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Make yourself and your family more resilient against depression, anxiety and the challenges of life.
Browsing Tags positive
Enjoy Vacations more with “FABLES”
Savoring the memory of a vacation can be as good as the vacation itself, sometimes better. There is a fascinating article describing how even anticipating a vacation can give one joy.
I met a wise young man recently that created a delightful, and (I think) scientifically sound method for helping people enjoyably savor their vacations even better–while still on them. I begged him to let me share his creation.
This graphic was created by Greg Sullivan of Sullivan Gang Graphics.
Sullivan Gang Graphics115 S Handley St Wichita, KS 67213Phone: 316-262-6242
Prepare for Success – Don’t get Expertitis
Our brains do some weird things when we are successful. It can pay to prepare for it. Especially, because we can get what I call “expertitis.”
I have a confession to make. After getting some really rough feedback about ten years ago I realized that I had come down with a bad case of expertitis. I had become successful as a change agent, and at helping people transform. This success unfortunately went to my head (which swelled a few sizes). I began to lecture people who had no interest in my advice. I was showing the first two symptoms below. No surprise, my success rate (and popularity) began to decline.
Symptoms: Expertitis is that dreaded egotistical state that shows itself in one or more of the following behaviors:
- Knowledge bias: (pompous chest puffing-up) “I’m an expert in one area which of course means that I’m an expert in a bunch of areas.”
- Teacher bias: (unwanted professorial air) “Of course you want my advice! Let me tell you how to do it right“
- Specialist jargon: (speaking in terms no average person can understand – see the urban dictionary for more.)
- Narcissistic bias: (with nose up in the air) “I’m so smart that I deserve better treatment than others.”
My solutions to priming by brain to be more realistic and helpful were simple, if not easy.
- First, I posted above my desk the following quote. “Focus on learning, not knowing”.
- Then, I made sure with every program that my goal was to “Add as much value as possible, rather than show my expertise.”
I’d love to hear what you do to balance yourself and prevent expertitis.
Also, I love learning about other brain geeks that use research to help us all learn how to work and live better.
I’ve followed Dr. Srini Pillay for a while. Here are his great suggestions for counteracting expertitis in the Harvard Business Review blog. The Unexpected Consequences of Success
Creating Optimism – Make your life a work of art, with Jason Silva
Jason Silva is one of the most profound thinkers of our day. To make it even better he is a master video producer (and host of Brain Games) so creates dynamic videos to explain his concepts.
I challenge you to create vital cycles of optimism. Design experiences for yourself that increase your passion, enhance your optimism, and as Silva says, “make your life a work of art”.
Mindfulness: Think and Feel Better
Would you like to be calmer in the face of work and family stress?
Would you like to be more content with life as it is, and less affected by the imaginary dangers that play in your mind?
Would you like to make better, more rational decisions?
I’m going to give some of my thoughts, and those of Sam Harris, a renowned philosopher and neuroscientist.
Increasing mindfulness does all three of these things. Mindfulness is being able to calmly face the exaggerated threats our mind creates without fighting, fleeing or freezing. That means to not have to suppress our unwanted urges, run from our own emotions, or deny our own thoughts and feelings. Instead, noticing our thoughts and feelings with equanimity, allowing these urges to “float” by instead of choosing to react to them. Then choosing the “right” action toward what is best for oneself, instead of merely away from momentary discomfort and toward comfort.
I created the ACT Team to give people an easy step in this direction. These represent aspects of our brain that embody certain fearful urges 
and motivations. Seeing them as somewhat separate allows us some mental distance, and increases the ability to choose “right” action instead of simply react to their promptings. This also allows us to see ourselves as more than our thoughts, our feelings and our urges. In addition, it allows us to influence our own motivations a bit more objectively, instead of be a victim to them.
The fearful urges and motivations we feel in a given moment distort our sense of what is real, creating reactionary “inner movies.” Inner movies are our brain’s guess of what is real combined with our biases, fears and hopes. It plays them out in our minds like a visual, auditory or sensed movie. Most of the time we’re caught up in the inner movies of life, not realizing that they are simply movies, not reality. Mindfulness is being able to look past the movie to see what is really there, with less bias from our fears, hopes and biases. This is what I argue that “enlightenment” truly is—seeing reality more clearly. More mental light is now shining on what is actually happening, and less on the internal distortions. For example, we may have an inner movie that our child is “shaming the family” by choosing career we dislike, when the reality is that she is usually simply being attracted to what she finds interesting and enjoyable. You can see how much unnecessary conflict this kind of inner movie causes for ourselves, and for those around us.
