An Amazing Mind

Ever wondered why some people are loved by others everywhere they go? Ever wondered why some people seem perpetually happy, even in situations where you would be angry or annoyed?

You’ll find out in this article! And you’ll also learn:

• a simple trick that completely transformed a New York stockbroker’s relations with other people
• a precise scientific definition of friendship
• how to become more successful AND happier at the same time
• how “being realistic” is just an excuse used by pessimists to avoid taking action
• and much more!

The power of a smile

Here’s a story from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends And Influence People”. (It’s a great book btw):

I have asked thousands of business people to smile at
someone every hour of the day for a week and then come
to class and talk about the results. How did it work?
Lets see. . . Here is a letter from William B. Steinhardt,
a New York stockbroker. His case isnt isolated. In fact,
it is typical of hundreds of cases.

1 have been married for over eighteen years, wrote
Mr. Steinhardt, and in all that time I seldom smiled at
my wife or spoke two dozen words to her from the time
I got up until I was ready to leave for business. I was
one of the worst grouches who ever walked down Broadway.

When you asked me to make a talk about my experience
with smiles, I thought I would try it for a week. So
the next morning, while combing my hair, I looked at
my glum mug in the mirror and said to myself, Bill, you
are going to wipe the scowl off that sour puss of yours
today. You are going to smile. And you are going to begin
right now. As I sat down to breakfast, I greeted my wife
with a Good morning, my dear, and smiled as I said
it.

You warned me that she might be surprised. Well,
you underestimated her reaction. She was bewildered.
She was shocked. I told her that in the future she could
expect this as a regular occurrence, and I kept it up every
morning.

This changed attitude of mine brought more happiness
into our home in the two months since I started
than there was during the last year.

As I leave for my office, I greet the elevator operator
in the apartment house with a Good morning and a
smile, I greet the doorman with a smile. I smile at the
cashier in the subway booth when I ask for change. As I
stand on the floor of the Stock Exchange, I smile at people
who until recently never saw me smile.

I soon found that everybody was smiling back at me,
I treat those who come to me with complaints or grievances
in a cheerful manner, I smile as I listen to them
and I find that adjustments are accomplished much easier.
I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars
every day.

I share my office with another broker. One of his
clerks is a likable young chap, and I was so elated about
the results I was getting that I told him recently about
my new philosophy of human relations. He then confessed
that when I first came to share my office with his
firm he thought me a terrible grouch - and only recently
changed his mind. He said I was really human when I
smiled.

I have also eliminated criticism from my system. I
give appreciation and praise now instead of condemnation.
I have stopped talking about what I want. I am now
trying to see the other persons viewpoint. And these
things have literally revolutionized my life. I am a totally
different man, a happier man, a richer man, richer in
friendships and happiness - the only things that matter
much after all.

A simple smile… and how much it matters! Do you think you smile often enough? Or do you go through your day feeling mostly grumpy and not in the mood to smile.

In the opening of my article on body language, I share what happened when I simply forced a smile on my face and left it there for a couple of minutes. It’s a fun thing to try, and you will realize how powerful even a forced smile is.

When you’re alone (right now?), just put a huge-ass grin on your face, and leave it there for five minutes. At first you’re probably be thinking things like “this is nonsense” and “why am I doing this?”. Towards the end it will be like “lol this is silly ^_^” (am I the only one who sometimes uses “lol” when talking to themselves? :))

But our goal isn’t a fake forced grin. It’s a genuine smile. A heart-warming smile. The kind of smile you see on a baby’s face, and you just can’t help but start smiling yourself.

And that smile comes with a positive attitude. When you believe your life is good, the world is good, and the people around you are good. When you wake up with a smile on your face, looking forward to the day ahead. (Yes, I actually do that. And it rocks :D.)

In other words, being an optimist.

The “realist” myth

Have you ever had the following conversation? (It happens a LOT to us optimists)
You: “Dude, stop being such a pessimist!”
Friend: “Nah man, I’m just being realistic.”

Guess what. Apparently, about 90% of our negative expectations never come true. Now who’s being realistic?

Pessimists (majority of the population) believe that they’re being realistic, unlike those silly optimists. (And optimists believe they’re being realistic, unlike those silly pessimists :p) . Pessimists sacrifice their happiness - but get a trade off of those I’m-better-than-you feelings. Similarly optimists get the same I’m-better-than-you feelings by being optimistic. But they also feel good about life in general (that’s what optimism is about).

(Update: A couple of months ago, when I wrote the first draft of this article, I wrote that pessimists form the majority of the population. Then, when I picked it up now to finish it, I was like “Hey, is that really true? Most people I know are optimists!” It made me realize how much I changed the kind of people I hang out with. Awesome :D)

Choose your reality

There’s not a “more real” reality. It’s as real as you make it.

Think about that for a second. A flat-earther’s reality is just as real as yours. As far as he’s concerned, he’s spent his whole life living on a flat world, with a huge conspiracy around keeping most people from knowing the truth. The reality in your head only starts to matter when you try to interact with the real world. If you believe you can fly, and you jump out of a window to prove it… you get the point.

(By the way, that’s the basis of science. Making claims that can be refuted by experiment.)

But I think that optimists generally pick their own reality, while most pessimists are handed down their reality through media and other people. Hey, if those people actually chose their own reality, they would probably pick something better! So, whose reality do YOU want to live in?

Synthetic Happiness

Imagine I give you a choice. You could either win the lottery, or become a paraplegic (lose control of your lower body).  Which one would leave you more happy a year down the road?

If you said winning the lottery, think again. Studies show that paraplegics are just as happy as lottery winners a year after the incident. This is due to our body’s ability to generate synthetic happiness.

And you can leverage that mechanism RIGHT NOW, to create more happiness in your life without changing the objective circumstances.

Simplicio: But doesn’t creating artificial happiness take your attention away from your real life?
Vlad: Not at all. Synthetic happiness lets you pursue all your dreams BETTER. I’m currently starting an online business, beginning my university studies and posting to my blog - all that while having a lot of outside hobbies. More happiness gives you more energy to pursue your dreams. Optimism also lets you take on challenges you wouldn’t otherwise - and succeed.
Simplicio: But isn’t artificial happiness about escaping from reality?
Vlad: Synthetic happiness is the body’s natural way of creating happiness. I’m definitely against things that take you away from reality, like alcohol and drugs. I’m actually proposing MORE reality, by being present-minded. But more on that in another post.
Simplicio: I’m already quite happy with my life. I don’t see why I should create more happiness…

Creating more happiness

Do this quick exercise right now. On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?

