What is the Point of Conflict?

There is plenty of conflict in this world, even if we don’t go looking for it.

When I was in graduate school, one of my colleagues was a Mormon – let’s say “Jim,” and one Friday, apparently most of my colleagues didn’t have much work to do, and so they sat around his desk, and it became “Ask a Mormon” day.

Many of the questions were calling into question the credibility of his religion. They pointed to some unusual practices, and they would ask him if he actually believed in that.

Jim took it quite well and did not seem uncomfortable about it – I’m guessing this wasn’t his first time being ambushed. I asked a few questions too. I felt at the time that I was asking them in a neutral way and not trying to add fuel to this “fire” that seemed to be more about seeking entertainment by trying to poke holes in someone’s belief system.

Jim’s answers to everything were pretty reasonable – I recall that he stated some practices he engaged in were a matter of tradition and community-building. Later on, I regretted having taken part in this interaction. I didn’t like the approach or attitude of some of my colleagues, who actually seemed to enjoy trying to start a conflict. They questioned in ways that bordered on being disrespectful and antagonistic.

After this interaction, I thought: What was the point? What was anyone trying to accomplish?

Just as Jim had his beliefs, it seemed that most of us had our beliefs about what Mormonism was, and our minds were probably never going to be changed. Neither would Jim’s, obviously - he was born and raised a Mormon, and most of his friends and family were also Mormon.

Again, I come back to the key question – what was the point of this interaction/conflict?

As far as I can tell, the point was that some of my colleagues found it amusing to try to show off their intellect or superiority by looking for holes in the Mormon belief system. It seemed like if they made Jim doubt his beliefs, my colleagues would gain points. In the end, neither side won anything, and they were left at a standstill. This “game” was not very satisfying, and afterward, as I said, I regretted even having been there. One of my other colleagues admitted to me in private that she had felt the same way as me. By being bystanders and idle participants, we felt like we were encouraging it.

I wish more of us would ask ourselves this before seeking or participating in conflicts:

What is the point of this conflict? What can anyone gain from this?

More often than not, here is what you can expect from a conflict:

•       Hurt feelings

•       People making fools of themselves

•      No one changing their minds

•       People believing more firmly in their own beliefs and even less in the opposition

•       Friends becoming enemies

•       A waste of time, as none of your goals, are accomplished

Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you should avoid all conflicts. Sometimes, you need conflict to learn and grow or come to a common understanding with someone. Other times, if someone brings conflict to you, you may need to defend yourself. But usually, these conflicts are not over deeply held beliefs that you know no one will ever change.

If you want to engage in a conflict that you know you can win with “facts” and “logic,” be aware that your opposition may disagree with your facts, making your logic irrelevant. You can’t win if your opposition refuses to follow your facts and line of reasoning. Then again, the point should not be to win - we’re not talking about high school debate teams. Rather, it should be to come to a common understanding of something. To hopefully do something constructive rather than destructive.

From what I have seen, most of us are more concerned with appearing to be right rather than actually being right. We are not interested in finding facts and then following the objective line of reasoning. We want to find a convenient story that makes us feel good, and we gain points if we make the other side look bad. This increases the divide between us. And ultimately, there will be no winners if we proceed that way. Read here to learn what actually guides human behavior besides reason.

I’m at a point where I want no part in unnecessary conflicts. I find that the vast majority of them are unnecessary. I can’t remember when I had a conflict with anyone (okay, minor squabbles with a spouse or family member do not count). Believe me, I’ve received the invitations into conflict. Someone will invite me into a conflict, and I politely decline.

Sometimes no response is the best response. Feel free to take a moment to stop and take a breath - this will help you to avoid doing something you will regret.

I want to wrap up by saying something about Jim. When I was moving out of the state (a 17-hour drive), Jim was the only person willing to help me on a Saturday at 7 AM to carry all of the things from my house into a moving truck. He happened to be very efficient and helped me to get it done quickly. He told me he had gotten a lot of practice from helping people in his church to move. His willingness to help is something I will never forget. Now when I hear someone question the Mormon belief system, I tell them this.

In the end, it seems that our character and actions speak louder than our privately held beliefs.

Where is Your Life’s Blood?

One of the most important things is to have something in your life that energizes you. To accomplish this, I actually try to forget any rational and practical life plans I’ve made for myself.

I’m not talking about a desire to move to a nicer place, finish that degree, or even find a special someone to spend your life with. I’m not talking about accumulating money or things.

I speak of something that runs deeper in us, in our life’s blood.

Today, I am curious how you may answer some of these questions:

• What is the last time you felt alive, truly alive? What were you doing?

• What gets you excited when you can pursue it? Having it is not the most important thing – simply being able to pursue it is wonderful on its own.

• What would truly disappoint you and make you feel like a part of you had died if it were taken away from you? (e.g., this may be a person, place, thing, action, passion, or idea)

• What gives you the feeling of flow? A feeling of timelessness, complete focus, great challenge, and yet finding joy in that challenge, of getting lost in the moment. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, one of my favorite books.)

• When are you so happy that you stop caring about all the problems you face?

• What is the source of this life’s blood of yours? Is it your will to love? To be loved? To help? To challenge yourself to your limits in a way that is still enjoyable? To feel a thrill? To be a hero?

• Is there something you do that carries great risks? Yet despite the risk, it’s well worth doing to you?

• Is there something you could do all day, and you would be happy to do it? Even perhaps without pay or acknowledgment?

• Is there someone or a group where you feel like they are your true family? They awaken a deeper part of you that you didn’t even know was in there?

As I write these questions, I am aware that some of these could point toward clearly negative behaviors such as drug abuse – of course, I’m not encouraging anything of that nature. I am hoping to get you to find something positive that energizes you.

Unfortunately, sometimes as the days pass us, we can slip into a sort of comatose version of ourselves, just going through the motions, just putting in the work to get us from point A to point B, responding as we think we’re supposed to respond, just working toward that next promotion so that we can work toward the one that comes after it. If this sounds familiar, you may be stuck in the busy, entertained, exhausted cycle. Perhaps we all slip up in that way sometimes, but this is not the way to live our lives.

