Tag: Understanding

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Venting Leaves A Bad Memory

Venting doesn’t move us forward; it keeps us in place.

People tell you it’s ok to vent after a terrible event.
Someone says “Let it out, it’s ok,” while you wax poetically about some wrong.
It felt good. You got to say all the things they did (all while avoiding your hand in the situation) and your friend (with limited information) let you know how right you are.
Your brain marks this memory, and off you go, using your vent story as the memory of what happened.  This imprint is problematic.
  • It is difficult to understand the lessons learned with a self-told favorable story.
  • A friend supporting you backs up this version of events, making it that much harder to go back to things as they were.
 So here is a quick exercise on venting.

 Exercise

When you want to “vent” do the following:
  1. Go to a quiet place. Sit with yourself for a while; the next step is difficult.
  2. Write a timeline of events, stripping out all emotion.
  3. By each event, write what you did to cause that point to happen and write the other person.
  4. Leave it for an hour or so.
  5. Go back and write what you did. This second pass is critical because there is a high chance that the first pass sounds like venting.
  6. Find the lessons on your end.
This exercise is difficult and venting is not. Venting, however, doesn’t help you understand or make you better. Taking the time to do this exercise improves your decision-making, which means fewer opportunities to vent overall.
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Time to Dismiss the Default of Reactive

Reactive isn’t memorable.

We all have 24 hours in a day. There isn’t anyone who has 23 or 25. You can’t “save” time. You only spend it.

Time’s consistency combined with its scarcity is a major reason it’s the most valuable resource we have.

Our default state is to react to time:

  • Wait for an email to tell me what to do
  • Get that text to show us who to talk to
  • Find “fires” so we can feel effective

All of these things are reactive. None of those instances create memories. You won’t tell people at the bar later about that email that started you on a project. It isn’t a life that is memorable. When someone asks about what you were doing, all you say is you were “busy.”

When one is reactive, they rely on the word busy. Busy is a buzzword designed to protect your ego. When you say your busy, you don’t have to think about why you decided to do something.  You take away your personal responsibility.

At the end of the day, would you rather be busy or memorable?

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Avoid Busy For Two Reasons

Not a great word

  • Using it takes away an opportunity to communicate what you work on. It comes from a place of insecurity.  “If I say I’m busy, then that will confirm what I am doing to the other person.”
  • Being “busy” means we lost track of what we are doing. Just by using that word, we generally settle on System 1 (or gut reaction) thinking. Suddenly, the day is gone.

The worst part about the word is the two behaviors feed each other. When you don’t stop to communicate what you are doing and feed into your insecurity, it gets easier to lose track because “busy” often works.

Note: You aren’t as busy as you think you are.

 

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Explosions!

Volatility is exciting.

Volatility is all the beginner “sees:” the savageness of a fight, the flash of a dance, the motion in the ocean.

“You could triple earnings in the stock market!”

One change that happens when someone leaves the amateur ranks is that they finish that sentence above.

“I could triple your earnings in the stock market, and you can lose three times your earnings, too.”

Volatility becomes a risk*. Once there, one can choose a better strategy on how to deal with it.

Understanding risk and volatility is the difference between being wowed by the fireworks display to understanding how the act is done.

*I prefer to engage in it to help shape my processes.

 

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The Magic of Facts

Facts aren’t always understood

If the foundation isn’t in place, facts don’t matter.  Like technology, facts too high level from that foundation will come off like “magic.”

Not the good kind either, the kind that gets attacked so “way of life” is maintained.

That’s trouble.

So you have to make a choice:

  • Just talk about sports (or reality TV, “news” etc).
  • Find the point where there is common ground. Use that to raise awareness.

The first choice is easy on both parties, it keeps the conversation flowing, and everyone is happy.

The second option is a minefield and necessary if you want a team around you to prosper.

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Run With the Lions

Being forced in a lion’s den is a blessing.

Hear me out.

In Christian mythology, the most “devout” Christians in Rome would be offered as a sacrifice. They had a chance to escape the lions den if they converted. So, the trouble in which they found themselves made them consider their belief and mortality.

Nothing creates focus like stakes. They had skin in the game.

