The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

Having correct beliefs is vital to having the best life!     

Source: Randall Munroe, used with permission

Right now you have something within your reach with an almost magical ability to break out of wrong ideas. You can use it to process data and identify patterns and trends. What do you think it is? Take a guess before reading onward.
Did you guess your computer or your phone? Then you’re wrong! What I'm talking about is much, much more powerful than that. It's more powerful than the fastest supercomputer on the planet.
I'm talking about your brain.
Humans didn't spread out to rule the entire planet because of bigger muscles or sharper claws. Intelligence, the kind of intelligence that all humans have, is our superpower. It's what separates us from other animals, and it is your greatest resource.
But most people don't really use their brain to its full potential. Do you?
You certainly weren’t taught to use its real potential in school. Children are taught facts that will pass tests, but the skills that are most important in life usually don’t involve stuff that’s on an exam. How do I make plans (link is external)? How should I decide between places to live? What’s the best way to negotiate for higher pay? All of these questions involve thinking about and modeling the future (link is external). Imagine how many fewer poor decisions you will make and how much better off your life will be if you learn how to unlock your brain’s true potential and gain agency (link is external) over your life!
Want to know a secret? It's actually pretty easy to make big improvements to how you think. A few quick tricks can make a world of difference and boost your future-predicting power. I'll share one of them right now.
Have you ever heard of Confirmation Bias (link is external)? It's one of the known problems that scientists have discovered about how we naturally think. Imagine a friend suggests that people who drive red cars are bad drivers. At first you don't think that's true, but after hearing a few stories of bad drivers in red cars from your friend, you think he might be onto something. The next time you're on the road you notice a red car swerving around like a maniac... proof! You're a believer now. You start seeing reckless drivers in red cars all the time.
If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try it out. Drive for a month looking for reckless drivers in red cars. You'll see them everywhere. Or you can save yourself the time and trouble. This perception would only be in your head!
If you actually use science you'll find this is false (link is external). What happens is that if you look for something you'll find it, but you'll also end up ignoring things that don't fit the pattern. If a blue car does something dangerous you won't think about it. If a red car drives safely then maybe it's just a fluke or maybe you'll interpret it as reckless anyway.
Confirmation Bias affects all sorts of things, from racial prejudices to conspiracy theories to personal relationships. If you expect someone you know to act sad, you'll notice their sadness and ignore their happiness. And importantly, it can hurt your ability to predict the future.
Imagine a gambler (link is external) who loses five games of poker in a row. She thinks “I’ve been getting bad luck for a long time… surely my next hand will have to be good to balance it out!” Have you ever thought something like that? I have. After two more bad hands she finally gets a good hand and thinks to herself “I knew it!” But she was wrong twice before being right! With that sort of sloppy thinking it would’ve been smarter just to walk away.
There are several tricks to avoiding this bias and being a better thinker. The one I'm going to share today is to visualize alternate universes regularly. An alternate universe is just a world exactly like this one but where one or two things are different.
Let's use the example of drivers of red cars being reckless. There are two alternate universes here. One alternate universe is where drivers of red cars are *safer* than normal. The other is where red car-drivers are just as good at driving as anyone else. Take a moment to visualize these alternatives and imagine what they look like. Can you see how that would help? Just like focusing on red cars being dangerous causes you notice examples that fit the story, focusing on the opposite lets you catch examples you might otherwise miss. It’s all about controlling where you put your attention.
Let me give an example from my personal life. I once met someone who I had heard was “obnoxious.” Indeed, when I first met him I could immediately see why: the man had almost no social skills. With the seed of “obnoxious” sown in my mind I began to get annoyed when around him. I noticed every time he said the wrong thing or didn’t seem to understand what the topic of conversation was. But then I remembered what I had learned from my research into psychology and I flipped my thinking: I imagined the alternate universe where this guy was cool and easy to be around.
Did my visualization of the alternate universe mean my friend suddenly became suave and charming? Not at all. But it did make him not obnoxious! Specifically, I realized that having weak social skills did not mean I had to find spending time with him unpleasant, and I began to enjoy my time with him much more. I also noticed that his social skills weren’t as bad as I had initially thought. There were a few times when, not trapped by “small talk” or the pressure of meeting someone new, I noticed him acting much more like his alternate-universe counterpart than I would have otherwise expected.
I don’t invite this friend to parties very often (I doubt he’d even enjoy the experience), but we still talk fairly regularly and he’s someone I know that I can turn to if I have a difficult problem in his field. Without the technique of visualizing alternate universes I would have worse social interactions, fewer friends, and be generally less wise. This simple trick has brought many, many people success in their relationships, their work, and elsewhere!
This is just one step on the path to being a better thinker about the future (link is external), and as we move forward I think you'll see how the technique of visualizing alternate universes can be used for becoming more intelligent, effective, and happy!
What do you think?