Answer before reading on.

If you pose this questiona to a hundred people, most will answer between six and nine. (I’ve seen it done). Even though their happiness levels are radically different. Because everyone’s comparing their happiness levels to their own baseline.

But if you ask some of the same people a few years later, they will be like “Wow. I used to think my happiness was 8. Now I see it actually used to be 3, but I didn’t know it at the time. It’s an 8 now, though.”

Most people have been living with a certain level of happiness all their lives. They have their ups and downs, but those all remain pretty close to a certain base line, which was set in their early childhood. Just like a fish can’t even imagine going out of the water - so most people don’t even realize how much happier they could be.

The good news is… you can shift your happiness baseline! So that your ups will be higher, and your lows will also be higher. Now wouldn’t that rock?

So how do you become happier?

Well, one of the BIG ingredients of happiness is… positive attitude!

Friendships

Have you ever wondered what a friendship IS?

Think about that for a moment. How would you define friendship?

Here’s a great definition of friendship I heard somewhere:

Friendship is mutually shared positive emotion.

There. That’s it. Nothing more.

In case you’re thinking “Friendship is about more than that. A real friend will always be there for you. A friend will cheer you up when you’re feeling down. A friend will help you out when you’re in trouble.” … Well, that’s not friendship. That’s confusing friendship with some kind of commitment (if healthy), or dependence (if unhealthy).

Sure, being “best friends” is usually more than just about positive emotion. There’s definitely a bit of commitment in there. And yes, it helps your friendships if you have the similar beliefs and values.

But friendship itself is all about shared positive emotion. No more, no less.

And now you realize what friendship is (you knew it subconsciously anyway, but now you know it consciously), we can answer the question at the beginning of this post!

Why are some people loved by others everywhere they go?

Positive attitude

Positive attitude! Just sharing good emotions with others!

Who would you prefer to be your friend… the person who tears down your dreams and tells you to stay reasonable and keep doing your job? Or the person who supports you in your ambitions, even if they seem a unreasonable to most of the world?

Who would you prefer to be your friend… the person who always comes in with a smile and greets everyone cheerfully? Or the person who is grumpy and complains and doesn’t break a single smile all day?

Be the kind of person you would prefer.

And even more importantly… be the kind of person you prefer… TO YOURSELF. Because like you are your own best friend, you could just as easily be your own worst enemy. If someone else criticizes you, you can bounce back quickly. But if you keep criticizing yourself… then nobody can help you.

So stay optimistic. Stay strong. Be yourself. Live your dreams.

Don’t let your fears be stronger than your desires.

Have a positive attitude.

You rock.

Yaaay! Productivity!

You don’t hear me talk about productivity much, because it’s something I’m still figuring out. But today, I will share the BEST productivity tip I ever got! It definitely more than doubled the amount of stuff I get done on most days.

Ready? Here we go:

Always carry around a pen and paper.

It works! But why?

1. You don’t forget tasks

I’m at the grocery store. I just remember an important e-mail I need to send. I think “As soon as I get home, I’ll send it.” Of course, by the time I get home, I completely forget. Then, when I’m walking the dog, I remember again. “Ah ha! In five minutes, when I get back home, I’ll send the e-mail!” By the time I get home, I forget…

Does the above paragraph seem familiar?

That’s how I used to do stuff. Nowadays, I always carry around this small pocket-sized paper notebook, and a pen. On the front, I keep a to-do list. That is, simple actionable items like “call Tom about the rock-climbing” or “look up bus connections for the trip”. On the back, I note any cool ideas I have, anytime, anywhere.

2. You don’t forget cool ideas

I can’t count how many times I’ve had some cool idea, but forgot about it before implementation. (Obviously. If I COULD count them, that would mean I haven’t forgotten them ) Or, on some days, I would be thinking about possible topics for my next blog post, only to come at one and realize I thought of it a few weeks ago, figured out what I’d write about it… and then forgot.

But ever since I write stuff down, all my cool ideas stay right there, at the back of my notebook! So sometimes I just flip through it, and go “Oooh, I completely forgot about this idea. Awesome, I’ll get started on it right away!”

3. You free your mind for new ideas

Let’s say you’re walking home, and it will be about 15 minutes’ walk before you get there. You’ve got an important phone call to make. And let’s even say you don’t forget. But in order not to forget, you’ll need to think of the phone call every couple of moments as you walk. It will keep interrupting your train of thought.

Now that’s not such a big deal, if It’s just one task. But imagine you had several such tasks on your mind… they would keep interrupting you ALL THE TIME. It would basically waste any quality thinking time you had on your walk home.

Aha! Pen and paper to the rescue!

If you note all the tasks in your little notebook (and remember to look at your to-do list every time you get home). Then you could spend the 15 minutes’ walk inventing a cure for cancer. Or thinking up witty captions to put on pictures of your cats. Whatever you call productive

Bonus

Scene: A remote island full of dinosaurs. A group of 3 people is walking next to a huge gate, when suddenly red lights start flashing.

Doctor: Oh no! The automated gate release mechanism has been activated! We need to memorize this 100-digit number and enter it on a keyboard 5 minutes’ walk away, or the gate will open and the dinosaurs will come out and we’ll all be DOOMED. Oh, and we have 10 minutes to do it.
Vlad: Don’t worry! I have a pen and paper in my pocket!
Doctor: Hooray! We are saved!
(Audience cheers)
(obligatory xkcd reference)

Outro

If you don’t have the habit of always carrying around a pen and paper, hopefully I gave you some reasons today to make you think about it. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: productivity, pen and paper

I recently wrote about my experiences with Esperanto, and why it was the best language (after English) for me to learn.

