30 Ways to Reboot Your Body by Ben Greenfield | Book Summary
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30 Ways to Reboot Your Body: A Complete User Manual for Getting the Most Out of the Human Body by Ben Greenfield
How healthy do you think you are? Very? Well, perhaps you don’t run a marathon every few months. But you’re probably healthy enough, which is the category that most people find themselves in. You might not be a dedicated athlete, but you move around enough to stay in shape.
And that might be just fine for you. But did you know that with just a few changes, you could easily become a very fit person, able to take on challenges you never before thought you could achieve? This book summary showcase the highlights of the author’s 30 easy ways to become a fitter, stronger, healthier person.
In this summary of 30 Ways to Reboot Your Body by Ben Greenfield, you’ll also discover
- how a microwave can help get you moving;
- why no exercise regimen is as important as a good night’s sleep; and
- why you need to be wary of electrical pollution.
30 Ways to Reboot Your Body Key Idea #1: To start pushing your health and fitness goals forward, identify which habits hold you back.
Let’s face it: you’re not as fit as you’d like to be. But that doesn’t mean you should just give up.
The first step is learning what can be improved. Do you eat too many processed foods, drink too much alcohol or caffeinated beverages, or take paracetamol or other medications unnecessarily? These are the kinds of bad habits that lead to chronic inflammation and damage your body.
Consuming these “bad” foods essentially wreaks havoc on your gut. You might not know it, but your gut is one of the most important systems your body has. It makes up three-quarters of your immune system! And yet so many people don’t properly care for their gut. Their poor diets strain their digestive systems, which leads to hormone imbalances, excessive hunger, fatigue and worse.
It’s not just what you eat that can damage your gut, but your stress levels have a powerful impact, too.
We accept stress as a normal part of our professional lives. But stress is dangerous. Constant stress increases levels of the hormone cortisol in the body. When it’s produced at high levels for extended periods of time, cortisol can harm bones and muscles, and disrupt normal hormone regulation.
Our jobs and relationships aren’t the only sources of stress, either. Excessive exercise can stress your muscles and joints. Many think that staying active means exercising hard and pushing yourself to the limit. But guess what: people burn more fat by performing lighter exercises more frequently.
By all means, keep up your heavy program if you like it! But do so only occasionally. Regular, light exercises will help you stay fit, and they’re much easier on your body, too.
With these basics in mind, let’s move on to a more detailed fitness strategy.
30 Ways to Reboot Your Body Key Idea #2: Begin your journey toward a healthier lifestyle by taking the time to reboot your body.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could wake up tomorrow and simply be healthier? But Rome wasn’t built in a day. A realistic plan for rebooting your body takes four to 12 weeks.
So, let’s start with a solid first step: an assessment of your body.
If you’ve been avoiding a check-up at the doctor’s, now’s the time to book an appointment. From blood tests to examining your family’s history of disease, it pays to be thorough. This check-up will help you identify problem areas or extra precautions you may need to take. Check if diabetes is prevalent in your family, for example, or if your thyroid isn’t functioning at 100 percent.
The next step is to create a plan. What are your health goals? Do you want to lose a specific amount of weight, get fit enough to run a marathon or stop eating junk food once and for all?
Define your goal and break it down into tasks you can achieve every day, from eating a certain amount of green vegetables to exercising for one hour each evening.
But how do you stay on track? Easy! By measuring. Look at your goals and decide which metrics would be most helpful in assessing your progress. One metric might be your heart rate variability, which indicates how fast your heart reacts when you start exercising (the higher the better).
Your gut has an important role to play, too. These weeks are your chance to clean all that bad stuff out of your body. Inflammatory foods that contain gluten, caffeine or artificial sugars have to go.
Build a new foundation for better nutrition by remembering how food gives you energy. Carbohydrates and fats are the main sources of energy in the human diet. We tend to rely on carbohydrates for energy, and as a result, consume more carbohydrates than we should. This causes fat to accumulate in our bodies, and can even lead to allergies and other complications.
So try to switch to getting your energy from healthy fats, and reduce your carbohydrate consumption.
30 Ways to Reboot Your Body Key Idea #3: After rebooting your body, introduce new elements into your health and fitness routines.
So you’ve built the foundations for a healthier body. But why stop now? There’s so much more to gain.
Learn how to consume delicious things in a more sustainable way and take your body to the next level. Food, after all, should be enjoyable. And eating a restricted diet, while useful during a reboot, isn’t a long-term solution for your health.
What you’ve got to work on now is reintroducing foods into your diet. Here it’s important to focus on only reintroducing foods with the least negative effects, and enjoying them only in moderation. For example, a small piece of dark chocolate every now and then can still be justifiable.
Get your fix for wheat and grains by eating varieties that are soaked, sprouted or fermented. Quinoa is a great option. Dairy can also be a part of your diet, ideally raw or organically raised. Fermented varieties of soy, such as tempeh, are also good. Black coffee is a great way to start the day, and you can even indulge in a glass of organic red wine, on occasion.
Measurement is just as important in this phase as in the previous one, so keep an eye on how your body responds to new foods. Everyone’s gut is different and sensitive to different things. What works for others may not work for you.
At this stage, you’re also ready to start expanding your exercise routine. You’ll want to increase both your strength and lung capacity, combining slow training and high-intensity interval training.
It’s important at this stage to keep your activity levels high by making movement an integral part of your day. For example, set up a pull-up bar at home and do five pull-ups while you’re waiting for the microwave to ding! And avoid sitting down for too long. Try experimenting with a standing desk – you’ll be surprised at how much better you feel after a few hours of not slouching in a chair!
You can even bring movement into your social life by exercising with coworkers or signing up for running groups. It’s a great way to meet people and prevents your exercise routine from becoming stale.
But we’re not finished! The next stage is about making living healthy instinctive.
30 Ways to Reboot Your Body Key Idea #4: Live to the fullest by vitalizing your body with smart exercises and solid routines.
If you’ve come this far, your body is performing better than ever. If you’re ready to kick things up yet another notch, then it’s time to get vitalizing.
Start by incorporating new tricks into your training routine. When you perform daily exercises and sprint a few times a week, you’ll get tired and fatigued. But highly specialized training can fix that. For example, you can try hypoxia, the exercise of depriving yourself of oxygen for brief periods. You can do this by swimming 25 meters without breathing – it can help keep you fresh and fight off your body’s aging mechanisms.
You can also test new strategies to develop stamina. In early stages, pushing your body to the limit is not recommended; but now that you’ve achieved peak fitness, you’re ready for more. Exercise at your utmost capacity at least once a month, and at most once a week. Just make sure you allow your body time to recover. You won’t get stronger unless your body can restore itself regularly.
That’s why you have to change your lifestyle, as well, like by making sleep a very high priority. A healthy sleep rhythm is essential for maintaining health and fitness, and it’s no surprise: sleep is your brain and body’s prime time for recovery and repair.
Eight hours of sleep is a minimum which should never be compromised – people who sleep any less tend to develop health issues.
One trick for better sleep is to beware of electrical pollution. Since your cells’ ability to absorb nutrients depends on their voltage, it’s critical you stay away from areas with lots of electrical currents. You can do this by switching off your digital devices.
There’s one last thing to remember in this final stage, and it might seem surprising. If you ever feel like “cheating” when handed a slice of cake, for example, sometimes it’s ok to give in.
Cheating occasionally or eating something that’s not healthy is nothing to feel guilty about. In fact, eating a calorie-rich meal can even boost your body’s weight-loss ability, as the body’s hormone signals go into overdrive in response to a surprise treat.
In Review: 30 Ways to Reboot Your Body Book Summary
The key message in this book:
Unhealthy eating, chronic inflammation, imbalanced hormones and poor training plans have wrecked our bodies and brains. You can change this situation not only through more training, but through a radical reboot of your body. Only then can you enhance your health and performance and push on to the highest levels of achievement.
Actionable advice:
Get some air!
We’ve been conditioned to spend our days indoors, sitting, without complaint. It’s time to break the habit and learn to love the outdoors again! Getting out is a great motivation to move. Locate your nearest parks, woodland reserves or even playgrounds. Make time in your weekly routine to lose yourself outdoors and reconnect with your body and local environment.
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller | Book Summary
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The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller
Have you always doubted Christianity? Have you struggled to reconcile a world of pain and sorrow with a kind and loving God? Are you unsure by the claims of numerous religions that say they are the only true religion?
The following chapters will unpack a few essential truths about the Christian faith.
One of the most famous pastors of New York named Timothy Keller has used his new method to help in reviving the Christian faith. In these chapters, he describes the main points of Christian faith and its most common oppositions.
1 – Different from the popular belief, the Christian church is not particularly exclusive; however, they have their core principles.
People have a lot of things against the Christian church. However, the idea that Christianity is a strict and self-righteous religion is what scares the majority of the people away.
This is a result of Christianity’s strict beliefs and their claims of being just the only true religion and this is what makes a lot of people doubt Christianity.
For instance, a few parts of the Christian faith such as the belief that Jesus is truly the son of God are not compatible with some other religions. By claiming that their belief is real and true, Christianity denotes that other religions are wrong.
Each religion is right in its own way for the majority of people. This is why they don’t support Christianity because it assumes that its own rules and perception are the right ones. Actually, this type of notion can really make some people very annoyed.
For instance, the author of this book was once part of a panel discussion where he, a rabbi and an imam all said that not all religions are true. This statement made one of the students that were at the discussion annoyed, the student answered by saying, “We will never come to know peace on earth if religious leaders keep on making such exclusive claims!”
However, in reality, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having strong beliefs and core principles. As a matter of fact, everyone and society have a set of core principles that forms their identity and it also distinguishes them from other people.
For Instance, if you believe in the right to private property, or you believe that your life has a basic value, then you are upholding a core principle. Also, all society that has basic rules on how people are meant to behave; for instance, a law against homicide – also has some core principles about life that form a common moral basis for their specific social identity.
Also, even very tolerant groups have their own specific core principles that bring them together and also create their own identity just like Christianity. For example, gay rights activists believe that same-sex relationships should be completely accepted by society.
2 – Your personal or cultural freedom is not threatened by Christianity.
The strict regulations that Christian faith has is another typical misconception about Christian faith. Non-believers usually ask questions like: how can you live a free life if there is a firm set of rules that you have to abide with?
Truly, a lot of people assume that accepting and following Christianity’s strict rules and rigid regulations would threaten their personal and cultural freedom.
For instance, while the author was working as a pastor in New York; he met a lot of people who claimed they can’t become Christians because they wanted to live their life with their own rules and not rules set by another person.
However, Christianity truly has space for your personal freedom and your own practices.
This is due to the fact that the Bible is unclear on several points, and while it instructs you on some essential core beliefs, it also enables everyone to decide precisely how they want to practice their faith.
For instance, the Bible does not have a strict set of rules and regulations for religious services: it just states that religious practices are essential; however, the instructions can be interpreted in various ways. This enables every Christian community and believer to choose the type of service they want, either the loud gospel choirs of Africa or the quiet masses of some Protestant churches.
However, Christianity is beyond permitting personal freedom; it also gives room for the incorporation of existing cultural traditions.
Due to its openness, it is easy for Christianity to be incorporated into several local cultures and traditions. By doing this, Christian beliefs don’t overrule the existing traditions; however, it adds a new layer and new meaning to the culture. For instance, African cultures repeatedly had a strong belief in good and evil spirits as well as the notions of a divine savior. Hence, when they heard about the coming of Jesus Christ and how he resisted the evil spirits while wandering in the desert, they could instantly relate it to Christianity, regardless of their own local traditions.
