Category: personal AnGoL

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Advice:: Alex Payne — Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity

Everyone Wants A Cheerleader
Everyone says they’re comfortable with criticism and with critics, because not being able to handle criticism is a sign of immaturity. What people really want, though, are cheerleaders. Nowhere in life is this more true than in business.
A healthy business needs passionate employees to succeed. Critics are the most passionate people you can find, but we’re conditioned to assume that critics are negative curmudgeons with nothing more than slings and arrows to contribute. So rather than seeking out critics, employers seek out cheerleaders.
Cheerleaders are, on the face of it, lovely people to have around an office. They’re just super excited to be there, even if they haven’t had the time or inclination to really think about why. They abhor any suggestion of negativity, and pave over it with empty can-dos. A cheerleader might be a good worker or he might not be. It doesn’t really matter, because the guy is just so damn nice.
via Alex Payne — Criticism, Cheerleading, and Negativity.

I use to be a vortex of negativity. I believe everyone goes through a I’m mad towards the world for no fucking reason phase.
After I got through some of my hang-ups I believe I started to criticize most things/people/stuff. People don’t really like this.
Now; I believe I am in a If I care for this/for you I will not shut up. As most things balance is needed. I accept you/this for what you/this is , But I still yearn for you to meet your potential, yet if you don’t it’s not an issue.  It is this constant battle between loving/accepting who we/they are , and wanting to change/improve who we/they are.
If we love ourselves too much we don’t change, If we hate ourselves too much we become powerless to change.
It’s this dualism that keeps us going forward one step at a time.
What does this mean to you? Some friends will push your patience. Some friends will make you hate them. Some fill question what you believe in. Some will tell you flat out you are wrong. Don’t go for the primal reaction of wanting only cheerleaders. If your friends can’t be honest with you, who can?

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Funny:: Nice Pacquiao Mention

Smiled reading this!

Q: If the boxing higher-ups had any sense whatsoever they would give us Pacman/Mayweather in six months. I would stop everything to have a fight night party for this event. I have not paid for a boxing event since Holyfield/Lewis in 1999 but I would spend at least $300-$500 to see this. What is the holdup?
— Seth Johnson, Middletown, N.Y.
SG: It’s going to be disappointing. Just warning you now. Floyd Mayweather Jr. could never in a million years trade punches with Manny Pacquiao. He will be on his bicycle for 12 rounds. There is no way that, at this point in his life, Mayweather wants any part of Pacquiao, a concrete-headed, indefatigable freak of nature who can finish with either hand from every angle. If Mayweather gets in the ring, he’ll end up doing more laps than Steve Prefontaine did for the University of Oregon. Just keep your guard up when you’re spending that $64.95.
(Important note: Will I be spending that money? Of course! Happily! I made the decision during Pacman’s glorious evisceration of Miguel Cotto that he finally had reached the exalted “I Don’t Care Who You Are Fighting, I Am Watching It Live & That’s That” status, which puts him in the following company: Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tyson. My own personal Mount Rushmore. Pacquiao hit Tiger/Federer status about a year ago, and nobody cared. That’s why he needs the Mayweather fight so badly. We’ve seen dominant pound-for-pound guys these past two decades, but nobody with finishing power anything like what Pacman has. He’s like a coked-up Aaron Pryor, only without the coke. Insane. If he’s fighting, I am watching.)
via Bill Simmons’ Thanksgiving mailbag – ESPN.

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Sentences To Ponder: Some new happiness research

There is, I suspect, a common theme here – that people don’t predict what will make them happy at all well. Having children and investing in careers rather than in social networks doesn’t make us happy, and yet we do it in our 20s and 30s, only to be miserable later.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: Some new happiness research.