A couple of readers responded, and seems they also seem to think Esperanto is the best thing since salty pretzels covered in chocolate. Here’s what some of them said:

“When I as a late teenager learnt esperanto just for fun (to have a secret language with my best friend) I could never guess what it would mean to me 40 years later.
The language has brought to me work(a profession in library) friends in 5 continents and travels between south Bulgaria up to north Norway, from east Finland(Imatra) to west England (Morecombe), guests from several countries, numbers of contacts in internet and so on.”

and

“On my foreign travels speaking English, German, French, Spanish, Greek and some Italian and Serbo-Croatian never got me invited into any private homes anywhere - but speaking Esperanto most certainly did! And thus gave me quite a different take on life in Bulgaria, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Romania than I would have got as a regular tourist. Try it - Esperanto can be as useful as you yourself like to make it!”

So I though “Hey, maybe other people would like to know more about this ‘Esperanto’ thing!”

Here are a few reasons you might want to learn Esperanto:

• you want to learn a new language, but aren’t sure which one
• you tried learning other languages, but got stumped by complicated grammar and counter-intuitive spelling
• you want to meet some totally awesome people

It’s hard to explain what makes the Esperanto community so awesome (though I’ll try ). But I have a good reason to believe you’ll love the kind of people you can meet through Esperanto. And the reason is… you’re reading my blog! There’s just something about that.

First, I’ll give you a crash course in Esperanto grammar, so you can see why the language totally rocks. And then I’ll give you The REAL Reason Esperanto rocks!

Esperanto grammar - why Esperanto rocks as a language

1. All Esperanto verbs are regular

Do you know what all natural languages have in common? The verb “to be” is irregular. I am, you are, he is… there’s no logic behind that! And in most languages, there are dozens, or even hundreds other irregular verbs.

Of course, not so in Esperanto. In Esperanto, EVERY verb is completely regular. So you have:
esti - to be
dormi - to sleep
promeni - to walk

And the present tense is always the same: Mi dormas, vi dormas, li dormas, ni dormas (I/you/he/we sleep(s) ). The past and future tenses are also incredibly simple. Mi dormis, mi dormos (I slept, I will sleep).

2. Pronunciation and spelling are simple and obvious

One thing that confused me to no end when I was learning French was the random spelling and complicated pronunciation. For example… the words es, et, and est are pronounced EXACTLY THE SAME in French, and so are the endings -ot and -aux. Aaaargh!

Esperanto to the rescue! It has a phonetic alphabet. Which means that every symbol you write corresponds to one sound. You can check out the Esperanto alphabet. Oh, and you can check out this cool English poem to see why a non-phonetic alphabet is confusing. Try reading it out loud for extra lolz

3. Every noun ends in -o, every adjective ends in -a, every adverb ends in -e

This makes the Esperanto much easier to learn. It also helps you construct words that you never heard before. For example, if you know that “rapida” means fast, you can form “rapide”, which means quickly.

4. Prefixes and suffixes

This is where the real power of Esperanto grammar comes.

I heard stories of people learning Japanese getting confused, because you have to use a different word for the same thing depending on who’s doing it. If it’s you, it’s small and unworthy, if it’s the other person, it’s grand and exquisite. And if you’re talking to a person of really high social rank, you use yet ANOTHER word for the EXACT SAME action. Crazy Japanese

Esperanto is the exact opposite! After you learn a word, you will be able to form a lot of other word by using some basic prefixes and suffixes.

For example:
granda means big
malgranda means small

bela means pretty
malbela means ugly

So once you learn that rapida means fast, you will be able to form malrapida. (Figure out for yourself what that means ;))

The REAL reason Esperanto rocks

Esperanto’s grammar is great. But you know what’s really REALLY awesome about the language?

The people.

The Esperanto community is more like a big family than just a bunch of people speaking the same language. There’s a program where you can stay in other Esperanto speakers’ homes when you visit other countries. I haven’t tried it yet, but I heard people have great experiences with that. I’ll definitely try it myself next summer.

There’s also this aspect of Esperantists that I love… they’re less likely to follow the mainstream. For example, when I was at the summer camp this August, one morning I was sitting at a breakfast table with 3 other people. The talk turned to computers, and we found out that ALL OF US were using Linux!

In general population, about 1% of people use Linux. At the summer camp, there were at least 8 of us out of about 70 people. Yay for Linux :D. Esperantists are also more likely to do other minority things, like be vegetarians.

That’s something I really enjoy about Esperantists. They’re not afraid to be different from the mainstream. This makes them very liberal-minded and accepting. They’re all also really cool and friendly people (but then again, almost ALL people are cool and friendly ).

So hopefully I gave you some good reasons to think about learning Esperanto. If you want to learn more, visit lernu.net. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: esperanto, languages

I’ve got a confession to make.

I have never lied to you (apart from the obvious sarcasm in some posts). But I have generally tried to make the impression like I am a wise old guy full of life experience.

Ok, here’s my confession. Actually, I’m just 19 years old, and I’ll be starting college at the end of September.

If you feel that my advice is any less valuable because I’m only 19, feel free to stop reading my blog.

And now to the fun bit!

My request for advice

As you might know, I’m the kind of guy who likes to have stuff figured out before taking action (Although I’ve been practicing the 70% solution lately). And college is a big step to take, with a lot of things I could do right. And a lot of cool opportunities I could miss.

I read somewhere that 90% of the time we regret things we DIDN’T do, and only 10% of the time we regret things we DID do.

So my request for advice is this. Imagine you were writing your autobiography, and were making notes for the chapter called “Things I wish I had done at college”. (Or, if you haven’t finished college yet, just let your imagination run wild)

I’m not looking for mainstream obvious stuff (like “I wish I had partied less and studied more”). I’m looking for… well… more like crazy ideas that might actually work. To give you an example, here’s one thing on my list of what I wanna do at college:
- on the first day, knock on everyone’s door and introduce myself

Alright! Payback time! Now YOU can finally give advice to ME!

Why do some people pay thousands of dollars for a used baseball? Why do some people spend $1000 on an iPhone application that does nothing except show others that they have way too much money?

Because people have different ways of measuring value. Everyone uses a different yardstick.

But this article is not about those people. This article is about YOU, and how you can use the right yardstick for each situation.

Why weight and grades don’t really matter

Do you know anyone who measures their fitness by how much they weigh? Or do you even do it yourself?

Unless you’re a professional boxer or a fashion model, your weight doesn’t really matter.

What matters more are your energy levels, your strength, and your endurance. I mostly measure my fitness by how energized I feel.