3 – Christianity is the cause for the majority of the good that in the world.
How do you know if a set of principles is valid or not? One method to know is by observing those who practice such beliefs and see how they act in the world. As for Christianity and a lot of other religions, it is very obvious that its followers have done a lot of good things and they are still doing a lot of wonderful things.
This is because the principles of Christianity lay the basis for good beliefs, and it also inspires its believers to help others particularly those who are worse off than us.
As a matter of fact, not all Christian in history has been reliable in doing good. However, a lot of our Western moral beliefs find their origin in Christianity like the unquestionable value of human life. The source of this belief is from the Bible where God gave a command that no one should kill another person because God created every human. Hence, killing another human means that you are destroying what God made.
Also, according to the Bible; Jesus who is the most significant teacher of Christianity. He also assisted the poor as well as the weak, he even encouraged other people to do such. .He spent a lot of his time among the poor and marginalized, claiming that they are the ones that needed him the most.
Finally, in the seventeenth century, Christians were part of the first people in the United States to go against slavery because it opposed their core principles about every human being’s worth.
Also, the Christian faith encouraged its believers to do great things even during bad times.
For instance, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s faith obliged him to fight courageously against the Nazi administration; he even left London which was a safe place just to fight against it. After his arrest in Germany, he clarified in his various letters to his family that his faith in God gave him the courage to fight injustice, and focus on always helping others even if he had to pay the price of pain and suffering.
4 – It really isn’t a bag thing to accept one’s sins
There is one last common objection to Christian belief which is when you become a Christian, you’ll have to face all the things you have done wrong and you will have to accept that you are a sinner.
However, does this have to be a bad thing?
As a matter of fact, it is really redeeming to accept that you’ve made mistakes and that you are not a perfect person.
For instance, Professor Alberto Delbanco writes about the experience he faced while he was conducting research in the self-help group Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the members was a young man who felt he was cheated by society, and he blamed everyone else for his life that was going wrong. He was very annoyed and felt like he could not escape from his problems.
However, everything changed when one of the other members said: “I experienced the same problem until I had low self-esteem.” He further stated that he was eventually set free after he accepted that he wasn’t perfect and that he and not society had made a lot of mistakes. These statements helped the young man overcome his belief that his own perfect life was ruined by society and he didn’t feel annoyed anymore.
Also, another advantage of accepting our sins is that it helps us do something about them.
For instance, just imagine that you are sick and you continuing blaming your poor health on your surroundings or your genes. Because these things are out of your control, you really can’t do anything about them, and you won’t get any better. However, if you begin to think about what you have done wrong; perhaps you haven’t been exercising enough – you can begin to act differently and make a positive change.
Finally, accepting your sins can also help you focus more on significant things like helping others instead of focusing on just money or your career.
Why?
This is because if you accept that you’ve done bad things in the past, Christianity proposed that you ask God for salvation. This implies that you’ll have to try to please him by abiding by his rules; for instance helping others.
In the following chapter, you’ll learn about the author’s arguments on the reason why it is good to believe in the Christian God.
5 – Suffering, injustice, and calamities don’t oppose God’s existence.
In spite of several people doing their best just to make the world a better place, there is still a lot of suffering. Also, for a lot of people, this simple fact is the core argument against the existence of a loving and just God.
However, what these people fail to see is that these bad things signify something and it can bring out something good.
A popular illustration of this point is the story of Joseph from the bible. Joseph suffered countless sufferings which include him being sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers. All through his terrible suffering he must have prayed for help to God; however, God didn’t intervene. Even though it was painful, his suffering made him become stronger and wiser as a person.
Ultimately, after he was released, he used this strength of character to become a leading politician and he also saved a lot of people from hunger and drought. God allowed him to suffer as a slave because it was just this suffering that made him become a stronger and better person.
On top of the meaning that can be seen in suffering, there is also a more subtle reason that indicates that irrespective of this world’s injustice, we do believe in a higher being even if we fail to recognize it!
The fact that we consider something unfair signifies that we have some belief in a higher being. For instance, if we consider a disaster like a tsunami is an unjust occurrence, instead of a random act of nature, we are assuming that there’s some type of higher-order that is capable of influencing these occurrences. This means that an occurrence can’t be unjust if there is no one responsible for it. Therefore, claiming the occurrence is unjust shows that such catastrophes are more than pure coincidence.
One could even ask further: if there is no God, where do the ideas of “just” and “unjust” originate from, seeing that we can’t quantify justice in the physical world? Here is a likely explanation:
The mere fact that we have a feeling for justice signifies that there’s a God who gave us this idea.
6 – The idea of hell doesn’t oppose the idea of God being a loving God.
The idea of a scorching hell and an angry judging God scares away a lot of possible believers. However, these people don’t really understand the meaning of hell: hell can and should be viewed as an abstract principle which means a deviation from what is right, and a concentration on what is wrong.
For instance, Christian belief says that if you depend on the wrong things such as money and fame, you will live in your own personal hell.
Jesus once described this point in the story of the rich man and he said to the rich man that his money would hinder him from getting into heaven. Jesus meant that the people who are only concerned about money won’t find real happiness and comfort that lies in God, and are instead forced to live in hell on earth.
However, it reasonable that such a loving and just God would get angry at his creations sometimes.
For instance, imagine someone close to you was continually making the same mistakes and never getting to their full potential. There is a possibility that you will get angry because you care for that person and want to help them take charge of their life.
Sometimes, people that are wrong need to get punished for their actions. Imagine a world where there is no punishment for a murderer in a society. That barely looks fair particularly to the victims and their relatives.
A biblical illustration of this was when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the forbidden fruit, he felt betrayed, he became furious and he banished them from paradise. However, he still showed that he cared for them by making clothes for them and watching over them which shows the idea that God can judge and be a loving God at the same time.
7 – Science can’t contradict God’s existence.
Have you ever heard people say that religion is no longer essential because modern science now describes all the mysteries in the world and it has also proven religion to be wrong in the process?
These people are not aware that science and religion aren’t as incompatible as they look.
For instance, the theory of evolution is frequently stated as one of the core conflicts between science and religion. However, as a matter of fact, the Catholic Church stated a long time ago that the theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity.
Moreover, the fact that a lot of scientists are very religious shows that there’s no conflict between practicing science and religion. For example, take Francis Collins who is the head of the Human Genome Project and also a profound religious Christian.
A lot of these scientists acknowledge that there are still a lot of things science can’t explain, however, religion can explain.
For instance, all events require a cause. However, what was the very first cause that initiated everything in the universe? This can’t be answered by science without coming to a contradiction, such as suggesting an infinite chain of causes that began from nowhere! However, religion obviously puts God as the first cause that formed the universe.
Some people object and say that the Big Bang was the initial cause. However, if we say the Big Bang was the start of all things, we’ve just formed a new question of what instigated the Big Bang?
Another confusion of the relationship between science and religion is when scientists attempt to challenge or explain miracles.
What they fail to recognize is that miracles work on a different level of meaning and proof. When they ask for a scientific explanation for a miracle illustrated in the Bible; like when Jesus turned water into wine they are missing the point. Because by their description, miracles can’t be explained by science.
8 – It is a fact for Christians that Jesus really rose from the dead.
The main belief of Christianity is also one of its popular discussed topics which are the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, can something so miraculous actually be real?
Let’s look at this statement through what we know from the Bible: immediately after the death of Jesus, there was a rapid change in the entire community of Christian that can only be explained by real experience. All Christian instantaneously began to believe and preach that Jesus had risen from the dead. For the Christians, the lack of big disagreements inside the Christian community at that time signifies that the resurrection was true, and there was no point talking about its validity.
Also, there’s the fact that the belief in God as a resurrected and transformed human body – in contrast to Ancient Greek mythology, where gods sometimes just used humans as a disguise was totally new in the Jewish community. However, since it actually happened, no one cared that it was a new belief.
However, even if the story of the resurrection was not true, it would have been faked very poorly.
Why?
Because a lot of its details are possibly destructive for Christian doctrine, and it would have led to a lot of doubts at that point.
For instance, the first set of people that met Jesus after his resurrection were all women. Then, women weren’t seen as official witnesses in court. If somebody had faked the whole story, it would have been very convincing to state that the first witnesses were men.
In conclusion, the resurrection of Jesus’ story is supported by a lot of eyewitnesses mentioned in the Bible.
In an account of the resurrection, Paul apostle mentions more than 300 witnesses mostly by their names and claims that a lot are still alive. This was significant evidence because the relatively safe roads of the Roman Empire made it easy to see the listed witnesses and also ask them questions directly. Definitely, he would not have gone through all these troubles unless he was certain that the resurrection was real.
9 – Even though there is no certain proof, a lot of clues lead us to believe in God.
Debates on religion can go on and on forever. Although there may be no proof for God, there are certainly a lot of strong clues that talks about his existence.
For instance, we all have experienced emotions that appear to connect us to something beyond our daily world. This shows that there is a higher plane of existence and within it, there might be a higher being.
Additionally, a lot of people have moral feelings and a deep sense of beauty; these feelings are difficult to explain in both our normal and non-spiritual world. For instance, we think that some things are simply wrong, for instance, committing murder without any reason; while other things are really beautiful such as a breathtaking landscape that seems to touch something inside us that is unexplainable.
Also, another argument for the existence of God is that we have the need for a higher being and a higher meaning for our lives – and where there is a desire; something regularly exists to fulfill that desire.
People who don’t believe in God or a higher meaning experience what author John Updike called a sense of “horror.” This enables them to continually seek for a higher calling in life and a lot of people wish for a higher being that watches over them to make that call. It is reasonable to assume that there is such a God who can satisfy these desires seeing that a lot of people have this desire for a deeper meaning and an almighty God.
Why?
Because it would be unreasonable to have a desire for something that is not in existence, as we would never be able to fulfill it. For instance, the fact that we have a desire like hunger strongly shows that there is something like food to satisfy our desire. And truly there is!
The Value of Voluntary Simplicity by Richard Gregg | Book Summary
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The Value of Voluntary Simplicity by Richard Gregg
The practice of simplicity means that you have decided to lay up your treasure in heaven rather than on earth; that your treasure will consist of intangibles rather than physical things; that it will not lie in the realm of material power; that you prefer to cultivate and amass the reality of human trust rather than its symbol, money. Practicing simplicity means not only that you have made this decision, but that you are doing one of the important parts of it, you are conforming with one of its essential preconditions, you are expressing your preference by actual conduct.
Introduction
“Voluntary simplicity of living has been advocated and practiced by the founders of most of the great religions: Buddha, Lao Tse, Moses and Mohammed—also by many saints and wise men such as St. Francis, John Woolman, the Hindu rishis, the Hebrew prophets, the Moslem sufis; by many artists and scientists; and by such great modern leaders as Lenin and Gandhi.”
“Our present ‘mental climate’ is not favorable either to a clear understanding of the value of simplicity or to its practice. Simplicity seems to be a foible of saints and occasional geniuses, but not something for the rest of us.”
“We are not here considering asceticism in the sense of a suppression of instincts. What we mean by voluntary simplicity is not so austere and rigid. Simplicity is a relative matter, depending on climate, customs, culture, the character of the individual.“
What is Voluntary Simplicity?
“Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life.”
“It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.”
“Of course, as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another. Yet it is easy to see that our individual lives and community life would be much changed if every one organized and graded and simplified his purposes so that one purpose would easily dominate all the others, and if each person then re-organized his outer life in accordance with this new arrangement of purposes—discarding possessions and activities irrelevant to the main purpose.”
“The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself, but the meaning of the principle is now perhaps clear enough for discussion, even though the applications of it may differ.”