If one attempts creative work, chances are they are going to find themselves in this predicament. The “Romans” might throw you into the lions den for not converting.*

Even if it’s metaphorically the same, the stakes aren’t as high. The thing is our brain doesn’t know the difference. It still thinks we are headed to a lion’s mouth, al dente.

The thing is there are no lions other than our fears, and by not letting them eat us up, we still get the benefits of the focus on how we really feel.

*It might be worth your time to convert

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Can I Get Your Attention, Please!

Attention matters.

Your attention is one of the greatest gifts you have.  Your attention is the key to the depth you get out of the time you spend.

If time was a car, your attention is the gasoline.

Your car can run on regular, and most cars do.

However, if you consider your car high-end (and you should since time is the only thing you can’t get back) it suffers when you use regular gasoline. You would get so much more out of your car(time) if you used the best fuel(attention).

Whenever you are focusing, consider each text, IM, email etc.  lowering the quality of attention (gas) to your time (car).

It’s important because that understanding will take you where you want to go.

All of our cars eventually break down.

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Are You Paying Attention?

Take a deep breath.

Take a second to think.

Exhale.

While you are reading this, listening to that new album, and answering texts, something important just screamed past you.

  • Maybe it was the first thing this post asked you to do?
  • Maybe it was an insane solo or lyric that would change your life?
  • Maybe it was the text from your significant other that changes the way you see them?

Or maybe it wasn’t? You won’t know unless you give something real attention.

 

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We Think The Other Side Is Dumb, But We Make Ourselves Stupid

 

The other side isn’t dumb. 

You see this in politics all the time.

If you want to see something interesting, see a vocal Donald Trump supporter say something nice about Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders  (and vice versa).  Watch how many times the word “stupid” gets thrown in their mentions. 

I assume most of my readers aren’t of the rabid political animal species (if you are…why?) so they find the above funny.

Wake up!

This concept strikes us in any situation where one side has more/less (authority, resources, experience) than the other side.

We lie to…

  • bosses/direct reports
  • children/parents
  • government/doctor

Some of it is to protect ourselves, but some of it is because we think “the other side is dumb.”

Most of us have an internal BS alarm which we can’t vocalize, but we feel.  Both sides mentioned above make decisions based on the lie and since that BS alarm goes off both can’t tell the truth to each other so it compounds. As it compounds, opportunities vanish and we end up confused, wondering what happened.

The counter to all of this is to listen, and let people feel that they are heard. This leads to the truth, which is ugly sometimes, but the conversations always turn fruitful.

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Season 1 of the Video Blog is Complete :-)

Some things must come to an end

I have decided to stop shooting my Life As Usual video blog temporarily. For those unaware, each week, for the last 4 months, I have shot, edited, and distributed the video blog. Each Sunday I shot and posted the video on YouTube. Then on Thursday, I posted the video on the blog with some of the things I learned.

Its time to re-consolidate and try a few different experiments with my YouTube videos, and I want to spend my time towards trying different things with the videos I shot. I don’t think I can do two of those things at once while working through altMBA. What better time than now to take a break and deal with what I learned.

I am glad I shot the videos, because it required working with my fear of producing something I knew nothing about.

I am a rookie

The reason I decided to try video is because it scared me and I had zero experience.  I saw that I could do it for cheap (~$20). All I needed was a tripod to stabilize my shot and a holder for my cell phone.  The rest of the work relied on time and dealing with my emotional pain points:

When I started this,  I was very scared of putting myself on video, so I got the courage and put myself in the arena, killing a lot of bad self talk.

I learned by doing, and each week the videos got better. I felt more comfortable shooting them. I learned a bunch of tools and tricks. The community around me helped me get better shots, write better material, and focus my message.

So whats next?

More experiments! I will learn more about the editing process. I plan on cutting up the videos I already have and distributing them into posts. I also plan on getting better at promoting the clips I have through social media. I am doing this top prepare for a “second season” of these videos, with better content and production. I am proud of these videos, but I hope these are the worst videos I ever shoot.

If you haven’t seen them, I’ve provided a list below. Season 1 of the Life As Usual video blog.

November 2015

December 2015

January 2016

February 2016

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