Tag: cognitive dissonance

Become someone who can make good decisions

Is it worth it? Is it worth the bother, the effort, the work? Will it get me finally what I want?

One of the reasons people don’t like to try new things is because they cannot judge whether they can do it or not. Whether it will be easy or not. Whether it will be pleasant and enjoyable or not.

How come? Why is it so difficult? Life is complex, and most of us have no tolerance for complexity. Complexity, ambivalence, ambiguity are normal, but the capacity to hold them becomes available to you in only at a certain brain development age… If you got stuck in young child brain development, that is most people, you have never developed the capacity.

Can you develop this capacity now? Of course you can. What is preventing you from doing it? Your low TLB number… you are a Twitchy Little Bastard… and you can’t deal with complexity, confusion, or looking long enough to actually see something.

Some of my students, when they learned about my habit of looking long and more than just once… as a way to deal with my dyslexia, have started to practice the same… and their ability to hold controversy and ambivalence has increased… because of that practice. But if you fancy yourself smart, quick, etc. Looking long and hard is going to be difficult, because your precious I will tell you that only stupid people look long and hard.

Actually the opposite is true: your precious I is deceiving you and keeping you… eh… stupid. In the stupid as the stupid does sense. Continue reading “Become someone who can make good decisions”

You can’t become extraordinary if you live an ordinary life

I am getting a lot of requests to teach people how to become people who live a life worth living, who excel in all four areas, all four pillars of the good life.

My answer is almost always: Sorry I can’t help you.

But why?

Today I got lucky and got my answer in a pristine form.

My University classmate, Panni called me. We talk once a month. She is, of course an architect: we were classmates in architecture school, a five year study.

And she is a mother and a grandmother. Continue reading “You can’t become extraordinary if you live an ordinary life”

10 of the Most Surprising Findings from Psychology

Psychology has a reputation for being the science of common sense, or a field that simply confirms things we already know about ourselves.

One way of battling this misconception, explains Jeremy Dean — a PhD candidate in psychology and master of ceremonies at the always-awesome PsyBlog — is to “think about all the unexpected, surprising, and just plain weird findings that have popped out of psychology studies over the years.” Here are ten of his favorite examples.

  1. Cognitive dissonance

    cognitive2This is perhaps one of the weirdest and most unsettling findings in psychology. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that we find it hard to hold two contradictory beliefs, so we unconsciously adjust one to make it fit with the other.
    Continue reading “10 of the Most Surprising Findings from Psychology”

The get into action activator, or how to accomplish things in your life

get into action

Dear Sophie, I’ve purchased three audio activators so far, and all I can say is… you deliver. The – Get Into Action activator should be subtitled – how to get organized immediately.

When you read that, you should say: I want that for myself. Really.

There are two types of people.

  1. Type One: They live a vegetable life. They have no ambition, they are not up to anything. They may have some higher aspirations tickled when they watch a movie, for example, but they don’t see that living, thriving, accomplishing is for them.
  2. Type Two: The second group sees that life is pretty much what you make it… but they lack the motive power to rise to the occasion. They want to, they’d like to, they dream about it, they may even plan to live a life suitable for a human being, but gravity, insistence on comfort, safety, pulls them too much. Continue reading “The get into action activator, or how to accomplish things in your life”