Page 51 of 81

What’s in your Personality Zoo?

May 21, 2009 /

Alex Fayle has a really interesting post today, Taming the Voices in the Personality Zoo. It describes a fun and really useful way to sort out what stops us from achieving what we want.

By assigning each piece of resistance a personality, I can diffuse the internal argument by recognizing the emotion attached to the thought and therefore come up with effective ways to work around or dismantle the particular excuse for not continuing. (It’s also a whole lot of fun!)

Alex links to his own zoo and the Lab Rats (Cat, Jim and Brett) list theirs. It’s an interesting read and I started to list my own voices.

My own voices.

My list include the good ones as well as the not so good ones.

  • Zen Bengt is always around, calm and centered.
  • Optimistic Bengt is almost always there too, thinks that everything will work out and it all just gets better and better.
  • Confident Bengt is also mostly there, he knows that it will work out in the end, even if it’s unchartered territory part of the way.
  • Tugboat Bengt is doing most of the work, moving stuff and get the ball rolling.
  • Lazy Bengt pops up now and then, thinks that we have worked a lot and deserve a break, we can start again later or even later…
  • Distraction Bengt is looming in the background. He comes in sometimes and talks about nice things like walks, reading and Twitter. Could we not do that, just for a while?
  • Impatient Bengt is also looming in the background. He thinks that we could have been there already if we only had focused on what we should do.
  • Procrastination Bengt is luckily a rather rare visitor, he tries to team up with Lazy Bengt in order to get more influence.
  • Frustrated Bengt is a strange companion to Zen Bengt. He comes in to clear out the disturbing voices in order to get back to work and focus.

What’s in your Personality Zoo?

Credit image: Sign @ Africa Alive, Suffolk at Flickr

This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.

The Five Tibetan Rites

May 19, 2009 /

When browsing through videos from Yoga Today I came across The Five Tibetan Rites. At Wikipedia the practice is described like this:

  • First Rite: Clockwise spinning: inhale and exhale deeply as you spin.
  • Second Rite: Inhale deeply while lifting the head and legs; exhale while lowering the head and legs.
  • Third Rite: Inhale as the spine arches back; exhale as the spine returns to an erect position.
  • Fourth Rite: Inhale while rising up; hold the breath while in the top position and tense the muscles; exhale while returning to the starting position.
  • Fifth Rite: Inhale while raising the body; exhale while lowering the body.

Read more:
Five Tibetan Rites (Wikipedia)

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

When mind attacks body – the nocebo effect

May 13, 2009 /

Today at Twitter I got this link, The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body. It’s a really interesting article that goes from placebo (when mind helps the body) to nocebo (when mind attacks body).

The idea that believing you are ill can make you ill may seem far-fetched, yet rigorous trials have established beyond doubt that the converse is true – that the power of suggestion can improve health. This is the well-known placebo effect. Placebos cannot produce miracles, but they do produce measurable physical effects.

The placebo effect has an evil twin: the nocebo effect, in which dummy pills and negative expectations can produce harmful effects. The term “nocebo”, which means “I will harm”, was not coined until the 1960s, and the phenomenon has been far less studied than the placebo effect.

What I find interesting but not surprising is that this is a yin-yang pair, good and bad, in both cases the mind affects the body. The nocebo effect can also explain how voodoo works:

What we do know suggests the impact of nocebo is far-reaching. “Voodoo death, if it exists, may represent an extreme form of the nocebo phenomenon,” says anthropologist Robert Hahn of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, who has studied the nocebo effect.

The article gives an example of a person who was told that he was terminally ill and died within the said timeframe. It was then found out that the diagnosis was wrong, still the person and those surrounding him believed in it and acted/reacted as if it was true. Mind attacked body.

Despite the growing evidence that the nocebo effect is all too real, it is hard in this rational age to accept that people’s beliefs can kill them. After all, most of us would laugh if a strangely attired man leapt about waving a bone and told us we were going to die. But imagine how you would feel if you were told the same thing by a smartly dressed doctor with a wallful of medical degrees and a computerful of your scans and test results.

I find this connection between mind and body very interesting. I know the good effects from yoga and meditation, this is the darker side of it.

This was originally posted at Zen And More, another blog of mine.

Making presentations in the TED style – The TED Commandments

May 12, 2009 /

I got a link in my Twitter stream pointing to The TED presentation commandments which is a great list of ten commandments in order to make a great presentation.

The TED Commandments

  1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
  2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
  3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
  4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
  5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
  6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
  7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
  8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
  9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
  10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.

Presentation Zen

That post lead me to Making presentations in the TED style at Presentation Zen. The TED commandments are here too but the best part is the reviews of some TED speakers. It says:

There is not one best way to speak at a TED conference, there are many different ways. But what the good presentations have in common is that they were created carefully and thoughtfully with the audience in mind and were delivered with passion, clarity, brevity, and always with “the story” of it (whatever it is) in mind. So let the list of 10 above be your general guide. In addition, take a look at some of the TED presentations below. They all follow a different style but were effective and memorable in their own way.

Go to Presentation Zen, read reviews and learn more about what works (and not).

My comments

The TED commandments are great and useful for any speaker. The presentations listed at Presentation Zen are great examples to learn from. In addition, take a look at some of my favourites:
• Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius.
• Benjamin Zander on music and passion
• Matthew Childs: Hang in there! 9 life lessons from rock climbing.

This was originally posted at Forty Plus Two, another blog of mine.

Let limitations guide you to creative solutions

May 3, 2009 /

I came across this text in “Motivating Yourself – Heroes, Role Models & Rivals” which links to the source at Embrace Constraints (37signals)

Let limitations guide you to creative solutions
There’s never enough to go around. Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough people.

That’s a good thing.

Instead of freaking out about these constraints, embrace them. Let them guide you. Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage.

This was originally posted at another (now extinct) blog of mine.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