“There are a number of reasons for voluntary simplicity of living, a considerable number, but perhaps not so many as to make the discussion of simplicity itself complex. If it seems complex, it is because so much intellectual clutter and underbrush has to be removed in order to see clearly.“
Simplicity & Purpose
“Simplicity is clearly a sign of a pure heart, i.e., a single purpose. Also, because environment has an undeniable influence on character, simplicity of living would help to stimulate and maintain such singleness of purpose.”
“There can be beauty in complexity but complexity is not the essence of beauty. Harmony of line, proportion, and color are much more important. In a sense, simplicity is an important element in all great art, for it means the removal of all details that are irrelevant to a given purpose. It is one of the arts within the great art of life. And perhaps the mind can be guided best if its activities are always kept organically related to the most important purposes in life. Mahatma Gandhi believes that the great need of young people is not so much education of the head as education of the heart.”
“There is the simplicity of the fool and the simplicity of the wise man. The fool is simple because his mind and will are incapable of dealing with many things. The wise man is simple not for that reason but because he knows that all life, both individual and group, has a certain few essential strands or elements and outside of those are a vast multiplicity of other things. If the few essential strands are kept healthy and vigorous, the rest of the details develop almost automatically, like the bark and twigs and leaves of a tree. So the wise man confines most of his attention to the few essentials of life, and that constitutes his simplicity.”
Simplicity & Civilization
“The great advances in science and technology have not solved the moral problems of civilization. Those advances have altered the form of some of those problems, greatly increased others, dramatized some, and made others much more difficult of solution. The just distribution of material things is not merely a problem of technique or of organization. It is primarily a moral problem.”
“Quantitative measurement and the use of quantitative relationships are among the most powerful elements in science, technology, and money. Because of this, the preponderating stimuli exerted by science, technology, and money are on the quantitative rather than the qualitative aspects of life. The qualitative elements are cramped. But the essence of man’s social life lies in qualitative rather than quantitative relationships: it is moral, not technological.“
“We had better turn our attention to cultivating qualitative relationships and the ways of life which promote them. Our technology is overdeveloped. It rests on a moral foundation which had developed in a simpler world and was intended for simpler conditions. Our civilization is like a huge engine resting on too small and weak a foundation.”
“In Volume III of Arnold J. Toynbee’s great Study of History he discusses the growth of civilizations. For some sixty pages he considers what constitutes growth of civilization, including in that term growth in wisdom as well as in stature. With immense learning he traces the developments of many civilizations—After spreading out the evidence, he comes to the conclusion that real growth of a civilization does not consist of increasing command over the physical environment, nor of increasing command over the human environment (i.e., over other nations or civilizations), but that it lies in what he calls ‘etherealization’: a development of intangible relationships. He points out that this process involves both a simplification of the apparatus of life and also a transfer of interest and energy from material things to a higher sphere. He follows Bergson in equating complexity with Matter and simplicity with Life.”
“To those who say that machinery and the apparatus of living are merely instruments and devices which are without moral nature in themselves, but which can be used for either good or evil, I would point out that we are all influenced by the tools and means which we use. Again and again in the lives of individuals and of nations we see that when certain means are used vigorously, thoroughly, and for a long time, those means assume the character and influence of an end in themselves. We become obsessed by our tools. The strong quantitative elements in science, machinery, and money, and in their products, tend to make the thinking and life of those who use them mechanistic and divided. The relationships which science, machinery, and money create are mechanical rather than organic. Machinery and money give us more energy outwardly but they live upon and take away from us our inner energy.”
“We think that our machinery and technology will save us time and give us more leisure, but really they make life more crowded and hurried.”
“The mechanized countries are not the countries noted for their leisure. Any traveller to the Orient can testify that the tempo of life there is far more leisurely than it is in the industrialized West.”
“No—the way to master the increasing complexity of life is not through more complexity. The way is to turn inward to that which unifies all—not the intellect but the spirit—and then to devise and put into operation new forms and modes of economic and social life that will truly and vigorously express that spirit. As an aid to that and as a corrective to our feverish over-mechanization, simplicity is not outmoded but greatly needed.“
“There are certain elemental human needs which have to be met—food, clothing and shelter. These vary according to climate, custom and development of civilization, yet in any one place certain minima of these must be met if life is to exist at all. And if life is to be vigorous, there must be a margin above the minima, so as to provide physiological reserves for endurance, resistance to disease, and sudden emergencies requiring unusual exertion; and to provide mental and moral reserves for the work of adaptation to changes and making progress in civilization.”
“Simplicity of living is, as we have seen, one of the conditions of reaching and maintaining these right relationships. Therefore simplicity is an important condition for permanent satisfaction with life. And inasmuch as national self-respect is a necessary condition for the maintenance of a nation or a civilization it would seem that widespread simplicity, as a cultural habit of an entire nation, would in the long run be essential for its civilization to endure.”
Simplicity & Environment
“Observance of simplicity is a recognition of the fact that everyone is greatly influenced by his surroundings and all their subtle implications. The power of environment modifies all living organisms.”
“Therefore each person will be wise to select and create deliberately such an immediate environment of home things as will influence his character in the direction which he deems most important and such as will make it easier for him to live in the way that he believes wisest. Simplicity gives him a certain kind of freedom and clearness of vision.“
“A lesser consideration is that in these days of rapid change, it is easier to adapt oneself if one is not much cumbered with things. Physical mobility in these days is an asset.“
“In our American mechanized environment it will take intelligence to change successfully from living a complex life to a simple life.”
“What is simplicity for an American would be far from simple to a Chinese peasant.”
Simplicity & Consumption
“Simplicity of living affects primarily consumption. It sets a standard of consumption. Consumption is the area within which each individual can affect the economic life of the community. Small as his own share may be, that is the area within which every person can exercise his control over the forces of economic production and distribution.”
“Competitive ostentation—’keeping up with the Joneses,’—is a prominent feature of modern social life. Simplicity of living acts as a deterrent to such ostentation and hence to both greed and competition.“
“The first step I can take to cut down my share in exploitation is to live simply. All luxuries require unnecessary labor.”
“The production and consumption of luxuries divert labor and capital from tasks which are socially more productive and beneficial; they often take land away from wise use; and they waste raw materials which might be used to better advantage.”
“A recent study by Professor E. L. Thorndike, of Columbia University, indicates that the actual American expenditures for food, clothing and housing are considerably larger than the actual necessities to sustain life.”
Ruskin: “Possession is in use only, which for each man is sternly limited; so that such things and so much of them as he can use, are, indeed, well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any other things, are ill for him, or Illth.”
“The greatest characters, those who have influenced the largest numbers of people for the longest time, have been people with extremely few possessions. For example, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Kagawa, Socrates, St. Francis, Confucius, Sun Yat Sen, Lenin, Gandhi, many scientists, inventors, and artists.”
Vida D. Scudder: “The higher ranges of life where personality has fullest play and is most nearly free from the tyranny of circumstances, are precisely those where it depends least on possessions … The higher we ascend among human types and the more intense personalities become, the more the importance of possessions dwindles.“
Simplicity & Psychology
“There is one further value to simplicity. It may be regarded as a mode of psychological hygiene. Just as eating too much is harmful to the body, even though the quality of all food eaten is excellent, so it seems that there may be a limit to the number of things or the amount of property which a person may own and yet keep himself psychologically healthy.”
“The possession of many things and of great wealth creates so many possible choices and decisions to be made every day that it becomes a nervous strain.”
“If a person lives among great possessions, they constitute an environment which influences him. His sensitiveness to certain important human relations is apt to become clogged and dulled, his imagination in regard to the subtle but important elements of personal relationships or in regard to lives in circumstances less fortunate than his own is apt to become less active and less keen. This is not always the result, but the exception is rare. When enlarged to inter-group relationships this tends to create social misunderstandings and friction.”
“The athlete, in order to win his contest, strips off the non-essentials of clothing, is careful of what he eats, simplifies his life in a number of ways. Great achievements of the mind, of the imagination, and of the will also require similar discriminations and disciplines.”
“If simplicity of living is a valid principle there is one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, ‘Then don’t give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired.‘ It is interesting to note that this advice agrees with modern Western psychology of wishes and suppressed desires.”
Simplicity & Spirituality
“The most permanent, most secure, and most satisfying sort of possession of things other than the materials needed for bodily life, lies not in physical control and power of exclusion but in intellectual, emotional, and spiritual understanding and appreciation. This is especially clear in regard to beauty. He who appreciates and understands a song, a symphony, a painting, some sculpture or architecture gets more satisfaction than he who owns musical instruments or works of art. The world of nature and the museums afford ample scope for such spiritual possession. Such appreciation is what some economists call ‘psychic goods.’ Entering into the spirit which lies at the heart of things is what enriches and enlarges personality.“
“We cannot have deep and enduring satisfaction, happiness, or joy unless we have self-respect. There is good reason to believe that self-respect is the basis for all higher morality. We cannot have self-respect unless our lives are an earnest attempt to express the finest and most enduring values which we are able to appreciate. That is to say, unless we come into close and right relationships with our fellow-men, with nature, and with Truth (or God), we cannot achieve full self-respect.
“Living simply seems to be an important element in this effort to manifest love and human unity, and hence, to live in accordance with Jesus’ commands. Love is the sentiment which accompanies the realization of human unity. It expresses that unity and stimulates and helps to maintain it. We have seen in the case of St. Francis how simplicity aided in his attainment of unity with his fellow creatures. Likewise simplicity helps to express and aid love.”
“Hinduism and Buddhism have also emphasized the value of simplicity.”
“Tender-heartedness, together with great intelligence and strength of character, has in the cases of such leaders as Buddha, Jesus, St. Francis, George Fox, John Woolman and Gandhi, resulted in simplicity. Tender-heartedness seems to have been one of the elements which compelled those men to recognize human unity and to live in accordance with it and to share their property and lives with those who had need.”
“Simplicity would constitute part of a code of moral hygiene necessary for a healthy and vigorous spiritual life. The verse, ‘He that loseth his life shall find it,’ may mean, for one thing, that he that loseth his keen sense of separate individuality and acquireth a strong sense and practice of human unity shall find his truer and more enduring and richer life.”
“The heart of the problem of simplicity is spiritual and lies in inner detachment. But the inner state must be expressed by an outer act, in order to have sincerity, in order to prevent self-deception, in order to strengthen the inner attitude and in order to gain further insight for the next step.”
Cultivation of Simplicity
“Practicing simplicity means not only that you have made this decision, but that you are doing one of the important parts of it, you are conforming with one of its essential preconditions, you are expressing your preference by actual conduct.“
“If I wish actively to participate in this transformation, I myself must begin to alter my own life in the desired direction.”
“My changes must be both inner and outer, and must, I believe, be in the direction of more simplicity.”
“Simplicity, to be more effective, must inform and be integrated with many aspects of life. It needs to become more social in purpose and method.”
“Inasmuch as the essence of the matter does not lie in externals but in inner attitude, let us discuss certain ways by which that attitude can be cultivated. Since simplicity means the supplanting of certain kinds of desires by other desires, the best aid in that process is directing the imagination toward the new desires. We must try, of course, to understand intellectually all the implications of the new desires, but further than that, make the imagination dwell upon them in spare moments, and just before going to sleep and just after awakening. Read books or articles dealing with them. Associate with people who have ideas similar to those which you wish to cultivate. Exercise your discrimination in the relative values of different modes of living, and in the little details that compose them. Practice the desired simplicity in small ways as well as the large. Provide as many small stimuli as possible for this line of thought and conduct.”