If you find that happening to you, I hope you can ask yourself where your life’s blood is. What truly excites and stimulates you and is worth doing on its own? Bring more of that into your life.

Perhaps you haven’t found it yet - that is fine, then you must work on finding it.

I see some people sometimes, and I can’t help but ask: Where has their life’s blood gone? I can’t judge too much. It has happened to me in the past. Perhaps it happens to all of us at times. The important thing is not to get stuck there.

How to Make a Decision

One of my readers recently asked me for some help on “how to make a decision.” I thought this would make a good idea for a post.

The topic can quickly get complicated, so I will aim to keep this simple and practical.

When you have to make a decision, I recommend asking yourself a variety of questions. Here they are:

Does the situation demand immediate action?

I ask this question first because if the situation demands immediate action, there is no time to figure out the best possible option. You have to use any available resources and do the best that you can given the circumstance.

The main criteria for deciding if you need to take immediate action is to ask if, by doing nothing, you may cause great and irreparable harm. Usually, when this is the case, you must take action. Strangely enough, if you have the presence of mind, you may also ask yourself: By doing something, might I cause great and irreparable harm? Perhaps sometimes it is best to do nothing if you will cause more harm by doing something.

Let’s say you are in the woods alone, and you suddenly notice a bear. It is not too far up ahead from you, perhaps just 20 feet away. Many things may immediately come to mind – you could run, hide, or even stay frozen in place and wait to see what happens, but of course, your instinct is probably to do something. If the bear has not shown any sign of aggression, you may even consider slowly walking away.

Regardless of what you choose to do, you may not have much time to evaluate all your options. You may need to act on instinct. This is clearly an important choice, whatever you choose to do, but you cannot easily perform research at the moment. Your mind and body are all you have to help you. You can only hope that the bear is not hungry and not aggressive.

Another type of example will be if you or someone near you suffers a medical emergency. If someone is choking, you may need to attempt the Heimlich maneuver even if you do not feel confident in your abilities. (Even if you call 911, the operator will probably try to talk you through how to perform the Heimlich while you wait for medical assistance.) To wait for assistance and do nothing else may lead to death.

Am I the right person to make this decision?

It’s easy to assume that you need to make this decision, but perhaps you're mistaken. You should question whether you are the person with the right expertise to make such a decision before proceeding.

For example, today, I took my car to my mechanic because I heard a noise when using my brakes. He ended up recommending that I get my brakes replaced because they are worn down. Keep in mind that I don’t have much expertise in cars other than what I’ve learned by getting them serviced through the years.

The decision I have to make is whether to spend the money on this particular service. However, as far as the need for this service goes, I am willing to defer judgment to the mechanic since he is the one with the expertise to know what needs to be fixed.

If I ever have reason to believe that my mechanic is dishonest or that he lacks expertise or good judgment, then I may decide to find another mechanic.

Nonetheless, this is an area of my life where I rely on experts to help make the final decision. In such cases, I still recommend asking many questions. I always wish to understand what they want to fix, how long the parts will last, and so forth. And if they mention parts of the car I am not familiar with, I will ask how it works. I mention this for you to understand that while I defer judgment to the experts, I still aim to make sure I follow what they are doing as much as is possible. Experts can make mistakes, so if something doesn’t make sense, you should be alert and let them know.

In the end, I decided to follow the judgment of my mechanic and get the brakes replaced. My decision was to go along with his decision.

You may find yourself in a situation where you are entrusted to make a final decision. If so, do not let the power go to your head. Ask yourself if you are truly the right person to make that final decision. If not, look for someone with the right expertise to help you make the best choice. The right person may be above your level or even below it, or in another field altogether.

Is this important?

Deciding whether something is important can be trickier than it seems. Sometimes a seemingly trivial action can suddenly seem incredibly important. Or something that seems immensely important may actually be trivial if viewed differently. Nonetheless, this is a key question that you must ask yourself.

One time I was shopping for dental floss, and there happened to be about five different choices. I struggled to figure out which one was the right option. Then I realized that this was probably not such an important decision at the end of the day. I should make a decision and move on with my day. For most of my purchases that involve health in some way, I usually want something that is good quality, so I settled on one of the floss options that cost above average.

Regardless of which option I settled on, it probably wasn’t going to impact my life much.

The less important something is, the less time you should spend on it. This is because you probably have more important decisions to make in your life. And of course, the more important something is, the more time you should be willing to spend on it, to make sure you choose the best option.

Do I have all the information I need?

Something else to ask is if you have all of the information that you need to make the right choice. Are you confident that you know enough to make the right choice? Have you gathered information from different reliable sources? Do you have expertise in the area?

Be aware that you will probably never have all of the possible information. There will usually be something that you do not know about a topic. But of course, there is limited time, and you have to learn to realize when you have learned enough. When you know enough, you should stop gathering information.

If you do not have the information that you need, ask if you can get it in a reasonable amount of time. Do you know the right people or sources where you can get the right information?

If you do not have the information and cannot get it efficiently, you should find someone who can help you make this decision. Clearly, you should seek out an expert or someone with more experience.

What are my deal-breakers?

Sometimes I see people considering clearly bad options, and I can’t help but feel that they are just wasting time. Of course, we all have different ideas for what is bad.

As a brief example, if you are selecting your apples at the grocery store, you probably know to avoid any that are broken and exposed or that have dark brown spots, perhaps indicating that they have been dropped or that they are starting to rot. You do not need to take time to consider these. The options that are clearly bad should not take your time – you can safely ignore them.

To use a more impactful example, if you are house shopping, you may decide that you do not want to live in an area with a high crime rate. Or you do not want to live right next to a busy street, perhaps. We all have to decide for ourselves what the deal-breakers are – the options that are so bad we will not even consider them.

Although this seems obvious, it is easy to waste time evaluating the deal-breakers. Instead, identify them and ignore them or purposely remove them from the options that you will consider.

What are the consequences of making a mistake?

When making your decisions, consider what will happen if you make a wrong choice. Can it cause irreparable harm? Can it cause you to get stuck in a situation that you do not want to be in for many, many years? Can it cost you your job or endanger your life? Might it cost you your life savings? A valued friendship?