That was one loaded sentence. Thinking about my life, I am solidly in Team Social Network and Not the  TEAM Children/Career that a lot of my generation are slowly (fast?)  going into. I don’t know, maybe in our 40’s we would know.
PS 01: I’m not anti kids. Simply put I see myself as a big kidI sometimes can’t be trusted with myself, why the hell would I trust myself with the responsibility for another human being.
PS 02: I’m not strictly anti-career, It’s just that I believe that our society/backgrounds do not allow us the leeway to really find our passions. If we dive head on to our “careers” when will we ever find our passions. 2 things.
One, I’m lucky to have my mom and dad as my parents.  This for me means that I have a personal responsibility to be the best that I can be, whatever that means.
Two, I saw a friend from high school/college in the elevator yesterday, we decided to catch up a little. During our conversation he told me something. He has found his passion, He said in a way Pisay and UP wasn’t such a good fit for him, what he wanted to do was for from what he learned from these great learning institutions. This is the third time (That I remember vividly but probably more than 10 or even more) that I have heard this from a friend from Philippine Science/University of the Philippines. In a way it made me happy. Not that my friends wasted a lot of their time, rather they do not see the other side of the coin, I prefer to think of their predicaments more in the light of; I am lucky to have found my passion, it is probably because of the different things that I went through in life, of which going to PSHS/UP was a part of.
Read the original post to get to the research to justify the claims.

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Introspection::It Stops Here

The students were interviewed after the study and most appeared “genuinely flabbergasted” to learn that an experimenter swap had occurred, yet they still responded differently to the prostitution scenario compared to the control group. Proulx and Heine say these results are similar to other studies where people have been made to feel threatened before making a judgement: when threatened, people are harsher judges of others. The researchers suggest that the students implicitly noticed the change of experimenter, but since this type of a swap is unusual in real life, they never became conscious of it. Because of this implicit detection of an unusual event, the students behaved as if they had been threatened.
via What if you saw something that rocked your world … and you didn’t notice? : Cognitive Daily.

Read the whole thing it’s very intructive. I’d like to just say that we should try to understand other people’s predicaments. Some are just simply lonely/sad/insecure and that’s why they are acting like class A @$$h0135. There was this movie “Pay It Forward”, where in upon receiving a major blessing from another person, you Pay It Forward. I think we can make something different. I don’t have a gift for naming things so let’s just call it “It Stops Here”.
Whenever somebody is acting harshly towards you, take a few deep breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
Whenever some other driver cuts you off, You don’t go ballistic. Respectfully correct the driver , take a couple of deep breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
When you get home after a long stressful day at work, before entering your house, you take a couple of breaths and tell yourself “It Stops Here”.
See when we are insecure we go into defensively offensive mode.  If you really are the strong one, then you roll with the punches and make it stop where you are. We must make it such that there is a voice inside our heads that says “I would not be abusive because another person is abusive towards me.”,” I will not let my insecurity become the reason I shout at another person.” It’s the small things like this simple act that make the world so much more livable.

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UCLA Loneliness Scale

Take the loneliness test here: UCLA Loneliness Scale.
UCLA Loneliness Scale
Indicate how often each of the statements below is descriptive of you. Circle one letter for each statement:
via UCLA Loneliness Scale.

If I interpret this correctly I have low loneliness, but this is because I don’t feel lonely doing things alone (I love how this sentence rolls of the mouth).  I searched for the UCLA Loneliness Scale after reading this post by Gretchen of The Happiness Project. Loneliness was on my mind because of the study this article was based on. (Pointer From Jayson F.).
Hope we can all self-evaluate and if we feel lonely then connect with people. Loneliness can be debilitating.

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Advice::The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog

In the same paper Gilbert and colleagues report studies on people getting dumped by their partners, told their personalities are deficient and academics failing to get tenure. The pattern repeats: people think it’s going to feel bad, but generally it’s not as bad as they expect, and people recover quicker than they predict.
The merciful unconscious
The very fact that we don’t seem to notice our psychological immune system is probably the only reason it works at all. After all, in order to feel better we have to conveniently forget some important facts, such as how much we wanted the job we didn’t get, loved the partner who walked out or were enjoying the ice cream we just dropped.
But the good news is when life deals out its cruelest blows, our unconscious will be working overtime to find the upside. That’s why life often doesn’t turn out to feel as bad as we think. Soon enough most of us are on our merry way again with a bounce in our step, all thanks to the merciful but covert work of the psychological immune system.
via The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog.