• Have you had success in improving your life through visualizations before?
• Do you know anyone in your personal life that seems just convinced about something that isn't true?
• Can you think of any areas of your life where you might have an incorrect perception of the world?
• What are specific steps you can take to apply the techniques in this article to improve your perception of the world?

Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an author, speaker, consultant, coach, scholar, and social entrepreneur specializing in science-based strategies for effective decision-making, goal achievement, emotional and social intelligence, meaning and purpose, and altruism - for more information or to hire him, see his website, GlebTsipursky.com. (link is external) He runs a nonprofit that helps people use science-based strategies to make effective decisions and reach their goals, so as to build an altruistic and flourishing world, Intentional Insights (link is external). He also serves as a tenure-track professor (link is external) at Ohio State in the History of Behavioral Science and the Decision Sciences Collaborative, and published over 25 peer-reviewed articles. A best-selling author (link is external), he wrote Find Your Purpose Using Science (link is external) among other books, and regular contributes to prominent venues, such as Time (link is external), The Conversation (link is external), Salon (link is external), The Huffington Post (link is external), and elsewhere. He appears regularly on network TV, such as affiliates of ABC (link is external) and Fox (link is external), radio stations such as NPR (link is external) and Sunny 95 (link is external), as well as internet-only media such as podcasts (link is external) and videocasts (link is external).
Consider signing up to the Intentional Insights newsletter (link is external); volunteering (link is external); donating (link is external); buying merchandise (link is external). Get in touch with him at gleb (at) intentionalinsights (dot) org.

Gleb Tsipursky Ph.D. Intentional Insights

Source: The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

How To Become Really Unstoppable - Tony Robbins Amazing Motivation

Another great video by Tony Robbins.

If you need some motivation he's your guy.

Listen and channel your ambition.

FEEL FREE TO SHARE

18 Signs You Have High Emotional Intelligence

18 Signs You Have High Emotional Intelligence

Are you emotionally intelligent? Here’s how to know for sure.

Travis Bradberry

Measuring emotional intelligence can be difficult because of its intangible nature. But Dr. Travis Bradberry has analyzed the data from the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested for EQ to help identify the behaviors that are sure signs you have a high EQ. He shares them with us in this article, originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: People with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly-held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that we know 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.
Despite the significance of EQ, its intangible nature makes it very difficult to know how much you have and what you can do to improve if you’re lacking. You can always take a scientifically validated test, such as the one that comes with the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book.
Unfortunately, quality (scientifically valid) EQ tests aren’t free. So, I’ve analyzed the data from the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested in order to identify the behaviors that are the hallmarks of a high EQ. What follows are sure signs that you have a high EQ.

1. You have a robust emotional vocabulary.

All people experience emotions, but it is a select few who can accurately identify them as they occur. Our research shows that only 36 percent of people can do this, which is problematic because unlabeled emotions often go misunderstood, which leads to irrational choices and counterproductive actions.
People with high EQs master their emotions because they understand them, and they use an extensive vocabulary of feelings to do so. While many people might describe themselves as simply feeling “bad,” emotionally intelligent people can pinpoint whether they feel “irritable,” “frustrated,” “downtrodden,” or “anxious.” The more specific your word choice, the better insight you have into exactly how you are feeling, what caused it and what you should do about it.

2. You’re curious about people.

It doesn’t matter if they’re introverted or extroverted, emotionally intelligent people are curious about everyone around them. This curiosity is the product of empathy, one of the most significant gateways to a high EQ. The more you care about other people and what they’re going through, the more curiosity you’re going to have about them.

3. You embrace change.

Emotionally intelligent people are flexible and are constantly adapting. They know that fear of change is paralyzing and a major threat to their success and happiness. They look for change that is lurking just around the corner, and they form a plan of action should these changes occur.

4. You know your strengths and weaknesses.

Emotionally intelligent people don’t just understand emotions; they know what they’re good at and what they’re terrible at. They also know who pushes their buttons and the environments (both situations and people) that enable them to succeed. Having a high EQ means you know your strengths and you know how to lean into them and use them to your full advantage while keeping your weaknesses from holding you back.

5. You’re a good judge of character.

Much of emotional intelligence comes down to social awareness; the ability to read other people, know what they’re about, and understand what they're going through. Over time, this skill makes you an exceptional judge of character. People are no mystery to you. You know what they’re all about and understand their motivations, even those that lie hidden beneath the surface.

6. You are difficult to offend.

If you have a firm grasp of whom you are, it’s difficult for someone to say or do something that gets your goat. Emotionally intelligent people are self-confident and open-minded, which creates a pretty thick skin. You may even poke fun at yourself or let other people make jokes about you because you are able to mentally draw the line between humor and degradation

7. You know how to say no (to yourself and others).

Emotional intelligence means knowing how to exert self-control. You delay gratification, and you avoid impulsive action. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout and even depression. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them.