Or perhaps the consequences would not be so dire. Perhaps, in some cases, the worst consequence you face is losing $10. Or you may risk losing 10 minutes, having to perform an action again if you make a mistake. In such cases, you may decide that the money or the time does not concern you too much, and if you make a mistake, that is fine.

Many years ago, my parents told me they were looking into a micro-surgery option to help my Dad fix some back problems he was having. To help them, I decided to do a bit of research into a company that had sent them promotional materials regarding this service. In reading reviews and researching the company, I quickly realized that many people were claiming the micro-surgery (from this particular company) had failed to fix people’s back problems – and in many cases, people even complained that their problems had gotten worse. Unfortunately, this was a broad pattern – it did not seem to be just a few isolated cases. In the end, I recommended that my parents avoid this option.

Generally, when it comes to health, if you risk terrible consequences through making mistakes, it is worth it to take the time and to do the research to make sure you arrive at the best decision that you can make.

What are My Selection Criteria?

Hopefully, by using the above questions, you will make good decisions much more easily. But what can we do for critical and complex decision-making?

If your decision requires many different criteria that you find important, weigh those criteria. I will use buying a house as an example again. This is perhaps one of the most significant decisions that many of us will make.

Below is an example of how I would weigh the criteria if I were personally going to buy a home. Of course, if you are buying a home or making another important life choice, you should weigh your criteria in the order of importance for yourself.

1) Cost – If you are going to buy a home, you need to know the price range you will consider. Anything outside of this range will be dropped from consideration. For most things in life, the cost isn’t my first consideration, but trying to buy a house that is too expensive could lead to bankruptcy or other major financial troubles that will impact your whole life.

As a part of considering the cost of a house, I would consider the list price, cost of any transactions and fees, the average expected fees to maintain the house, and any repairs that may be needed.

2) Do I really like it? – If I am going to spend a lot of money on a home and be living there for years, I would not want to buy it unless I truly like the home. This may include the layout of the rooms, their size, the home's condition, the feeling I get from it, the style, the condition of the yard, etc.

3) Safety – I would want the home to be in a safe area with a relatively low crime rate. This might include considering whether the home is near the main street or in a residential neighborhood with less traffic.

4) Proximity to my wife’s job – I work from home, but my wife still needs to get to work, so it would help to live close to my wife’s workplace. Within a 20 minute drive would be preferable.

5) Proximity to a good grocery store, shopping center, bookstore, restaurants, a hospital, etc. - I would rather not have to drive too far to pick up the groceries or get to important places that I frequently need to go to.

6) Other considerations - These are not the most important considerations, but I would still keep them in mind. Here, I might consider distance to family members or friends, frequency of natural disasters, and other factors.

When you have decided upon your selection criteria, make sure to keep them in order of highest priority in your mind. Perhaps your budget is the most important thing, and you are unwilling to spend more than a certain amount. To stay within your budget, you may need to sacrifice something - perhaps you will have to drive a bit further to get to work, for example.

On major decisions, I think it helps to imagine them in your mind. Can you live with driving 45 minutes to work every day? Or is it important to you that it be within a 20-minute drive? When you think it through more deeply, you may realize that you wouldn’t mind the drive, or rather, you may realize that you would be miserable driving so much. Using your imagination will help you to make sure that your priorities are in the right order.

Concluding Thoughts

These are some of the key considerations I go through when I have to make a decision. I hope that this helps you. When you have a big or important decision to make, it’s best to give yourself as much time as you can. I would not want to feel pressured into making a big life decision in just a few days. I would want more time to think it through.

As a consideration that goes beyond the scope of this post, you may question whether you can create new options. This involves creative ability and knowing how to unlock infinite possibilities. I have often found myself in situations where there appeared to be just a few limited options, and I ended up creating new pathways and possibilities for myself rather than accepting the obvious options.

We all know some people who struggle to make decisions on their own. They may rely too heavily on input from friends, family, or colleagues. It can be helpful to get advice from others, but keep in mind that in the end, you will be the one who has to deal with the outcomes, whether good or bad. Be cautious with taking actions just because it would please the people around you.

Of course, there are many types of people. Some people may be content with making big decisions on a hunch or using their intuition. I prefer to explore my options and what the consequences may be analytically. I prefer to take my time for major decisions, but for decisions that do not matter much, I try to limit the time I spend on them. It’s easy to get sucked into wasting time on the things that do not matter, so you should set a time limit on such simple choices. If I feel that the available options are not the best, I’m also more than happy to create new options.

What I Learned from Billy Joel

In my last years of high school (when I was around 16-17 years old), I discovered Billy Joel’s music more deeply. Most people know about Uptown Girl and Piano Man, but he has performed such a great range of music that these are just scratching the surface. Today, I would like to review what I learned from listening to Billy Joel’s music.

My Life

This was probably the song I listened to most during high school. The message of My Life is quite simple. The people around you will try to guide you in this or that direction, but you must forge your own path at the end of the day. You are the one who must live with your decisions, not someone else.

Many things in life can be learned quite easily, but they are not truly grasped until you experience the message in many different ways. In listening to this over and over, I felt energized through the music. It felt refreshing to see that I was going to figure out my own life, however easy or hard this may be, and at the end of the day, I would be responsible for my own choices.

I think I just longed to be fully free and on my own, even though I had no idea what that would truly mean. With that freedom, whatever mistakes I may make, I would make them and get through them, and this was just a natural consequence of living out my own life. I would rather make my own mistakes than make someone else’s, trying to live out their dream.

Big Shot

Another song I listened to many times was Big Shot. Basically, this is about the dangers of always needing to appear to be better than everyone else. This song made me think about how we often worry too much about what other people think. Then in caring too much about this, we want to impress them so that they think we are greater than we actually are. We tend to become obsessed with having the appearance of greatness rather than actually attaining greatness.

Since this song showcases the dangers of trying to be too much of a big shot, I realized it was much better to be humble and to strive to be whatever it is I wanted to be, rather than to go for it for the sake of appearing to be something. To do that would only lead to emptiness.

