Good And Bad Emotions: Finding The Perfect Mix
Some people appear to be hopped up on happy pills, being oblivious to any bad events going on around them. Others are all too quick to express their disgust at anything that doesn’t go exactly their way.
Could it be that the healthiest emotional mix is somewhere between the extremes? Say, four parts good feelings to one part bad feelings, shaken not stirred, and served with a twist of lime? Read the Rest of This Article »
A Powerful Guide To Active Listening
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We have two ears and one mouth. Just based on our body parts, you’d think we’d all be natural listeners. But we’re really not. You’re born with the ability to hear, but you have to develop the ability to listen. The normal listening mode for most people is passive. Words come in one ear, and go out the other. Important information is missed. Details are overlooked. Reasoning is misunderstood. People feel disrespected.
The alternative to passive listening is active listening, where you’re more of a participant than a spectator, even though you’re not the one talking. It’s a better way to listen effectively. Here’s how to do it:
1. Be prepared to actively listen.
If you start off intending to listen passively, you’ve already lost. Listening well is much harder than you think, and it won’t happen by itself. Simply deciding that you’re going to actively listen puts you in the right frame of mind for actually doing it.
2. Stay physically focused.
If your body can’t stay still, your mind won’t either. Being physically present in the conversation is obviously essential for good listening, but many people fail at it. Don’t multitask. If you’re checking your email while talking on the phone, you’re not listening to that person. Don’t fidget, drum your fingers, or do pen tricks. Make good eye contact, and don’t interrupt the conversation to take a phone call or perform any other task.
One great way to ruin a conversation is to look at your watch when someone’s talking. While you may have a good reason for doing so, it’s a clear signal to the other person that you’re not as interested in listening to them as you are in getting on to your next thing. Even if you think you can be subtle about checking the time, they’ll probably notice. If you absolutely must look at your watch, do it when you’re talking, not when they’re talking. This makes a huge psychological difference to the other person.
3. Stay mentally focused.
OK, you’ve managed to make your body sit still. That’s the easy part. Just because you appear to be listening doesn’t mean you are. Does your mind jump around between topics that have nothing to do with the conversation? Listening requires your full attention, so a wandering mind is no good here. Save the daydreaming for your own time. If other conversations are happening around you, tune them out. Block out all background noise and focus on the person you’re talking to. Specifically, focus on the message they’re trying to get across. If you’re thinking about how they don’t pronounce the g at the end of a word they’re sayin’, you’re paying attention to the wrong thing. The important part is their message, not their grammar or diction. Tone and body language can be very important too, so don’t forget to look beyond their words. If you find yourself in a boring conversation, try to find something interesting about it. Putting up with a few minutes of less than stellar discussion might pay off. Anyway, it’s the polite thing to do.
4. Let them talk.
When they’re talking, you want to be sure you give them room to say what they want to say. Don’t get impatient if they don’t get to the point as quickly as you’d like. Be respectful, and let them talk their way.
Don’t correct mispronounced words, finish their sentences, make disapproving faces, or interrupt to say you disagree. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about what you’re going to say next. Just listen. To make sure they know you want to listen, encourage them to keep speaking by nodding and saying “go on” or “tell me more.”
5. React appropriately.
After they’ve finished talking, only then should you respond. Don’t jump the gun by rushing to judgment before they’ve even finished. In fact, even after they’re done, you still might want to pause to think before responding.
Do it in a way that shows you were paying attention. You can summarize what they said in your own words, to make sure you understand it correctly. You can ask follow-up questions. Offer feedback based on your careful consideration of what they said. Listening is fairly simple, but it’s not easy. It does take effort, especially when you’re not really in the mood for it. But it’s worth it. By listening well, you not only greatly reduce misunderstandings, but you also give people that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that someone really listened to them.
About the writer: Hunter Nuttall wants you to
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The Art of Giving Criticism
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I previously wrote about how to take criticism, a very important life skill. In the comments, someone asked for a post about how to criticize. Good idea! It only makes sense to look at the flip side of the coin.
Some people get a kick out of insulting others. It’s really easy to find some friends, neighbors, politicians, actors, comedians, athletes, or other people who aren’t doing everything exactly to your liking. And when someone is making mistakes, some people feel the need to make sure they know it.
This kind of destructive criticism really doesn’t help anyone. People who partake in destructive criticism often seem to think there’s a limited amount of success to go around, so putting others down makes them feel better about themselves.
That’s crazy. Criticizing someone just for the sake of putting them down makes both of you miserable. Criticism should always be done with the goal of helping the other person improve. So then, how do you deliver constructive criticism?
1. Decide on your objective up front, and remember it.
Are you trying to help the other person improve, or are you trying to win an argument? These are very different goals. What you set out to do sets the tone of the whole conversation, so be clear on your objective.
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The Art of Taking Criticism
There are lots of people on this planet, and they all have their opinions. That means that all of us should expect to receive lots of criticism in our lifetime. Friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, random strangers…they all have something to say (just as we often do ourselves). And if you have any kind of online presence, you can expect to receive much more criticism, as everyone comes out under the veil of anonymity.
There’s no avoiding this, so we need to be prepared to take criticism in a way that’s going to be best for everyone. Here are some tips for doing just that.
1. Check the critic’s motives
Some critics are not honestly trying to help, but just want to provoke a reaction. If someone attacks you with a nonsensical anonymous comment online, they’re not seriously interested in having a real discussion. You wouldn’t take the bait if a loud drunk wanted to tell you what’s wrong with you, because there’s nothing to be gained by arguing.
