Carlon here with a short announcement.
If you like the material here at carlonhaas.com, then you’ll LOVE what I’m, doing at my new blog.
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Catch you on the flip side,
Carlon
I’m a big fan to to-do lists. There are a lot of books out there on ways to be productive, but all of them boil down to the same thing–a to-do list.
There are lots of programs on the web. In fact, you can waste a lot of time looking through all the different sites and programs. But this one beats them all hands down:
If you follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, you’ll find it easy to impliment. How about the covey system? You can implement that one too. But the best part is–it’s free. If you have an iPhone, you pay a minimal fee and it’ll sync right up. It works like a charm on my phone.
Have a look, play around with it…or at least put it on your to-do list.
It seems like I go through a major mid-life crisis every 5 years or so. It’s cool, I think. I mean isn’t that the whole point of personal development? I know. Some people will say that personal development is all about getting better and living a happier life.
True. But then again isn’t personal development about changing and changing for the better? I have found that anything worth having never comes easy. Hence every 5 years or so I find myself going through a mid-life crisis—or better I experience…
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On October 22, 1844, sun rose in the morning and set in the evening. Things didn’t exactly go the way William Miller planned.
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I was about to lose it all—my job, my health, and my sanity. The pressures of work were building to the point that I had written out my resignation letter, proof-read it, and translated it into a foreign language. All that was left to do was hand it in.
But I did something instead that saved everything.
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I read an interesting article this week. Scientists have shown that you learn more from your successes than from your mistakes.
I found this interesting on many levels.
First of all, I think it’s interesting that I hear people giving advice saying, in essence, make enough mistakes and you’ll get it sooner or later. Of course, the message is re-packed in such a way that to sounds a lot better (and perhaps sell you some motivational material). Something like “if you avoid failure, you also avoid success.” Or “you have to learn to fail before you can learn to succeed.”
I agree that if you are afraid to fail, then you will not be successful. But I don’t think that mistakes in and of them teaches anyone to succeed. Think about it for a moment. I have made the same mistakes repeated times before I realized what I was doiung wrong.
Whereas, other times I made a mistake and knew it right away.
I think everyone’s had this experience.
Another thing I thought made this interesting about the study was how it can account for why people repeat the same mistakes over and over again. What made this study so interesting is that it showed what kind of mistake we might repeat. It’s the kind of mistake where the only choices are succeeding or not succeeding.
When you choose between taking and action and meeting with success versus taking an action and meeting with no success, chances are you’re more likely to repeat the same mistake. This is different from taking an action and meeting with a negative outcome.
Think about it. We make mistakes all the time. If nothing happens as a result, it’s very likely that we’ll make the mistake again and again. However, if we meet success, we learn from it. So, chances are if we’re successful, we will learn from that success, whereas if we failed we might not learn anything at all.
I mention this study interesting because some people attribute making mistakes to being “stupid” or “negative thinking”.
I don’t blame people to feel this way because you might have late realized you’ve been repeating the same mistake over and over throughout the years. But don’t feel bad. It just might be that your “mistake” never led you to any negative outcome. Without any negative outcome, you are MORE likely to repeat the mistake.
My advice is when you do make a mistake that turns out badly for you and then realize you’ve been doing it for years, don’t beat yourself up about it. It seems that’s pretty normal. Just don’t repeat it again.
To read the article go here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32287782/ns/health-behavior/
There are a ton of fad diets and dubious weight-loss products promising you will lose weight.
They might even work. Who knows? The problem with most of us is not going on a diet. One of my friends goes on a diet almost every day until dinner when he hits his favorite diner for a monster burger and batter-dipped fries.
The problem is sticking to a diet.
Today, I’ll show you a way that will significantly improve your chances of sticking to a diet.
Here goes:
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Listen closely. This is a true story.
Seven years ago I stopped smoking. My wife at the time had just gotten pregnant and I was determined to be healthy not only for myself but for the new baby.
So, THAT DAY, I smoked my last cigarette and that was that.
Or was it?
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I sometimes like to look for inspiration for life lessons in film. And today it happened. Last night I was watching one of the great film classics, “Dumb and Dumber.” And I got to the part where Harry (Jeff Daniels’ character) is talking about why his old girlfriend broke up with him. And he says this:
Yeah I called her up. She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.
As my friend and author Steve Harper likes to say, we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally. I agree with this 100%. But the movie got me thinking: Harry obviously listened to his girlfriend (he has ears, doesn’t he). But is listening itself important? Or is it how you listen that’s important? And is listening the same thing as paying attention?
The truth is we listen to people every day. And a ton of books tell us how we have to be good listeners. But can we take a cue from Harry? If Harry had just “paid attention,” would his girlfriend had felt like he had “listened” to her?
Actually, there are many different types of listening. In today’s post, I will talk about five of them.
Appreciative listening
Appreciative listening is where you listen to simply enjoy the listening experience. This is the way we tend to listen when we are at a concert, club, or other fun venue. Here you are listening for the joy of listening itself. However, if you’ve ever talked to someone and it looks like they have “lost interest” in what you are saying, most likely they are utilizing appreciative listening. Mostly likely they no longer “appreciate” what you’re saying. This is what Harry was doing in the movie. Obviously, he did not “appreciate” what his girlfriend told him.
Empathetic listening
Emphatic listening is when you are listening to support the person speaking. We’ve all done this. When our friends or spouses vent about their problems and we just listen to it, we are using empathetic listening. We are showing how much we care when we listen like this.
I get the feeling that when Harry’s girlfriend talked to him about her troubles, she might have been looking for him to listen like this.
Comprehensive listening
Comprehensive listening is listening to organize the information given by the speaker. When you re listened like this trying to apply the information to your personal experience. Some examples might include taking directions, trying to figure out what to do next, etc.
Discerning listening
Discerning listening is listening to gather information. With discerning listening, you are listening to find the main message. An example might include going to a seminar and trying to find out what the whole point of a speech is about.
Evaluative listening
With evaluative listening, you are listening in order to solve the problem of the person speaking. For example, if someone is telling you about their annoying co-worker, the evaluative listener will problem offer up different ways in which the person can deal with the co-worker.
Evaluative listeners are typically in problem-solving mode.
Now, how does this all apply to you? Surely it can apply in more ways than I can talk about in one blog post. But consider this:
You are venting to your friend about your bad day looking for a little sympathy, and your friend starts telling you about ways in which you could have made it better. How does it make you feel? Do you think your friend is really listening to you?
He is, just not the way you wanted him to.
So, keep these things in mind. Try to see how you are listening to others. And be aware of how others are listening to you.
I’d like to give a brief plug for Tim Ursiny’s book, “The Coward’s Guide to Conflict” that introduced the ways of listening to me.
When last you heard from me, I was in the midst of an information diet. I vowed to avoid all news sites for an entire week.
Did the diet work?
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