This is not a lesson that is gathered all at once, but one that can be arrived at by listening to this song over and over, by contemplating the message, and by reflecting on one’s own life motivations. Are you doing what you do for the credit? For the positive reactions, you expect to get? Or because it actually matters to you?

All About Soul

This song indicates some deeper feeling that we sometimes can get if we find the right partner (or perhaps a bond that could happen with anyone). We may arrive at a point where we can sense things in each other without the need for words to express them. You may sense trouble, or emotions, or even a deep need that someone has.

Again, as I was 16-17 years old when I listened to this song, this was quite a deep message to me. I had always thought we needed things to be explicit and openly stated for them to be real. Yet here, Billy Joel was hinting at the idea that there was a deeper, more profound, intuitive way of knowing.

Listening to this song made me realize that it could be worthwhile to explore this deeper soul or deeper feeling that perhaps we all have. In general, this may be something that we haven’t properly explored or even developed.

We Didn’t Start the Fire.

I heard a legend somewhere that an American History teacher told his students to forget about the class textbook. Rather, they could learn everything stated in the song We Didn’t Start the Fire, and with this, they should get a good grade on the final exam. I wish I had had that teacher – I may have actually learned something.

Much of the era he is describing in We Didn’t Start the Fire happened before I was born, and so I never did get all of the references, but still, I found the song fascinating. You can’t help but get the message that there have always been tremendous problems throughout history and likely always will be.

If you don’t know your history, it’s easy to feel like you are in a unique position that has never happened in all of human history. And of course, part of this is true, as there is always something new happening. Yet much of what is already happening is just recycled and pops up in a modified form. It’s new, but it’s still old.

Perhaps it’s true we didn’t start the fire, but it seems we will all keep it burning.

Pressure

I did not give this song much of my focus until I got to college. Pressure is not the most aesthetically pleasing song out there, but what is interesting to me is that the song itself does brilliantly capture the feeling of being pressured near your breaking point and being fully overwhelmed.

When the pressure is so great, and you don’t know what to do, how can you handle it?

The main message here is that we can run or do whatever we want to get away from the pressure, but it will find us nonetheless. The best we can do is learn to manage our own feelings about it. There comes a time when there is no other way but to get through it on your own. Personally, I have found that there is great value in learning to get through the pressure. It’s always there or ready to pop up somehow, so this is something we have to learn to deal with.

Other Songs

There are other songs that I listened to many, many times and that left some impression on me, but I don’t have too much to say about them. I’m not sure how to put in words the lessons or impressions that I gathered from them. Nothing beats just listening.

Those songs are Keeping the Faith, Only the Good Die Young, Tell Her About It, Piano Man, She’s Always a Woman, Just the Way You Are, and Allentown. Sometimes I just liked the song. Sometimes I may have gathered a different message than he intended. Sometimes I may have just absorbed the feeling, and it didn’t matter the words used.

By the way, I purposely didn’t mention any lyrics for legal reasons. Also, if you are interested in understanding what I have said here more deeply, I fully recommend listening to the songs on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen to your music.

What is It That No One Else is Willing to Do?

My father has said that he made a successful career because he did what no one else was willing to do. In his case, he works long hours outside, leaving the house at sunrise and coming back after dark. Usually, this includes weekends too.

As another example, Bobby Fischer, arguably the best chess player of all time, was up against the best Russian chess players in the 1960s. At that time, the Russians were dominant in chess, and no one seemed to offer them much of a challenge. No American seemed to have a shot against them until Bobby Fischer.

One of the ways Bobby Fischer was willing to do what no one else did was that he decided to learn Russian. Many of the best chess books were written in Russian since many of the best players were there.

Fischer was already one of the greats without knowing Russian, but it seems that learning the language helped to push him to a higher level. He was able to learn from chess books that most Americans would have never read.

In 1972, at 29 years old, Fischer beat Boris Spassky and became the world champion. It was the first time a non-Russian had won the title in 24 years.

His story is sad after this, but I think he still serves as a good example for today’s post.

Today, ask yourself:

What is it that no one else is willing to do?

Are they unwilling to…

• work overtime?

• get their hands dirty?

• learn a new language or a computer language?

• dedicate themselves to getting better every day?

• sacrifice some of their free time?

• work on the toughest problems?

• interact with people who they disagree with?

• try something new?

• risk looking like fools?

What is it? What is it you could start doing that most people around you are unwilling to do?

Maybe you will think: “If no one else is willing to do it, then why should I do it?”

You don’t have to, but sometimes it pays off to venture onto trails no one else wants to go on. Maybe they are scared, complacent, or entitled. If these are qualities you have also taken upon yourself, you may also draw firm lines about what you are unwilling to do.

However, if you want to stretch yourself and see if you can grow and evolve, one way to do that may be to do what no one else was willing to do or go where no one else was willing to go.

If you are troubled about taking a great leap, then start with one simple action.

Latent Creative Energy

I never considered myself to be artistic or creative. It took me a very long time to realize that I had creative energy within me. Most people think they don’t have this, but I think we all had it. We were all born with impressive and creative powers that gradually were lost.

As a young child, I was afraid of my own creative abilities. I didn’t realize that my mind would make things up that were not there. Many children are afraid of the dark, but I was afraid of actual beings and monsters that followed me in the darkness. They were actual, in the sense that my mind created the vivid imagery based on the amorphous, uncertain shapes that hovered in the dark.

Like a Rorschach test (old inkblot image psychological tests where you can see anything in your subconscious through them), the darkness was all a grand Rorschach in my mind, and anywhere I looked, beings and monsters followed. At four years old, I saw Superman fly right by my side, but I was not happy with this. I was scared because he flew too close to me. I didn’t want him to fly into me and knock me over.

As a young child, I could not control my creative energy. These beings, structures, and monsters followed me everywhere in the darkness. I wanted them to go away, but they would not. Through the years, they faded bit by bit. Finally, around 12 years old, they were almost completely gone. I was happy. I was free from their terrors.