“Inasmuch as competition and emulation, especially the variety known as ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ lead to complexity of living, and inasmuch as competition is encouraged by a sense of diversity and exaggerated individualism, we will help ourselves toward simplicity by cultivating a strong and constant feeling of human unity. Try to cultivate the ability to work without attachment to the fruit of works. If you realize that the purpose of advertising is to stimulate your desires for material things, you will be wise to avoid reading many advertisements. At least exercise selection in so doing.”
“Other elements of character which will be desirable to cultivate for this purpose are: strength to resist the pressure of group opinion; ability to withstand misunderstanding, unfavorable comment, or ridicule; sensitiveness to intangible values and relationships more than to sense impressions; greater sensitiveness to moral beauty than to beauty perceptible by the physical senses; persistence, endurance, and strength of will.”
Ruskin: “Three-fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic: founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections; and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart…. We need examples of people who, leaving to Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure, not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession.“
“Modern discoveries about vitamins, mineral content of foods, calories, food mixtures, sunshine, and fresh air show that it is entirely possible to live simply and have an optimum of health.”
“If such simple action by me seems too tiny and insignificant to make it worth while to attempt, I should remember that it is not really insignificant, because it is an organic part of the great spirit of millions throughout the ages who have voluntarily lived simple lives. The meaning of my part in such a movement does not lie in the size of my accomplishment so far as I am aware of it, but in the quality of the principle and the quality of my participation.”
“No matter what changes take place in human affairs, the need for simplicity will always remain.”
Winning Through Intimidation by Robert J. Ringer | Book Summary
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Winning Through Intimidation by Robert J. Ringer
Why, after more than five decades, is Winning through Intimidation still one of the most talked about personal-development books of all time? Because it teaches you, in straightforward, easy-to-understand terms, how to defend yourself against the intimidators of the world. As you’ll discover from the summary:
- The results a person obtains are inversely proportionate to the degree to which he is intimidated; and
- It’s not what you say or do that counts, but what your posture is when you say or do it!
Every person has the inherent right to “self-proclaim”–to announce, at any time he chooses, that he is on any level he chooses to be on.
THE THEORY OF REALITY:
Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, or the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. You either acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit, or it will automatically work against you.
- THEORY OF SUSTENANCE OF A POSITIVE ATTITUDE THROUGH THE ASSUMPTION OF A NEGATIVE RESULT
Prepare yourself for long-term success by being prepared for short-term failure
A person shouldn’t enter a sales situation feeling he can’t make the sale, but he should really assume that he won’t make the sale. If you’re prepared, then you’re able to feel confident that you are capable of making the sale if it is possible to be made. Hope for the best, but realistically assume the worst.
No matter how well prepared you are, only a small percentage of deals actually control, because there are an endless number of factors beyond your control.
Each negative result is an educational experience from which you can extract lessons learned, and then forget about the negative result.
Most people wish that business took place on a nursery school playground, with fairness being enforced. The reality is that the game of business is played in a vicious jungle.
- UNCLE GEORGE THEORY
If you keep your nose to the grindstone and work long hard hours, you’re guaranteed to get one thing in return: Old. Hard work will not, in and of itself, assure a person of success.
- THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Language is relative and subjective; you have to make sure that you define exactly what people’s statements really mean.
- THEORY OF RELEVANCE
The most important factor to consider is whether something is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. Work only on things that are relevant.
For example, the builder’s cost is irrelevant to a buyer. All the buyer cares about is cash flow. Also, whether or not a person is “honest” is irrelevant. What matters is what he puts down in writing.
- THIRTY YEAR THEORY
You are going to die. Therefore, you should go after all you can get, as quickly as you can get
You are going to die. Therefore, you should go after all you can get, as quickly as you can get it, because the reality is that your time is limited.
- ICE BALL THEORY
In 50 billion years, the sun will burn out and the Earth will be a frozen ice ball. Nothing you do now could possibly matter then. So don’t take yourself too seriously. Life is a game, and play to win. There’s no reason to be afraid to be aggressive or take chances. The reality is that there’s no way you’re going to get out of this thing alive, so why play conservatively.
- THREE TYPE THEORY
There are only three types of people in the business world
- Type 1: Lets you know that he’s out to get all of your chips. Then he tries to do just that.
- Type 2: Assures you that he’s not interested in getting your chips. Then he tries to grab all of your chips anyway.
- Type 3: Assures you that he’s not interested in getting your chips, and honestly means it. However, in the end, he tries to grab all of your chips anyway.
In business, no one ever does anything for anybody else without expecting to gain something in return.
- LEAPFROG THEORY
A person has no legal or moral obligation or, for that matter, logical reason to “work his way up through the ranks.” The quickest way to the top is not by fighting your way through the pack, it is to leapfrog over the pack and simply proclaim that you’re above it. However, you must be prepared to be above it, or reality will knock you back down.
- THEORY OF INTIMIDATION
The problems most people have in reaching their objectives revolve around the fact that they constantly allow themselves to be intimidated.
The results a person obtains are inversely proportional to the degree to which he is intimidated.
- POSTURE THEORY
It’s not what you do or say that counts, but what your posture is when you say or do it. You need to maneuver yourself into a position of power.
- TYPES OF POWER
Money: The ability to walk away—nice if you can get it
Image: The ability to prompt respect
Legal: The law, plus the Law of Universal Attorney-Attorney Respect. Always have everything in writing. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Performance: Be the best at what you do and deliver. Be fanatical about execution. This backs up your Image and Legal Power.
Don’t let anything get in the way of making the deal. If there are questions, dig out the answers yourself if necessary, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
- THE 5 STEPS OF SALES SUCCESS
- Obtain a product to sell
- Locate a market for the product.
- Implement a marketing method
- Be able to close the sale
- GET PAID.
- GENERATING IMAGE POWER
Ringer used a spectacular, expensive, hard-bound brochure to intimidate potential sellers.
Every interaction was designed to show the buyer or seller that they needed to sell Ringer on working on their deal
When he went to meet them, he brought along everything that he might need, from typewriters to law books, to 2-3 secretaries—so that nothing could hold up the deal, and to intimidate the hell out of people.
- MAKEABLE DEAL THEORY
It’s more efficient to work hard on finding a few makeable deals, rather than working hard on an endless number of unmakeable deals and clinging to the faint hope that you’ll somehow close one. People have a masochistic tendency to work on “pie-in-the-sky” deals that have little possibility of closing.
- PHRASING MATTERS
Don’t say, I can “sell” the property, say I can “do something” with the property.
Don’t call a contract a contract, call it a “one-page understanding.”
- Try to avoid looking legal and attracting the attention of the Deal-Killing Attorney.
- Ringer would have a contract done and signed on the spot, rather than waiting and allowing time to pass.
- FIDDLE THEORY
The longer a person fiddles around with something, the greater the odds that the result will be negative. Time is always against you when trying to make a deal—any kind of deal.
- BOY-GIRL THEORY AND BETTER DEAL THEORY
If a boy plays it cool, then a girl wants the boy. If a boy comes on like a hungry dog chasing a squirrel, then girl doesn’t want the boy. A man will usually want the deal he can’t have, and won’t want the deal he can have.
Before a person closes any kind of deal, he always worries that there may be a better deal down the road.
To combat the effect of these factors, bring the deal as quickly as possible to the point where the money is on the table and the papers are ready to be signed. Then it’s put up or shut up time.
- Don’t let the speed depend on everyone else. If necessary, fly a secretary to the office to pick up the documents and hand deliver them.
- You MUST take matters into your own hands and move swiftly once you smell victory. At the crucial moment, the great quarterback takes control of the game.
- ATTORNEY GOAL LINE DEFENSE
Attorneys are not subject to intimidation like normal people, but if you cower, they will smell blood and strike. Instead of being tough or humble, play it cool. Be calm and matter of fact. Adopt an air that indicates you have no concern over the deal, that everyone knew the deal would happen.
- “Problems” don’t represent obstacles to the closing, but just normal “points” which had to be “handled” as a natural part of every deal.
- “That’s a darn good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Here are many ways we can handle that particular point.” The only reason all are gathered is to “handle” the normal “points” that always come up.
- As a last resort, indicate the willingness to walk away. “Well, I guess that’s it. It looks like we just can’t make this one happen.”
- DIRTY LAUNDRY
There will almost always be several major undisclosed deal-killers that pop up at the 1-yard line. Soften the blow by setting expectations with the buyer ahead of time. That way, the dirty laundry reinforces your posture of expertise.
- BLUFF THEORY
The best way to bluff is not to bluff. Wealthy people are good bluffers because when they threaten to walk away, they mean it. They can’t be intimidated.
If you’re not wealthy, the best substitute is guts. It’s more painful, but it works. Draw a clear line, and stick to it.
Perhaps the most important reason of all for taking action now is that time is finite. No matter how proficient you are, you can only accomplish so much in a lifetime. Every second that’s wasted reduces the totality of what you can accomplish by one second.
Why the Rich Are Getting Richer by Robert Kiyosaki | Book Summary
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Why the Rich Are Getting Richer by Robert Kiyosaki
It’s Robert Kiyosaki’s position that, ‘It is our educational system that causes the gap between the rich and everyone else.’ He laid the foundation for many of his messages in the international best-seller Rich Dad Poor Dad – the #1 personal finance book of all time – and in Why the Rich Are Getting Richer, he makes his case…
In this book, the reader will learn why the gap between the rich and everyone else grows wider; why savers are losers; why debt and taxes make the rich richer; why traditional education actually causes many highly educated people – such as Robert’s poor dad – to live poorly.
In this book, the reader will find out why going to school, working hard, saving money, buying a house, getting out of debt, and investing for the long term in the stock market is the worst financial advice for most people. In this book, the reader will find out why real financial education may never be taught in schools.
In this book, Robert shares the answers found on his life-long search, after repeatedly asking the question, ‘When will we learn about money?’ In this book, the reader will find out ‘What financial education is… really.’
About the author Robert Kiyosaki
Robert Kiyosaki is a businessman, investor and writer of several works, among them:
His profession in the Merchant Marine earned him a job at one of the largest oil companies in the United States, Standard Oil Company.
On the other hand, as a member of the Marine Corps group in his region, he studied ways of leading troops in the Vietnam War until 1974. After that period, he learned sales techniques at the company he worked for, Xerox.
From this learning he set up Cashflow Technologies, achieving success worldwide through books that he and his consultants develop.
To whom is this book indicated?
“Why the Rich Are Getting Richer” is recommended for anyone who is willing to transform their financial conditions and become a professional investor.
Main ideas of the book “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer”
While the poor are getting poorer with taxes, the rich use them to get richer;
The CASHFLOW quadrant determines the four quadrants in which a person can belong financially: employee, self-employed, large business owner and investor;
The rich use debt, market crises and taxes to get richer;
To get rich, it is not enough just to make money; you have to change your attitude;
Many people believe that saving money and investing in the long run is a good option for getting rich; however, author Robert Kiyosaki proves the opposite;
You don’t have to give up fun and happiness to get rich.
Overview: Why the rich get richer every time
In the first part, the book reports how taxes negatively impact the poor and the middle class, while they make the rich increasingly wealthy.
On the one hand, the most affected classes see taxes as a burden that needs to be paid; on the other hand, the rich see possibilities of gain.
From this perspective, the rich get richer, because, unlike the rest, they are not restricted to working to pay taxes.
Then the author Robert Kiyosaki presents the fact of why saving is not a good option. He reports that the savings interest rate is close to zero. What’s more, banks charge you to save your money almost the same as you pay to save it.
Another important factor cited in the book, “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer”, is the fact that states are printing more and more money to prevent their economies from collapsing. This causes the currency to devalue, leading to crises.
