1. Seeing an old friend2. Hearing a song that reminds you of your past3. A bit of good news for a loved one/friend4. Getting a thank you from someone5. Doing something that makes someone else laugh/smile6. Eating comfort food7. Getting into bed with freshly washed sheets8. Finding a ten pound note in an old pair of jeans9. Looking back at old photographs10. Seeing a funny video online

REVEALED: The top 50 things most likely to make YOU smile

11. Winning a tenner on the lottery12. Walks in the country13. Getting a nice message from a loved one14. Waking up on a sunny day15. Sitting in the sun16. Cuddles17. Listening to your favourite song18. Booking a holiday19. Landing at the holiday airport20. Being surprised with flowers or chocolates

21. Someone offering an elderly person their seat on the bus/train22. Someone giving you their car parking ticket when you arrive in a car park23. Fitting in to a pair of jeans you thought were too small24. Finding a bargain in the sales25. Old people holding hands26. Someone telling you you’ve lost weight27. Bumping into someone you haven’t seen for ages28. Getting a quiet moment to myself29. Chocolate30. The smell of freshly baked bread

31. Sunday dinners32. Finding out your children have done well at school33. People carrying their babies34. Making a new friend35. Hearing your child say their first words/smile36. Waking up to find out it has snowed overnight37. Driving a car with the window down on a sunny day38. Finding out someone likes you39. Getting a new hair-do40. A good hair day

41. Passing a driving test42. Getting praise from your boss after working hard on something43. Getting spontaneous kiss or cuddle from your children44. Getting the answers right when watching a TV quiz45. Sleeping children46. Babies47. Swimming in the sea48. Waking up on a Saturday morning and realising it is the weekend49. Having a girlie/lads night out50. Being made a cup of tea

SEEING an old friend, hearing a song that reminds you of your past and getting into a pair of jeans you thought were too small are among the 50 things that make us smile, new research reveals.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝟻𝟶 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎:)

Habit is the foundation of the routines that comprise the vast bulk of our everyday lives. When we are not disturbed, we live our practical lives without engaging in anything like a cautious assessment of what it is we are doing at any given moment. No conscious deliberation or reflection is required to brew morning coffee, or to catch the morning train to work. As the late philosopher Hubert Dreyfus said, habits are a part of our “everyday coping practices”.

Habits: Everyday Coping Practices?

In tune with this characterisation, philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists alike often conceive of habits as highly mechanistic and near-automatic responses to environmental cues that unfold outside of our deliberative control. This conception of habits as mindless and reflexive might seem intuitive when we recognise that they are often counterproductive to our capacity to pursue our goals and desires. For example, many of us may have recently found ourselves habitually reaching over to shake hands with people even though we know we should refrain from doing so in light of the pandemic.

… Or Mindless Reflexes?

However, even our most mundane habitual routines actually display a great deal of intelligence. Indeed, they are often intelligently context-sensitive and flexible in such a way as can support and structure our goals and projects.

The Intelligent Dimension Of Habits

Consider the example of driving the same route to work every morning. You might often find yourself wrapped up in thoughts about how your day will unfold, or how you might explain to your boss why you failed to complete some task, and yet you still easily navigate the roads that lead you to your destination.However, despite completing this task on something like autopilot, your drive will still be intelligently adjusted to situational intricacies, such as how fast or slow the driver in front of you is going, or when the traffic lights change.

Habits: An Intelligent Autopilot

In attempting to account for the intelligent dimension of habit, researchers have moved away from construing habits as unintelligent mechanisms and towards modelling them as a species of belief. The puzzle we face in clarifying the character of habits is to explain their intelligent dimension while also acknowledging that they can often work against our intelligence and lead us astray.

The Puzzle In Defining Habits

Great thinkers since before Aristotle have overwhelmingly tended to characterise humans as rational animals in virtue of our capacity to form and intelligently adjust our beliefs. On this view, constructing good habits is vital – but, once a habitual routine is established, it is not itself intelligent. However, if we are serious about attributing intelligence to our embodied interactions with the world, then our notion of how to construe human rationality will need to be revised, and profound questions will need to be raised as to our conceptions of nonhuman animal intelligence.

Who And What Is Intelligent?

Gilbert Ryle, in his seminal work The Concept of Mind (1949), emphatically denied that habits were intelligent. For him, habits are mere mindless mechanisms. Indeed, he explicitly contrasts habitual doings with intelligent and skilful behaviours, claiming that it “is of the essence of merely habitual practices that one performance is a replica of its predecessors”. A habit is simply an unintelligent and stupefied way of reacting to the world.