Now I wonder, perhaps a big chunk of my creativity was gone with it too. Where did it go? No one knows. As an adult, in the darkness, I see darkness. I can’t see beings and monsters anymore, even if I try.

Where did the creativity go? For a long time, I was lost in the idea that there was a right and wrong way to do things. Buying into this limited me greatly. I began to search for the right answers everywhere, not understanding that the single right way was a mirage. Usually, a problem can be solved in 10 or 20 different ways in the real world. There is no one right way.

Even in art class, the teachers taught us a system, a single right way to produce the type of art they wanted us to make.

One time in the 5th grade, the assignment was to draw a girl's face in our class extremely fast. We were supposed to learn to produce a general idea of an image quickly, even if it was not perfect. The goal was to outline, not reproduce.

I failed to understand this assignment, and instead, I drew incredibly slowly, trying to capture every detail from this girl’s face. I kept looking at my paper and back at her to try to make sure the shapes were all right, that she was properly represented in my drawing.

“We are waiting on you,” the teacher looked at me desperately, as everyone else had finished.

Normally I cared about what the teachers told me, but for some reason, that day, I didn’t care.

What was the point of working on art if I couldn’t do it my way?

I continued, trying to capture everything in painstaking detail.

The teacher looked at me with disapproval, telling me that I was missing the point of the assignment.

A moment later, she moved along to some other task for the class, but I kept working on the drawing, trying to get it right.

I had been taught all my life up to then that there was a right answer for everything. Surely, the right way to make this drawing was to make sure that girl’s actual face could be captured on my page. I saw now that I had to consider the lighting, her expression, what she was feeling even.

I was always a good student, but somehow this task was more important now than all the other classes and facts the teachers had tried to shove into my head.

If I could get this drawing to match up with her face like a picture, perhaps I could show that all my learning had been worth something.

Finally, the class bell rang, and I had barely managed to finish my drawing.

A few students passed by me with remarks such as:

“Wow, that is pretty good,” and “I didn’t know someone in this class could draw.”

The truth was I didn’t know how to draw – I never drew anything, but I just wanted to get it right.

After that, I forgot about art. It left a distaste in me that the teacher had pressured me to do it her way. I decided that, just as with most other classes, this wasn’t worth caring about. I was a sort of zombie student, doing what needed to be done, but not really personally invested in it.

In 9th grade, my English teacher asked us to write some poems. I didn’t have a creative bone left in me, and the girl sitting behind me told me it was easy. She actually wrote me a couple of poems as a favor, and I would take the credit. I was relieved. I really liked that teacher, and I wish I had given poetry a shot then.

In 12th grade, I randomly decided that I wanted to play the piano. Something was drawing me to it. I really liked Billy Joel and couldn’t get enough of his music. And one of his most famous songs is Piano Man. Maybe that had something to do with it.

My instructor was some prodigy who went to college at 14 years old and had traveled the world giving concerts. He ended up settling on a vocation in real estate and teaching students like me in his spare time. I spent a few months learning piano with him. Then, he told me something I had not expected. He told me that I was playing in a way that often took people four years of lessons to get to. After that, I went to college to focus on serious matters and mostly left the piano behind.

I would return to the piano in the summers, learning to play songs from video games, like Phantom Forest, from Final Fantasy 6 (from a popular video game series). Such melodies gave me comfort, and I felt that I could connect more deeply to some feeling that I was perhaps feeling at that time.

I also began writing poetry fervently. I was always looking for inspiration for my next poem. Perhaps some were bad, but I think some were okay, some were actually good. I was in college then, but perhaps similarly as with the drawing of the girl in the 5th grade, I began to feel that these poems were the real work. All of those classes I took were just for a degree, but the writing was what actually mattered. Something had pained me in those years. Honestly, I don’t even remember what, and I suppose poetry was a way to express that feeling.

Then I went to graduate school and had no time for silly things like being creative. Ironically, my research focus was creativity and innovation. This was serious work. I went to class, conducted studies, wrote research papers, went to research meetings and more meetings, presented my research, and so on. There was no time to be creative. Eventually, I left there, and I was motivated to create something.

I began writing poems and short stories. The short stories were often dystopian or absurd.

Again, when I was working on a poem or story, I often had this feeling that this was what truly mattered. Somehow these words on a page and these made-up characters mattered more than other stuff like having a good job, having an intelligent conversation, or acting like an adult.

Then I left it behind and decided to pursue more serious work.

Lately, I have found poetry again, and this somehow seems to get my meaning across better than through my usual writings. I have the feeling again that these poems are what truly matters. If I work at it and get better, perhaps my true message will find its way better through poetry than through my typical ways of communication. We shall see.

When we have creative energy, sometimes we can’t contain it. Where it will take us, nobody knows – but we must let it loose somehow.

Today, I encourage you to look for that creative part of yourself that you thought you had lost. It was always there somewhere waiting for you. Did you always want to create something? Build something? Learn to draw, paint, sing, dance, or write? Why not give it a shot?

What are you Training Mentally for?

Introduction

When it comes to physical activity, it can be easy to see that someone is training certain muscle groups to get stronger. They are running to get faster and build stamina, or they are training to improve at a particular sport.

But what about mental training?

Are you training your mind? To me, it is clear that the mind’s powers naturally regress and fall into laziness if not being trained for anything. This may happen earlier in our lives than we fear. Even when I was in high school, I distinctly remember that oftentimes I felt like a zombie, going through the motions.

Whatever the teacher told us was treated as fact and must be known for exams. In most classes, even if there may be room for dispute or disagreement in a domain, to disagree with the teacher was to guarantee yourself a lower grade. Anything the teacher did not cover must be assumed to be insignificant or irrelevant, even though in reality, of course, some topics the teacher did not cover must have been quite important.

My point is that sometimes you may feel that you are in training (e.g., taking a course or on-the-job training), but perhaps it is not enough. Are you truly training or just going through certain motions?

Here are some examples of what we can train our minds in:

Resilience

Having a resilient mind is critical to deal with the ups and downs of life. We all have problems that come up, sometimes when we least expect them, and we must be resilient to overcome them with calm and poise. We all know some people who are never fazed and never give up no matter how difficult things get. And we also know some people who give up on something as soon as there is a slight problem. This is the difference between people who are more resilient and less so.