This stems from the impact projected for the year 1971. During this period, Richard Nixon uncoupled the gold standard dollar to start printing money, and its value decreased by 90%.
Overview: How the rich get rich
Do you know why taxes make the rich richer? Through tax incentives! The government provides lower taxes to large companies.
In this sense, before taking the next step, it is necessary to understand the CASHFLOW quadrant, taken by the author Robert Kiyosaki from his other work, “Financial Independence”.
CASHFLOW reveals who pays the most taxes. The quadrants are:
E from Employee;
S from Self-Employed;
O from Owner of large companies;
I from Investor.
The Owner of large companies (O) and Investor (I) quadrants get more tax incentives because the initiatives that take place there help the government play its role in improving the economy.
If you want to be part of such quadrants, the best option is to prepare your mindset, skills for money, and educate yourself financially.
When you see debt and taxes as a hindrance to getting rich, you are targeting the Self-Employed (S) and Employee (E) quadrants. Because they are committed to paying constantly, these quadrants are the most taxed.
The more difficult it is to make mistakes and admit your mistakes, the more difficult it will be to leave Employee and Self-Employed and pass to Owner and Investor. According to the book “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer”, changing the quadrant requires the following types of intelligences:
Spiritual intelligence: believe in yourself;
Mental intelligence: seek knowledge;
Emotional intelligence: learn from mistakes;
Physical intelligence: use what you know and resist falling.
The rich buy bargains that enrich them. They wait for stock market crises to buy the best at low prices such as real estate, gold, silver and trades at minimal prices. That way, the rich don’t invest in the long run, they diversify into a little of everything.
Overview: What is not financial education
Financial inefficiency is something that immobilizes people, destroys self-esteem, making them frustrated and depressed. Thus, they end up committing corrupt acts in search of more money.
On the other hand, inefficiency can also blind you as your confidence goes beyond the necessary level, to the point of not letting you see the market’s crises.
Therefore, it is necessary to be careful with the level of confidence, since, as it becomes smaller than necessary, we feel victims of our own finances. However, when trust becomes ego, we ignore trends.
But what makes people financially inefficient? Sometimes, it may be the lack of adequate information about what financial education consists of.
The author Robert Kiyosaki discusses in his work, “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer”, which people may think it is, but it is not financial education, among them:
Economics: “If economics studies make you rich, why are most economists poor?”;
Balancing a checkbook does not make you a financially educated person;
Saving money: “Why would an intelligent person save money when the government is printing it?”;
Your credit rating, or score, is important, but it is not financial education. Many poor and middle class people have good credit scores;
Get rid of debt: bad debt buys liabilities. Good debts are those that someone else pays for;
Living below their means has made the poor and the middle class poorer;
Long-term investing: “Why invest in the long run if the next crisis will be thousands of times larger than the great 1929 crisis?”.
Overview: What is legitimately financial education
Legitimate financial education does not have to be complex or confusing. This concept can be very simple, such as playing Real Estate Bank. In addition, it should include the concept of differences between the following three types of income:
Income earned: “the most taxed of the three”. This income is based on working to generate income. Examples: savings, pension plans etc;
Portfolio income: “it is understood as “capital gains”. The purpose is to generate profit; For example, you buy a stock when it is cheap and sell it when it is valued;
Passive income: “is the cash flow of an asset”. An example is buying a property and putting it to rent. The monthly rent is your passive income.
Most of the poor and the middle class have only earned income, as they work for the money. Millionaires, on the other hand, usually invest in portfolio income.
Now, the truly wealthy, or called “sophisticated investors” or “money masters”, have another type of income: phantom income.
For this type of income, debts are cash flow. Phantom income from debt consists of “renting money” to do more, instead of working for it.
As quoted by author Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer”, some examples of phantom income are:
Appreciation: is the appreciation of the price of a property;
Amortization: debt reduction;
Depreciation: this is the biggest source of phantom income for homeowners, as wear and tear reduces property taxes even though it has been valued.
Do you have a plan B?
In order to have a plan B, legitimate financial education is required, which includes study and practice.
The goal of this plan is to increase your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual intelligence, so that you can change quadrants.
Because of this, learning to use debts and taxes is important to move towards a better quadrant.
Thus, you must create an interest in yourself to frequently analyze how your financial obligations are interfering in your life.
You do not need to live life on the average, having a rented house, an economy car, saving money etc.
Legitimate financial education gives you a great advantage in life: having fun, living beyond your means and still getting rich!
Best option is to associate that behavior with some type of pain.
Okay, but how can I apply this to my life?
Learn from finance books how to have a more prosperous life;
Invest right: look for courses that can help you;
Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, as this will make you reach a better quadrant;
Always have a plan B in mind;
Always study about financial education;
Identify the best strategies for knowing where to inject capital.
Born to Run By Christopher McDougall | Book Summary
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BORN TO RUN By Christopher McDougall
Every year millions of people all over the world run marathons. You might think they’re all completely crazy or that you could never run a marathon yourself. Many of us secretly fantasize about being marathon runners if only this were possible.
However, it doesn’t take a freakish, superhuman physique to cover 26 miles and 385 yards at a clip. You just need some training and the right attitude to get yourself off the couch.
In this summary of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, you’ll learn
- why dogs can’t run marathons;
- why most running shoes hurt us, rather than help us; and
- why the best runners run like kindergarteners.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #1: THE HUMAN BODY IS EVOLUTIONARILY WELL-ADAPTED TO LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING.
When you think of fast sprinters, your mind probably jumps to cheetahs or horses. But when it comes to running long distances, it’s actually Homo sapiens who take the lead.
The reason? It’s in our physiology.
For one, humans are able to dissipate heat more rapidly than other animals.
Most other mammals don’t have the right glands in their skin to cool down via sweating, so their main method for releasing body heat is through breathing.
When four-legged animals want to run fast, they break into a gallop. This method of running, though quick, restricts their breathing rate because the moving leg muscles squish the animal’s lungs like bellows. As a result, when running fast, most animals can only breathe at a rate of one breath per stride.
This works fine for them – until they reach the critical limit at which they heat up faster than they can cool down. Then they have to stop running in order to survive.
We humans, on the other hand, prevent overheating by sweating through our skin. As a result, the human breathing cycle is not determined by our need to cool down, making it more efficient at procuring oxygen and maintaining endurance.
A second key factor that makes humans master runners is that we move on two legs instead of four.
When early humans began to walk upright – thus freeing their hands to use tools and reach higher hanging fruit – it allowed their throats to open and chests to expand. Though this development came at the expense of sprinting speed, this new posture and the increase in air capacity enabled them to maintain running over long distances.
Finally, our Achilles’ tendon is the third trait distinguishing humans as runners.
Some 95 percent of human DNA correlates with that of our close genetic relative, the chimpanzee, but even these primates don’t have this flexible, rubber-band-like cord of collagen tissue in their lower leg. As it’s stretched, the tendon stores energy until it’s ready to be released when the leg propels the body forward. This maximizes our endurance because it takes us less energy to spring from one step to the next.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #2: RUNNING SHOES ACTUALLY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
As we’ve seen, we have many biological traits that work to our advantage as runners. Sometimes, though, we actually hinder our natural gifts with inventions that are intended to help. A key culprit here is running shoes, which are guilty of stabilizing the foot too well.
When you run, your foot rolls inward in a process called pronation that acts as a built-in shock absorber for the lower leg. Unfortunately, pronation has been demonized as being responsible for runner’s knee, a painful and common ailment.
As a result, we now see a fleet of pronation-alleviating shoes on the market, although a mere three percent of the population have a medical need for special shoes.
For most people, encasing the foot in a shoe is a lot like having a plaster cast on the leg. The shoe limits the foot’s full movement, causing the muscles to atrophy and the foot to lose strength.
The resulting imbalances throughout the body put excessive strain on certain muscles and joints and can lead to injury, which is why taking running shoes out of the equation might actually be better for you.
Consider Alan Webb, the greatest mile runner in the United States, who suffered from foot injuries while still in school. Part of the problem was that Webb had flat feet with low arches, which are not well-suited for running. Thanks to various barefoot running exercises, however, his feet strengthened, and his arches rose dramatically – so much so, in fact, that his size 12 feet now fit into size nine or ten shoes, and his foot injuries abated.
Another problem with running shoes is that they mask the discomfort caused by harmful impacts against the ground.
Thickly cushioned shoes fail to alert runners to the painful shock waves that reverberate through their bodies as they pound the pavement, thus preventing them from adopting less harmful running forms.
Barefoot running, on the other hand, forces the runner to adapt a natural, and ultimately more comfortable, gait.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #3: TO RUN FASTER AND LONGER, RESTRICT YOUR PROTEIN INTAKE AND SWITCH TO A VEGETARIAN DIET.
OK, so now that we’ve gotten rid of the shoes, what’s next?
Sorry to say it, but your bacon habit might have to bite the dust if you want to become a champion runner.
Despite Western society’s current vogue for diets based around lean meats, cutting out meat entirely is probably your best bet.
If you need evidence, just look at some of history’s greatest endurance athletes, many of whom were vegetarians.
Japanese marathon-running monks, for instance, would complete 25,000-mile ultra-marathons on a daily provision of miso soup, tofu and vegetables.
Or take Percy Cerutty, coach to some of the greatest runners of all time, who strongly advocated a vegetarian diet. He often pushed his clients through triple sessions on a simple diet of raw oats, fruits, cheeses and nuts.
Elite ultra-runner Scott Jurek took it even further and switched to a vegan diet. Despite being told that he wouldn’t recover from workouts and would be more susceptible to injuries, he proved his doubters wrong and performed better than ever.
A vegetarian diet is especially well-suited for running long distances because foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains help you extract the maximum nutrition from the fewest calories. As a result, the body is spared from carrying and processing any additional bulk.
Furthermore, your body digests proteins much more slowly than it does carbohydrates. That means that when you eat meat, you’re wasting a lot more time waiting for the food to be processed by your digestive system. Think about it this way: less meat means more time to train and fine-tune your running skills.
And don’t worry about being malnourished on a meat-free diet, because a diet of grains, legumes and vegetables possesses the amino acids essential for muscle production. They allow for recovery while keeping you ready to run at any moment due to their comparatively brief digestion time.
Now that we have the right equipment and diet, let’s move on to the next step in becoming a skilled runner: the right training!
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #4: FORM AND PACE ARE ESSENTIAL TO LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING.
If you’ve ever watched Olympic sprinting and marathon events back to back, you’ll know that they might as well be two completely different sports.
For instance, the ideal sprinting posture, with a straightened back, steady head, and large, forceful strides, is astonishingly different from the way Kenyan athletes choose to run – and, given that Kenya is an elite nation in long-distance running, we might want to pay attention to how they do it.
Ken Mierke, an exercise physiologist and world champion triathlete, set out to discover the Kenyan secret. After watching hours of footage of barefoot Kenyan runners, he discovered that these world-class athletes actually run like kindergarteners.
The key was moving the legs in smaller contractions to enable quicker foot turnover. This technique increases efficiency and fosters endurance that is ideal for running long distances.
Ken came up with a creative, if unusual, idea to help athletes adapt to this form: he set metronomes to 180 beats per minute and attached them to his athlete clients, instructing them to match their pace to its tempo.
After five months, a 60-year-old client who’d been a runner for 40 years in the top 10 percent of his age group saw significant improvements in his trial time. His running résumé proved that the improvements weren’t simply the gains of a beginner and that anyone could apply the metronome method to their own running.
Once you’ve got your form down, the next thing to master is the art of pacing.
In order to achieve this, start by trying to stay below the aerobic threshold – that is, the point at which you begin breathing heavily.