So instead of picking a diet to lose weight, I eat foods that leave me energized and happy. Because I use a different yardstick.

Or, in high school, I always valued learning over grades. In my last year, I had an average of 8.4 out of 10, where 10 is best and 6 is a pass. I also had a 3 for chemistry… because I disagreed with my teacher’s teaching methodology and found most of the tasks she gave us useless at best, and downright counter-productive at worst.

Sure, you might be in a situation where grades DO matter to you. The point is, always make sure what’s most important to you. Use the right yardstick. If you want to feel energized and look good, forget about measuring your weight (muscles weigh more than fat anyway).

Set goals according to your yardstick

Once you know your values, you can set goals better.

I could measure my blog’s success in at least 3 ways. I could measure the traffic. Or the number of comments. Or the number of RSS subscribers.

I decided to use RSS subscribers as my yardstick, because when someone subscribes to my RSS feed, it means they get consistent value out of my blog, and want to read more. So my strategy is to provide the kind of value that gets readers to subscribe, rather than, say, writing controversial posts that draw lots of comments.

In my social life, I used to feel insecure and worry what others think of me. I worried what kind of impression I’m making, if I’m looking cool, etc. etc.

Then I realized that’s not helping me. So I swapped my yardstick, and started to focus on having fun. Ironically, I find that it makes a lot better impression on people than TRYING to make an impression.

Don’t let others force their yardstick on you

Sometimes you’ll find people who think their yardstick is the ultimate measurement, and they’ll try to force it on you. People like that might claim weight is all that matters about your fitness, or that salary is all that matters about your job.

Listen to those people, but make sure you figure out what’s the best yardstick for YOU.

When I started learning esperanto, I had a couple people tell me “Wtf, Esperanto? Why don’t you learn a language that’s actually USEFUL, like Spanish.”

Well, my yardstick for learning a new language is how much fun it allows me to have. And Esperanto wins that contest hands down over any other language. (Well, maybe except Klingon. I’ll have to look into that one a bit more )

Are there any areas where you use a different yardstick from most people, and it’s worked for you really well? Let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for better ways to view the world

Summary

Here’s a quick summary, to help you remember the main points:

1. Figure out what’s the best yardstick for you in each situation
2. Set your goals by that yardstick
3. Measure your success by YOUR yardstick, and nobody else’s

Until next time. Long days and pleasant nights.

Technorati Tags: productivity, measuring, goals

You might have noticed I missed a week’s worth of posts recently. I was at a summer camp for esperanto learners in Slovakia. It was absolutely awesome, and I simply had no time to write blog posts.

And yet I almost didn’t go there, because I had a lot of doubts - it was so far out of my comfort zone.

But now I’m back, fully victorious. I conquered my fears, gained a lot of friends, and had an incredibly awesome week. And it’s not the first time, either. A few times before, I put myself far out of my comfort zone…. and had great results. I’m starting to notice a pattern.

Why sticking within your comfort zone sucks

Imagine a small little worm, crawling happily on a tree. It eats leaves, grows, and one day decides it’s time to build a cocoon for itself.

And once it’s in the cocoon, it’s nice and safe. Just like you feel safe within your comfort zone.

But it can’t just stay there forever. It would eventually wither and die of hunger. And a similar thing happens to people who stay in their comfort zone too long. It’s not a physical death for them, but emotional death. When you see a frowning, unhappy face of someone who hasn’t done anything new or exciting for years - that’s what I’m talking about. Sticking in your comfort zone eventually deprives you of emotional food - excitement, adventure, new experiences.

But if the worm decides to eventually get out of his cocoon, instead of just staying there forever, he becomes a butterfly! Free, and happy, flying through sunny fields all day long. And you too can become a butterfly! Just get out of your comfort zone, and do things even when you’re uncertain of the result!

“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
- John F. Kennedy

Feel the fear and do it anyway

So you decided to stretch your comfort zone, and do something you never had the balls to do before. But at the last moment, you backed off, because you were just too afraid.

I’ve been there. Hundreds of times.

Don’t worry, it’s normal to feel afraid or nervous before big decisions. Just feel the fear, and then do what you wanted to do anyway. You are guaranteed to gain confidence exactly proportional to how much fear you just conquered.

Q: But I’m just too afraid to do it!

A: In that case, start smaller. It’s just a matter of building up confidence so you can tackle bigger things. Every time you stretch your comfort zone, you gain confidence. And more confidence, in turn, lets you conquer bigger fears.

So if you’re too afraid to get up in front of 100 people to sing, even though you know you’re a great singer, you could join a public speaking class where you’ll be standing in front of a friendly group of about 15 people. Or, if you’re too afraid to do even that, just get together half a dozen friends and practice being in front of that kind of audience.

A word of caution

Now, this could be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. I don’t recommend stretching your comfort zone with things that are actually DANGEROUS. Like driving on the top of a subway train or something.

I recommend stretching your comfort zone where you logically know it’s safe, but you’re still EMOTIONALLY afraid. Like public speaking. Like approaching strangers in a public place. Like traveling, like meeting new people, like taking on new hobbies.

Get started NOW

So you want to get started, but aren’t sure how?

RIGHT NOW, take a pen and paper (or open a text document, thought I personally prefer pen and paper). Close your eyes for a few moments, and think of three experiences you would like to enjoy, but you keep stopping yourself because it’s too far out of your comfort zone.

It could be trying out a new hobby, or contacting someone you always wanted to talk to, or anything else you can think of.

Got it written down yet?

Next to each of them, note how much you’re afraid, on a scale 1-10.

Then, for each of them, figure out the next single step you need to take. It might be sending an e-mail, or doing a google search for the information you need, or talking to a friend who knows about these things.

After you figure out the next step for conquering each of your fears, figure out when’s the earliest time you can do each of them (right now?), and then do it at that time.

Conquer the fears! Spartaaaa!

…

Go ahead. It’s ok!

In recent years, there’s been a trend called radical honesty. It was founded by a guy who got tired of lying. He decided to stop. COMPLETELY. And instead he started telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He wasn’t afraid to bare the most intimate details of his life.

He got quite a following of people who were also tired of all the lies around them.

While I like the initiative, I think radical honesty is too much. You need to have some private stuff you don’t share with just anybody you meet. And some private stuff you don’t share with ANYBODY. Period.