To train your resilience, if you have certain routines that you always follow, you may purposely break them occasionally to make sure that you can manage or adapt either way. For example, if you always eat breakfast at 9 AM, you may occasionally eat it at 11 AM to help build resiliency. If you get used to that pattern too much, you may occasionally skip breakfast. (Of course, if you have any health conditions or concerns, speak to your doctor before trying any of this.) If you feel that you must do or have something in one way, that may be a good opportunity to practice your resilience by trying a new way.

Another key way to train your resilience is to train beyond what you think you need to. My friend Arthur, a mountain climber, recently told me that when you climb to the top of a mountain (metaphorically or real), you should keep on climbing after reaching the summit. You can do this through mental exercise (e.g., visualizations) or actual physical activity, depending on what you are training in (perhaps not actually to climb a mountain). Essentially, train yourself to go beyond the point to which you thought you would need to go.

Creativity

Most people that I know do not believe themselves to be creative. I always say we are all creative. Everyone dreams at night, and so our minds automatically create worlds, scenarios, characters, dialogue, and all in real-time. These are not scripted out in advance. Our minds seem to make them up at the moment. We can literally make stuff up in our sleep. So why couldn’t we do it while awake?

One of the easiest ways to train your creativity is to practice coming up with a list of 10 ideas every single day. (E.g., ideas for books to write, inventions, ways to save money, places to go on a date, things you could do with a paperclip, jokes to write, objects that could be used as a musical instrument, etc.). If 10 is too much, even 1 idea per day can make a difference!

Memory, Attention, and Mindfulness

Memory, attention, and mindfulness are quite interrelated, at least in how we train them. Often if you forget something, it’s because you didn’t pay proper attention to it in the first place. And if you’re not paying enough attention to what is happening around you, this indicates a lack of mindfulness in your life.

So the way to train any of these is to be more mindful. Use your senses and actually see and fully experience what is happening around you. Keep your mind on all that is there, not all that is not.

Avoid distractions, or rather, avoid the need always to be distracted. Our phones are, of course, an ever-present distraction. Most people I know could be doing anything – having a conversation, playing a game, or working, and when their phone chimes, they will check it right away. Perhaps find some hours in the day when your phone is not the most important thing and set it on mute.

In my case, I have noticed that a practice of meditation helps my memory, attention, and mindfulness. Often when I meditate, I end up remembering that night’s dreams in extra detail. I suspect this is because I am maintaining mindfulness within the dream, experiencing everything that is happening fully. And these effects are not limited just to my dreams. In real life, I will also remember more, observe more, attend more, mind more, and experience more fully.

Learning

Learning is an essential skill, so essential that we all do it even if we avoid doing it. As a practical matter, learning is often critical for being competitive in our careers. A person who doesn’t learn new things on the job may find in the best case that he never gets promoted and stagnates. In the worst case, he may lose his job and have difficulties finding a new job since he has not learned as much as other top candidates.

Beyond this, of course, learning is about exposing ourselves to new and interesting ideas. When you learn, you can prepare to understand and then create meaningful action in this world. What more reason to learn do we need?

This post isn’t just about performing an action but rather about training it. To train your learning, though, you must keep learning. If you truly want to improve your learning skill, you can also learn about learning. When you do this, you may learn some techniques that will help you to learn more effectively in less time.

When it comes to learning, sometimes we reach a point where we struggle to get any better at a given skill. This is why it is important to train ourselves to learn, to overcome such barriers. The best learners may work on learning in a variety of areas – physical skills, book learning, learning through experience, focusing on logical abilities as well as creative ones, abstract thinking, and also practical abilities. The best learners may also make it a point always to be learning something new. This way, you will always be training your learning abilities.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is about knowing how to find the relevant facts (especially when you have a problem) and then knowing how to come up with reasonable action steps based on those facts. Also, through critical thinking, you should be able to read facts and then be able to understand how some of those facts could influence the real world, or at least influence your own life. With critical thinking, you do not need to listen to everyone’s opinions. You can form your own independent opinions, just based on the facts.

To train your critical thinking involves many processes, and so this can be difficult for many people. But it is doable. Part of the training will involve searching for unbiased or less biased information sources. Also, it will involve learning to perceive when a source is biased. To learn what is more and less biased, at first, you should examine many different sources to see what they have to say about an issue. Withhold your judgment until you have read or experienced many points of view. When the information from different sources overlaps (or is the same), this is usually neutral or valid. If there is no overlap, the information may be less reliable in some cases, or in other cases, the source may have dug deeper to gain more information.

As another way to train your critical thinking, you may get used to reading facts and then coming up with your own viewpoints based on those facts. Rather than spending too much time with people’s opinions, you may focus on only learning the facts and avoiding opinions altogether. If you are not used to separating opinions and facts in your mind, you must get used to this. This will be an important process in developing your critical thinking. You will learn to give less weight to opinions in time and more weight to facts.

When you do give some weight to opinions, you should consider the expertise of the person who had the opinion. Often, you will find people giving opinions on topics where they have no expertise. You can safely discard such opinions or at least give them very little weight. At a minimum, to even consider someone’s opinion, perhaps they should hold a degree in the topic, or have read a wide variety of books on it, or have had a career or meaningful experience that relates to the topic. Ideally, they should have a combination of these.

As another way to train your critical thinking, you should get used to asking yourself a variety of questions to see how truthful any “fact” or statement may be. A key question I often ask myself is, “What is the evidence that supports this?” Then, you must ask yourself if the evidence is substantial, meaningful, and reliable. You can do this with your thoughts too. When I form a thought, sometimes I ask myself, “What is the evidence that supports this thought?” Just because you have a thought doesn’t make it true.

Concluding Thoughts

I believe it is important that we always work on training the mind. However, even if you do not consciously train, your mind is always being trained toward something. But if you are not careful, it can be trained in a way that ultimately works against you. You can train yourself to become less and less resilient, for example, if you do not have enough challenges in your life. Rather than moving in such directions, you should take control and train yourself toward something that will help you meet your life goals.

