There are normal people, who <a href="https://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/6-helpful-reminders-for-the-overwhelmed-person/">get overwhelmed</a> on those occasions when they have more obligations to fulfill than time in which to fulfill them. Procrastinators are constantly overwhelmed because even when we do have time, we don’t make use of it until we no longer have enough of it. If you're one, you'd understand the being late for everything, undone lists for months and missing appointments.

I Procrastinate

Consider your "stuff" as individual happenings that are best treated individually. Ignore all the others while you target to get started on at least one of those To-Do tasks.  The distinction between stuff and things is important. Once you’re treating each obligation as separate from the whole bundle of “stuff”, you can see that they each have a very predictable life cycle. Recognizing each problem’s separateness brings it from the realm of the abstract and endless to that of the concrete and temporary.

Ignore Your Stuff

The problem starts when you know what you need to do, but don't. The anxiety, shame and fear lie between the knowing and the doing. Nothing else happens in this phase except your suffering and aging, we can call this the Unproductive Phase.  At some point, often spurred by a crisis of some kind, you start to do the thing. Here's where the anxiety usually spikes — you are entering the Productive Phase, where failure, embarrassment, and the discovery of your own incompetence go from being future-dwelling specters to real-time dangers. That’s why procrastinators avoid ever getting to this part.

Life Cycle of a Thing

The anxiety from the Productive Phase, soon drown as you begin to realize that the task is pretty doable, is finite and consists of small, ordinary actions like Googling, reading, and sketching.  Your sense of capability swells and the fear recedes. This phase takes less and less willpower and courage as it goes on until the task is in your past, and the life cycle ends.When you extend the Unproductive phase, the anxiety continues to rise. Deadlines whoosh by, making it more and more absurd and embarrassing that you haven’t acted yet, which only paralyzes you further.

Receding Fear of Tasks

A Serious Procrastinator might experience the overlapping fear from many sources and begin to see them as a single problem: I suck at life. This makes it harder for them to do any task with longer Unproductive Phases and increased anxiety with a daring crisis to force them to act. Such a person is almost helpless until they know to treat each of those lines as a single, predictable course of events. Ultimately there’s no other way to deal with them. To tend to one we must ignore the rest while we do so.

Hell Zone

It is to end the Counterproductive phase as soon as possible. This end is always a concrete, bodily action, often taken with some trepidation: opening up the word processor, dialing a phone number, or getting out a piece of paper so you can sketch up a plan.

The smart thing to do is obvious

Many or most procrastinators are pessimists, habitually overestimating the difficulty of what they are avoiding. They think doing it is the hard part. But not doing it is much harder.  The odd task that turns out unexpectedly hard doesn’t change anything — the counterproductive phase will always be counterproductive, and the anxiety will always shrink with action. The moment you start acting on something, you are at the beginning of the end of the anxiety associated with that thing.

Beginning of the End

When you halt your work on a given thing due to fear or aversion, you are re-entering the nonproductive phase. Physical action ceases, and pointless rumination begins. Anxiety will rise until you enter the Productive Phase again. This is a good reason not to switch tasks unnecessarily. Push one thing at least until it is coasting, if not finished. The moment you start avoiding action again, the process restarts.

Halt the Pointless Rumination

The rising anxiety associated with a particular thing comes from a misapprehension of what it will actually be like to do the work.  The anxiety associated with the work is made of abstract, big-picture emotional concerns, about reputation, legacy, anxiety for the future, self-esteem, comparisons to others — worries about who you are, rather than what you’re doing. Once you enter the productive phase you enter the world of the concrete and finite, putting your related existential despair on the backburner. You can’t see an obligation for what it actually is until you’re doing it.

Moving to the Other Side

The critical point is always where you enter the productive phase, and this is accomplished by starting alone. Finishing is only a matter of starting from where you are, as many times as you have to, until it’s done.  Most of the resistance and stress is piled up on the boundary between the phases, and so once you’ve started it’s mostly behind you. You finish a thing by starting it until it’s done.