I understand how powerful this knowledge is but the fear is still there.
I hope I am not alone when I say that the fear of not getting what you want is one of the main reason that I sometimes or probably the majority of times I do not go after that which I want.  We really need to convince ourselves that, It’s not going to be as bad as you think! The earth will not end after she rejects you (well at least for a week/month or so it seem to have ended). Life goes on even if you got fired. The birds will still sing even if you are alone. See it’s like the rich getting richer. The people who fear less get to live more. The people who fear more live less. A friend told me that I lacked faith because I was always too prepared. This advice is for me. Fear less. Have faith. Things are seldom as bad/more bad than you expect it to be!

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Advice::There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) | Derek Sivers

This was inspiring hope you can read the whole thing!

Doing this in addition to my full course load, I graduated college in two and a half years – (got my bachelor's degree when I was 20) – squeezing every bit of education out of that place that I could.
But the permanent effect was this:
Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me “the standard pace is for chumps” – that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than “just anyone” – you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life – not just school.
Before I met him, I was just a kid who wanted to be a musician, doing it casually.
Ever since our five lessons, high expectations became my norm, and still are to this day. Whether music, business, or personal – whether I actually achieve my expectations or not – the point is that I owe every great thing that’s happened in my life to Kimo’s raised expectations. That’s all it took. A random meeting and five music lessons to convince me I can do anything more effectively than anyone expects.
(And so can anyone else.)
I wish the same experience for everyone. I have no innate abilities. This article wasn't meant to be about me as much as the life-changing power of a great teacher and raised expectations.
via There’s no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.) | Derek Sivers.

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Learned::Ezra Klein – The behavioral economics of Thanksgiving

“Move to chopsticks!” he exclaimed, making bites smaller and harder to take. If the chopsticks are a bit extreme, smaller plates and utensils might work the same way. Study after study shows that people eat more when they have more in front of them. It’s one of our predictable irrationalities: We judge portions by how much is left rather than how full we feel. Smaller portions lead us to eat less, even if we can refill the plate.
via Ezra Klein – The behavioral economics of Thanksgiving.

I bought a box containing 40 pcs of california maki about two months ago. I couldn’t get over the fact that after only 15 pieces I was so full. People who have seen me eat know that I can eat alot. It really surprised me. I knew the reason must be psychological/cognitive.  Maybe I can use this while I’m dieting!
FYI: I gained alot of pounds because of my Mindanao vacation. I still can’t get over how many eat all you can’s Cagayan De Oro has, or how any where you look most barbecue or grill has unlimited rice in Davao. Must exercise, Must Diet!

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Repost::Open as in water, the fluid necessary for life

Most of our happiness and productivity comes from the everyday details of our lives: the people we live and work with, the books we read, the hikes we take, the parties we attend, etc. But how do we choose these things? How do we know what to do, and how do know if we’ll like it? The obvious answer is that we do and like whatever the TV tells us to do and like. I’m not certain that's the best answer though.
By sharing more of our own thoughts and lives with the world, we contribute to the global pool of “how to live”, and over time we also get contributions back from the world. Think of it as “open source living”. This has certainly been my experience with my blog and FriendFeed. Not only do people occasionally say that it has helped them, but I’ve also met interesting new people and gotten a lot of good leads on new ideas. These are typically small things, but our lives are woven from the small details of everyday living. For example, I saw a good TED talk on “The science of motivation”, shared it on FriendFeed, and in the comments Laura Norvig suggested a book called Unconditional Parenting, which turns out to be very good.
via Paul Buchheit: Open as in water, the fluid necessary for life.