Mental Representation… an incredibly useful distinction and an incredibly rare capacity
I loved the book ‘Peak, the new science of expertise’, until almost the very end. Then I got angry.
Somewhere around 90% of the book I noticed that he uses an expression, a phrase, that means something to him, the author, but meant nothing to me.
Now I know how you feel when you read my articles…
The expression he used was “Mental Representation“.
One of the most useful things I have ever done is this:
I would find a mentor. I offered my services to do whatever needed done. More often than not I learned useful skills through the doing. Skills that I needed for myself. And while I was around the mentor, I could learn from him.
Life needs a lot of skills to do life successfully. The opportunities to learn those skills is sparse… Because skills are not knowledge, even if they are mental, intellectual skills: they are the ability to do, to perform a skill… not to understand it.
To learn skills on your own stuff is very difficult. Why? Because you are too invested, you
I just had a breakthrough…
I have been teaching you how to raise your consciousness, your level of consciousness, by allowing something or someone guide you to look at things beyond where you always look, and differently than you have always looked.
I consider myself always a student as well… so I have been listening to myself, and following my own teaching.
But the results, in the area of growing visibility, increasing my following, increasing my
There is a step in the 67 step program that wants you to look at what would be your obituary if you died today.
But there is a much better test, the test:
Until today I’d thought that what it drives up is all the things you haven’t done, all the things that are important and maybe you can do now… tell people you love them, and other trite things like that.
But today of all days I had an insight.
The insight came because I was trying to figure out what is in common in people who do the 67-step program w
The fox and the hare tale: Why does a rabbit run faster than a fox?  Because while the fox is running for his dinner, the rabbit is running for his life. All of life works the same way…
I have noticed that take-away, as a manipulation technique, works exceptionally well on me.
Here is how the technique works: you show something, and you state that it is only available at this price for a limited amount of time.
I find myself scrambling to get it.
I could also have made the title: your horoscope and your ego’s role in it, or your soul correction and your ego’s role in it.
There is a lot of different ways people define ego, but what if the ego is none of those. Not what Freud called ego, not what gurus call ego.
What if the ego is simply the mechanism by which the Selfish Gene perpetuates itself… like an old dog that is un
Did you notice that we are not talking here about IQ? About ability?
No, the behavior ascribed to the stupid and the behavior of the wise can and often come from the same IQ.
The ability to do things differently can’t be accessed without a modicum of humility. Modicum means: a little bit.
Humility is a capacity, an attitu
I just discovered that the version of the Freecell game is “forgiving”, i.e. you can go back more than one step… “start over again” without a penalty point.
This makes the game an even better modeling tool than it used to be.
I always suspected that the first step really decides the rest of the journey… but being a Quickstart… jumping-without-thinking-type-of-person, this would not have
I am reading Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. The genes that use humans as vehicles, and are only interested in procreation, and not in the life experience of the vehicle.
But, as I have said before, there are 160 intangible capacities, mostly dormant, in the human DNA. The ones that we are going to look at in this article are the capacities (genes) of generosity (altruism) and trust.
Trust and generosity seem to be at odds with the selfishness of the genes… but they don’t have to be.
Learned helplessness, this is today’s topic. The opposite of “Bring it on…!” Your life depends on which is your dominant attitude.
Which attitude will get you what you want?
No contest, I hope, learned helplessness will get you more of the same.
50% of the world’s population behaves like they can’t handle it. It is learned helplessness… it is not innate. But it feels innate…
But it is, in reality, a reflex built and initiated by parents, religion, school, and politi