With that in mind, whenever you sense that someone is criticizing you without having the intention of helping, don’t lose your temper. Ignore them if you can, or just give a quick response to indicate that you’re not going to bother trying. Then get on with your life.
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How to Find Your True Priorities
On January 1st, many people make resolutions for the new year, such as to go to the gym every day. You can’t help noticing that gyms suddenly become much more crowded. But by February 1st, most people have abandoned their resolutions. Gyms become empty.
Sometime between January 1st and February 1st, people realize that they don’t really care that much about their New Year’s resolutions. In many cases, it’s because they chose their resolutions for the wrong reasons. This applies not just to New Year’s resolutions, but anything people do just because they think they should.
Think about why you do what you do
Maybe they think they’re supposed to exercise, so they decide that’s what they should focus on. But regardless of the wonderful benefits of exercise, you won’t stick with it if it doesn’t support something that truly matters to you.
This goes for exercising, losing weight, reading, writing, socializing, or anything else. Just because something is beneficial doesn’t mean it’s right for you. And one of the biggest mistakes you can make is focusing on the wrong things.
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How to Eat an Elephant
Image courtesy of Exfordy
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We all know the saying, but we often fail to apply this lesson in our lives. If you view the elephant as one giant goal that your whole life depends on, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Why not enjoy the bites along the way?
If you ask somebody what goal they’re working on, what kind of answer do you think you’ll get? Assuming they even have goals, they’ll probably say they’re working on something really big, maybe even something that will make them feel like they’ve achieved their life purpose.
It’s not just about big goals
Many people make a major mistake in being entirely focused on big goals. If your goal is to become a best-selling novelist, great. But that’s a really big goal. If you base too much of your life satisfaction on achieving it, you’ll be unhappy for a very long time (possibly your whole life).
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A Simple Guide to Effective Communication
We’ve all seen spam emails and hyped-up sales pages that look so sleazy. We see large fonts, boldface, red text, and sometimes even blinking text. Everyone claims to be able to change your life with this one secret you absolutely need. Effortless abundance is there for the taking, but you must ACT NOW because they only have one product left.
But while they’re screaming at you and telling you why they want you to buy it, they’re sending an even stronger message with the words they’re not saying. The fine print may say “results not typical” or “these are paid actors,” but they sure don’t want you to see that, lest it destroy the perfect illusion they’re trying to create.
They’re not trying to help people understand the pros and cons of the product so they can figure out if the product is right for them. Instead, they’re trying to just cram it down everyone’s throats and pressure people into buying.
We’ve all seen this, and we all despise it. Even in one-way media like television, communication is still meant to be a two-way street. The problem is essentially that they’re talking AT people instead of talking WITH them. But is it possible we’re doing similar things without realizing it?
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How to Establish a Year-Round Attitude of Gratitude
We’ve recently celebrated Thanksgiving in the U.S., a time when many people stop and think about what they’re thankful for. Now that the holiday is past us, should we return to taking everything for granted? No!
Gratitude isn’t meant to be something you pull out once a year, use a little bit, and then stuff into a closet until next Thanksgiving. It should always be on our minds. Most people spend so much time thinking about what they want, that they forget about everything they already have.
An attitude of gratitude not only lets us appreciate our lives more, but it also puts us in the right frame of mind for doing even better. And if you think about it, you’ll quickly see that you have plenty of amazing things to be grateful for.
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How to Master the Art of Forgiveness
Many people find it hard to forgive. As we go through life, it’s inevitable that we’ll come across people who wrong us in one way or another. From the one who cuts you off in traffic to the one who puts you on hold and forgets about you, there’s no shortage of people out there who aren’t treating us exactly the way we’d like. Unfortunately, we’re rather limited in our ability to influence their behavior. But the good news is that we have a lot of control over how we react to them.
Why forgive?
First of all, keep in mind that it’s generally in your best interest to forgive people. Choosing to carry a grudge forever keeps you from ever repairing the relationship. Long after you’ve forgotten what the other person actually did, you’re still focused on being mad at them because you’re stuck in that habit. It’s very easy to blow something way out of proportion because you think too much about what went wrong instead of how to make it right. Don’t be too attached to your anger.
Another thing to consider is what you accomplish by not forgiving. You might decide never to forgive Hitler, and I can’t really object to that. In that case, many people would consider forgiveness to mean compromising their integrity. But what about someone who just made a rude comment about you? Do you really need to be mad at them forever? Is it really worth the stress and the higher blood pressure, or can you just let it go? Just because you might be justified in being mad, doesn’t mean it’s your best option.
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Lifestyle Design for the Rest of Us
The great playwright and Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw once said, “Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.” Wise words indeed.
The concept of lifestyle design was popularized by Tim Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. The idea was to create a system that would generate enough money to meet your living expenses, while requiring only 4 hours a week to maintain it. And then by not having a full time job, you’d have the freedom to do whatever you wanted with your life.
As great as this sounds, the reality is that very few people will be able to make a decent income in only 4 hours a week. Most people will be lucky to work only 40 hours a week in the U.S. But that doesn’t mean that you just have to take what you get. On the contrary, with a busy schedule, it’s even more critical that you make the effort to design your own lifestyle.
Make no mistake, your lifestyle will be designed. The only question is whether it will be designed by thought or by chance. Here are some tips for making sure you get what you like, instead of having to like what you get.
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