Monthly Archives: August 2018

Manage Your Petty Daily Frustrations with Reframing

Have you ever been waiting in a long grocery line and felt angry and frustrated at the situation?  What about when you’re in the grocery store and people are in your way so you have to wait for them to leave before you can get your eggs or milk or yogurt?  How about when you’re driving and someone dangerously weaves into your lane to cut you off and force you to hit the breaks? These things and others typically make people angry and upset. That is the natural response.  But anger is not healthy.  Anger and stress not only is bad for your mental and emotional health, but it has been proven to manifest negatively in your physical health as well.  So for the sake of your own health and happiness, learning to manage these daily frustrations is key.

Reframing situations is the trick to achieving health and happiness by removing stress and frustration from your daily life.  Reframe the grocery line from being frustrated at everyone in line in front of you to being understanding that everyone in the line is feeling the same frustration too. That you’re not alone in the grocery line and instead you’re all in it together. Reframe the people shopping in the grocery store from obstacles in your life where you matter the most to understanding that people shopping in the grocery store may have worse lives than you, and you are the obstacle in their life.  Reframe the reckless driver who endangered your life and bruised your ego as a worried parent desperately trying to get their sick child to the hospital.

At the end of the day, there are many ways to describe reality.  Specifically, describing reality to yourself is something you have 100% control over.  And it is also something you are guaranteed to never be 100% correct or certain that your description of reality is accurate.  You do not have perfect information, so when you assume the worst, realize that you may probably be wrong in your assumption. Thus, for health and happiness, pause your certainty in your assumptions and instead allow for a more positive description of reality to come forth. Take that one, barring advice to the contrary.

This concept comes from the talk This is Water by David Foster Wallace . It is a great talk if you want to hear him go into more detail and depth about this issue.

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3 Keys to Goal Setting Success

Goal setting isn’t easy.  Setting a goal is easy.  What is goal setting?  It’s not just picking a goal.

Goal setting is about picking

  1. The right goal
    – How big is this goal?  Is it going to be 3 steps over a few days, or a hundred step over months or years?
    – What category should you set your goal in? Should it be in art, math, relationships, etc?
    – How likely are you going to be able to succeed at this goal?  1%? 90%?
  2. For you
    – Why did you decide to set this goal? Is it because parents/society? Is it because you want to achieve it? is it because you want to get something after you achieve it?
  3. At that time.
    – Why now? Why not take a different goal for now and do this goal later?
    – How does this goal fit into your current life plans and strategy?

Other good questions to ask about your goal are:

  • What is the follow up goal after you finish this goal? What does achieving this goal lead into next?
  • What is your Goal Plan?   (Next post = goal planning!) How do you specifically in detail plan to achieve your goal?

This post is part of AttemptedLiving’s Life Education Curriculum, a collection of core knowledge everyone should have.

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Thoughts on Trust

Trust of Corporate Entities is made up of 3 things: Empathy, Logic, and Authenticity. If your Manager/Leader gives you those 3, then you’re more likely to trust them
https://www.ted.com/talks/frances_frei_how_to_build_and_rebuild_trust

Trust of strangers through a website (Uber/Airbnb/BlaBlaCar) is made up of 3 things: Trust the Idea, Trust the Platform, Trust the Other User
https://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_we_ve_stopped_trusting_institutions_and_started_trusting_strangers
Trust over time: Community Accountability -> Systems of Authority (Legal/Government/Institutions/Church) -> Distributed Systems of Trust (Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, Uber)

 

Personally, to me, in order to trust a system like government, capitalism, education, etc., I need to be taught enough of it that I approve and accept how it works and why.  Example: I hated league of legends ranking because I thought it was flawed and the system was not reflective of my skill because teammates bad, etc.  But then I was convinced of the system, and experienced the ranking system working correctly when viewed over long periods of time, and then I realized that I can accept the system, and that I had enough tools and skills to assess my performance and learn and improve and see that work pay off. Then I became much more willing to invest in the system.

This principle to me is true for capitalism as well.  Before I understood capitalism, I hated it and believed it was the cause and source of all my suffering as a poor person.  Now I understand it’s use and what it’s good at, so I can understand why it exists despite the fact that it did and does and will continue to cause pain and suffering to those it wasn’t designed to serve.  Now I can participate knowing that it’s not a flawed system, it’s just a limited system.  The analogy is: The butter knife is used to put butter on bread, not to cut through tough steak.  If you try to misuse the butter knife you will have a hard time.  The steak knife is used to cut through tough steak, but if you try to use it to spread butter you’ll have a hard time. Capitalism was designed for use by the rich. It was not designed for the poor. Using capitalism on the poor is like using the wrong knife for the wrong purpose.  It doesn’t mean the knife is bad, it just means the use case and application is wrong.

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