Finish it by Starting

I have a special sympathy for sufferers of a particular human problem, and I get more emails about it than just about any other topic. There are normal people, who get overwhelmed on those occasions when they have more obligations […]

productivity

Productivity

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to Get Yourself to Do Things

Research by psychologist Carol Dweck suggests that there are two basic <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-mindset-2795025">mindsets</a> that influence how people think about themselves and their abilities: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.<ul><li>People who possess a fixed mindset believe that things such as <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/theories-of-intelligence-2795035">intelligence</a> are static and unchangeable. They tend to give up more easily in the face of a challenge.</li><li>Those who have a growth mindset, feel that they can change, grow, and learn through effort. People who believe that they are capable of growth are more likely to achieve success.</li></ul>

1. Build a Growth Mindset

<ul><li>Believe that your efforts matter. Rather than thinking their abilities are fixed or stuck, people who have a growth mindset believe that effort and hard work can lead to meaningful growth.</li><li>Learn new skills. When faced with a challenge, they look for ways to develop the knowledge and skills that they need to overcome and triumph.</li><li>View failures as learning experiences. People with growth mindsets don't believe that failure is a reflection of their abilities. Instead, they view it as a valuable source of experience from which they can learn and improve. </li></ul>

What can you do to build a growth mindset?

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to understand, utilize, and reason with emotions.To improve your emotional intelligence:<ul><li>Pay attention to your own emotions. Focus on identifying what you are feeling and what is causing those feelings.</li><li>Manage your emotions. Step back and try to view things with an impartial eye. Avoid bottling up or repressing your feelings, but look for healthy and appropriate ways of dealing with what you are feeling.</li><li>Listen to others. This not only involves hearing what they are saying, but also paying attention to nonverbal signals and body language.</li></ul>

2. Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

Mental toughness refers to the <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-resilience-2795059">resilience</a> to carry on and continue trying even in the face of obstacles. People who possess this mental strength see challenges as opportunities.What can you do to improve your mental toughness and increase your chances of being successful in life?<ul><li>Believe in yourself. Cut out negative self-talk and look for ways to stay positive and self-encouraging.</li><li>Keep trying.</li><li>Set goals.</li><li>Find support. Doing things alone can be difficult, but having a strong support system can make things easier.</li></ul>

3. Develop Mental Toughness

Strategies you can use to improve your willpower include:<ul><li>Distraction. For example, if you are trying to lose weight but are having a difficult time staying away from your favorite snacks, distracting yourself during your moments of weakness can be an effective way to avoid giving in to temptation.</li><li>Practice. Willpower is something you can build, but it takes time and effort. Start by making small goals. As you build your ability to use your willpower to achieve such small goals, you may find that your willpower is also stronger when working on much larger goals.</li></ul>

4. Strengthen Your Willpower

What can you do to boost your sense of intrinsic motivation?<ul><li>Challenge yourself. Pursuing a goal that is achievable, is a great way to increase motivation to succeed.</li><li>Stay curious. Look for things that grab your attention and that you would like to learn more about.</li><li>Take control. Look for ways that you can take an active role.</li><li>Don't fear competition. There might be other people out there trying to reach the same goals as you, but this doesn't mean that you should give up. Don't compare your progress or journey to anyone else's, but you can look to others for motivation and inspiration.</li></ul>

5. Focus on Intrinsic Motivations

If you are trying to learn how to be successful in life, consider what you can do to nurture these key traits:<ol><li>Conscientiousness. They consider the effects of their actions.</li><li>Accepting of Ambiguity. People with a great deal of potential for success are better able to accept this ambiguity.</li><li>Capable of Adjustment.</li><li>Courageous. The world's most successful people often exemplify great courage.</li><li>Curiosity. People who are successful tend to be curious about the world around them.</li><li>Competitiveness. Successful people are able to utilize competition to motivate, but avoid falling prey to jealousy.</li></ol>

6. Nurture Traits Linked to High Potential

How do we define success? There are many different tactics for how to be successful in life, but the strategy that works best for you may depend on your view of success itself.
There may not be a perfect combination of ingredients that can guarantee success, but there are some basic steps you can follow that can improve your chances of being successful in life, love, work, or whatever is important to you.

Find out about psychological strategies that can help you be successful in life, and learn the key habits of successful people.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

mentalhealth

Mental Health

6 Psychological Strategies for Success in Life

People who are optimistic are more likely to live an exceptionally long life. “While research has identified many risk factors for diseases and premature death, we know relatively less about positive psychosocial factors that can promote healthy aging. This study has strong public health relevance because it suggests that optimism is one such psychosocial asset that has the potential to extend the human lifespan.