Sam Harris explains mindfulness well in his book “Waking Up”.
He states:
My friend Joseph Goldstein…likens this shift in awareness to the 
experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall. Your perception is unchanged, but the spell is broken. Most of us spend every waking moment lost in the movie of our lives. Until we see that an alternative to this enchantment exists, we are entirely at the mercy of appearances…
We crave lasting happiness in the midst of change: Our bodies age, cherished objects break, pleasures fade, relationships fail. Our attachment to the good things in life and our aversion to the bad amount to a denial of these realities, and this inevitably leads to feelings of dissatisfaction. Mindfulness is a technique for achieving equanimity amid the flux, allowing us to simply be aware of the quality of experience in each moment, whether pleasant or unpleasant. This may seem like a recipe for apathy, but it needn’t be. It is actually possible to be mindful—and, therefore, to be at peace with the present moment—even while working to change the world for the better.
(Sam Harris teaches how to achieve mindfulness through various exercises in “Waking Up”. He has audio guides to this kind of mediation on his website. He manages to extract the powerful insights of Buddhist meditation from the mythology, so that it’s relevant to everyone regardless of your beliefs.)
Happiness. Bliss. Serenity. Mental Health. There are many worthwhile goals of mindfulness meditation. A very small segment of people find sitting for days, weeks, months or even years at a time appealing. The goal for most of us though, as Harris describes it, is increasing happiness. Not reaching some magical state of nirvana, enlightenment, etc.
What is the next step you will take to becoming more mindful?
To make better decisions?
To be more content with life as it is, and less affected by the imaginary dangers of your inner movie?
Energize is for free this weekend only – Amazon ebook download
I have great news! The Kindle version of my book “Energize: Ignite Passion and Performance with User Friendly Brain Tools” will be FREE this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (April 4, 5, and 6). It’s part of a cool promotion that my publisher Aloha Publishing and Amazon are doing to get Energize into more people’s hands. Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/mb2znrl
Will you help me get the word out? I would love it if you would share this and help promote my social media posts this week about this free promo. Here’s a sample of some things you can share with your social media followers, if you’re so inclined:
“My friend, @BobFaw, is the author of “Energize,” which will be FREE this weekend only. Head over to http://tinyurl.com/mb2znrl to get your free download.”
“Looking to make positive change in your life and business? Check out @BobFaw’s book, “Energize,” which is free this weekend at http://tinyurl.com/mb2znrl“
Thank you in advance for your help!
Have a great weekend,
Bob
Get your ACT together when overwhelmed
Tom Raffio interviews Bob Faw about how to get your ACT together on their radio show.
Here are tips for motivating yourself, and others, particularly during busy or stressful times.
Tom Raffio is the leader of Northeast Delta Dental. He is also the co-author of “There Are No Do-Overs: The Big Red Factors For Sustaining a Business Long Term” with Dave Cowens and Barbara McLaughlin
Energize Brainstorming – for real innovation
How can you harness the power of a team’s creativity?
Energize Brainstorming is one of the highest rated tools we teach in our Energize Universities. Your brainstorming process must be good to counterbalance the recent research that shows how average brainstorming doesn’t work well. Here I’ll share Energize Brainstorming techniques that galvanize true innovation.
There are a few major factors necessary for a truly innovative brainstorming session.
- Energizing atmosphere: The environment, team culture, leadership style and even tone of voice you use should encourage people to speak very freely about ideas, with no fear of being attacked or hearing sarcasm. You want to activate the most creative part of their minds, what we call the Artist. Direct their inner movies to energize creativity in a way that helps them feel safe, have fun, and enjoy exploring wild ideas together.
- Clear focus: The group does best with goal clarity. It helps to have a memorable, compelling goal statement that inspires action. They also need to know what criteria the end solution must achieve, and what limits the end solution cannot exceed. Provide the absolutely needed criteria and limitations, but no more than you have to. This allows freedom to explore and create, with a helpful focus. In addition, positive goals release more brain chemicals that provide motivation to create. Paradoxically, clear limits (stated positively) can help people get really creative about how to work within those parameters.
- Diverse perspectives: It helps to get representatives (of each stakeholder group in the solution) to be part of creating these important criteria and limitations. This way your goal is strategic in scope, and can dramatically increase the likelihood of coming up with a solution that works well in real life. Sometimes we interview stakeholders about the clear compelling goal ahead of time and bring some of their ideas for the solution, and even on what to change about the criteria and limits. We invite people that have to put the solution into action, and those who will be affected by the solution. The brainstorms can really benefit as well with diverse participants with a potentially helpful perspective to your desired goal. They don’t have to be part of the decision making later, but you can include them just in brainstorming.