So instead of radical honesty, I propose the following:

Simple Honesty

• Always be honest to YOURSELF
• Always tell the truth
• If you don’t want to talk about something, just say so

Be honest with yourself

“A lawyer came to my office one day, complaining he was feeling bad, but didn’t know why. As we talked, I found out he had this habit of always slightly exaggerating his achievements. For example he would make $80,000, but report his income as $81,500. Or when he went golfing, he would report his score of 73 (which is already a great achievement) as 71.

No wonder he was feeling terrible. No matter how well he performed, he could never do as well as the self he pretended to be.”

- Paul McKenna, a psychiatrist

Are you honest with yourself?

If you lie to yourself, it usually means you’re avoiding some unpleasant truth so that you don’t have to deal with it. Maybe you tell yourself your job is ok when you really hate it. Maybe you tell yourself you have a great marriage when you’re really clearly married to the wrong person. Maybe you tell yourself you’re not addicted to computers when you really are (I used to be guilty of that one).

Hey! Wake up! Face the truth!

Once you start being honest with yourself, and face the bad stuff, you can CHANGE it. Then you can actually work on having a great life instead of just pretending so.

So how do you go about it?

Here’s a cool trick: Just notice when you’re avoiding thinking about something. Like, every time it comes up, you just kill the thoughts as soon as they come. Like you’re afraid to even go there.

There’s a very thin line between not thinking about something because you’re avoiding it, and not thinking about something because you consciously decided thinking about it won’t do you any good. But once you consciously look for it, you’ll be able to tell the difference. Really.

Tell the truth

How many times did you lie today?

Count everything. Little white lies. Or exaggerations (“I’ve been waiting there for HALF AN HOUR” when it was really 20 minutes.)

Can you truly say you didn’t lie a single time today? (Or yesterday, if you’re reading this in the morning.)

Before I started my quest for simple honesty, I used to lie dozens of times a day. Small, innocent, unimportant lies.

But why?

The common causes for lying

Why do we lie?

We exaggerate to make ourselves look better. We exaggerate to make our boring lives sound more interesting (instead of MAKING our lives interesting).

We also lie to avoid facing the truth.

But those aren’t the biggest reasons. The following scenario illustrates the biggest reason we lie…

Imaginary case study - why we usually lie

Let’s say you’re a middle aged man, you decide to hop in to the pub with your buddies after work, and come home two hours late. Your wife asks why. Here are the scenarios:

Case 1: Simple Honesty
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I went to the pub with my buddies.
Wife: What? You went to the pub with your lousy no-good friends? Blah blah blah…

Case 2: Simple honesty 2
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I don’t want to talk about it.
Wife: Why don’t you want to tell me? Were you doing something bad? Blah blah blah…

Case 3: Lying
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I was working late.
Wife: Ok.

So what’s the conclusion? In the above example… you lie because you’re married to the wrong person! A good mature wife would be ok with the fact that you spend two hours with your friends at the pub, and she would be ok if you didn’t want to tell her what you did with your time.

Most lying comes down to avoiding confrontation with immature people. Mature people can handle the truth without bugging you about it.

Learn to say no

Once you start telling the truth, including “I don’t want to talk about it”, you will probably find people around you resisting the change. They’re used to being able to push your buttons and get the truth out of you. Once you start keeping some stuff private, they’ll get withdrawal symptoms.

Don’t worry. The mature friends will get over it in a few days, after they learn you mean it. When I first started simply saying “I’m not going to tell you” instead of making up lies, I also got some resistance from friends and family. I went to London for a couple of days in July, and I didn’t tell any of them what I did there. They bugged me for a few days, and once they found out I’m not going to tell them, they stopped and moved on. Yay for simple honesty!

But if someone keeps bugging you, and acts downright negative (like trying to make you feel guilty), that’s a sign they’re an immature person. You might wanna cut such people out of your life. They’re disastrous to your growth in the long term.

Why honesty rocks

Honesty feels great! Seriously.

When you stop lying, it’s like you stop banging your head against the table. You go “Wow, I feel great! Why the hell did I start doing it in the first place?”

Peace of mind. It is teh roxxorz.

So give simple honesty a try. Stop lying. Completely.

To make sure you don’t slip into your old habits, I propose the following method: The rubber band trial. Take a rubber band (or a bracelet, or a piece of string), and put it on one of your wrists. Then, whenever you catch yourself lying, simply take the rubber band and put it on the other wrist.

If it stays on the same wrist for seven consecutive days, congratulations! You have completed the rubber band trial. You are now… simply honest

Every day, as I look at all our awesome inventions, I say to myself “Neat.” But every now and then, “neat” just isn’t enough. It’s more like “Holy flying cow that’s frickin’ awesome! And the principles behind it are soooooo simple!”

Which is what this article is about. 10 inventions that are based on amazingly simple principles, and yet are incredibly effective. In fact, this article was inspired by #1 on the list (don’t skip ahead to see what that is. Build some anticipation :)). When I first found out how it works, I was just blown away by how simple the science behind it was. Enjoy!

10. Bottle caps

Once you open a bottle, you can screw the cap back on really easily, and take it off again, and repeat as many times as you want. It takes almost no effort. And yet it can hold all the liquid if you turn the bottle upside down, and shake it, and put it on the ground and step on it with all your weight. And not a single drop spills out!

I can remember a time when all bottles were glass. And there was this really annoying contraption you could use to re-seal them after they were opened. But it wasn’t easy to use, and it required quite a bit of strength. PET bottle caps ftw!

9. Soap

Ever tried washing grease off your hands with just water? It doesn’t work too well. (doesn’t work at all, really). It’s because oil/grease/fat doesn’t mix with water.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, there are basically two ways that molecules in a liquid hold together. Polar and non-polar. Polar liquids can mix with other polar liquids, and non-polar with other non-polar. But polar liquids (like water) don’t mix with non-polar (like oil). That’s why, if you put oil and water in a bottle and shake thoroughly, they will eventually separate and form two distinct layers. They just don’t mix.

Which is where soap comes in! Every soap molecule has a polar “head” and a non-polar “tail”. So half dissolves in water and half in grease/oil/fat. Then you can wash your hands with water, and the attached oil washes off as well. Awesome!

