I have a student whose company moves earth. That is their business. Parking lots, roads, leveling the ground.
Unless you have a clear picture, a clear and accurate mental representation of what a job entails, you can’t bid successfully on it: you may lose your shirt if your mental representation was off. ((The doctor’s mental representation of the state of my injured ear was neither clear nor accurate, and therefore his suggestions to me were way off the mark. This was the topic of my article yesterday…))
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
Some ten years ago I learned a valuable way of looking at making life meaningful, or living a meaningful life. The teacher suggested that we pick a horizon, a direction, and then look what’s blocking the way of getting there.
Since then I saw that even seeing the horizon is blocked… Blocked by seven boulders, lined up one behind the other, blocking your view, blocking your movement.
So, in my coaching practice, when I ask people to set a direction, and they can’t see any, I am inclined to suggest that they choose the direction: living a meaningful live, or a fulfilled life… without specifying what it is.
I lead a workshop on Sunday. I had knowledge, I had strategy. I executed it. It was sloppy. What was missing?
I didn’t know. But “god” works in mysterious ways, the book I am reading has an answer that shows me what has been missing for me on Sunday and all my life.
The book, Peak, the new science of expertise, calls it Mental Representation.
Mental Representation is being able to see the finished product in your mind’s eye, and also see the process getting there, so you can anticipate missteps, and can correct, given that you
We are all special, if special means, as special as our thumbprint… But that is not special enough for you, is it?
You want to be SPECIAL… so you can be treated special… a special talent, outstanding, mind boggling, awesome, the best.
In this article I will shed light to an important phenomenon that we are all experiencing… the ITCH, that keeps us miserable, and the HORIZON that keeps us on track, sane, happy and always well.
How does mind serve the ego, and ego serves the selfish gene… Evolutionary view of team “you”
Tuesdays are my days to interface with people who are neither my readers, nor my clients.
Ordinary people. And although it is very frustrating to me, and maybe even them, I learn a lot from these unpleasant interactions.
Ever since I read The Selfish Gene, a book, and even more since I read the book “Why beautiful people have daughters” a look on life through evolutionary psychology, I am trying to match what I read with what I see, hear, and feel.
It’s a fresh new way to look at people, and a lot more forgiving than th
If you want the good life, you’ll need to learn some stuff, and unlearn some stuff… but most importantly you’ll have to learn how to and how not to… Remember the how? How you do anything is how you do everything… it is the approach, the attitude, the beingness.
There are a great many ways you can remain unaccomplished, and left behind in life.
Almost as many ways as many people. This is the Anna Karenina Principle.
This feeling can be colored by fear, dread, can feel like anxiety, but at the root of most fear is a sense that you are insufficient for the task that is in front of you.
Not big enough, not smart enough, not fast enough… Not enough = insufficient.
Now, for most people, feeling this is all they need to run for the hills.
For some people, they can hang in there, waiting for the feeling to subside.
For some people, unless they feel up to the task, they won’t even start.
For me: I know that unless I feel that and go beyond it, doing what I don’t feel I can, several times a