Thinking Positive, Enables More Ways To Open Up.

The trait can increase the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.

health

Health

This Personality Trait Leads To A Very Long Life - PsyBlog

Does your internal monologue play out on a television, in an attic, as a bickering Italian couple – or is it entirely, blissfully silent?  Claudia, a sailor from Lichfield in her late 30s, is not Italian. She has never been to Italy. She has no Italian family or friends. And she has no idea why a belligerent Italian couple have taken over her inner voice, duking it out in Claudia’s brain while she sits back and listens.

Identifying your inner voice

In order to understand how the inner voice works, you need to understand how human thought translates into action. “Whenever we do any action, our brain makes a prediction of the sensory consequences of that action,” says Loevenbruck. Say you want to fetch a glass of water. “Your brain sends the appropriate motor signals to your hand, but it also generates a sensory prediction of the command,” she says. “Before you’ve even picked up the glass, your brain has made a prediction of what the motor command will do, which means you can correct for mistakes before you make an error.

How does the inner voice work?

Loevenbruck explains that, for the most part, we hear what she terms “inner language”. But not always. “You can have expanded and more condensed forms of inner speech,” she says. “People may experience them as abstract representations of language, without sound … some people say their inner voice is like a radio that’s on all day long. Other people don’t have a voice at all, or they speak in abstract symbols that don’t involve language.” Loevenbruck can’t explain why some people experience the inner voice differently: we are at the limits of neuroscience...

The concept of inner language

Does your internal monologue play out on a television, in an attic, as a bickering Italian couple – or is it entirely, blissfully silent?

habits

Habits

The last great mystery of the mind: meet the people who have unusual – or non-existent – inner voices

Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management—like its hipper cousin, productivity—is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays.

Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience. Instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient.

The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

The paradox of limitation

It means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won’t have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do—and so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing. <ul><li>Since hard choices are unavoidable, what matters is learning to make them consciously, deciding what to focus on and what to neglect, rather than letting them get made by default.</li><li>And it also means standing firm in the face of the “fear of missing out,” because you come to realize that missing out on something—indeed, on almost everything—is basically guaranteed.</li></ul>

A limit-embracing attitude to time

I’m not suggesting our troubles with time are somehow all in the mind, or that a simple change of outlook will cause them all to vanish. Time pressure comes largely from forces outside ourselves: from a cutthroat economy; from the loss of the social safety nets and family networks that used to help ease the burdens of work and childcare; and from the sexist expectation that women must excel in their careers while assuming most of the responsibilities at home. None of that will be solved by self-help alone.

Acquire a reputation for doing your work at amazing speed, and you’ll be given more of it.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian Parkinson wrote in 1955.And it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing.

Parkinson’s law

Rendering yourself more efficient—either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder —won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time,” because,the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you’ll be creating new things to do.For example: it’s not simply that you never get through your email; it’s that the process of “getting through your email” actually generates more email.

The efficiency trap

The modern world provides an endless supply of things that seem worth doing, and so there arises an inevitable and unbridgeable gap between what you’d ideally like to do and what you actually can do.The internet makes this all much more difficult because it promises to help you make better use of your time, while simultaneously exposing you to vastly more potential uses for your time—so that the very tool you’re using to get the most out of life makes you feel as though you’re missing out on even more of it.

The bottomless bucket list

The point isn’t to eradicate procrastination but to choose more wisely what you’re going to procrastinate on, in order to focus on what matters most. The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.<ul><li>The good procrastinator accepts the fact that you can’t get everything done, then decides as wisely as possible what tasks to focus on and what to neglect. </li><li>The bad procrastinator finds himself paralyzed; here, procrastination is a strategy of emotional avoidance.</li></ul>

Procrastination of some kind is inevitable

We tend to think of it merely as a matter of not being particularly interested in whatever it is we’re doing, but in fact, it’s an intense reaction to the uncomfortable reality of confronting your limited control.You’re obliged to deal with how your experience is unfolding at this moment, to resign yourself to the reality that this is it. No wonder we seek out distractions online, where it feels as though no limits apply.