This will help you utilize your fat stores instead of burning through your sugar reserves.
This is important because the average person has enough fat stored to run very long distances. Unfortunately, the mistake that many runners make is running too quickly and using up their sugar tank, which is far more limited than the fat. Pacing will help you to capitalize on the fat reserves and keep you running longer and further.
BORN TO RUN KEY IDEA #5: THE TARAHUMARA TRIBE EXCEL AT LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING BECAUSE THEY SEE RUNNING AS PART OF THEIR IDENTITY.
The Tarahumara people live in settlements scattered among the canyons of northern Mexico. What’s their connection to running?
“Tarahumara” roughly translates to the “running people.” They’re aptly named, because they are well-known for their ability to regularly run 200 miles in a single session. Not only this, but they also avoid the running injuries typical of the modern world.
This elusive tribe lives in isolation and shuns outsiders, the reason for which stems from their mistreatment at the hands of Spanish colonizers. Since that time, the Tarahumara have preferred to stick with one another and experience the natural joy of running.
To find out more, the author enlisted the help of a local to track down the secretive tribe. After a marathon drive and two-day hike, they finally met face-to-face with the tribe and the most respected Tarahumara runner.
Thankfully, despite his stand-offish reputation, Arnulfo welcomed them in and shared the secret to being an outstanding runner.
The lesson from the Tarahumara was simple: learn to love to run.
By creating a mind-set and culture based on the belief that running is an indispensable human skill, they’ve made it hard to be a part of the Tarahumara and not enjoy running. It’s seen as an ancestral necessity that makes them who they are as a people.
Not only do they run for the sake of their tribe, but they also run for themselves.
But this passion for running isn’t limited to only the Tarahumara people; it’s something many of us can relate to. Do you remember running around with total abandon and delight when you were a child? The fact is, running can be a blast. Although we’re often conditioned to lose this sense of pleasure, the Tarahumara have not forgotten this feeling – and it’s something you should relearn, too.
IN REVIEW: BORN TO RUN BOOK SUMMARY
The key message in this book:
Many people are unaware that we humans have a host of innate traits that make us excellent long-distance runners. One of the most important things you can do for your inner runner is to make sure you don’t hinder these inherent gifts – go barefoot and remember the natural joy of running!
Actionable advice:
The next time you’re thinking about throwing away $100 on a pair of flashy running shoes, think again. Save the money and your health by opting to go without them entirely. Run on a flat sole like a true Tahamuran if you want to improve your running prowess.
The Relationship Cure by John Gottman | Book Summary
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The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships by John Gottman
From the country’s foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life-with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work.
Gottman provides the tools you need to make your relationships thrive. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman-
– Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls “emotional connection”
– Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional “bid,” the fundamental unit of emotional connection
– Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others’ bids
– And more!
Packed with fascinating questionnaires and exercises developed in his therapy, The Relationship Cure offers a simple but profound program that will fundamentally transform the quality of all of the relationships in your life.
“The relationship cure?” It sounds unrealistic. All things considered, no two connections are the equivalent; even to the extent that we can make speculations regarding them, they fall into various classifications. We have associations with our sentimental accomplices, companions, collaborators, family, and kids. There can’t be a one-size-fits-all answer for the issues of all these unmistakable gatherings, can there?
Indeed, yes and no. There unquestionably is certifiably not a sorcery pill that will fix your connections in a single singular motion. In any case, there are some broad techniques you can figure out how to help you manage them better.
Step-by-step instructions to utilize these procedures shift from relationship to relationship and from issue to issue, however, the basic standards are the equivalent. What’s more, they all originate from the examination and thoughts you’re going to find.
Chapter 1 – Individuals don’t shape cozy connections by essentially “opening up” to one another.
What’s the key to having a cheerful, solid, and cozy relationship with someone else?
If you believe it’s a readiness to share your most profound, most close to home contemplations, emotions, and encounters, you’re in good company. Back in the mid-1990s, numerous clinicians thought so as well – including one of the creators. In any case, at that point, he led some examination into the issue, and the outcomes astonished both him and numerous others in the field of brain research.
In 1990, research analyst Dr. John Gottman and his partners at the University of Washington set up an abnormal logical exploration community. They called it “the Love Lab.” within, it resembled a typical studio condo, with a kitchen, feasting territory, cover-up away bed, TV, and waterfront perspectives on a trench.
Over the next year, they welcomed 60 wedded couples to go through an end of the week in this comfortable setting. Each couple was given one basic guidance: carry on with life as you ordinarily would.
There was a trick. The loft was fitted out with four observation cameras and a two-path reflect, behind which eyewitnesses watched the couples for 12 hours every day. The members were likewise manipulated with amplifiers and body sensors that looked for side effects of pressure, similar to increments in pulse or levels of sweat.
Dr. Gottman gathered many long periods of video film demonstrating the couples’ regular associations in moment detail. He at that point checked on the tape, looking for instances of accomplices exposing their spirits to each other. However, he looked constantly, he scarcely found any examples of what therapists call “self-divulgence.” Instead, most discussions went this way:
“Nectar, might you be able to snatch me some espresso?”
“Indeed, dear.”
Or on the other hand:
“Hello, look at this funny cartoon!”
“Shh, I’m attempting to peruse.”
Pretty unremarkable stuff, correct? That is what Dr. Gottman thought, as well. Truth be told, he dreaded the entire test had been an exercise in futility. Yet, at that point, in the wake of investigating the recording for a couple of months, he saw something. The way to framing cozy connections was looking straight at him, not too far off in every one of those dull discussions.
What made a difference wasn’t so much the thing the couples were discussing, however how they were discussing it to one another. What’s more, it’s an exercise that applies to all connections, regardless of whether sentimental or something else.
Chapter 2 – Offers are the most crucial units of passionate correspondence.
A wife requesting her husband to get her a mug of espresso doesn’t seem like the stuff of an extraordinary relationship show. In any case, put yourself in the situation of the wife for a second. Envision that as opposed to stating “Sure, nectar,” your better half reacted by snapping, “Go get it yourself.”
Do you feel the distinction? The primary situation uncovers decent homegrown cooperation – such a thing you’d observe in a caring home. The second is more similar to something you’d find in a playback reel called “Why We Got a Divorce.”
The distinction comes down to what the creators call an “offer” and how your accomplice reacts to it.
As indicated by the author, an offer is any endeavor to build up an enthusiastic association with somebody through verbal or nonverbal correspondence. It very well may be an inquiry, as “Hello, did you see the game the previous evening?” A shout, similar to “Goodness, take a gander at that dusk!” A motion, for example, offering somebody a seat, or even only an outward appearance, similar to a straightforward grin.
However, whatever structure it takes, and whatever its surface-level significance, the basic message of the offer remaining parts as before. It says, “Hello, I need to associate with you.” The other individual would then be able to react in one of three different ways: moving in the direction of, getting some distance from, or betraying the offer.
Envision you’ve quite recently perused a fascinating news story, and you need to impart it to a companion. “Hello,” you state, “look at this present.” That’s your offer. Presently, envision your companion puts down his telephone, and happily asks, “What’s going on?” That’s him moving in the direction of your offer and reacting decidedly to your endeavor to build up an association.
Paradoxically, envision your companion keeps gazing at his telephone, claiming not to get with you. Or then again he attempts to change the subject by asking, “Do you understand what time it is?” all things considered, he’s getting some distance from your offer by disregarding or avoiding it.
At last, envision he reacts by saying, “Ugh, wouldn’t you be able to see I’m sincerely busy something?” A negative response like this is betraying your offer.
Through his examination, Dr. Gottman found that such offers, and the three sorts of reaction, speak to the key structure squares of enthusiastic correspondence and human association. Furthermore, as you’ll see, these offers and offer reactions can represent the deciding moment of your connections.
Chapter 3 – Offers as a rule contain concealed messages.
“How’s your day going? Do you have any plans tonight?” These aren’t significant inquiries. Truth be told, they may seem like simple “casual chitchat.” And yet, as offers to build up an enthusiastic association with somebody, each can assume a significant part in fortifying or debilitating that relationship.
The explanation these inquiries are so significant is that there’s something else entirely to them than meets the eye.
Envision a sentimental couple, Mary and Jeff, sitting on a couch in their parlor. Mary hangs over to Jeff and says, “It’s somewhat nippy in here, wouldn’t you say?” This is her offered.
To start to translate its concealed message, we should look underneath the outside of this basic connection.
It couldn’t be any more obvious, it isn’t so much that Mary simply needs to reveal to Jeff that she’s cold or see whether he concurs with her appraisal of the temperature. Mary has an implicit goal: she’s trusting that Jeff will give her a nestle. All in all, she’s offering him to draw nearer to her, both in a real sense and metaphorically.
So for what reason doesn’t she simply state, “Hello, Jeff, give me a snuggle?” Well, now and again we make clear offers. However, normally, we make them more inconspicuous and ambiguous – and all things considered.
By outlining her offer for actual friendship as an assertion about the temperature, Mary has an approach to hide any hint of failure and feels to a lesser degree a blow if Jeff rejects it. Suppose she says, “Give me a snuggle,” and Jeff answers, “No, I’m not in the disposition.” Ouch.
Then again, on the off chance that he reacts by throwing her a sweeping, she’s as yet not getting what she truly needs. Yet, in any event, she’s receiving something positive consequently, and it’s a ton better than by and large dismissal.
Mary is likewise giving Jeff an approach to easily decrease her offer. Regardless of whether he realizes she most likely needs a snuggle, he doesn’t need to experience the ungainliness of saying no on the off chance that he’d preferably mind his own business. He can decide to decipher Mary’s assertion in a real sense and react in like manner.
As such, the ambiguity of our offers is an element, not a bug, and it regularly serves us well. Shockingly, it can likewise prompt a few issues, as we’re going to see.
Chapter 4 – The shrouded messages of offers can be difficult to decipher, so react to them cautiously.
Up until this point, we’ve zeroed in on a portion of the more direct offers that individuals may toss your direction. Certainly, there are concealed messages behind inquiries like “It’s somewhat nippy in here, wouldn’t you say?” But you don’t require a Ph.D. in brain research to translate them. The shrouded messages aren’t excessively covered up.
If all offers were that basic, connections would be anything but difficult to explore. Be that as it may, truly, offers are frequently hard to react to. Truth be told, they regularly don’t seem like offers by any stretch of the imagination.
To some degree, we all have sentiments and wants that we don’t have the foggiest idea of how to communicate – in any event not helpfully. Also, on the off chance that we don’t comprehend our feelings, it makes sense that we’d struggle to convey them to others.
At the point when a kid pitches a temper fit since her dad will not get her a toy, you may think the fit of rage is a declaration of outrage at not getting what she needs, yet it could likewise be an offer for her dad’s solace.
At the point when a wife asks her husband other a stacked inquiry – “Why not ever call me when no doubt about it?” – it’s not simply an allegation; it’s an offer for more correspondence. Inadequately communicated, however, an offer in any case.
At the point when sensations of misery, outrage, or dread are included, individuals’ offers can seem as though regrets, reactions, or grievances. What’s more, they can be hard to perceive and react to. The key is to recollect this and rather look underneath the outside of what the other individual is stating.
Envision you’re the dad or wife in these models. Rather than protectively clarifying why you won’t accept the toy, give the kid an embrace and recognize her neglected requirement for comfort. Rather than grumbling that you’re excessively occupied at the workplace to settle on close to home decisions, organize a set time when you’ll quickly connect with your accomplice, and recognize his requirement for correspondence.
By zeroing in on the fundamental offer, you’re bound to figure out how to react that will construct associations – moving in the direction of the offer, rather than away from or against it.