8. Stairs

Have you ever driven a car in the mountains? The road doesn’t lead straight up, because that would be too steep for most cars. Instead, the road leads along the mountain, only rising slightly, then back in the other direction, again only rising slightly. That way you travel longer distance, but… well… you TRAVEL. As opposed to not traveling at all if the road was too steep. It trades distance for difficulty.

And stairs rock because they do exactly the same. Except they have another twist that makes them even MORE awesome. All the surfaces are HORIZONTAL. You don’t slip!

Oh, and if you don’t get why stairs are so awesome, try carrying a heavy load (like an old TV) up the stairs. Good. Next try carrying it up a ladder. You’ll get my point

7. Lids (cooking)

Caveman discover fire. Meat above fire turn dark. Dark meat taste good!

Later on, some guy (or woman) invented a pot for cooking above fires. And all was well, until recent centuries. With rising gas prices, it became important not just to cook something, but to cook it using as little energy as possible. I don’t know how the lid was invented, but I imagine it must have gone like this:

*sound of door closing*
Man: Damn! She’s back early! I hope she doesn’t find out I’ve nicked some sausages at the market again. (*covers a cooking pot on a fire with a baking tin*)
Woman: Darling! I’m home!
*she takes off her coat and shoes, walks into kitchen. Man is pretending to be reading a newspaper, standing in front of the cooking pot.*
Woman: Mmmm, what’s that smell?
Man: Smell? What smell? There’s no smell here!
Woman: It smells like sausages.
Man: Oh, that smell! Yeah, you see, I just had the window open, and…
Woman: (*pushes him aside*) Ah, I see! You wanted to surprise me!
Man: …and, and, one of our neighbors was cooking, so…
Woman: (*takes the baking tin off the pot*) Mmm, nice. The sausages are done by the way.
Man: … so some smells drifted in through th… wait, what? They’re done? But I just put them there!

And so they discovered a lid for cooking pots. At least that’s my version of reality. Feel free to disagree.

Cooking with a lid takes 4 TIMES LESS ENERGY! (I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who read it somewhere, so it must be true). When you cook without a lid, most of the hot air escapes, and you need to heat up more air, just to keep the water boiling. If you cover the pot with a lid, the hot air stays inside, and you need much less energy to maintain the boiling temperature. In other words, just lay a piece of metal on top of a pot, and you have a huge efficiency increase! Talk about simple!

6. Wet t-shirts

Yeah, I consider wet t-shirts a great scientific invention. Wait, don’t call the men in white coats just yet! First read my reasoning.

When I was a kid, we used to play sports at my school. During half-time, I would be really hot and sweaty. One day, I went to the washroom, and put a little water on my t-shirt and in my hair. And, surprisingly, it worked really well to cool me down. Next time, I completely wet my whole t-shirt, and within a minute I went from dying from heat to FRICKIN’ FREEZING.

I asked my physics teacher wtf was going on (I phrased the question slightly differently), and she explained. When you have something wet, it’s going to dry as long as the surrounding air has fairly low humidity. Now, each water molecule that evaporates needs to gain enough energy to be turned from liquid to gas. That’s quite a lot of energy. And the energy comes from its surroundings, which is you and the t-shirt. So the molecules with the most energy leave, leaving behind molecules with less energy, i.e. colder. As the water evaporates, the wet t-shirt keeps getting colder. And, unless you’re the abominable burning man, you will soon be ice cold under the shirt. Nice!

(by the way, you can use this same principle on a really hot summer night, if the heat is preventing you from falling asleep. Just wet a blanket slightly, and wrap it around yourself. Don’t wet it too much though, because you would freeze.)

(another by the way - blowing on your soup to cool it down works along the same principle. But here, when soup evaporates, a lot of the hot moist air hovers right above the plate. When you blow at it, you replace the hot moist air with cool dry air. The soup then evaporates faster, and hence cools down faster.)

5. Frisbee

Well, I just had to include this one. It’s way too fun

The design couldn’t be simpler. A round, flat thingamajig. (that’s the technical term ;)) And yet it’s so much fun. I imagine the inventor just had a habit of throwing stuff around with full force (he probably didn’t have many friends. Conscious ones, anyway.), and one day he noticed that circular-shaped thingamajigs fly really well if you spin them.

4. Eye mask

I’m a lucky guy. My room has good solid blinds - I can make it completely dark any time of the day.

But for those who aren’t so lucky - don’t worry! Eye mask to the rescue! You can create complete darkness for yourself anytime you want. You won’t believe how much that improves your sleep.

A friend of mine called the eye mask “The best $4 I ever spent.” I would agree. A simple piece of dark stuff over your eyes - and the effect is incredible!

3. Clothing

Here’s a simple quiz. What would warm you up more, three thin sweaters, or one sweater, but three times as thick?

Answer before reading on.

Hopefully you answered it’s about the same. Because then I can tell you you’re WRONG and feel better about myself :). Three thin sweaters will warm you up a LOT more than one thrice-as-thick sweater. And you know why? Because the clothing doesn’t warm you up. The air between layers of clothing is what warms you up.

The layers of air act as insulation. Just like in a window with two window panes. The whole point there is to have an extra layer of air between the cold outside air and the hot inside air.

Also, along the same principle, some smart designers built houses from hollow bricks. One might think that hollow bricks would provide less insulation, because… well… there’s LESS BRICK between you and the outside. But the extra air layer provides MORE insulation. Great example of putting a new twist on an old idea!

2. Wheel

Of course a list like this wouldn’t be complete without the wheel.

The wheel is great because you lift the surface off the ground at the back of the wheel, and lay it on the ground at the front of the wheel, instead of just sliding it along. For comparison, try walking. Then try standing with your feet together, and move by sliding both feet simultaneously forward. Feel the difference?

The first version of the wheel were simply round bits of wood under a heavy load. You would just push the load along, remove the bits of wood behind it and place them back in front.

|________________________| ->
O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Despite being so simple, the wheel is one of the most efficient machines, and it’s been reinvented hundreds of times. Just recently, I read a website (pics included) about that - apparently some scientists came up with a great way to transport water in poor countries… reinventing the wheel yet again!

So simple, yet so damn effective. I love wheels

1. Toilet

When I was a kid, I used to wonder how the toilet works. Specifically the part where your waste goes. I thought there were some complicated sensors to make sure the water level is always maintained as it is, and I used to worry they would somehow break and our house would be flooded with filth.

