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 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/
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.
Day 2 of the media fast gave me no clear insights, except for one—it seems that the more productive I get on one end, the more others are trying to take it away from me on the other.
To paraphrase Al Pacino, “The more I try to get productive, the more they try to suck me back in to un-productivity.”
Since I was getting my work done so quickly, people in my office started asking me if I could “help” them (do their work for them) or “discuss a few things” (talk about nothing).
These time vampires (to borrow a term from Dan Kennedy) literally sucked all my productive time away.
Well, today I will employ a tactic my 4-year-old uses—the NO tactic.
I have written about it before, and have used it to great success. But it seems that when you start getting more productive, the time vampires smell blood. They figure that since you’re not “busy” you have time for them.
So, I will be cultivating my “busy” image even more. And when people ask me for help, I will use some phrases like:
“I’d love to, but I really have to take care of something right now.”
“I only have a minute because I’m on my way to X. Let me see what I can do now.” –Only at the end of yesterday did I employ this tactic (because it was true). But by forcing people to deal with me right then and there and putting a short time limit on it, those “emergencies” completely disappeared.
Do not and I repeat DO NOT let them say they can talk to you about it later. With the time vampires, if you leave the door open for them to “ask you later” then by gosh they sure will come by and ask you something later.
We’ll see how combining NO tactics with my media fast improves my productivity.
On the LeBron Front
It’s amazing what you can learn from headline news! I heard briefly that there was some trade to help out LeBron.
Now, I wasn’t able to read commentary telling me what to think about this trade. And I don’t even know the details. So, I can’t be so sure if this qualifies as giving LeBron respect.
I mean the media could spin the trade in so many ways so as to show utmost disrespect to LeBron. I’m sure they can. But since I’m not reading it, I don’t know.
I just have to deal with the raw facts of the matter and make up my own mind about what it means. Here goes that critical thinking again.
But with all the stories about the trade I’m sure some joker of a sportscaster will talk about how LeBron has “no more excuses” or use some other term that shows disrespect to LeBron. So, I’ll hedge my best and say they are still disrespecting him.
The protest continues…
No news web sites. No unnecessary web surfing.
The results so far?
Here are a few things I’ve started to notice from my media fast:
#1 Productivity has nearly doubled, but I have a lot of work
I roughly doubled my productivity. I’ll give myself a few more days to see if this wasn’t just a fluke. But what used to take me all morning and half and half an afternoon now took me only 3 hours.
I’d say that’s pretty good. Was I mindlessly surfing that much?
But this sudden jump in productivity made me realize I do have a lot of work. I’ll need to address that issue pronto!
#2 Is my critical thinking kicking it up a notch?
I do love politics and political news. As one my regular commentators to this blog Corinne Edwards said she couldn’t live without MSNBC, I was starting to feel the same way.
You see, I like election coverage. From headline news I know who’s winning the primaries. But without reading all the commentary, it feels like I don’t have anyone to tell me what to think anymore.
I may have to start thinking for myself. Perish the thought.
Seriously though. I get this same feeling I used to get in college. I used to read primary sources so I could come up with my own conclusions before reading others’. But with news, I find myself looking to see what others say before I make up my mind.
Media fast day #1 is showing me that I can come up with my own opinion about Barack Obama’s victory sans three columnists telling me what I should think about it and all the major implications thereof.
#3 Playing toy animals with a 4-year-old is quite fun
Cutting out some TV, I instead played animals with my daughter. I mean WOW! That kid does a spot on imitation of me and her teachers at school. She thinks I’m a zebra.
I thought I should be the lion, but nope…zebra.. There you have it. In the animal kingdom, I’m a zebra. Her teacher, however, got to be a tiger. My daughter was a small tiger.
I think I preferred it when my daughter was on a Star Wars kick and I got to be the Emperor.
#4 Lost is a cool show
I picked up the first season of Lost on DVD. I took in 45 minutes of TV this evening and watched an episode. Cool show.
I’ll tell you though. It pained me to listen to Daniel Dae Kim’s Korean. I’m sure most Americans don’t know, but I certainly hear the difference in his Korean and Kim Yunjin’s. No matter though. I liked Daniel Dae Kim in Crusade, so I won’t hold his Korean ability against him too much.
#5 Somewhere out there is LeBron James still getting disrespected?
Of course, my protest continues! Because I am not reading any sports pages, I have no idea whether or not LeBron is getting any respect. I assume he is not. But this media fast continues until LeBron James is shown some respect.
Those are my thoughts for today. I’ll keep you posted on this media fast and you can read more on how it is affecting my work and my life.
A while back, I pulled a lat muscle at the gym. Now, if you’ve never pulled a lat muscle, let me tell you something:
You are lucky!
It hurts like heck. You use your lat muscle to lift, while you’re sitting, and it hurts every time you twist your body.
Well, after taking it easy for a few weeks (treadmills are boring), I was ready to get back to some weight training.
But not wanting to take any chances, I was pretty much on light weight training (and for full disclosure, my gym activities do NOT include lifting heavy weights…I have no intention to be the next wannabe Schwarzenegger.)
How did it go?
Today, one of my friends was having a bad day. It must have been pretty bad because despite talking to me, Mr. Ray of Sunshine, it had no effect. Though I did think that my comment that today was a wonderful day because it was pouring down rain should have encouraged her. To no avail. Am I the only one who likes rainy days?
But anyway….
The one thing that separates mankind from animals is imagination. The ability to imagine what is possible, what was possible, and what could be. This power. This gift allows us to go in endless directions. Gives us unlimited potential.
In order to realize this potential, we must find ways to stimulate our imaginations. I have found the most effective way to do this is…
Excuse the title, but yesterday, I was tagged by John W. McKenna to answer his challenge to write my views on the current state of leadership. To be honest, I wasn’t going to write anything since I am not a “leadership guy” and because I have no interest in telling other people how to become leaders.
And I don’t buy the whole leader-follower dichotomy that holds the leader 100% responsible for the failings his or her followers. Many things are not in any leader’s ability to control. And I also don’t believe that the human condition has changed oh so much in all these years and the short answer to John’s challenge is that leadership is in the state it’s always been in—a state of flux. No better and no worse than it has been.
But I thought it might be worth it to just to share my personal opinions on leadership and use some of my personal experiences as a guide for those of you out there who are trying to be better leaders.
But I have to say something very important first.
For the last 2 months, this has really been bothering me. Every day I have to look at it, and today I could stand it no longer. I had to know why my co-worker had pictures of models taped all around her (yes, her) computer monitor.
I asked my other co-workers about it, but they just laughed and said I needed to ask her myself. So, today I did. I was breathless with anticipation. What was it for inspiration? Did she just like girls? (I had to at least consider the possibility)?
Her response was…
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