A Habit Is A Replication

In On Habit (2014), Clare Carlisle notes that this sort of characterisation of habit – as unintelligent and “a degradation of life, reducing spontaneity and vitality to mechanical routine” – has been held by many influential philosophers of the mind throughout history, including Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant and Henri Bergson. Even today, the researchers Susana Ramírez-Vizcaya and Tom Froese identify a prevalent notion of habit across several domains of the contemporary cognitive sciences that conceives of them as “rigid patterns of behaviour that are automatically activated by context cues”.

A Habit Is A Robotization

One inclined to agree with this mechanistic conception of habit as inherently unintelligent might argue that the puzzle referred above is simply ill-posed. On this analysis, any attempt to construe habits as intelligence-involving straightforwardly confuses habit and skill. An implication would be that our above purported examples of intelligent habits (such as the habit of driving the same route to the office every morning, which allows us to effectively reach our workplace, even when we are lost in irrelevant thoughts), insofar as they are intelligent, are not habits – they’re skills.

The Problem With The Mechanistic Conception

The mechanistic view of habits is misguided. Habits are not, despite what Ryle says, simply stupefied and rigid reactions to environmental triggers, or ‘single-track dispositions’ to respond to the world with highly stereotyped reflexes. To see this, we need only note that forging any clear-cut distinction between habit and skill is not even remotely intuitive or feasible. On one hand, many of our skills consist of habits. Skill acquisition in sports, for example, is often nothing but the process of cultivating a new motor habit through repetitive practice.

Skills Aren’t Habits. But Skills Often Consist Of Habits. 

On the other hand, habits often comprise skills. Consider the habit of whistling when you are bored. This is a considerably skilful act, which can in some cases constitute genuine musical expertise. For just these reasons, introducing a clear-cut distinction between skill and habit, such that habitual doings cannot, by definition, be skilled or intelligent, is wrongheaded.

Habits Aren’t Skills. But Habits Often Comprise Skills. 

In opposition to the mechanistic conception of habits, some, such as the philosopher Jason Stanley, advocate for an intellectualist conception, on which habits are intelligent because they are really a kind of ‘settled belief’ about ways of achieving certain goals.

The Mechanistic Conception Vs The Intellectualist Conception

An example: in my initial weeks at a new workplace, I will have developed a belief about how I could successfully get to the office. Through my daily commute, this belief gradually becomes entirely automatic and unconscious. At this stage, I do not need to consciously consider what route I should take to the office but am instead guided by an unconscious belief about how to successfully get there.

“The Best Way To Work”

As this unconscious belief becomes entrenched, it might also become recalcitrant to counterevidence. I might, for instance, accidentally take this route to the office even after I am informed and sincerely convinced that there is a more efficient route. According to intellectualists, a habit is nothing but a deeply entrenched belief of this form. Holding this view, we could preserve the traditional view of human rationality as dependent on belief.

“The Only Way To Work”

This intellectualist view of habits as a form of belief, however, also has serious problems in accounting for their intelligent aspect. Habits are, as our above examples show, often exquisitely context-sensitive. But if Stanley takes habitual doings to be intelligent only in virtue of being guided by unconscious beliefs, then he relies on the idea that the intelligent flexibility of habits depends on the flexibility and rapid updating of unconscious beliefs. Emphasising this flexibility conflicts with his claim that habits themselves are guided by stubborn and recalcitrant unconscious beliefs.

The Problem With The Intellectualist Conception

It is also unclear how unconscious neural processes can even involve beliefs (philosophers have tried in vain for decades to provide a satisfactory account of how they might). As such, if an alternative notion of habits can successfully explain their context-sensitivity without requiring a commitment to positing hidden, unconscious beliefs, then such an account would be more theoretically attractive.

The Need For An Alternative Conception

Both mechanical and intellectual conceptions of habit encounter significant difficulties in explaining how habits sustain intelligent behaviour. These conceptions have a common root problem, which is a failure to appreciate the pivotal role of perception that philosophers working in the phenomenological and pragmatist traditions have recognised. When we follow them in recognising the crucial role of perception in guiding our habitual doings, we can explain the intelligent aspect of habits while obviating any need to identify them as beliefs.