8. You let go of mistakes.

Emotionally intelligent people distance themselves from their mistakes, but do so without forgetting them. By keeping their mistakes at a safe distance, yet still handy enough to refer to, they are able to adapt and adjust for future success. It takes refined self-awareness to walk this tightrope between dwelling and remembering. Dwelling too long on your mistakes makes you anxious and gun shy, while forgetting about them completely makes you bound to repeat them. The key to balance lies in your ability to transform failures into nuggets of improvement. This creates the tendency to get right back up every time you fall down.

9. You give and expect nothing in return.

When someone gives you something spontaneously, without expecting anything in return, this leaves a powerful impression. For example, you might have an interesting conversation with someone about a book, and when you see them again a month later, you show up with the book in hand. Emotionally intelligent people build strong relationships because they are constantly thinking about others.

10. You don’t hold grudges.

The negative emotions that come with holding onto a grudge are actually a stress response. Just thinking about the event sends your body into fight-or-flight mode, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. When the threat is imminent, this reaction is essential to your survival, but when the threat is ancient history, holding onto that stress wreaks havoc on your body and can have devastating health consequences over time. In fact, researchers at Emory University have shown that holding onto stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease. Holding onto a grudge means you’re holding onto stress, and emotionally intelligent people know to avoid this at all costs. Letting go of a grudge not only makes you feel better now but can also improve your health.

11. You neutralize toxic people.

Dealing with difficult people is frustrating and exhausting for most. High EQ individuals control their interactions with toxic people by keeping their feelings in check. When they need to confront a toxic person, they approach the situation rationally. They identify their own emotions and don’t allow anger or frustration to fuel the chaos. They also consider the difficult person’s standpoint and are able to find solutions and common ground. Even when things completely derail, emotionally intelligent people are able to take the toxic person with a grain of salt to avoid letting him or her bring them down.

12. You don’t seek perfection.

Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know that it doesn’t exist. Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible. When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure that makes you want to give up or reduce your effort. You end up spending your time lamenting what you failed to accomplish and what you should have done differently instead of moving forward, excited about what you've achieved and what you will accomplish in the future.

13. You appreciate what you have.

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23 percent. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

14. You disconnect.

Taking regular time off the grid is a sign of a high EQ because it helps you to keep your stress under control and to live in the moment. When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline and even—gulp!—turning off your phone gives your body and mind a break. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels. Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking (read: stressing) about work can drop onto your phone at any moment.

15. You limit your caffeine intake.

Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, and adrenaline is the source of the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine’s long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. High-EQ individuals know that caffeine is trouble, and they don’t let it get the better of them.

16. You get enough sleep.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams) so that you wake up alert and clearheaded. High-EQ individuals know that their self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when they don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. So, they make sleep a top priority.

17. You stop negative self-talk in its tracks.

The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural tendency to perceive threats (inflating the frequency or severity of an event). Emotionally intelligent people separate their thoughts from the facts in order to escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive, new outlook.

18. You won’t let anyone limit your joy.

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from the opinions of other people, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. When emotionally intelligent people feel good about something that they’ve done, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or snide remarks take that away from them. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within.

Source

Motivation for Smart People (Sans Chest Pounding)

July 25, 2006 by Steve Pavlina

Do you ever feel there’s a greater being inside of you just bursting to get out? You can feel its presence sometimes, can’t you? It’s the voice that encourages you to really make something of your life. When you act congruently with that voice, it’s like you’re a whole new person. You feel like a god in a human body. You’re bold and courageous. You’re strong. You’re unstoppable.

But then reality sets in, and soon those moments are history. Where did that powerful voice go? Were you merely suffering from delusions of grandeur?