Why boredom seems  aggressively unpleasant

It states that any task you’re planning to tackle will always take longer than you expect.In other words, even if you know that a given project is likely to overrun, and you adjust your schedule accordingly, it’ll just overrun your new estimated finishing time, too. It follows from this that the standard advice about planning—to give yourself twice as long as you think you’ll need—could actually make matters worse.

Hofstadter’s law

The truth is that it’s impossible to become so efficient and organized that you could respond to a limitless number of incoming demands. It’s usually equally impossible to spend what feels like “enough time” on your work and with your children, and on socializing, traveling, or engaging in political activism. But there’s a deceptive feeling of comfort in believing that you’re in the process of constructing such a life, which is due to come into being any day now.

There's never "enough time"

<ul><li>Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity. It’s better to begin from the assumption that tough choices are inevitable and to focus on making them consciously and well.</li><li>Focus on one big project at a time and see it to completion before moving on to what’s next.</li><li>Decide in advance what to fail at. You’ll inevitably end up underachieving at something, simply because your time and energy are finite.</li><li>Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete.</li><li>Consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics.</li><li>Embrace boring and single-purpose technology; choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle e-reader.</li><li>Seek out novelty in the mundane. Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane.</li><li>When presented with a challenging or boring moment, try deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity.</li><li>Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later.</li><li>Practice being ok with doing nothing.</li></ul>

Ten tools for embracing
your finitude

Time is our biggest worry: there is too little of it. The award-winning, renowned Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman offers a lively, entertaining philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favour of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life. The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn't enough time. We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless struggle against distraction; and we're deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and "lifehacks" to optimize our days. But such techniques often just end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with "getting everything done," he introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made, as individuals and as a society--and that we could do things differently.

timemanagement

Time Management

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   “This is the most important book ever written about time management.”  —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks

From the beginning of time humanity connected to a collective sense of meaning through myths & stories. In the West, a lot of our identity is shaped by Christian stories. With the advent of technology, we moved away from superstition and embraced rationality & technology. SF in a way is plucking that hole, discussing the philosophy of science. Dune, for example, shares a lot of its narrative ark with Jesus's hero journey but replaces the historical background of Ancient Rome with space feudal lords.

SF is about the mythos of science

SF, the good SF at lest, is working on the same big questions we keep asking as human beings, but from a place of scientific understanding rather than assuming everything is God-made:<ul><li>What is our purpose in an infinite universe that does not seem to care about us?</li><li>Are we alone or there are other consciousness we can interact with?</li><li>Can we make our own path using technology? </li><li>Can we escape death? Can we become Gods?</li><li>What makes us human in materialistic universe?</li><li>What is good and evil if there is no ultimate judge?</li><li>How do we know what's real?</li><li>etc...</li></ul>

The big questions of a scientific world

Most SF starts with the assumption progress is going to be fully technological. 2001, the Stanley Kubrick movie, explores the idea that technology can only take us so far, & altering our consciousness is the real way fwd.In 2001, the rise of the human from the apes happens through the obelisk, an awakening event. And while humans evolve their tech to the point of creating a general AI, HAL9000, it turns out that the AI will inherit our human flaws. The ending of the movie, the psychedelic scene, is a statement that we have to upgrade our consciousness to go to the next stage.

Psychological Progress: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Dune explores the rise of a Messiah. We go from prince Paul Atrides to Muad'Dib. But his ark is not a traditional hero ark, as described by Cambell.Paul's abilities are transformed by the spice. he becomes a God only after taking on drugs.The book appeared during the Hippie Generation and while it's unclear whether Frank Herbert experienced LSD, it is a product of that culture. Paul goes on a drug-induced trip while the houses went to battle, just as the US students discovered LSD during the Vietnam war.

The psychedelic element in Dune

Dune, the movie, gave me a thirst for deep SF. I am so happy I discovered Damien, a SF nerd with a very philosophical analysis of SF. I stashed a few ideas that stuck with me.