More on each of the Energize Brainstorming Guidelines:
- Focus on clear goals: Post the goal (compelling goal statement, with the criteria and limitations) where everyone can easily read it during the entire brainstorm. This keeps people brainstorming towards the goal. You can also use this to refresh their minds’ focus periodically.
- No critical remarks allowed: Any negativity during the brainstorming can be counterproductive to the energizing atmosphere. If you wish the group would be more specific on an area; instead of telling them not to be so vague, reframe it to tell them where you’d like them to be more specific.
- Evaluation comes later: After brainstorming you should only focus on the ideas most likely to work, rather than wasting time critiquing the ones you won’t use anyway. A quick group multi-vote after brainstorming helps cull out the the ideas most likely to be used. Give each person the ability to choose the three ideas she/he thinks will most likely meet the goal (and its criteria and limitations) best. They can check mark on paper, or post dots, etc. Then you can take the top ideas to the next level of decision-making. This prevents wasting time, or lowering morale, by being negative about the low check marked ideas. To make sure people don’t miss a brilliant, but misunderstood idea, give people a chance after the mutli-voting to convince the rest of the team of any lowly checked ideas they think should be in the top idea list.
- Start solo: This is very important. Everyone involved should privately list as many ideas as they can before any discussion is started about possible solutions. This will gain far more diverse perspectives. If you brainstorm out loud together, groups tend to stick to the first idea or two, or follow the leaders or experts rather than think for themselves. Once a solo round is over, you can encourage people to add new ideas, build upon previously posted ideas, or add ideas that completely oppose any ideas up there. Multiple rounds often gain more insight and depth.
- Quantity is desired: Encourage people to post lots of ideas. That generally loosens up their concerns about only posting their best ideas. A good quantity is more likely to inspire multiple perspectives, and something truly new and useful.
- Wild ideas are helpful and encouraged: I often add crazy, silly, and even downright stupid ideas to the first brainstorm round. This encourages people to stretch their thinking, post half-baked ideas, share thoughts from other fields of expertise, etc. Much innovation requires some completely new ideas. Even the bad wild ideas might inspire great wild ideas in future rounds. I actively applaud and praise the crazy ideas to inspire people to post “risky” ideas.
- Adding to ideas is okay: People often limit themselves to discrete ideas or stop themselves from duplicating. However, many times an idea already thought of may ignite ideas for an even more sophisticated approach. This is one of the real advantages of multiple rounds of brainstorming.
- Facilitator keeps group on task and creative. Ask “What else?”: We like wild ideas, and yet people can go so far astray that the ideas have little value over time. Never criticize the ideas that are off topic, of course. Instead, periodically ask, “What else can we do to achieve ___ goal, that fulfills these criteria ___, and fits within these limits ___.” That refreshes their minds about what the target is. A facilitator should also remind people to stay positive, and that all ideas are welcome should any negativity occur. I do this even when people disparage their own ideas.
- Record everything: Ensuring that all ideas are up where everyone can see them helps in many ways. It prevents needless repetition of ideas, it helps people build off of what is there, and it inspires people with new ideas. There are many great ways to do this. The best way I know of at this point is giving everyone index cards and a sharpie marker. Tell each person to write as many ideas as they can that might help achieve the goal (state the full goal with its criteria and limitations); Write only one idea per card–this enables highly “voted’ ideas later to be moved to the top and the others to be moved away. Have people post their own ideas–I use sticky boards made of display boards with repositionable adhesive spray on them.
I hope you find these ideas helpful.
Please post below any other ideas or experiences you’ve had with successful brainstorming.
Bob
Calming the Caveman’s F Responses
I have fun playing the “caveman”, one of the most primitive aspects of our survival response. I describe the “Caveman” (or Cavewoman, if you prefer) and its responses to stress.
… then there are goofy outtakes
FYI, The “F Responses”–Fight, flight and freeze are technically part of the limbic system of the brain. We call it the Caveman to make it easier to remember and deal with.
When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change
Daniel Goleman’s post in Harvard Business Review blog network
Wonderful article illustrating the problems with negative feedback and how it limits motivation and creativity. He also talks about some fantastic brain research showing the positive advantages of talking about positive future states.