The Root Problem Of Both Conceptions

For Dreyfus, we are no less experts at our everyday habitual routines than Serena Williams is an expert at tennis (albeit what we accomplish might be substantially less impressive). The consequence of this, for him, is that our everyday habits will be guided by expert-level perception and intuition. For instance, many of us have now cultivated social distancing practices. By that measure, as we incorporate these practices into our everyday lives, we are able to proficiently maintain an appropriate distance automatically.

We Are Habit Experts

Dreyfus is correct to highlight the important role of perceptual skill in guiding our habitual doings, but his account should be revised in one crucial respect. For him, as we become experts at completing some everyday routine, the world increasingly draws us to act in one optimal, appropriate way. In other words, we will, as our everyday routines become engrained, come to perceive nothing other than the possibility of pursuing a singular optimal course of action for each situation. This renders Dreyfus’s view of habits too close to the mechanistic conception of habit that we rejected above.

(As) Experts, (We) Suffer From Narrow Expertise

The pragmatist philosopher John Dewey is instructive here. Dewey, like Dreyfus, construes habits as facilitating intelligent behaviour by shaping perception. However, he denies that, as we become experts at carrying out everyday routines, our habitual responses always become entirely automatic response patterns. Instead, for Dewey, the “more numerous our habits the wider the field of possible observation and foretelling. The more flexible they are, the more refined is perception in its discrimination and the more delicate the presentation evoked by imagination…”

Habits Are Extra Sense Organs

In other words, our habitual doings are intelligently adjusted to context precisely because we perceive the environment in which they have been cultivated in terms of the vast and discriminating habitual responses we might make to it. Habits, seen through this pragmatist lens, then, far from being blunt reflexes, amount to a treasure trove of possible responses to our situated environment, highly constrained by circumstance, but genuinely open to the world. Nor does Dewey deny that our thoughts will almost always be suffused by habit.

Habits Are Omni-Sacks

Contemporary philosophy of mind is positively replete with warnings that we ought not to fall into easy dichotomies between intelligent and voluntary processes on the one hand, and unintelligent and automatic processes on the other. Indeed, even psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman who have influentially advocated for dual-processing views on which the brain comprises two distinct ‘systems’ – one habitual, unconscious, and quick, and another slow, conscious, and reflective – have for years conceded that such a picture is far too simplistic.

We Ought Not To Fall Into Easy Dichotomies

One sure-fire way to cut right through this dichotomy is to note that, while habits can distort our goals, they can also be exquisitely context-sensitive. Accounting for this context-sensitivity will require acknowledging the pivotal role perceptual skills play in guiding our habitual doings. By recognising the flexible aspects of habits, we further distance ourselves from an outmoded view of intelligent action as one that’s always guided by appropriate intellectual apprehension of knowledgeable beliefs.

Habit And Intelligence Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

“Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.” - Blaise Pascal

Rather than mindless mechanisms for routines, habits are a species of belief that display a great deal of intelligence

mindfulness

Mindfulness

habits

Habits

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

In Praise Of Habits – So Much More Than Mindless Reflexes

Every day, a new video goes “viral”, and an “infectious” idea starts spreading. Mental immunity is a psychological theory that is also known as cognitive immunology. With origins dating back 70 years, this field of research is based on the premise that not only is there an immune system for the body, but an immune system for the mind as well.People with a healthy mental immune system are more likely to detect misinformation. A strong cognitive immune system can also help spot bad ideas at an earlier stage, so you may avoid wasting time, energy or money.

 Protect Ourselves from Bad Ideas

Let’s explore the concept of cognitive immunology, together with a list of strategies you can employ to help strengthen your mental immune system.The concept of mental immunity was formulated by Professor Andy Norman, director of the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. Despite the field of cognitive immunology being in its infancy, mental immunity research has deep roots dating back to the 1950s. The mental immune system is believed to function in a similar way to the body’s physical immune system.

Cognitive Immunology

The purpose of the physical system of immune cells is to detect pathogens including bacteria and viruses, so that they can be eradicated from our blood stream and organ systems before they have a chance to cause damage. Similarly, a healthy mental immune system will detect harmful or incorrect information that enters our mind, so that it can be recognised as such and then promptly rejected.

The Process

In a paper about immunology’s theories of cognition, philosopher Alfred Tauber explained that developing an “immune self” requires us to actively distinguish between the self and the foreign, so that foreign information can be interrogated and potentially defended against.This way, the mental immune system sifts through ideas, information and other forms of external stimuli to identify, and therefore protect us from, the adverse outcomes associated with misinformation.