It isn’t hard to temporarily put yourself into an emotional state of power. Just go to any Tony Robbins’ concert seminar, and he’ll have you dancing in the aisles feeling totally motivated. Put on your favorite fast-tempo music, stand tall, breathe strong, chest out, shoulders back. Strut around like a superhero. Shout, “Yes!” Pound your chest a few times for good measure. You’ll look like a dolt, but this does actually work.
But then you go home, and the emotional motivation fades away. Your great ideas now seem impractical. How many times have you been temporarily inspired with an idea like, “I want to start my own business,” and then a week later it’s forgotten? You come up with inspiring ideas when you’re motivated, but you fail to maintain that level of motivation through the action phase.
So how do you reach the point of high motivation and stay there?
Emotional motivation
Tony Robbins says the key to motivation is state management. This means conditioning yourself to feel a certain way via techniques like anchoring (connecting an emotion to a physical trigger). When Tony pounds his chest while speaking, he’s firing off anchors he previously conditioned. The downside is that you need to keep firing off these anchors as well as periodically reconditioning them to keep your motivation up. That means lots and lots of chest pounding.
As another motivational method, Tony suggests writing down the pleasure you associate to a task as well as the pain of not doing it. Again the idea here is to stir up your emotions, so you’ll be motivated to take action. This type of motivation is usually short-lived, even when the emotions involved are very intense.
I studied and practiced these kinds of emotional motivation techniques extensively during my 20s. In the long run, I didn’t find them particularly effective. My intellect saw right through all the chest pounding. The logical part of my mind was ultimately dissatisfied with attempts to induce motivation through emotional manipulation.
Have you ever seen one of those rah-rah motivational speakers? If the speaker is good, s/he will have an emotional effect on you and get you to feel motivated. But within a day or two, that emotional boost fades away, and you’re back to normal. You can listen to hundreds of motivational speakers and experience an emotional yo-yo effect, but it doesn’t last. I think this is especially common with technically minded people. We’re accustomed to thinking with our heads. We’re still emotional creatures on some level, but our emotional B.S. detectors periodically scrub our minds free of anything that doesn’t satisfy our logic.
Intellectual motivation
I used to get frustrated when my emotional conditioning fizzled out after a while. Eventually I realized that being guided by intellect, not emotion, wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I just had to learn to use my mind as an effective motivational tool. I stopped using emotional motivation techniques and decided to see if I could motivate myself intellectually. I figured that if I wasn’t feeling motivated to go after a particular goal, maybe there was a logical reason for it. Perhaps I just wasn’t taking my logic far enough to see it.
I noted that when I had strong intellectual reasons for doing something, I usually didn’t have trouble taking action. I’m motivated to exercise regularly because doing so is intelligent and reasonable. I don’t need to emotionally pump myself up to go to the gym. I just go.
But when my mind thinks a goal is wrong on some level, I usually feel blocked. I eventually realized that this was my mind’s way of telling me the goal was a mistake to begin with.
Sometimes a goal seems to make sense on one level, but when you look further upstream, it becomes clear the goal is ill advised. Suppose you work in sales, and you set a goal to increase your income by 20% by becoming a more effective salesperson. That seems like a reasonable and intelligent goal. But maybe you’re surprised to find yourself encountering all sorts of internal blocks when you try to pursue it. You should feel motivated, but you just don’t. The problem may be that on a deeper level, your mind knows you don’t want to be working in sales at all. You really want to be a musician. So no matter how hard you push yourself in your sales career, it will always be a motivational dead end. You’ll never convince your mind to give up on your more important dream of being a musician.
When you set goals that are too small and too timid, you suffer a perpetual lack of motivation. Try all the emotional conditioning techniques you want, but you’re wasting your time. Deep down you already know the truth. You just need to summon the courage to acknowledge your true desires. Then you’ll have to deal with the self-doubt and fear that’s been making you think too small. There’s no getting around that if you want to experience lasting motivation. Ironically, the real key to motivation is to set goals that scare you.
I recommend working through these kinds of blocks in your journal. Type a question like, “Why am I feeling unmotivated to achieve this goal?” Then type whatever answer comes to mind. You’ll often find that the source of your block is that you’re thinking too small. You’re letting fears, excuses, and limiting beliefs hold you back. Your subconscious mind knows you’re settling, so it won’t provide any motivational fuel until you step up, face your fears, and acknowledge your heart’s desire. Once you finally decide to face your fears and drop the excuses, then you’ll find your motivation turning on full blast.
When I use this process myself, I uncover new goals that seem unreasonably big. I admit that I want them, but I feel incapable of achieving them. However, when I finally step up and set goals that lie outside my comfort zone, somehow I end up feeling very motivated, and I summon all sorts of unexpected resources to help me.
Was it unreasonable to set a web traffic goal of reaching a million monthly visitors without spending any money on marketing? I originally thought so, but I privately set that goal before I ever launched this site because it inspired me. More reasonable traffic goals had no motivational effect on me. Now that I’ve achieved that goal, my next traffic goal is to reach 10 million visitors a month. Is that unreasonable? Probably. But somehow it’s very motivating to me.
It seems counter-intuitive that motivation may be highest when setting goals that lie outside your comfort zone, but I’ve seen this pattern too many times to discount it. Perhaps we have to set big, hairy, audacious goals in order to feel truly motivated. Maybe little goals just aren’t enough to trigger the release of motivational energy. If we think a goal is too easy, we won’t commit all our internal resources. It’s only when we set unreasonable goals that all our internal resources come online, including motivation and drive.
When I set a goal that’s big enough and challenging enough, I never need to pump myself up with emotional rah-rah. I feel motivated to pursue the goal because my intellect is fully behind it. I just find myself doing what needs to be done. No chest pounding required.

Source Motivation for Smart People (Sans Chest Pounding)

3 Books That Changed My Life - Top Self Development Books

Great video illustrating the power and influence of self education.