What are you going to begin training your mind in today? Or what have you been training in?

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I have written many books that operate as training manuals for the mind. Here are some of them:

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By (to train resilience and more)

The Secret Principles of Genius (to train critical thinking and more)

Practical Memory (to train memory)

The Insightful Reader (to train reading abilities)

Idea Hacks (to train creativity)

No One Ever Taught Me How to Learn (to train learning)

Master Your Focus (to train attention and focus)

Learn to Unlearn

In my life, I have focused not just on learning but also on unlearning. We all absorb bad patterns and habits and even knowledge at some point in our lives, and it’s important to be aware that this happens so that we can overcome it.

Many of the things we learned were never worth learning. Or they were only worth learning so that we could realize that they were wrong and stop doing them.

Here are a few things I have unlearned in my life:

1.     Sudden Anger and Impatience

In my teenage years, I was generally calm. Still, I recall that if I became upset about something, I would sometimes get suddenly angry and impatient, not handling the situation well. And some of this extreme impatience carried on into my twenties as well.

By my mid-twenties, I realized that this was terribly maladaptive and that this was not helping me grow, and my behavior would only drive people out of my life. I realized that my loved ones did not deserve this from me, and usually, they were the ones who had to suffer through it.

Most of the time, I was fine – but I was fairly easily pushed to my limits back then, and I would sort of blow up in anger, making minor situations into something much bigger than they needed to be.

I unlearned this quickly when I had the realization that my wife (who was my girlfriend at that time) did not deserve to deal with this and that she probably would not deal with it for long. Eventually, it seemed clear that she would leave if I could not manage my behavior appropriately.

Strangely, unlearning this was easier than I thought. I’m sure it was a challenge at first, but I feel that in a matter of months, I made a sizeable change in my behavior. I was no longer blowing up over trivial matters. Over the years, I was able to become a great example of patience rather than impatience. I do not get angry very easily at all anymore. In fact, I think it takes much more for me to become angry than it would for most people.

2.     Intense Shyness

Through much of my childhood and young adulthood, I feel that I was intensely shy. Although never diagnosed, I may have had social phobia / social anxiety disorder. Sometimes the thought of being around new people would make me very anxious. Inside, all I wanted to do was avoid being around new and unfamiliar people.

If I knew there would be a lot of people around at a gathering or party, I sometimes would feel physically unwell from the anxiety.

Even for the people I knew, if I didn’t know them very well, I often felt uncomfortable. And even for the people I was more familiar with, I sometimes felt anxious and uncertain about how to handle a social situation.

What helped me unlearn this intense shyness / social anxiety was realizing that there was no single right way to handle a social situation. I often felt that I had failed to properly socialize with people, which made me want to avoid these situations more and more. But when I realized there was no one right way to do things, it became easier.

Of course, it was also an important shift when I realized that I had a real problem. I was actually scared and overly worried about talking to someone new. This was an irrational fear that I could be rejected, misunderstood, that I would be disliked, or perhaps even made fun of if people thought my social skills were not good enough.

To unlearn my bad patterns, I began to make it a point to interact with as many people as I could. If I were invited to something, I would go even if I had to fight my own instincts to avoid it. I made an effort to speak to new people, although I’m sure many people would have easily spotted me as an extreme introvert. They probably could not have known that merely showing up to a place with people could take some effort from me.

In time, I found it easier to engage in conversations, let go a bit, and enjoy conversations with new people. I no longer had to analyze whether my social skills were good enough. I realized that the less I thought and worried about my social skills, the better things went.

Eventually, I lost most of the anxiety. I can still get a bit of anxiety if I meet a group of new people, but I think it is normal and mild. It is nothing like the outright fear that I used to have.

3.     Responding By Feeling Depressed or Hopeless

I’m not sure when I began feeling depressed if things would not go my way. It was probably connected to feeling like a failure socially. But in my late teens / early twenties, if I didn’t perform as well as I hoped on an assignment or test, I may get depressed about it. At some point, I may have gotten used to being in a depression, and I didn’t really work to get the things I wanted out of life. I accepted it for what it was, which is a horrible way to deal with it.

Then when I began graduate school and faced the biggest challenges of my life, I became deeply depressed. My natural response to challenges and obstacles was to feel depressed, and so it made sense that I would get deeply depressed then.

To overcome this took therapy and medication for a couple of years. Then I meditated to help keep control of my mind. I also decided always to take action to make things better rather than to allow my thinking to drift deeper and deeper into depressive loops.

I’m not sure that depression is always something that can be unlearned, as everyone is different. In my case, I was fortunate that through my own will to change, I was able to unlearn this habit. My habit had become that when something didn’t go my way, I got depressed. So it was critically important that I develop a better response to such challenges in my life.

Unlearning my depressive habits was something that took years. My therapist at that time stated it perfectly to me once – she said: “You have spent a long time with certain issues, and it can take time to work your way out of them and to heal them.” Similarly, as with the prior examples, I feel that I am quite resilient at this point, and I do not fall into a depressive mood or state very easily.

What is Worth Unlearning in Your Life?

In revealing the above things I unlearned, I see that a common theme is I wanted my freedom. I was trapped by my anger, shyness, and depression. And in time, I was able to unlearn those behaviors and to live my life more freely. I didn’t need to respond to the world by withdrawing from it. Instead, I could participate in it and enjoy it.

Is there something in your life that is holding you back that you would like to unlearn? Often we focus on learning new things, but it is just as worthwhile to unlearn the bad habits and thought processes that are preventing us from leading the life we truly want to live.

Surely everyone’s problems and paths to overcome them will be different. But in my life, usually, I noticed that there was a big problem holding me back. Then I realized that this was important enough that I needed to work on it. There was a point where it was no longer a question – to meet my life goals and live the way I wanted to, I would need to dedicate myself to overcome certain issues. The particular steps you take from there may be different, but eventually, you will find your way to better if you are committed.

Think One Step Deeper

It puzzles me sometimes that many of us oversimplify the world in our minds.