Developing an "Immune Self"

Both factual information and misinformation have the potential to spread through the population far faster than ever before. We have access to constant, real-time updates from online news platforms, as well as information shared via online magazines, social media, and unregulated websites. While factual information is a great asset, unreliable information and the inability to spot bad ideas may lead to poor decision making.

Information and Misinformation

Professor Sander van der Linden from the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge published a study which showed that the public could be inoculated against misinformation regarding climate change. In the study, the publics’ cognitive immunity to misinformation was reinforced when they were given a pre-emptive warning about politically motivated attempts to spread misinformation on the human causes of global warming. The results showed that this was an effective way to strengthen their immunity to false information.

Climate Change & Misinformation

In his 2021 book Mental Immunity, Professor Andy Norman explains that the immune systems of our minds can be strengthened against ideological corruption and mind parasites, which increases our capacity for critical thinking. This in turn helps us to spot and remove bad ideas before they can cause harm.Furthermore, developing greater cognitive flexibility allows us to change our minds faster when new, better-evidenced information is presented to us. In short, moving away from rigid thinking patterns improves our relationship with information and our resultant actions.

The Book "Mental Immunity"

You can increase your mental immunity by making your mind more resistant to misinformation, which will lead to better cognitive flexibility and decision making.To keep on using the same analogy, these strategies work in a similar way to vaccination: they support your mind in recognising the threat of bad ideas.1. Build awareness of misinformation. Misinformation is spread for a variety of reasons. It can be passed on innocently, especially when shared from person to person in a general conversation.

Strategies

However, research suggests that the spread of false content can also occur more deviously for political gain or polarisation, to generate income for media outlets, as a personal or industrial form of propaganda, or as a result of social media algorithms.Remember that misinformation is common, that fake news is designed to appear genuine, and train yourself to immediately interrogate the information or data you are presented with. This will help make your mind more resistant to bad ideas.

An Industrial Form of Propaganda

2. Develop healthy meta-beliefs. A meta-belief is a belief that one holds following a thorough reasoning process or cognitive interrogation to check the validity of the belief. In their 2020 paper, Gordon Pennycook and colleagues explained that “theories of belief should take into account what people believe about when and how beliefs and opinions should change — that is, meta-beliefs.”The team found that people who were politically liberal were more likely to believe that opinions and beliefs should change according to evidence.

Meta-Beliefs

Those who were religious, or held paranormal or conspiratorial beliefs, were less likely to agree that beliefs should change.Developing meta-beliefs strongly correlates with mental immunity. To strengthen your mental immune system, be prepared to assess and re-adjust previously held beliefs if new evidence comes to light. This way, your opinions are continuously being amended based on the latest evidence.

Meta-Beliefs & Mental Immunity

3. Practise self-reflection. When practising self-reflection, you should start to pay attention to your patterns of consumption. If this process of reflection indicates that you are drawn to the same news sources, or solely rely on influencers or social media platforms for your updates, your information diet may not be varied enough.For greater mental nourishment, diversify your information sources and dig deeper into the underlying research to fully understand whether you are unconsciously being sold misinformation.

Self-Reflection

It can also be helpful to develop a note-making practice so you can capture your thoughts and consciously reflect on the content you consume.Mental immunity is an emerging theory and more research is needed. However, the initial investigations have shown that a strong mental immune system helps filter external information to avoid falling prey to false data or flawed ideas.This cognitive system can be strengthened by building your awareness of the rampant nature of misinformation, developing healthy meta-beliefs, and reflecting on your patterns of information consumption.

An Emerging Theory

Once reinforced, stronger mental immunity will allow you to promptly detect misinformation, reject plans that are unlikely to succeed, and increase your cognitive flexibility to quickly adapt when presented with new evidence. Definitely a concept worth experimenting with!

 Cognitive Flexibility

Every day, a new video goes “viral”, and an “infectious” idea starts spreading. Mental immunity is a psychological theory that is also known as cognitive immunology.

health

Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

How developing mental immunity can protect us from bad ideas

“If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us.”

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.

Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

French laureate, philosopher and author Albert Camus's provoking thoughts on love, happiness, unhappiness and self-imposed prisons.

Insight into the evolution of some of the Nobel Prize winner's famous works is provided through the compilation of quotations and commentaries that reveal the nature of the author's spiritual, intellectual, and moral conflicts.