Chapter 5 – To comprehend individuals’ offers assists with realizing where they’re coming from.
As we’ve seen, offers are frequently obfuscated articulations of neglected feelings and want, which might be indistinct even to individuals communicating them. Maybe that brain research Ph.D. would be helpful all things considered!
Be that as it may, shy of taking a crack at a graduate school program, you can at present give yourself a significant advantage in deciphering others’ offers – you simply need a superior comprehension of their passionate cosmetics.
In this part, we’ll take a gander at one approach to pick up that.
Have you ever gotten into a battle with somebody and felt that you two were truly contending with a third individual who wasn’t in the room? That is the thing that it resembled for Rick and Sarah, a couple that came to Dr. Gottman for treatment.
At the point when Rick was a kid, his mom left him, thus he was raised by his grandma. She detested caring for him and continually revealed to him he was useless. Thus, he built up a delicate ability to be self-aware regard – which came to torment his relationship with Sarah.
Each time she submitted a question about his conduct, maybe Rick heard his grandma’s voice. Sarah would get frantic at him for turning on the TV as opposed to conversing with her – yet as opposed to hearing a message about disliking the TV, or needing to invest more energy with him, Rick heard her state, “You can’t do anything right!”
Concerning Sarah, one of seven kids, she’d experienced childhood in a helpless family and was instructed to hush up about her requirements. So she did exactly that in her relationship with Rick – in any event for up to 14 days, after which her dissatisfactions would detonate into grievances.
On account of the TV, what she truly needed was to have a closer association with Rick, yet sadly, she communicated this longing in a way that sounded harsh and accusatory.
Like Rick and Sarah, we as a whole convey stuff from our past connections into the present. It’s what the author call our enthusiastic legacy, and it influences our collaborations with others if we understand it. So it makes sense that the more you think about somebody’s experience, the more you’ll comprehend where they’re coming from, and the more fruitful you’ll be at deciphering their offers.
Chapter 6 – When causing offers, to ponder your necessities, and express them through delicate language.
We should recap what we’ve realized up until now. To start with, basic cooperations between individuals are frequently offering for the passionate association. Second, these offers regularly contain shrouded messages. What’s more, third, these hidden implications are regularly formed by an individual’s enthusiastic legacy and past connections.
On the off chance that you recollect this and attempt to study the notable individuals in your day to day existence, you’ll become better at reacting to their offers helpfully.
Yet, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care when making your offers and ought to depend on others to translate what you mean. There are things you can do to make yourself bound to be perceived, and such that meets your feelings – a mutual benefit for everybody!
At whatever point you’re attempting to get something throughout everyday life, it assists with understanding what you need. The equivalent is valid for offers. Whenever you end up going to dispatch into contention or submit a question, stop and ask yourself: What’s my neglected psychological condition here?
Frequently, it will be established in a principal human motivation, similar to the need to feel that you and your friends and family are protected. For instance, if a wife is doubtful of her husband’s choice to purchase a gun for their family, it very well maybe that she’s stressed over what will occur on the off chance that one of the children gets hold of it.
If that is the situation, as opposed to offering a bare expression about firearms being perilous, she should make an offer communicating her dread. That way, rather than getting into a warmed contention about the option to remain battle-ready, the couple can address her interests and discover a trade-off, such as purchasing a lockbox to keep the weapon put away unattainable.
Mellowing an offer additionally goes far to make it more tasteful. Once, the author was holding back to eat with his family, yet his better half was caught up with working in the cellar. “Hello, Julie,” he yelled cruelly. “Quit working! It’s family time!” Understandably, Julie felt assaulted and scrutinized; and she reacted protectively, saying, “I can’t! I must complete this!”
All things being equal, the author might have opened his offer by calling out, “Hello, Julie, we miss you! Come up and eat with us when you can.” Imagine the amount more certain Julie’s reaction would have been.
Chapter 7 – If you get your underlying offered and offered reaction right, you give yourself a greater open door for the association.
The underlying offer and offer reaction that commencement the main rounds of passionate correspondence between two individuals are somewhat similar to the beginnings of a neighborly round of tennis. You can consider them the services and bring volley back. If either player mishits this previously shot, the game could go to an abrupt end. However, if they’re fruitful, the activity is simply beginning.
To comprehend this better, how about we do a little in-depth examination of some passionate correspondence in real life. Two associates, Jim and Linda, are in the workplace. Jim approaches Linda’s work area and makes his underlying offer, asking, “Things being what they are, do you have any designs for lunch?”
Linda answers that she’s brought something from home and will eat outside. Understanding the concealed significance of the offer, she moves in the direction of it. “Need to go along with me?” she inquires.
“Sure,” says Jim. At that point he tightens the offer up an indent: “I’m going to the candy machine to get a beverage. You need anything?”
“Better believe it, perhaps a Coke,” Linda answers, moving in the direction of Jim’s offered indeed. “Gracious, and I’ll discover those photographs I outlined for you. I need to show them to you!”
“Extraordinary!” says Jim, “I’d love to see them!”
Notice how the positive reactions expand on one another, bringing Jim and Linda closer together. Presently, how about we witness what may if, all things being equal, Linda betrays Jim’s underlying offer.
“Have any designs for lunch?” Jim inquires.
“Lunch?! In this office? Who has the time?” Linda snaps, proceeding to gaze at her PC screen and leaving poor Jim despondent.
Now, Jim may mutter something about eating together some other time, and Linda may react with a short “Definitely, sure.” But in every way that matters, the correspondence between them is finished – just like any opportunity to the interface. In the interim, in an equal universe, the previous renditions of Jim and Linda are perched on a recreation center seat, chuckling at photographs of her canine and building a relationship.
We’ve said it previously, yet it bears rehashing: there’s much more to offers than initially meets the eye. How they are made and reacted to can have an immense effect on how connections unfurl.
Chapter 8 – You don’t need to acknowledge an offer to face an incentive to react decidedly.
“Uh-oh” you may be reasoning. “Does this mean I need to acknowledge each lunch greeting that comes in my direction? It seems like on the off chance that I decrease an offer, or even neglect to get on one, I’ll be conceivably harming my connections and driving individuals from me.”
Try not to stress. The circumstance is far less extraordinary than that. Luckily, you can in any case move in the direction of others’ offers and construct associations with them while simultaneously declining the solicitations you’re reluctant, incapable of, or just uninterested in tolerating. Everything boils down to how you react.
We should return to Jim and Linda and their lunch plans. In this rendition, it turns out Linda truly doesn’t have the opportunity to take a break today, so she can’t acknowledge Jim’s offer at face esteem – that is, as an encouragement to eat together on this specific day.
Yet, that doesn’t mean she can’t react decidedly and move in the direction of the offer. “Goodness, I’d truly love to eat with you,” she could state, “yet I’m so overwhelmed with work at present. Possibly tomorrow? Or then again we could snatch an espresso and make up for a lost time after work.”
Notice how Linda confirms her longing to associate with Jim even while she decreases this specific chance. She likewise offers some elective ways for them to associate. As such, rather than closing the allegorical entryway between them with a dull dismissal, she leaves it open and calls Jim closer.
Jim would now be able to continue with his offer, consenting to one of her other options, and expanding on his underlying suggestion. For example, he could offer to carry her something to eat, giving her more opportunity to control through that heap of work.
A similar exercise applies to any offer that requests that you accomplish something that you can’t or just don’t have any desire to do. Rather than stressing over tolerating it at face worth, or saying no and harming your relationship, utilize the occasion to console the other individual of your longing to associate.
Recall the sport of tennis from prior? Saying no in this manner is the thing that permits you to keep that bundle of amicable correspondence noticeable all around and flying to and fro across the net.
Chapter 9 – Our examples of reacting to individuals’ offers can affect our connections over the long haul.
Recall your latest connections with the individuals in your day to day existence. Did you move in the direction of, away from, or against somebody’s offered?
Whatever your reaction, don’t lose an excessive amount of rest over it. Regardless of whether you respond to an offer decidedly, an erratic trade won’t save or devastate your relationship. Connections get developed or worn out over the long haul, through numerous offers and offer reactions.
However, your activities do add up, so while one unforgiving word presumably won’t do a lot of damage, don’t fall into a propensity for cruelty.
If a relationship is set apart by an example of one part of the two individuals reacting contrarily to the next, they’re probably going to float separated. If the example is positive, they will in general turn out to be nearer.
There are two or three explanations behind this. To start with, moving in the direction of one another’s offers prompts more occasions to interface while dismissing or against them does the inverse. As we saw with Jim and Linda, it can spell the distinction between having, or not having, that lunch with your colleague.
Second, similarly, as offers pass on shrouded messages, so too do our reactions to them. If you move in the direction of an offer, you’re certainly saying, “I esteem you. I like investing in energy with you.” But on the off chance that you get some distance from or against an offer, you’re possibly sending unintended messages, as “I don’t like you” or “I need to hurt you.”
Put these messages on rehash and in the long run, you’ll have an example that sinks into the other individual’s brain as an impression of how you feel about them. On the off chance that it’s good, they’ll feel a ton of kindness toward you, which can help when you face clashes. Yet, if it’s particularly negative, they may wind up feeling like you scorn them and abandon making offers for the association through and through. All things considered, why?
It should not shock anyone, at that point, that an example of negative offer reactions is a solid indicator of issues. As indicated by the author’s exploration, relationships made a beeline for separate, wifes contrarily respond to their husband’s offers for association a shocking 82 percent of the time. In stable relationships, that figure drops to a simple 19 percent.
So no, you don’t need to get things right constantly – however, more often than not is certainly an objective worth focusing on!
In Review
If you break down others’ correspondences with you, you’ll see that they’re frequently making offers to associate. These offers may come as obscure language, or they might be veiled as protests or analysis – so you’ll have to decipher them cautiously.
Whatever you do, recall that your decision to move in the direction of, away from, or against an offer is something that can majorly affect your connections.
Try not to pause.
Our individual offers and offer reactions accumulate after some time, however, to get the show on the road you need to begin someplace. Will that lunch with your collaborator lead to a long-lasting fellowship without anyone else?
Likely not – however it very well may be the definitive initial step to a profound and enduring relationship.
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Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J Siegel | Book Summary
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Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel Siegel
– Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can’t shake?
– Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?
– Do you ever wonder why you can’t stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?
– Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?
What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn’t mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.
Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes
– a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal
– a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread
– a physician-the author himself-who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a “vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut,” and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection
– a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is “like watching myself from outside myself” and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting her
These and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
Mindsight Key Idea #1: Mindsight allows us to learn about the connections between mind, body and attitude.
Have you ever been in the middle of an important discussion when something pushes you over the edge? You might suddenly grow angry, your mind might go blank or perhaps you’ll feel an uncontrollable urge to leave the room as quickly as possible. Sound familiar?
Many of us experience reactions like this. They can be deeply confusing, leaving us at a loss to explain our own behavior. To understand these situations, we need to understand our internal worlds – and to do this, we need mindsight.
Mindsight is the skill that allows us to reflect on the connection between the body and the mind. This is central to learning how to regulate powerful emotions. Mindfulness techniques such as meditation are examples of mindsight, as they increase our awareness of our heartbeat and breathing.
But mindsight isn’t just something to practice when you have quiet time to yourself; it is a tool that you can use when life gets loud, messy and overwhelming. For instance, watching your kids scream and fight over food can make you upset. However, your children aren’t the direct cause of your growing distress – it’s your increasing heart rate.
By turning your attention and awareness to your heart rate, you can learn to regulate its influence on your emotions and get a better grip on the situation before you. By remaining calm and patient, you’ll be able to settle the conflict between your children, rather than exacerbate it by reacting with frustration.
