Changing Perspective

Humans are social animals -- which makes rejection all the more emotionally painful.

Anything that keeps us out of the group in an overt way, we're going to have a hard time with. It's an important aspect of who we are.

1. Make it known you noticed that underhanded insinuation by pausing and directing your attention to it.
2. Calmly state you will revisit what they said, the action they took or the decision they made at another point. And you don’t ask it as a question; you make a statement.

Give yourself space to come to terms with what you experienced before being able to consider what action to take next.

Get clear on your values. It’s important that you understand within yourself first, the nature and reason behind the battle you choose to fight.

Instead of defaulting into the low-quality obsessions that leave us wondering where the time has gone, we should cultivate high-quality hobbies that lead to lasting satisfaction.

• First allow for a period of abstinence.
• Follow this by a selective re-introduction of only those tools and technologies that pass a more rigorous cost-benefit analysis than you typically impose.

They go hand-in-hand.

Addiction seems to be the inevitable consequence of our culturally-created environment changing faster than our biologically-hardwired brains.

• Swearing helps mitigate pain.
• Those who speak more than one language, report that swearing in their first language carries a bigger emotional punch.
• A few blue words, uttered in a good-natured way, indicates and encourages intimacy.
• A recent study suggests that people who swear are perceived as more trustworthy.

A study on sixth-graders revealed that friendship is crucial and real for kids, and can be as deep as a parental relationship.

Most parents and teachers do not understand the importance of deep bonding among friends at school and tend to regard friendships as a distraction or a nuisance.

Social isolation is the dark side of the school, in which many kids with no friends are at risk of anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. There is a perceived sense of threat with being friendless, and the young, immature mind can deeply internalize the resulting difficulties, leading to depression.

Bullying at this age is also a major problem, with those who are socially isolated becoming the most vulnerable to being bullied.

Start with a clear destination to determine your steps. Identify your values and live by them.

• Visualize in detail your own funeral. What are they saying about how you lived your life, and your relationships? What do you want them to say? Change your priorities accordingly.
• Break down different roles in your life - whether professional, personal or in a community. List 3-5 goals you want to achieve for each. 
• Define what scares you and write down exactly how you'll handle it.

Prioritize your day-to-day actions based on what is most important, not what is most urgent.

Be disciplined to follow these actions regardless of how you feel at any given moment. Maintain a primary focus on relationships and results, and a secondary focus on time.

• Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. People learn faster and retain knowledge more effectively when rewarded for good behavior than punished for bad behavior.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation. The only way to get a person to do anything is by giving them what they want.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want. The only way to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

• Flattery is selfish and insincere. It’s cheap praise. You tell the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
• Appreciation is unselfish and sincere. It happens when we stop thinking about ourselves and begin to think of the other person’s good points.

During this tough period we are all currently facing, there is a positive aspect worth being taken into account: staying isolated at home can provide us with unique chances. 

For instance, we can now use this time to spend endless hours with our family or doing all the things we have so much wanted to do for the longest time and have never had the chance to do, because work would always come first. 

We can never do one thing. We should consider what the second-order consequences will be. When we interact with a system, we need to find out what the broader repercussions of our actions will be.

They can occur during the production or consumption of a service or goods. Calling something a negative externality can be a way of avoiding responsibility.

If a factory pollutes nearby water supplies, it causes harm without added costs to the factory. The costs to society are high and are not reflected in the price of whatever the factory produces. Even if pollution is taxed, the harmful effects still remain.