tell you what it thinks whether you want to hear it or not. But just like with other people, you don’t have to listen. You aren’t obliged to concur. You can freely ignore. You can disagree. To the untrained mind, one cannot differentiate oneself from one’s thoughts. To the trained mind, one can.
Save yourself the trouble – don’t make trivial changes to the written word
In high school I remember being told to start any paper as a draft. And to constantly revise it. If memory serves, we submitted draft after draft before submitting a final paper. And why not? It’s easy to make changes. But, that doesn’t mean those changes are worth while. And more often than not they’re trivial changes at best. Sometimes they…
Being right often conflicts with being successful
The desire to be “right” is occasionally mutually exclusive with being successful. Which do you prefer? Either way the desire to be right is innate, subconscious. That means it’s largely out of your control. You’re not a bad person for wanting to be right. No, you pretty much have no say over the satisfaction you receive. Or the gut wrenching…
Stress is often an illusion
Over the course of a day you can encounter many small stressful situations. Maybe a difficult problem to solve, a difficult decision to make, some conflict, maybe a paper cut or a stubbed toe. These stressors tend to linger in your mind. By the end of the day you can feel stressed even if all the sources of stress are…
Staring
If you’re waiting in line at a fountain while the person in front of you is filling up a gallon jug, all you have to do is make eye contact and they’ll stop. Even a momentarily glance will come across as a death stare. Conversely if you don’t mind, avert your eyes or you’ll interrupt them. Influence is affect
Not even the worst of things last
It doesn’t matter how good things get, or how bad they become. After six months at most, your mind will revert to a mean level of happiness. Lose your job or win the lottery? Same impact on happiness in the long haul. That means that no matter what happens in life you can take solace in knowing that the new…
Giving the benefit of the doubt.
Tonight as I was putting Pax’s collar on for her last walk of the day, I unintentionally pulled a bit hard on her leash as I was standing up. It jerked her a little and I felt bad. I apologized. She looked at me like I was a bit crazy before proceeding out the door. She was more interested in…
Inherent goodness
People are inherently good, but, we all get confused from time to time.
Communicate to not through
Very rarely is indiect communication a good thing let alone efficient. Communicate to the people that you are trying to get a message to, not through intermediaries. It takes two times as long to have a one way conversation through a middleman. And if there’s any back and forth it’s exponentially more costly: Conversations happen twice Feelings aren’t transmitted or…
Productive instead of right
Try substituting the words productive and counterproductive when you want to say right and wrong. How do you feel different as a result? Can you have a productive conversation with those that would otherwise be offended by the words right and wrong?