Three Laws of Performance

I haven’t read this book but I am going to. I have read a bunch of articles on it at the book’s website:

http://threelawsofperformance.com

I often go to the business section for ideas about how to help people with change, rather than self-help or psychology. I have summarized some of the points that stood out for me below.

1)  What’s the truth about where we are going? This is our default future, and as the Chinese proverb says, “if we don’t change the direction we are headed, we’re likely to end up where we’re headed.” Answering this question  requires a lot of listening and inviting people to talk about things they generally don’t talk about much. It is something people experience at a gut level and it really drives their behavior though. It includes assumptions, expectations, resignations, cynicism. It is different for everyone so everyone needs to be heard.

2) Do you want to go there?   “there” being your default future

3)  What kind of future would you be willing to commit to?

What do we need to deal with within ourselves or ‘get out of the way’ so we can start to see the situation in a new way?

This generally involves separating the facts of a situation from our interpretations of those facts. Those facts, cleared of interpretations, will reveal an always present ’field of possibility’ with facts acting ‘dots’.  We may be able to see them without all the clutter, and we may be able to make some new connections. We may discover what we really want to do.

It starts with really listening to folks, how they see things occuring, how they talk about those occurences, and how the use of future- oriented language can transform those situations to people.

Rather than describing the past or present - future-oriented language makes :

1) declarations

2) commitments

3) promises

4) requests.  (I would add that this can only be done effectively if people really know they can say no to requests. This opens up more conversation about assumptions, beliefs, etc. that to that point has been unsaid.)

The key is to start the conversations about what is often unsaid but permeates everything we do and heads us to our default future. Lay it all out there and get to work on clearing out the field, unless the default future looks good enough to you. Be careful not to assume you see your default future without this very honest self-examination. People usually gloss it over with hopes and expectations and deny they are even headed toward it.

This work is not easy. Not a quick fix – actually  quite outside the realm of ‘fixing’ things.

Out Of Mao’s Shadow – Phillip P. Pan

I recently finished a book that Reena purchased called Out of Mao’s Shadow by Phillip P. Pan. It is a remarkable book about various people who take a stand against injustice in China despite incredible risks posed to them by the ruling Communist Party. It will give anyone interested in China a great look at what it is really like to live there. It looks at current life there but China’s frightening past is certainly part of the story. It is an enjoyable, instructive inspirational yet disturbing read.

http://outofmaosshadow.com

You’ll find interviews of the author by Jon Stewart and Charlie Rose on the website.

Book: Awareness – Anthony deMello

I’ve read and reread this book.  

 The writer mentions is that all our upsets involve us adding something to the situation where we are upset.  In this case, upset refers to any degree of negative emotionality, including slight annoyance.

What do we add that causes the upset? 

I am not going to tell you.

If you are upset by this , ask yourself what you are adding to the situation?

If you are not upset, what would you have to add to the situation to be upset?

Have fun.

Diddly reads

I am reading a book called

Stumbling on Happiness

by Daniel Gilbert.  It certainly builds on the book that inspired Diddly by Cordelia Fine.

Below is a link to good review

 

http://jseliger.com/2009/04/23/stumbling-on-happiness-%E2%80%94-daniel-gilbert/

How to be decisive about being decisive

My ideas here are all well and good, perhaps satisfying to think about and even ponder doing. But I don’t really think I have really answered the question about how you can get yourself to become the decisive person that will most certainly help you cut through anger and lethargy and all the rest.

I think an author named Michael Loboeuf, Ph.D. answers the question in his book titled: The Greatest Management Principle in the World.  Here it is:

THE THINGS THAT GET REWARDED GET DONE

If we do things there is always some reward involved for us. If we do not see any reward associated with an action, we will not do it. Period. It is a law of human nature. You can try challenging it and I bet I will always be able to show you how this law applies every time.

Some actions have intrinsic rewards, that is, it is the feeling we get from doing it that is at least as rewarding as the result of the action.

Planning, or outlining your decisions for a day or week or year, is not intrinsically rewarding for must of us. I think it is because we don’t reward ourselves for being decisive. If being decisive is defined by our committment to rejecting or accepting a proposal we hear from ourselves or others – it  is going to provoke some emotionality. What if you regret it? What if it is ‘wrong’? It feels so final, even though many decisions are reversible. So we don’t make decisions in order to avoid these negative feelings, but in doing so we stray from the manageable world of action which adds to us becoming more internally focused on our  unmanageable feelings. The consequence is the augmented negative  emotionality that we meant to avoid by not being decisive in the first place. It is a vicious circle.   