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

books

Books

From 1935 until his death, Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks to sketch out ideas for future works, record snatches of conversations and excerpts from books he was reading, and jot down his reflections on death and the horror of war, his feelings about women and loneliness and art, and his appreciations for the Algerian sun and sea. These three volumes, now available together for the first time in paperback, include all entries made from the time when Camus was still completely unknown in Europe, until he was killed in an automobile accident in 1960, at the height of his creative powers. In 1957 he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A spiritual and intellectual autobiography, Camus' Notebooks are invariably more concerned with what he felt than with what he did. It is intriguing for the reader to watch him seize and develop certain themes and ideas, discard others that at first seemed promising, and explore different types of experience. Although the Notebooks may have served Camus as a practice ground, the prose is of superior quality, which makes a short spontaneous vignette or a moment of sensuous beauty quickly captured on the page a small work of art.Here is a record of one of the most unusual minds of our time.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field), he came to France at the age of twenty-five. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation was a columnist for the newspaper Combat. But his journalistic activities had been chiefly a response to the demands of the time; in 1947 Camus retired from political journali

Albert Camus

Notebooks, 1942-1951

Notebooks 1942-1951

You might think that you only buy what you need when you need it. But whether you are shopping for food, clothes or gadgets, the retailers are using the power of psychological persuasion to influence your decisions – and help you part with your cash.

Shopping Is A Mouse Trap

Why do shops like to move everything around? Well, it’s actually a simple answer. Changing the location of items in a store means that we, the customers, are exposed to different items as we wander around searching for the things we need or want. This ploy can often significantly increase <a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.227.8388&rep=rep1&type=pdf">unplanned spending</a>, as we add additional items to our baskets – often on impulse – while spending more time in the shop.

You Are A Lab Rat In A Supermarket

Studies suggest that as much as 50% of all groceries are sold because of impulsiveness – and over 87% of shoppers make impulse buys.It is known that external shopping cues – “buy one get one free” offers, discounts and in-store promotional displays, for example – play a key role.An appealing offer can lead to a rush of temporary delight, and this makes it harder to make a rational buying decision. We’re overcome by the perceived value of the “saving” if we buy the item in the here and now – so we ignore other considerations such as whether we really need it.

Impulse Buying

Bundling is another technique that retailers use to trigger impulse buying. Complementary products are packaged together as one product, with one price, which often provides a substantial discount. Game consoles, for example, are often sold together with two or three games, and grocery stores have “meal deal” bundles and even web pages dedicated to a whole range of bundle offers.

Bundling

<ul><li>While these strategies can help to swell the profits of retailers, they can also contribute to problems for their customers.</li><li>Impulse buying can undoubtedly affect a consumer’s mental wellbeing. It increases feelings of shame and guilt, which in turn can lead to anxiety, stress and depression.</li><li>It’s potentially even more serious when buying on impulse leads to excessive buying, especially if people spend money they don’t have.</li></ul>

The Bottom Line

Retailers have a range of strategies to encourage us to spend more - but they can help us to make healthier choices too.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

How shops use psychology to influence your buying decisions

<ul>
<li>Your time is now. Stop acting like you have all the time in the world.</li>
<li>If you keep waiting to get started, you’ll wake up one day and wonder where your life went.</li>
<li>Manufacture urgency – urgency is not natural – it has to be created and recreated e.g. cut your target completion date in half and start now.</li>
<li>The amateur sits around waiting to be inspired – the pro creates inspiration.</li>
</ul>

1. Create Urgency

<ul>
<li>Indecision is a big dream killer.</li>
<li>Too much choice means you don’t get to focus on what is really valuable, on what is really important.</li>
<li>Kill thinking you can have everything, kill thinking you don’t have to make a choice.</li>
<li>Instead of opting for choice, choose. Instead of allowing yourself options, decide what’s most meaningful to you – CHOOSE.</li>
</ul>

2. Choose

<ul>
<li>A lack of vision and clarity means you end up serving the dreams of others.</li>
<li>Create a vision so big and bold you feel electrified and uneasy. Captivate yourself, captivate your emotions. It should resonate deeply and move you – you should be able to touch it, smell it, live it – it should bring you to tears. You should feel an energetic shift as you think and talk about, like experiencing your dream holiday, like testing your dream car.</li>
</ul>