It turns out I had nothing to worry about. Because there aren’t any high-tech parts that could fail. In fact, it’s all built on beautifully simple principles.

The water level is simply maintained because of the principle of “connected vessels”.

When you flush, the filthy water flows away into the sewers. It’s replaced by clean water, and the water plug prevents bad smells from entering your house. (That’s a HUGE effect. Go smell a field that’s been recently fertilized with cow dung. Now imagine your house would smell like that. Thank the water plug for preventing it :))

—

So there’s my list of simple scientific inventions. Every time I see them, I get this warm feeling. Like “Yeah, I’m proud to be part of the western world.”

If your favorite didn’t make the list… that happens. There were only 10 spots, and I picked MY 10 favorites. Feel free to suggest your favorites in the comments.

Hopefully I managed to get across my love for simple and elegant inventions, and maybe I made you realize how much your life rocks. Cheers!

It was a warm summer day. A dozen strangers have met in a small conference room. They all came because they wanted one thing: To learn public speaking.

The instructor came in. He introduced himself. Then he called in two past participants from his course, who spoke easily and confidently, without written notes. The new learners really wanted to learn to speak like that.

Then the instructor introduced his method.

Positive feedback. (Don’t stop reading yet. There’s more to it than you think.)

Whatever the learners would do, he would point out what they did right, and sincerely compliment them. No negativity, but also no faking and bulls***. Just the positive truth.

For example, when one woman’s turn came up to speak, she was so afraid she just stood there and shook, and couldn’t say a word. After a few moments she sat back down. The instructor just looked at her, and said: “That was very brave of you to get up there.” And everyone realized it was true.

And the progress the participants made was amazing. Within a few weeks, they were able to speak clearly and confidently.

No, I’m not trying to sell you a public speaking course.

Instead of taking your money, I will give you something for free. The key to learning, in fact. So be ready. Because the skill of learning isn’t just any odd skill… it’s the skill that lets you acquire all other skills faster.

Feedback is the Key

“Feedback uber alles!”
- Me, speaking in a horribly fake German accent

“You don’t get feedback. In soviet Russia, feedback gets YOU!!”
- A random unrelated quote

Yeah, yeah I know. Water is wet, the sky is blue, feedback is the key to learning. What else is old?

Well, I’m going to help you see feedback like you never saw it before!

I’ll show you exactly which bits help you learn, which bits are useless, and which bits are actively stopping you from learning well. Surprisingly, a lot of people do exactly the right things to not learn.

The Anatomy of GOOD Feeback

Okay, so what’s the secret?

Here you go: Good feedback is…

• positive
• specific
• plentiful

Yes, in that order. (I’m not done yet, don’t stop reading :))

(Sure, positive non-specific feedback (”good boy”) won’t do you much good. But it’s still a lot better than specific negative feedback!)

Positive feedback

“You screwed up. That was really bad. You’ll never learn this.”

Feeling motivated yet?

More shouting won’t help your motivation. And it won’t help your learning either.

When you learn a new skill, you’re building habits and ways of thinking. Whether it’s learning to swing a tennis rocket, or to signal direction when turning your car around a corner, emotions play a huge part in learning.

Ever put your hand on a hot stove? I have. Ouch! (Don’t try this at home… or anywhere, really.) It’s damn painful, and I’m not that likely to forget the experience anytime soon. The emotion of pain acts like a glue that sticks the message to your mind.

Ok, now let’s say you were learning something, like getting your driver’s license. And let’s say that you did something really bad, like forgetting to give way and almost driving full-speed into an intersection and causing an accident. The instructor would (quite rightly, in his opinion) harshly point out your mistake and tell you to never do it again.

Then, in the evening, you lie down in bed and think about the day behind you. And when you think of your driving lessons, the part with the strongest emotional charge comes first. In other words, you think of the time you almost drove full-speed into an intersection and caused an accident. And every time you think of it, that behavior gets reinforced in your mind.

An American basketball club (I forgot which one. If anyone knows this story, can you let me know?) was going through a dry spell. They kept making mistakes and losing against their biggest opponents.

Then a new coach came in, and he completely reorganized their practice routine. Instead of looking at recordings of what they did wrong and trying to improve it, he made them watch only their most successful games, and from those, only the most successful runs. He replaced most of their long-distance shooting practice with short-distance practice, where they hit the basket almost every time. He had them visualise shooting flawlessly for an hour each day.

Their results completely turned around, and they went on to become one of the most successful teams in history.

Simplicio: So we should just always go “good boy” when teaching someone, huh? Whatever the person does, just say they’re doing great and keep it positive? I prefer telling the truth rather than a bunch of positive mish-mash nonsense.
Salviati: Ah yes, I see what you mean. I’m not saying you should claim all is well. But it’s about bringing out the positive, and letting the negativity fade into the background. Then every time the person thinks of doing the thing they’re learning, they’ll remember the positive experiences.
Simplicio: Yes, but what if the learner makes a mistake? Should I just ignore it and let them keep doing it wrong?
Salviati: Nooo… the best solution to that is what Toastmasters public speaking classes do. It works roughly like this:

You give a speech. Then someone gets up to evaluate your speech in two minutes. The evaluation contains two main ingredients:

1. Positive feedback
(”You did a great job using those diagrams to emphasize your point.”)

2. Points for improvement
(”Next time try varying your voice tone a bit more.”)

And here’s the vitally important bit - The positive feedback takes up about two thirds of the evaluation.

Sure, the first time you’re learning something you’ll be doing hundreds of things wrong. Don’t obsess about them. Run through all the positive experiences in your mind, then pick two or three points you want to focus on next. Like “next time I’ll try hitting the ball with the center of my tennis rocket.”

You won’t believe the difference in your learning speed.

Wanna learn even better?

So that’s about it. The great big secret. Now you know it.

Of course, after the great big secret, there are a bunch of only slightly smaller secrets, just waiting in line for you to learn them!

Like why 10-hours-a-day practice is only a myth, and how some top pianists got to be the best at only 1 hour of practice daily. And an exact step-by-step guide to duplicating their success, simply by timing your learning properly!

Or how to further accelerate your learning… by failing MORE.