How do you break this cycle?   REWARD

Before you make a decision, plan on how you are going to reward yourself just for making the decision. The decision may be to reject a course of action, which should be rewarded as readily as accepting a course of action. Knowing you have some pleasure ahead of you can mitigate the negative emotionality that is inevitably associated with making a decision. Unfortunately, what we do instead is reward ourselves for not making a decision. We live in maybe land.  We have nothing else to do, since we haven’t made any  decisions, so we fall into doing something pleasurable, in other words,  we reward ourselves for being indecisive.

So the next time you are wondering what you should be doing, take a break from that course of thinking, and ask youself how you are going to reward yourself for rejecting or accepting a proposal from yourself for a course of action. It could be a small or a large reward. It doesn’t matter.

For example, before you decide to make a to-do list for yourself for tomorrow, commit to rewarding yourself in some way for accepting or rejecting the proposal to make the list. Do not give yourself this reward until you accept or reject the proposal. What will the reward be? What do you like to do?   There are a wealth of rewards out there, and you can always reverse your decision and reward yourself again for the reversal, so you can’t lose here.   No rush to action, just making decisions. I’ll run through the process myself:

Will I come  with a to-do list for tomorrow? No. I am not sure when I can do it.

Without commiting to doing it, can you decide on a time to do it? Yes – 1:15 PM

Will I come up with a to- do list for tomorrow? No. I don’t know what Reena is planning.

Without commiting to doing it, can you get an idea of what Reena is doing? Yes. I’ll get up and ask her now.

Will I come up with a to-do list for tomorrow? No. I don’t have a notebook chosen to do it.

Without commiting to doing it, can you go find a notebook that will work? Yes

Will I come up with a to-do list for tomorrow?  yes

Reward -  5 minutes rest on the couch with or without TV  for ech decision. I made 7 decisions. I could take 35 minutes. I ended up only needing 10 minutes.  I actually rested for 5 of those minutes after the first ‘no’.

And yes, I did make the to-do list

The Anger Habit – Carl Semmelroth

I am going to be doing a series of post on The Anger Habit. It will be pulled from a workbook by Dr. Carl Semmelroth. I will post some of my own thoughts in there too. Maybe I’ll be more thorough than I was with Cordelia Fine’s book. At the very least it will correlate with the post from the Category – The Emotional Brain.

I want  to move away from so many  political posts. It feeds my anger habit.

Book Review: ‘The Islamist’ by Ed Hussein

Ed is short for Mohammed. He is a British National who describes his involvement in radical Islam, including association with people who were later arrested for terrorism. The book was a Christmas gift from my wife.

His parents immigrated from Bangladesh. They were devout Moslems, and openly critical of extremist factions that were becoming more vocal in the mosques 15 years ago. Ed had a ‘godfather’ of sorts who was a very respected Imam who visited often and tought him how to recite the Koran in Arabic. Not that he understood what he was saying. That is the interesting thing about the Koran for Moslems, it is more meaningful to them to recite the Suras (chapters) in Arabic than it is to read translations in their native toungues. The translation somehow contanimates words that they believe came literally from God out of the prophet Mohammed’s mouth. It is not until very late in his story that he actually decides to see what the Koran actually means in a language he understands. As sensible as his parents and ‘godfather’ were, they never encouraged him to actually think for himself regarding the Koran.

I think this makes young Moslems in the West like Ed very susceptible to cults and extremist movements within Islam. Groups vie to be the ‘real Moslems’ .  Their only defense is what they have been told by someone else such as their parents or a teacher. It is all up for debate and the winners are not always the ‘good guys’.

Ed grew up feeling like he didn’t quite fit in with other Brits, though he had good experiences with  certain teachers. This sense that he didn’t fit in, and the promise of Islamists to show him that not only was his difference with other Brits a mark of his superiority, but a means to power and significance, really left him susceptible to their manipulation.

England has its 9/11 on 7/7/07, and they have become more wary of these cults. They are indeed cults. They view themselves as superior and want total power. Western notions of religious tolerance allowed them to thrive in England , and influence people like Ed Hussein. He got out after the violence they teach resulted in the death of some fellow students. He began to take responsibility to understand, and not take anyone’s word for it.  He also met a woman who became his wife around the time that he started to pull out of these extreme groups. She didn’t push him, she just loved him, and he started to wake up. But even years later, his indoctrinattion still snuck in to his mind. He admitted he initially  bought into blaming the Jews for 9/11 in NYC.  It has taken him a lot of effort over time to really confront the indoctrination. It clearly requires him to be humble, and he earned my respect.   And he knows he is not finished.

We can learn from him, and be wary of ways of thinking that gives us subtle airs of inferiority and/or superiority. They leave us very vulnerable.