3. Captivate Yourself

<ul>
<li>Growth requires constant challenge, something that stretches you, that pushes you to the edge of your perceived limits.</li>
<li>Without challenge we wither away, we fade. We become complacent, stuck, bored, apathetic. Our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacity – no longer being tested – start to suck the life force out of us.</li>
<li>Doing the same thing and expecting change is madness.</li>
</ul>

4. Choose Growth

<ul>
<li>Don’t allow your potential to be wasted –take action, implement what you read and learn.</li>
<li>Motivational conferences and reading alone won’t make it happen. Move from KNOWING to DOING (the endless reps, practice, challenge – this is when it starts to get hard – and where most people quit ) to BEING (where the magic happens ).</li>
</ul>

5. Start Doing

“When you experience resistance, laugh at it. Smile at it. See it for what it is—a sign you’re growing.”

<ul>
<li>Keep heading towards your goal no matter the obstacles and rejections.</li>
<li>Persistence kicks in when that initial high of doing something new wears off. People fail because they don’t stick with the process after the good feeling fades, and through the hard times.</li>
<li>Know that you will face obstacles, sleepless nights, existential crises and moments that bring you to your knees – that’s part of the path.</li>
<li>Behind every overnight success are years of effort, struggle, and rejection and consistent action.</li>
</ul>

6. Do It Daily

Fall in love with delayed gratification. A farmer doesn’t plant seeds and wake up yelling in frustration the next day that the crop hasn’t bloomed. Instead they trust the process – with sunshine, water, and patience the crops will bear fruit. Why do some people fail to reach their goals? They expect too much too early and give up at the first sign of struggle – overnight success is a decade in the making.

7. Delayed Gratification

Maximum Urgency + Maximum Accountability = Maximum Results
<ul>
<li>The more successful you are, the higher you get, the more accountability and urgency forms part of your experience.</li>
<li>Create systems, structures and people to ensure you follow through – this will ensure consistent productivity over the long term.</li>
</ul>

8. Get Support

<ul>
<li>Lack of focus is the number 1 obstacle standing between people and their dreams.</li>
<li>Reaching our goals involves self-control, delayed gratification and ignoring distractions and temptations that can divert us from our path.</li>
<li>Emails and social media are dream killers – putting you in the driver’s seat for someone else’s vision.</li>
<li>In a world telling you to choose others, choose yourself. You need to be selfish to achieve success.</li>
</ul>

9. Say No And Focus

“If you don’t fill your day with high-priority items, others will fill your day with low-priority items.”

<ul>
<li>At the core of the 1% Rule is the use of reverse engineering to breakdown any large vision into its smallest common denominator, so tiny that it’s impossible for you to fail to make progress each and every day.</li>
<li>Process over end result – when you focus on small daily actions tied to a larger vision – you feel inspired rather than overwhelmed.</li>
<li>Dream big but start small.</li>
<li>Break your vision down into CORE OUTCOME, CORE PROCESS and 1% (DAILY) PROCESS.</li>
</ul>

10. Adopt The 1% Rule

1% progress + daily application(consistency) + persistence (focus) + time (endurance) = SUCCESS
It would actually be more than 1%+1%+1%…= 365% upgrade across a year – due to compounding, we have the potential of advancing by 3700% over a year. That’s a huge upgrade in terms of our health, relationships, finances etc, all by enacting a small 1% daily action, and doing it with consistency, persistence and patience.

The 1% Rule

• 1% progress – make progress and move forward daily, no matter how small.• Consistency – do the action daily – each and every day – and see your effort compound over time.• Persistence – stick with it beyond the initial high and choose it again and again, despite challenges, obstacles and distractions.• Endurance – stay with the process for long enough to see your dreams come true. Have patience.

Consistency Is The Key 

<ul>
<li>Make a process you love – you will spend more time carrying out the process than in the achievement of the end result so ensure you enjoy it.</li>
<li>Track your progress – reflection is just as important as action – assess where you are with your goals, and if you are heading in the right direction.</li>
<li>Celebrate small wins – this will keep you inspired and on track – progress no matter how small is motivating.</li>
</ul>

How To Improve 1% Each Day?