Or the one simple technique that transformed Ben Seeley from your average “good” Othello player to a world champion, after he though he had hit his limit.

To learn all that, all you need to is take out your credit card… no, just kidding :p.

All you need to do is read my next article! To make sure you don’t miss it, you can grab my RSS feed (What is RSS?). Or you can bookmark this page and check back later. I’ll update this article when the next one comes out.

Happy learning!

Update: Hi StumbleUpon users!

In case you’re wondering where’s all the stuff I promised at the end… here are the articles:

Learning Mastery 2 - Post Practice Improvement details how most skill growth actually happens OUTSIDE of learning sessions. And how to maximize the effect.

Learning Mastery 3 - Fail Early, Fail Often explains how to use failure to learn faster. (Hint: It’s about failing more)

Learning Mastery 4 - Teach and Hypothesise lets you understand how teaching others is totally awesome for YOUR learning as well as theirs.

Enjoy the learning!

Recently, I explained how you can ask the right questions to achieve more in life. Today, I’ll show you how the same principles apply more broadly.

When you ask yourself a question, (“How can I most easily…?”) you hand your subconscious mind a request, and it returns whatever matches that request. And it will filter through whatever assumptions you include in your question.

But your subconscious mind filters a lot more for you than just questions!

Have you ever looked for something (like your sunglasses) for a long time (like 10 minutes) and eventually found it in a really obvious place? (like on your forehead?)

Yes? Say hi to selective perception!

Your mind is literally bombarded with information. Just notice the hundreds of little things you can see in front of you right now. And all the background noise you normally ignore. Right now you can likely hear muffled sound of traffic, the whirrrr of your computer fan, sounds of people talking, occasionally people walking and phones ringing, creaking of your own chair and so on and so on. And don’t even get me started on all the things you can feel right now with the surface of your body.

Good thing your subconscious mind filters information for you! Otherwise you’d be completely paralyzed by the flood of stimuli. Scientists apparently found that most humans can only hold up to 4 things simultaneously in their conscious mind. (Yikes!) Thus, most information is delegated to your unconscious. Only the stuff that’s important to you gets passed to your conscious mind. (Or urgent stuff. Like when you staple a paper to your finger.)

Hmm, wait a sec. “Important to you”? How does the subconscious mind decide what that is?

Letting your subconscious mind know what’s important

When you normally walk in a street, you probably don’t even notice a red car. But if you were about to buy a car, and wondering if you want it red - then you would definitely notice all red cars and how the color looks on them.

Or, normally you don’t see any elephants walking down the street. But if you consistently focus on thinking about elephants, you will notice every elephant that walks down the street towards you.

Read the last paragraph again. It’s completely true.

Okay, now that I’ve given you a trivial example, and a completely irrelevant example, let’s move on to the real stuff!

You tell your mind what to filter for by focusing on the things.

Wow, that’s deep. (Not!)

Wait! Just like phrasing your questions right, focusing on the right stuff is trickier than it looks.

Misplaced focus

Don’t think of a pink elephant! No, really, don’t. No pink elephants please. Focus really hard on not thinking of a pink elephant.

(No pink elephant!)

If you’re like most people, you probably just imagined a pink elephant. It’s a classic children’s game - not thinking about something. But, in order not to think of something, you first need to think of it… (hey! look at me! I sound like a philosophy textbook!)

And there’s the problem. Lots of people focus on “not being poor” or “not being fat”. That automatically keeps their focus and self-image on “being poor” or “being fat”. They look around them and filter for “being poor” and “being fat”. Every time they focus on not being fat, they’re reinforcing their fatness in their mind.

What you focus on, you get more of.

This is what the famous “Law of Attraction” is about.

Some wackos say it works because it “bends the fabric of the universe” or “attracts probability particles to your life” or whatever. I don’t think that’s right.

I think it works simply because you start to notice the possibilities around you. Just like the sunglasses magically appear on your forehead when you could have sworn they weren’t there before.

Affirmations

Ever heard of affirmations?

You know… “I feel pretty and happy and gaaay!”

Affirmations are always phrased in positive, present tense. Like “I am becoming rich.” Not “I want to be rich.” or “I will be rich.”

That’s the exact same principle. *Focusing on the right things.*

If you said “I want to be rich” and your affirmation came true… it would be true that you want to be rich. Uhhh… yeah, not quite what you had in mind

I once tried this affirmation thingy. I wrote down “I, Vlad Dolezal, will win WOC [World Othello Championships] 2007″, sixteen times a day, for about two months. Now, I’m nowhere near a world-class player in Othello… and yet I ended up 8th at the World Championships. (That’s a damn good result). I’m not saying it to brag (ok I am saying it to brag, but anyway…), but to show you that there’s something to affirmations.

Not some magic. They simply made me play my best, and never give up.

Because the moment you say “I’ve lost this, I’ve got no chance.”, your mind stops looking for a solution. But if you keep looking for a way out, even when you’re in a disastrous situation, you will notice opportunities when they appear. And trust me, whether it’s in a board game, in your job, or in any other part of your life, there are a lot more opportunities out there than you think. You just need to know how to look. How to focus on the right things.

How to focus on what you want

So how do you go about it? Here’s my method you can use right now!

This stuff is deceptively simple. But don’t skip it! It’s incredibly powerful.

1. Take a pen and paper, and spend 15 minutes writing down all the things you want. It could be a sports car, a happy marriage, a million-dollar business, or a pair of warm socks. Just get it all down on paper. Don’t worry, no one else will read it.

2. Select 5 of all the things you wrote down that you really want.

3. For each of them, figure out three one-step simple actions that bring you closer to having them. The first action can be done immediately. It could be sending an e-mail, making a phone call, or looking up some information.

The second action, you will do in the next 24 hours.

The third action, you will do within the next 7 days.

4. Focus on each of your 5 goals for a couple of minutes daily. Just run mentally through your life and see if there are any opportunities for achieving them that you overlooked. You will be amazed at how many chances you notice!

Happy focusing!

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A note to my regular readers:

My next blog post will be a rerun. Don’t panic, you’ll get fresh bombastic content on Saturday :).

But I’ll try changing a few things in the rerun post, like the headline, and see if I can get it to become popular on social news sites. I recently read some stuff about marketing, and I wanna try it out immediately