Step back from the Canvas
/Pico Iyer, author of The Art of Stillness, has found that removing himself from the bustle of society is key to thinking outside the box (and recalling what he cares for). The various demands placed on us, which rob us of the idle time we need to be creative— expectations that we will be available 24/7 and interruptions made possible by the various technologies we use every day— aren’t going to go away. For Iyer, the solution lies not in changing those demands (which most of us can’t anyway) but in altering our relationship to them— which is fundamentally an internal process.
“When you stand about two inches away from the great canvas that is our world and our lives— just as when you stand too close to a painting— you can’t catch the larger patterns in it, the meaning,” Iyer explains.
Stanford psychologist Emma Seppälä writing in the Washington Post
did you feed the bears?
/A phone conversation with a four-year-old:
Did you feed the bears?
What bears?
The bears under your bed.
There aren’t any bears under my bed.
Oh, yes, their names are Teddy and Charlie. Teddy Bear and Charlie Bear.
I’m going to go check.
(a moment passes)
There are no bears under my bed.
They must have gone to the bathroom.
I’ll go see.
Don’t do that, they’d be embarrassed if you saw them.
(a few more moments of discussion)
I’m going to see if the bears are in the bathroom.
(phone is dropped)
The bears are in the tub. They’re taking a bath!
Life is filled with such interesting and remarkable things when you are four. The further we get away from that imaginative, amazing world, the harder it is to hear the voice of God in our lives and see his hand at work in the world around us. Hang on to the joy of a child.
Stephen Goforth
Dealing with a moody man
/Men are rewarded in our society for ignoring their feelings, except for anger. When emotions overwhelm a man and tightly wrap around his gut, he certainly knows something is wrong--but he will struggle if he attempts to label those feelings or articulate the cause--especially when the emotions are still in play. Lacking control, he looks down on himself with disdain because he believes it's a flaw to be a man without control. As that tight ball of emotion begins to uncurl and subside, as he feels that he's gaining mastery of himself once again, he has the opportunity to gain a handle on defining the emotion he is experiencing.
But if a partner puts a spotlight on those emotions, while he's in that uncomfortable place, the man may try to hide even more. He's not in control of himself and thinks he should be. The spotlight makes that all the more obvious. If she can restrain herself, it's possible to slowly draw the emotion-averse man out of his cave by building his confidence... by encouraging him to believe that he is able to handle the uncertainty. The passage of time, emotional space, and distractions often provide healing for him... and perspective.
Before the man moves completely away from that raw sensation in his gut, there's a brief period of realization where he can catch an authentic glimpse of himself and his emotional limitations. In that moment he can catch a glimpse of who he is--or go right back to repeat the cycle.
Stephen Goforth
avoiding the ditches
/Make your goal a readiness to deal with new and developing circumstances--instead of simply avoiding any possibility of failure by trying to control which circumstances you are willing to deal with. Chasing the latest fade (simply because it is new) or ignoring what’s going on around us (and thus becoming irrelevant to the conversation) are two extreme temptations. We can fall into these ditches in an attempt to avoid regularly thinking hard about life and deal with the uncertainty that surrounds us. To stay on the road of maturity, we have to allow for ambiguity and endure that nagging (and sometimes frightening feeling) about what may come our way.
Stephen Goforth
the consequences of failure
/Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. – Denis Waitley
Babies learning to walk can teach you something
/A few years ago a group of American and Norwegian researchers did a study to see what made babies improve at walking. They discovered that the key factor wasn't height or weight or age or brain development or any other innate trait but rather (surprise!) the amount of time they spend firing during their circuit, trying to walk. These staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.
Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code
Give people you don’t know a fair chance
/When you look at a person, any person, remember that everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed them, and forced them to grow. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours. We meet no ordinary people in our lives.
Renee Jones (read more here)
expect, plan, prepare
/Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised - Denis Waitley
Sailing into Adventure
/Three Englishmen decided to sail across the English Channel on a whim and a 7-foot dinghy in May of 2011. Eleven hours later they greeted rescuers with cries of “Bonjour,” thinking they had reached the coast of France. But the trio had traveled just two miles from where they had launched their tiny boat. One of the rescuers told the media that the smallest of waves might have capsized them.
It’s easy to laugh at the young men. They only brought a single paddle with a bottle of wine on their big adventure. Yet how often we are likewise adrift, thinking only of the fun we'll have during our journey, unaware we are going nowhere?
Stephen Goforth
When we’re anxious, things smell bad
/When we are tense, two parts of our brains that normally keep to themselves wind up talking to each other. The result? Researchers say that normally neutral odors become olfactory offenses. And it gets worse the more stressed out we get. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study found the offensive smells make us even more anxious creating a vicious stinky cycle. Details are in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Stephen Goforth
the audience effect
/The effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more. You can see this audience effect even in small children.
In one of my favorite experiments, a group of Vanderbilt University researchers in 2008 published a study in which several dozen 4- and 5-year-olds were shown patterns of colored bugs and asked to predict which would be next in the sequence. In one group, the children simply repeated the puzzle answers into a tape recorder.
In a second group, they were asked to record an explanation of how they were solving each puzzle.
And in the third group, the kids had an audience: They had to explain their reasoning to their mothers, who sat near them, listening but not offering any help. Then each group was given patterns that were more complicated and harder to predict.
The results?
The children who didn’t explain their thinking performed worst. The ones who recorded their explanations did better—the mere act of articulating their thinking process aloud seemed to help them identify the patterns more clearly. But the ones who were talking to a meaningful audience—Mom—did best of all. When presented with the more complicated puzzles, on average they solved more than the kids who’d explained to themselves and about twice as many as the ones who’d simply repeated their answers.