I would challenge you to consider that when you think you have something figured out, to continue to search one step deeper.

Often when we think we understand something, we really don’t.

Much of our thinking goes: A causes B, and I want B, so A is good. This may be true, but what if B causes C, which is a terrible outcome? Many of us don’t think this deeply, but we should.

This seems obvious when laid out in abstract form, but this is a common error in our thinking, where we did not think deeply enough. Of course, we cannot always predict what will happen so easily, but at least take the time to consider what the likely outcomes will be. Then, what will the outcomes of those outcomes be?

For example, a political science professor at Purdue taught me that it is quite easy to think superficially and fail to see the bigger picture.

He once discussed that, of course, we all want to be good and help to feed the starving, especially in different nations that are not able to provide this assistance to their own citizens. Yet, I was left in disbelief when he explained a rational outcome of feeding them, at least on a mass scale. As we feed them and nourish them, they tend to reproduce more, and then because there are probably not good systems in place for them to get jobs, we end up with even more poor and starving people than we began with. Eventually, at this pace, we cannot continue to feed the starving.

By feeding the starving, we end up creating more starving people eventually.

I do not claim to have all the solutions – I am not someone who would say we should not feed the starving. Clearly, it is very human to want to help the people who need it. But we have to admit it is quite odd to have goals where even if we accomplish them as we hoped, we will cause new problems that refute the original goal.

Human thinking is often shortsighted, where we tend to have one goal in mind. Yet, we fail to understand that by accomplishing that goal in the way we wanted, we will create new circumstances that contradict our original goals.

Here are some examples that could apply to you:

• If you pay someone to help you with simple favors, they may happily do favors for you when you pay for them. Yet, the one time you ask for a favor and cannot pay for it, they may refuse to help. They have come to view their role as performing a job rather than as performing favors.

• If you always pursue what makes you feel ecstatic, you may find your life highly enjoyable and pleasurable. But when something happens that does not go your way, you may not manage it and fall into a depression or anxious state.

• If you comment on a child’s weight frequently, you may get him to lose weight as you would like. But eventually, the child may become obsessive about his weight and develop an eating disorder.

• If you study hard just with the motivation of getting good grades, you may perform very well in your classes. Yet, you may find that you do not have a solid understanding of the material in time. You only memorized exactly what was supposed to be on the exams, but you never truly understood it.

• If you dislike a particular bug that often invades your house, you may hire exterminators to kill it. This makes you happy because the bugs are gone. Yet you may find in years that the exterminators killed some exotic and rare bugs critical to the ecosystem. The lives of multiple species may be threatened because many residents such as yourself exterminated these bugs.

• If you tell yourself positive lies to yourself to motivate yourself to do better, this may help you to succeed and give you a motivational boost in the short run. But in the long run, you may find that you are good at making people think you are highly skilled, yet in reality, you struggle to accomplish basic tasks in your field.

Train yourself to think at least one step deeper than you normally would. Do not settle for the type of thinking that goes: If A leads to B, and B is good, then A is good. The reality may be much much more complicated.

Ask yourself: Does A cause other problems? Does B cause other problems? Is there some C variable we haven’t even considered, which would cause other problems? Do some of these problems refute the original goal we were striving for?

Don’t Forget the Fundamentals

In our life goals, we sometimes forget about the fundamentals or the basics that we know we should be focusing on. This can be a great mistake, as the fundamentals are important enough that we should never lose sight of them.

For living a good life, the fundamentals may be: eating well, sleeping well, deep breathing (to help destress), exercise, staying hydrated, nurturing and working on important relationships, avoiding chronic stress, seeking out supportive friends and colleagues, and having some free time to enjoy yourself.

I would also say that monitoring your progress is a fundamental skill, as this can help you to notice if your mental health is suffering or if you have lost your motivation and to help resolve small problems before they become big ones.

If we consider work, the fundamentals there may be: prioritizing your most important tasks, showing up on time, making sure you understand what is expected of you, working together as a team, developing good relationships with your boss and colleagues, setting attainable goals, and identifying obstacles and problems.

Since I value mental and cognitive development, other important fundamentals may be meditation or yoga, reading, learning, challenging yourself, brainstorming ideas, creative or artistic expression, and writing or documenting your ideas.

We sometimes form grand goals that we want to accomplish, and it is good to be ambitious, but we should be careful not to forget about the fundamentals.

If we try to advance too far without applying the basics, then some important part of our lives will likely suffer.

Many times, people want shortcuts to help meet their goals. However, when it comes to the fundamentals, this often means putting in the work every day. Simply sticking to them can provide a struggle every day for many of us. And so, we must remind ourselves when we want to advance and reach higher levels that the basics still matter.

What good does it do you if you get that promotion, but you no longer have time to eat right and sleep well? You may earn more respect and income, but in time, your health may suffer. You may even lose motivation at your work.

The fundamentals are there for a reason. And while they may differ from person to person, many of the basics do apply to all of us, such as those listed above that matter for living a good life.

Be aware that even the fundamentals can be overdone and get in the way of each other. For example, what good does it do to meditate an hour every day if you do not have a job or the funds to support yourself? What good does it do if you oversleep, and this drains your energy and motivation rather than helping you? Exercise can be useful, but if you obsess about it, you may fail to make time for important relationships in your life.

Today I would like you to think about the most important 5 fundamentals are in your life. What are they?

To be fundamental, they should be important to do every single day. Are you happy with how you are accomplishing them? Are you overdoing it?

A lesson I would like you to understand is that the fundamentals can appear quite easy and simple, and so we may get bored with them and want to move on. But you may find that if you do this, your life will fall out of balance, and you will need to go back and perform those fundamentals that you had neglected.

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One of my books which I am most proud of explored some fundamentals in our thinking processes, and how having the right thoughts can help us to live our best lives. For example, the first three Thoughts are:

• Focus on What You Can Control, Not on What You Cannot Control.

• Focus on the Positive, Not on the Negative

• Focus on What You Can Do, Not on What You Cannot Do

The book is 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life - These Thoughts changed my life around, and I hope they can impact your life too.