As well as looking into your own internal landscape, mindsight encourages us to see the world through the eyes of those around us. This is something all humans are innately capable of, even though we often take it for granted; without the capacity for empathy, we would struggle immensely.
This is a challenge faced by Barbara, one of the author’s patients. During a car accident, the mother of three suffered damage to her prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that enables us to use mindsight to empathize with others. Having lost her sense of empathy, Barbara has struggled to maintain caring relationships with her kids and friends.
Mindsight Key Idea #2: The goal of mindsight practice is a balanced, harmonic self.
Some of us are addicted to rigid morning routines. Others start to squirm if something feels too “planned.” Whether you’re strict or spontaneous, too much focus on either extreme can make you hard to be around, and unhappier in the long run. Your best bet is to find the right balance by creating a harmonic self.
Having a harmonic self is all about keeping your personality balanced. With a balanced personality, you’ll be able to adapt to external changes, but will also stay stable and true to your core values.
This is a bit hard to grasp in abstract terms, so mindsight-based therapy makes use of the image of a gently flowing river. Rather than clashing with changes in your relationships and environment, simply make room for them while continuing on your original course.
To make your personality flow, you must first accept that it’s normal to act in a range of different ways, to have relationships that contrast with one another and that past experiences will shape you in different ways as you grow older.
A harmonic personality is also tied to creating a balance between rational, analytical thinking and emotional, intuitive thinking. While both modes of thinking are valuable, placing too much emphasis on one or the other can be detrimental.
Take Stuart, one of the author’s patients, a retired lawyer who was suffering from depression. It turned out that because Stuart only accepted rational, logical thoughts, he’d been repressing his emotions for years; this imbalance was at the heart of his sense of emptiness. For Stuart, learning to appreciate his emotional and rational sides in equal measure was the first step to overcoming his depression.
Mindsight Key Idea #3: Mindsight is brain training that keeps us resilient and emotionally healthy in everyday life.
Mindsight can be a powerful part of psychotherapy. With a deeper understanding of how brain activity shapes the way we see the world, you’ll be able to harness the power of mindsight. So how does it work?
Mindsight is like training for your brain. It teaches us how to reflect on thoughts and helps us create new connections between them. The more we associate two ideas with each other as we reflect on them, the stronger the neural relationship between those ideas will become.
Mindsight also trains our brains by boosting memory. Conscious reflection on past or future situations can be as vivid and powerful as experiencing those events themselves. By encouraging our minds to re-enact entire scenes in full detail, we activate the same areas of our brains that would light up if what we were imagining was taking place in real life. Neuroscience has even demonstrated that every single thought we have alters blood flow and neural signal rates.
By dedicating time to training our brains, we’re better able to deal with unexpected challenges. Our neural behavior directly shapes how we manage issues in our environment – so much so that certain physical parts of our brain are responsible for different reactions.
The prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead, triggers moral judgments, our attention (or lack thereof), our sense of time and our sense of identity. The insula, on the other hand, is responsible for our emotions, as well as how we respond to the emotional displays of others. Mirror neurons are specialized cells that help us understand the intentions of those around us.
Since mindsight allows us to boost our awareness of these areas of the brain, we’re able to better control the reactions that they create.
Mindsight Key Idea #4: Mindsight helps us train the right side of our brains to acknowledge and manage discomfort.
You might think that talking about your feelings is simply a matter of opening up. Sometimes, we experience emotions that we’re not even aware of. But just like any other skill, becoming aware of our emotions can be learned; practice makes perfect!
This is a central focus of mindsight-based therapies. Mindsight targets the right hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for our emotional awareness. Though we’re more comfortable exercising the rational capabilities of the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is the side we should exercise to deepen our understanding of our own feelings. Thankfully, this isn’t too hard to do.
You can stimulate your right hemisphere by taking part in nonverbal communication games, from imitating facial expressions, to trying to read movie character’s emotions with the sound off. You can also keep a diary to record all the emotional sensations and imagery of your experiences, rather than rationalizing them.
When you’re confronted with your own intense emotions, you can use other techniques that focus awareness on bodily sensations. The next time you’re stressed out, try doing the body scan. This entails lying down on the floor and focusing on different parts of your body, one by one.
This can be quite uncomfortable at first, as a sore back or itchy nose might make it hard for you to concentrate. But with practice, you can focus your mind on mental images of safe places to stay in control of your responses.
One of the author’s patients hyperventilated while doing a body scan. After ensuring the patient felt safe with her, they prepared a mental image of a safe space together to try for next time; the safe space, in this case, was a cove at the beach. On her next attempt at the body scan, the patient was able to focus calmly, without letting the intense sensations of her body bother her.
Mindsight Key Idea #5: Mindsight helps us see how feelings are fleeting experiences, not our defining character traits.
While it’s all too easy to tell someone to “keep their temper,” emotions can be very tough to manage. Many people find emotions overwhelming and distressing, but mindsight helps us realize that they’re all just fleeting parts of the human experience, rather than ingrained behaviors that indicate we’re somehow flawed and dysfunctional.
Meditation exercises, for instance, train people to focus on one thing and one thing only. Such exercises require that, if you do get distracted, you bounce back and return to your focus. This is a great way to experience how thoughts and feelings are just temporary experiences, rather than the foundations of your personality.
Another exercise to try involves imagining that your mind is an ocean. Your thoughts and feelings are what moves over the ocean’s surface; they can be ripples, or they can be storms. But no matter how big the waves, there is calmness at the bottom of the ocean. Stormy feelings are surface-level and temporary – it’s up to you to find the calmness on the ocean floor!
More broadly, mindsight exercises like the above two examples are built around three key pillars: observation, objectivity and openness. By learning to take all three of these in your stride, you’ll be better positioned to understand your own feelings.
Learn to observe your mind by noticing when distracting thoughts pull you away from your focus. This might be during meditation, or even when negative thoughts slow your productivity at work or make it hard to fall asleep at night.
Next, realize that you can train yourself to objectively follow the path of your attention. You can study where your thoughts carry you and how they make you feel. This, in turn, makes you more aware of how underlying prejudices or instinctive reactions are also thoughts that shape your experiences.
Finally, by staying open and accepting that judgmental, depressing or confusing thoughts are just temporary, you’ll see that emotions don’t need to be cause for distress. They’re natural, and by acknowledging that, you have the power to learn from them and change them.
Mindsight Key Idea #6: Negative childhood experiences might shape how we see our world today, but we can use mindsight to overcome them.
Who were your teachers in the first years of your life? Your parents, most likely! But parents do far more than teach us to read or how to ride a bike. We also learn a great deal from everything that they teach us subconsciously.
For better or for worse, our upbringing shapes how we interact with people today. Kids raised by parents who only showed affection inconsistently often feel that they can’t trust anyone when they become adults – not in friendships, not at work, not even in loving relationships.
Similarly, children who had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age learned that showing weakness is a failure. This means that they have genuine trouble opening up about their feelings as adults – since childhood, they weren’t comfortable with being seen as vulnerable.
Although these misconceptions we learned during childhood have been with us for a long time, we can, in fact, overcome them with mindsight. A great way to start is to write down as many of your earliest memories as you can, as well as some of the most recent.
This helps you get everything off your chest, and will help you see what narrative you’ve used to make sense of your past as a child. Examine the story that you tell about yourself and consider the possibility that there is no need for one perfectly coherent narrative. Rather, we’re all made up of multiple narratives within each stage and aspect of our lives.
The narrative you tell of your earlier life will reveal how your current difficulties are bound up with how you perceive your childhood. This helps you see these patterns for what they are: harmful. Discovering alternative stories to tell about your childhood and adult life is the first step to knocking down those walls you built around yourself as a kid.
Mindsight Key Idea #7: Use mindsight to be receptive rather than reactive to your partner when addressing relationship problems.
Many of us know what it’s like to have stupid fights with our partners. It starts out with one person addressing a problem, but soon seems to devolve into fighting for the sake of fighting. What prevents these discussions from being resolved peacefully? In the end, it’s a matter of attitude.
The key is whether you’re reactive or receptive toward your partner. This one factor can have a massive influence on the quality of your relationship as a whole – so it’s pretty important stuff! But what does it mean?
Well, being receptive means openly listening to your partner. Receptiveness makes your partner feel like you acknowledge and value their feelings, which in turn helps them open up and share what’s on their mind.
Being reactive, on the other hand, is what we do when all of our partner’s complaints feel like threats to us. We enter fight-flight-freeze mode, and either want to attack our partner, defend ourselves or stop talking and avoid eye contact. This is problematic for both of you, leading to a vicious cycle.
If one person feels the need to discuss an issue while her partner feels the need to flee whenever she brings it up, they’ll just want to push the issue even further away; this, in turn, can lead to endless fights and miscommunication. So what can we do better?
Mindsight helps us be receptive toward our partners and facilitates dialogue in a relationship. Both partners should take the time to reassess the narratives they’ve told themselves about their lives and consider whether they’re accurate, or whether alternatives are possible. They should then share these with each other, which can help each partner understand the other’s motivations and emotional needs.
Other strategies to try include the timeout method. This requires mindsight, as you’ll need to monitor your emotional state when you discuss a sensitive topic with your loved one. Call a timeout when you sense yourself reaching reactive mode – this gives you time to reflect and rejoin the conversation later.
Mindsight Key Idea #8: Mindsight can help us with both past trauma and an uncertain present.
We’ve already learned how our childhood experiences can shape our adult lives. However, even experiences from young adulthood can have an impact on our attitudes today, without us even realizing why.
Blackouts and angry outbursts due to excessive drinking or traumatizing experiences mean that some of our most painful memories are buried and forgotten. Even so, they continue to affect us on a subconscious level.
For example, one woman struggled with back pain for years. As a teenager, she had been sexually assaulted and had her back slammed against a table. She couldn’t remember the assault, but her body continued to remind her of the traumatic experience.
With mindsight techniques such as the body scan, we can regain access to the memories attached to physical difficulties that we can’t quite explain. As the brain focuses in on a particular body part, it activates related memories. This can bring repressed experiences to light, which in turn helps us accept and move on from trauma. The woman’s back pain disappeared after she realized what had been triggering it.
Finally, mindsight is one of the best tools at your disposal when coping with everyday uncertainties. Humans evolved with the tendency to prefer predictability over precarious and threatening scenarios. However, this instinct can also feed into neurotic behaviors like obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Those suffering from OCD know how frustrating it is to have distressing urges that simply won’t go away until they perform a ritual behavior. For example, someone with OCD may feel an intense need to knock on a desk three times when thinking about a relative dying, just to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Thankfully, this disorder can also be addressed with mindsight. Imagine the distressing urge is a person with whom you can start a discussion. You’re able to negotiate whether you really need to check five times that you locked the door, or whether twice is enough. Gradually, you’ll find it easier and easier to deal with these urges.
In Review: Mindsight Book Summary
The key message in this book:
Difficult or troubling emotions aren’t indelible parts of our personality; rather, they’re shaped by the structure of the human brain and the experiences we have as children. Discover the power of mindsight by learning to reflect, train and regulate your emotional responses, which will help you when facing conflict with loved ones, dealing with past trauma and managing everyday uncertainty.
Actionable Advice:
Worried about something? Observe it and name it to tame it!
The next time you can’t stop worrying, whether it’s about yourself, people you know or a bigger situation, take a step back to reflect on your thoughts. You could even try a body scan! Try to pinpoint the real source of your worries, and dissect them to learn more. By acknowledging and accepting your nervous feelings, you’ll be able to manage them with ease.
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