The new Sci Fi epic Dune is one of the year's biggest releases, and one of the most anticipated science fiction films in years. At Rebel Wisdom we are taking this opportunity to ask some deeper questions, including what is the meaning of Sci Fi? And what are the stories we are choosing to tell saying about us, who we are, and who we want to be? This is a discussion delving into these questions with the host of the Sci Fi podcast, and big fan of Rebel Wisdom, Damien Walter. He talks about how sci fi reworks the timeless stories of our core mythologies, reworking spiritual and religious truths for new secular audiences. We will be hosting a conversation on Sci Fi and more with Damien in our Digital Campfire on Monday 1st November, so if you'd like to join that, sign up as a Rebel Wisdom member: https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans

philosophy

Philosophy

sciencefiction

Science Fiction

movies

Movies & Shows

The new Sci Fi epic Dune is one of the year's biggest releases, and one of the most anticipated science fiction films in years. At Rebel Wisdom we are taking this opportunity to ask some deeper questions, including what is the meaning of Sci Fi? And what are the stories we are choosing to tell saying about us, who we are, and who we want to be?

This is a discussion delving into these questions with the host of the Sci Fi podcast, and big fan of Rebel Wisdom, Damien Walter. He talks about how sci fi reworks the timeless stories of our core mythologies, reworking spiritual and religious truths for new secular audiences. 

We will be hosting a conversation on Sci Fi and more with Damien in our Digital Campfire on Monday 1st November, so if you'd like to join that, sign up as a Rebel Wisdom member: https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans

We just relaunched our website, organising and categorising the content in a much more complete way than YouTube allows: https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/films

When our existing assumptions and ways of thinking break down, it’s the rebels and the renegades, those who dare to think differently, who are needed to reboot the system. 

Rebel Wisdom is a transformational media channel founded by BBC & Channel 4 journalist David Fuller, and writer Alexander Beiner.

We believe we are seeing a civilisational-level crisis of ideas, as the old operating system breaks down. The new is struggling to emerge – and the most transformative ideas always show up first as rebellious. 

Our channel trailer was recorded in 2018, but fits perfectly with the crisis we are now experiencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GGbLez57oM&t=1s

We created the Rebel Wisdom Digital Campfire and our courses to practice the ideas we talk about - you can read more about them on https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/



Rebel Wisdom

Dune & the Deeper Meaning of Sci Fi, Rebel Wisdom

There's a common perception that entrepreneurs and small business owners are overworked and stressed out. Both of those things can be true on occasion. At the same time, <ul><li>94% of small business owners say they are happy with their lives, and </li><li>81% attribute this happiness to their entrepreneurship.</li></ul>The reason for this may be that entrepreneurship stokes a type of happiness called "eudaimonic happiness".

Entrepreneur Are Busy But Happy :)

There are two popular conceptions of happiness in psychology, hedonic and eudaimonic. <ul><li>You experience hedonic happiness through pleasure and enjoyment, like when scarfing down your favorite dessert, watching your beloved sports team win a big game, or hitting a jackpot in the casino. </li><li>On the other hand, eudaimonic happiness is derived from activities that provide meaning or purpose, like volunteering for a cause you care about, raising children, or striving to make your business a success.</li></ul>

2 Concepts Of Happiness

<ol><li>Both eudaimonic and hedonic happiness contribute to overall life satisfaction, but eudaimonic seems to provide a far more sustained effect. </li><li>That's because hedonic forms of happiness tend to provide only fleeting bursts of wellbeing, and the more hedonic activities you engage in, the more their positive effect on mood becomes muted. </li><li>Eudaimonic pursuits (such as nurturing a hobby, starting an exercise program, or learning a language) are of goal-driven activities, which realize personal talents and potential, evoke happiness that tends to stick around, raising overall wellbeing.</li></ol>

Eudaimonic Pursuits Give Sustained Feeling Of Well-Being

Both eudaimonic and hedonic happiness contribute to overall life satisfaction, but eudaimonic seems to provide a far more sustained effect. That's because hedonic forms of happiness tend to provide only fleeting bursts of wellbeing, and the more hedonic activities you engage in, the more their positive effect on mood becomes muted. Eudaimonic pursuits (such as nurturing a hobby, starting an exercise program, or learning a language) are of goal-driven activities, which realize personal talents and potential, evoke happiness that tends to stick around, raising overall wellbeing.