Researchers have found similar effects with adolescents and adults.
Interestingly, the audience effect doesn’t necessarily require a big audience. This seems particularly true online.
Clive Thompson, Smarter Than you Think
seeing who's a winner
/What matters most in a music competition—the music, right? Before you answer, consider this study: Some volunteers were asked to guess which performers won classical music competitions after listening to audio of the contest. Others were given audio and video of the performances. A third group got the video with no sound. Despite not hearing a note, the last group, going off of video without audio, guessed the winners better than the volunteers who could actually hear the performances. These volunteers were not just music fans—they were amateur and professional musicians. Both these volunteers and the actual judges of the contests allowed the visual image to outweigh the music itself when judging its value.
Researcher took the study one step further by trying to figure out what made the difference. If you think it was the attractiveness of the performer, think again. The social cues related to passion and creativity provided the biggest indication as to which performances would be judged award winning.
Often what we say we value (in this case, the music itself) takes a backseat to what we really value (the performer's visual presentation flare and appearance).
Details of the study are in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can read it here.
Stephen Goforth
The freak-out test
/If I were feeling really anxious what would I do? If we would pick up the phone and call six friends, one after another, with the aim of hearing their voices and reassuring ourselves that they still love us, we’re operating hierarchically. We’re seeking the good opinion of others.
Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? If you are alone on a planet a hierarchical structure makes no sense. There’s no one to impress. So, if you’d still pursue that activity, congratulations.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger were the last man on earth, he’d still go to the gym. Stevie Wonder would still pound the piano. The sustenance they get comes from the act itself, not from the impression it makes on others.
Now: What about ourselves as artists?
If we were freaked out, would we go there first? If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?
Steven Pressfield. The War of Art
Wings are best grown after you jump off the cliff anyway
/Life after college is like getting hit by a bus you didn’t see coming because you were too busy texting to look both ways before crossing the street. And why would you? You’ve crossed that street every single day at the exact same time for 20 years and a bus has never run over you before. Here’s the thing: Up until this point, your entire life has been hinged upon a concept of preparation and reward. You study for a test, you get a good grade. You exhibit good behavior, you don’t get thrown in detention. You do your chores, you get an allowance.
The real world doesn’t really care about any of that. Sometimes you fail when you should have succeeded. Sometimes you’re punished when you’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes you lose, even when you did everything in your power to win. So lay down your ego and stop waving that degree around like it’s a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Jump in. Grow your wings.
fuming and fretting
/One autumn day Mrs. Peale and I took a trip into Massachusetts to see our son John and we pride ourselves on the good old American custom of promptness. Therefore, being a bit behind schedule, we were driving at breakneck speed through the autumnal landscape. My wife said, "Norman, did you see that radiant hillside?"
"What hillside?" I asked.
"It just went by on the other side," she explained.
"Look at that beautiful tree."
"What tree?" I was already a mile past it.
"This is one of the most glorious days I have ever seen," my wife said. "How could you possibly imagine such amazing colors as these New England hillsides in October? In fact," she said, "it makes me happy inside."
That remark of hers so impressed me that I stopped the car and went back a quarter of a mile to a lake backed by towering hills dressed in autumn colors. We sat and looked and meditated. God with His genius and skill had painted that scene in the varied colors which He alone can mix. In the still waters of the lake lay a reflected vision of His glory, for the hillside was unforgettably pictured in that mirrorlike pond.
For quite a while we sat without a word until finally my wife broke the silence by the only appropriate statement that one could make, "He leadeth me beside the still waters." (Ps 23:2) We arrived at Deerfield at eleven, but we were not tired. In fact, we were deeply refreshed.
Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
The Geography of Cancer
/Chance has a genius for disguise. Frequently it appears in numbers that seem to form a pattern. People feel an overwhelming temptation to deduce that there is more to the events they witness than chance alone. Sometimes we are right. Often, though, we are suckered, and the apparent order merely resembles one.
To see why, take a bag of rice and chuck the contents straight into the air.
Observe the way the rice is scattered on the carpet at your feet. What you have done is create a chance distribution of rice grains. There will be thin patches here, thicker ones there, and every so often a much larger and distinct pile of rice. It has clustered.
Now imagine each grain of rice as a cancer case falling across a map of the United States.
Wherever cases of cancer bunch, people demand an explanation. The rice patterns, however, don’t need an explanation. The rice shows that clustering, as the result of chance alone, is to be expected. The truly weird result would be if the rice had spread itself in a smooth, regular layer. Similarly, the genuinely odd pattern of illness would be an even spread of cases across the population.
This analogy draws no moral equivalence between cancer and rice patterns. Sometimes, certainly, a cancer cluster will point to a shared local cause. Often, though, the explanation lies in the complicated and myriad causes of disease, mingled with the complicated and myriad influences on where we choose to live, combined with accidents of timing, all in a collision of endless possibilities that, just like the endless collisions of those flying rice grains, come together to produce a cluster.
Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, The Numbers Game
Solving the problem is more important than blaming the cause
/When you’re young, it’s easy to get into the blame game when things go wrong. Your alarm clock didn’t go off. Your computer crashed as you were typing the last sentence of that 10-page history paper. That professor didn’t like you. Then you grow up, and guess what? No one cares about your excuses, unavoidable as they might be. Be proactive. Get the job done. Worry about the rest later.
If you’re not being challenged on a daily basis, change something
/Reaching adulthood is no excuse to stop learning or growing. It just means now we’re responsible for reaching new heights in every aspect of our lives. Go for a morning jog. Ask your boss if you can have a hand in a bigger project with more responsibility. Meet new people. Keep pushing.