The Alchemist

Want to read (listen to) a good book? Check out The Alchemist by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho. I listened to the audio. It’s a great story with lessons for the ages embedded within. Here’s a passage – 

“The story of your life and the story of the universe were written with the same hand.”

Enjoy.

Neuro-Associations

What we associate pain or pleasure to is called “neuro-association.” Maybe we went to a party in Montclair and we were ostracized and had a terrible experience. Now when we even hear the word “Montclair” we have a negative reaction. When we hear someone lives there, we think they are horrible unfriendly people.

Maybe we met some French people who were really super nice and accommodating and they helped us out of a jam when we needed it. Now we feel an affection for anyone when we learn they are French, assuming they are wonderful people.  

It could be a place, a person, a food, a situation, a company, an animal – anything.

Neuro-associations are how we learned and stayed alive thousands of years ago, and are still useful. Don’t go to that area because that’s where the dangerous animals are. Don’t trust a member of that tribe because they ambushed us long ago. It’s still how our brain works.

Neuro-associations can be helpful or paralyzing and limit us. For today, we have to ask ourselves, “Is it true?” Is it true that all people from France are really nice? No, it’s not, but from where I sit, it’s not hurting me to think that way. Is it true that all people from Montclair are snobs? Of course not, and it is not good for my health or my social life to carry around that sentiment. 

Some people are hijacked by unreasonable powerful neuro-associations and walk around limited forever. We can challenge them and overwrite the unuseful ones by making new decisions.

Facing facts

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?”

What do you think?

This is a question posed by Abraham Lincoln to his team. His answer to them? “Four. Calling it something it is not, does not change reality.”

Sometimes we want to see an external situation one way so we make a story about it for ourselves that makes us feel better. Sure, we can call it optimism, and there is a positive side to doing that. But when you make important decisions based on your errant views, you make the wrong decisions.

At our School of Entrepreneurship, we say “To set things right, you have to see things right.”

What sticky situation do you have in your life? Before you make a decision about it, are you seeing it right?

Avoiding a crisis

A crisis forces us to pay attention to things that we’d ignore in normal times.  Avoiding one takes a combination of foresight, understanding, caring and self-discipline.

Nothing happens suddenly.  The seeds are planted long before and the cumulative effect of repetitive action builds to finally bloom into results.

To avoid a crisis in your life, what have you ignored that you shouldn’t any longer?

Being the best you can be

Someone asked me something like “Do you like work?” and “Why do you work?” I thought about it for a few seconds and then spontaneously said, “I’m trying to be the best I can be.”

The next morning I read these words by Joseph Conrad (who was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century) – “I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself.”

By “working” we mean a classic job and/or working for a cause or goal which takes labor of the mind and/or body. What becomes of a person who does not work?

I think work is a path to being the best version of you by finding out what you can do. What do you think?

The Foragers' Secret

Before the agricultural revolution, humans used to forage for food. The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet. Farmers tend to eat a very limited and unbalanced diet. Especially in premodern times, most of the calories feeding an agricultural population came from a single crop – such as wheat, potatoes, and rice – that lacks some of the vitamins and minerals and other nutritional materials humans need.  

The typical peasant in China ate rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If she were lucky, she could expect to eat the same the following day. By contrast, ancient foragers regularly ate dozens of different foodstuffs. The peasant’s ancient ancestor, the forager, may have eaten berries and mushrooms for breakfast; fruits, snails and a turtle for lunch; and rabbit and onions for dinner. Tomorrow’s menu might have been completely different. This variety ensured that the ancient foragers received all the necessary nutrients.

One unquestionably negative trade-off of the agricultural revolution was the reduction in the variety of foods we eat. Add the industrial revolution and we have a diet that mostly consists of “edible food-like substances” that did not exist 150 years ago.

Maybe we should eat a greater variety of raw real food, ehh?

The limits of your own abilities

We are all talented – and in different ways, sure.  But there are limits of our inherent talents, especially in today’s world where getting ahead means using more brain and less brawn.  

When you have bumped up against the limits of your own abilities, the only way to go farther is to get out of your comfort zone and learn things from others and try things you aren’t good at YET to be all you can be.

Reach outside yourself.

Blue light at night

We humans are programmed, like a lot of animals, to be up in the day and sleep at night. When the sun is high the sky is blue. When we see blue light our brains manufacture cortisol to keep us awake.  When it’s dark, our pineal gland in our brain makes melatonin to make us sleepy.

What color light comes from laptop screens, smart phones and tablets? Blue.

Get a better night’s sleep and keep those things off when you get into bed.  

Better sleep, better day after.

Habits for a life you may not want

Do you have goals to grow into?  Do you have habits you formed a long time ago?  For most people it’s yes and yes.

Consider your habits may have been formed for a life you no longer have or want.  First we shape our habits and then they shape us.

What habits do you have that are incompatible with the future you that you are trying to be?

Is it time to replace them with the habits of the person you want to be?

Start out as a phony

Knowing what you want is the first step. Then act like you already have it or are it. 

Of course, you don’t and you ain’t; you’re a phony.

But if you fake it and work your way into being real, that’s how you change and be what you want.

Who do you need to start acting like?