<ol><li>Again, all this isn't to say that hedonic happiness is worthless. </li><li>For a quick, mood-boosting pick-me-up, partying with friends or playing hours of mindless video games is fantastic. </li><li>On the other hand, basing one's wellbeing purely around hedonic happiness requires repeated, and often more stimulating, triggers. </li><li>This is one aspect of what researchers term the "hedonic treadmill," the observed tendency of humans to return to a fairly stable level of happiness despite experiencing positive or negative events.</li></ol>

Hedonic Happiness Requires Repetition & More Stimulating Trigger

<ol><li>Interestingly, cues of hedonic and eudaimonic happiness seem to stimulate different parts of the brain.</li><li>In a 2019 study, researchers found that subjects in an fMRI brain scanner cued with hedonic events "showed enhanced activity in frontal medial/middle regions and anterior cingulate cortex." </li><li>On the other hand eudaimonic events prompted "increased activity in the right precentral gyrus."</li><li>"Hedonic and eudaimonic happiness activate similar neural correlates. However, both kinds of happiness are also associated with distinctive brain areas serving distinctive functions," the researchers wrote.</li></ol>

Different Parts Of The Brain Are Affected

<ol><li>Another fascinating physiological difference between eudaimonic and hedonic happiness may arise in the immune system. </li><li>In a 2013 study published to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, subjects who characterized their lives as having “a sense of direction and meaning” had lower expression of genes tied to inflammation and higher expression of antibody and antiviral genes compared to subjects who described their happiness as more founded in hedonic pursuits.</li></ol>

Having A Meaningful Pursuit Is Good For The Immune System

These are important to me as I resonate so much with eudaimonic concept of happiness. :)

There's a common perception that entrepreneurs and small business owners are overworked and stressed out. Both of those things can be true on occasion. At the same time, 94% of small business owners s

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Is Eudaimonic Happiness the Best Kind of Happiness?

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”

In the first place, you are going to miss a hell lot of opportunities to accomplish something awesome.There are opportunities showing up every day, but only a few people are taking advantage of at least few of them. Let's think about this: you are contacted by a local broker that is trying to convince you to invest in a great start-up. You decline and later discover that this just became a big company.By having a bad general conception about local brokers, you are not giving credit to an ending that could have been great. This happens very often. Open mindness could make you rich.

Why it matters to be open minded

By not believing that your concepts are buletproof. The skill of being open minded stands in how capable you are to have a second thought even for a seemingly straight forward situation. When we are intepreting a situation, we are counting on a conception that we already have in order to efficiently judge it. What if we would judge every situation without comparing it with a conception that might be biased? This bias is often encountered because we tend to equate past situations with present ones. But they are different...

How to be open minded

Why it makes so much difference to be open to new ideas

Research proves that anyone can be creative regardless of their IQ. Creativity is a way of operating therefore the environment and surrounding conditions rather that individual traits are critical to successful creative process.

Creativity is not a talent.

People operate in two modes: open and closed. Each of those is relevant for a different purpose and both are important in everyday life.Depending on personal preference, personality and sociological factors people default to one mode or the other. High-speed life does not promote open mode as it requires deliberate slowing down.

People operate in two modes

This is the action mode where stuff gets done, decisions are implemented and goals are achieved.It is associated with: pressure, tension, doing, purpose, goal-orientation, sense of urgencyOutliers (behaviours and concepts varying from assumed standard) are irrelevant and dismissed.

Closed mode

This is the slow mode where one can ponder the issues, experiment and explore new connections.It is associated with: play, exploration, relaxation, humour, childlike behaviours, being just for enjoyment, not for particular goal.Outliers are treated as clues for further investigation.

Open mode

<ol><li>Ponder the problem (open mode)</li><li>Implement the solution (closed mode)</li><li>Review the feedback (open)</li><li>Implement next stage, pursue other avenues, correct errors (closed)</li></ol>

Combining the two modes

Create oasis of quiet for a defined period of time. This requires SPACE and TIME. SPACE:Create a no-pressure, distraction-free environment sealed off from the outside. Block time in calendar, go to a place you don't associate with everyday work and where you can feel relaxed. TIME (duration):Define the length of sealed-off time. Allow nothing to interrupt it and discipline yourself into letting go of current affairs.

Getting into open mode

This requires TIME, CONFIDENCE and HUMOUR. TIME:Allow the mind to settle before deep diving into issues. Take your time to let go of everyday problems. Plan this "settling" time into the process i.e.: 90 minutes = 30 minutes settling + 60 minutes pondering. Use all the time you have assigned. First ideas are easy to take but might not be the best ones and serve as stepping stones to the final solution. One needs to tolerate the discomfort of not having a solution in order to fully explore the possibilities.

Use the oasis in full

you're either free to play, or you're not

Your oasis is a safe space where mistakes don't exist. If you play alone, allow yourself irrational thoughts. If you play with others never discourage, judge nor destroy and only build on ideas. Creativity is about connecting two pre-existing ideas in a novel way. Don't be logical: allow intermediate impossibles meaning you don't have to be right at every stage but only at the end.

CONFIDENCE

you can't be spontaneous within reason

Facilitates creation of safe environments, encourages trust, switches neural focus. Is associated with children and thus fits into open mode dynamics.

HUMOUR

Browse more videos from the famous John Cleese training company: www.videoarts.com In this lecture-style presentation, John Cleese claims that creativity is not a special talent. People are either in an ‘open’ or ‘closed’ state of mind. The closed mode enables people to apply themselves to tasks with vigour and concentration; the open mode is more relaxed and conducive to creative thinking. Cleese talks about how leaders can induce an open mode in their team members and establish confidence in them to accept that there is a succession of learning steps on the road to total quality.

creativity

Creativity

entertainment

Entertainment

Browse more videos from the famous John Cleese training company: www.videoarts.com

In this lecture-style presentation, John Cleese claims that creativity is not a special talent. People are either in an ‘open’ or ‘closed’ state of mind. The closed mode enables people to apply themselves to tasks with vigour and concentration; the open mode is more relaxed and conducive to creative thinking. Cleese talks about how leaders can induce an open mode in their team members and establish confidence in them to accept that there is a succession of learning steps on the road to total quality.

The most entertaining, memorable and effective video and e-learning in the business.

Video Arts

John Cleese on Creativity In Management

It's the biases we don't realize we have that impact our decision-making the most.Once you understand your conscious and unconscious biases, work with your team to raise all concerns and identify all opportunities. Useful tool: the SWOT analysis helps, but getting input from others first is critical to analyze objectively.

Attend unconscious bias training

360-degree feedback is a good system that allows others to anonymously provide their concerns.Additionally, building in and supporting an open-door policy is beneficial. The goal is to build accountability and prove to the employees that their voices are heard.

Implement 360-degree feedback systems

Before making any decision, reflect on the facts surrounding that choice. Then, study your decision well. <ul><li>If you have peace with your decision, chances are, the decision is right,</li><li>If you are uneasy and you find yourself asking for help from others, you know it could be the wrong one. </li></ul>

Focus on facts first

Staying humble helps you see past your biases and ultimately improves your judgment. If you don't know what biases you have, find people you trust and ask them about your blind spots.You'll see past your biases if you never stop learning.

Ask people you trust to point out your blind spots

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that gives a positive result but ignore information that refutes one's theories or desired outcomes.Ask yourself: 'What if I'm wrong' or 'What if the opposite information were true?' This can help illuminate any important factors that are being overlooked.

Seek to avoid confirmation bias

A great way to remove bias from decision-making is by consistently collecting data and suggestions in the workplace.People can submit their concerns anonymously if they feel more comfortable so you can get all the details and become aware of what's happening in your business and make informed decisions based on what you know.

Consistently collect and analyze workplace data

Think about specific people who will be directly impacted by a business decision before making one.Thinking about other people and what they might say can really help remove your own biases from decision-making: Amazon famously has an empty chair in their board meetings, which represents the customer, for example.

Think about people who will be affected by the decision

Ensuring there is a diversity of thought in your inner circle can yield better business decisions.It's important to have people around you who think differently from you on various issues. This will keep you from going into an 'echo chamber' where the only opinions you hear are the ones you already have.

Create a diverse 'inner circle' to consult with

Everyone has certain biases, but making an objective business decision requires you to recognize and set aside those perceptions.

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Corporate Culture

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Leadership & Management

8 Impactful Ways to Remove Bias From Your Business Decisions

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