Emails and social media are dream killers – putting you in the driver’s seat for someone else’s vision

In a highlight reel, microwave world — you're led to believe success is right around the corner: It's not working. Not only is it not working with your ability to achieve your goals, we've never been more frustrated, stuck, stressed and unfulfilled. Most personal development is all about the big and bold vision, yet these days we're not missing ambition or dreamers... We're missing results and execution. But what if there was a way to shut off the noise, fall in love with the process and take one step forward every single day as you paint your life's masterpiece? Enter The 1% Rule — a daily system designed to help you close the gap without the crushing pressure that has kept you stuck in the past. The 1% Rule was designed to answer three core questions: Why do some people seem to achieve massive success with everything they do — while others can't seem to get out of their own way? What separates those who get excited and inspired for a season, a quarter or a few months — and those who are consistently on fire? ​ What are the mindsets, principles, routines and behaviors of those who execute daily, and those who sit on the sidelines pondering? ...through answering these questions over the last decade in the trenches with thousands of people — they are now the framework of The 1% Rule and are yours today. It's time to take your power back, grab your copy now. If you're ready to ditch the highlight reel illusion... If you're tired of sitting on the sidlines waiting... If you're frustrated with the 24/7 noise... You've come to the right place!

productivity

Productivity

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

In a highlight reel, microwave world — you're led to believe success is right around the corner: It's not working. Not only is it not working with your ability to achieve your goals, we've never been more frustrated, stuck, stressed and unfulfilled. Most personal development is all about the big and bold vision, yet these days we're not missing ambition or dreamers... We're missing results and execution. But what if there was a way to shut off the noise, fall in love with the process and take one step forward every single day as you paint your life's masterpiece? Enter The 1% Rule — a daily system designed to help you close the gap without the crushing pressure that has kept you stuck in the past. The 1% Rule was designed to answer three core questions: Why do some people seem to achieve massive success with everything they do — while others can't seem to get out of their own way? What separates those who get excited and inspired for a season, a quarter or a few months — and those who are consistently on fire? ​ What are the mindsets, principles, routines and behaviors of those who execute daily, and those who sit on the sidelines pondering? ...through answering these questions over the last decade in the trenches with thousands of people — they are now the framework of The 1% Rule and are yours today. It's time to take your power back, grab your copy now. If you're ready to ditch the highlight reel illusion... If you're tired of sitting on the sidlines waiting... If you're frustrated with the 24/7 noise... You've come to the right place!

Tommy Baker helps dreamers, visionaries, and entrepreneurs bring those dreams to life —and create a life they can’t wait to wake up for. As the author of UnResolution, The 1% Rule and The Leap Of Your Life, Tommy believes living up to our potential is what we’re here for.

Tommy Baker

The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love with the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

There’s a pattern that goes like this: it’s late, given when we’ve got to wake in the morning, but instead of going to bed, we stay up. The next day, of course, we feel sluggish and weary and we promise ourselves an early night. Then it happens again: it’s already midnight and we’ve got a normal start the next day but we don’t turn in. It’s not that we’re full of energy – we actually feel desperately tired – but we resist going to bed. And the following day it’s the same: we’re worn out yet we don’t turn in until a very late hour. And it keeps on going.

The Problem With Rising Early: We Can't Sleep Early

At times during this erratic sleep cycle, we feel deeply frustrated: we call ourselves idiots and worse: obviously we need to get to bed early, yet we are too stupid, stubborn and self-sabotaging to do so. And to our profound exhaustion, we add the burden of self-disgust. But our anger at our own behaviour doesn’t lead us to change our habits. If our partner complains about our late hours we dismiss it as nannyish nagging – and it’s all the more irritating because we know they are right.

We Know We Are Wrong Yet Continue Our Sleep-Wake Cycle

It’s one of the weirdest features of being human: a completely clear sense that how we’re behaving is bad and counter-productive doesn’t get us to stop. Harsh criticism is the utterly entrenched human tactic for getting people to change – just as self-condemnation is our instinctive strategy for self-improvement – yet it doesn’t actually work. It induces panic, shame and despair but doesn’t bring about the desired alteration.

The Paradox Of Being Wrong

For many years, through childhood, night-time seemed immensely exciting. It was a secret, mysterious zone when from our darkroom we might hear the grown-ups laughing around the dinner-party table, talking of things we weren’t supposed to know about and catch, perhaps, the sweet scent of cigar smoke. If we were ever allowed to be up late it was for some special occasion; or there was the thrilling time we had to take a late-night flight at the start of an overseas holiday and the world seemed enormous and filled with adventure.

Childhood Nights

And even though such lovely associations may not be at the front of our minds, we continue to have a subterranean, but significant, sense that to go to bed early is to miss out on the joys of existence. Our late-night activities might be utterly prosaic but just by being awake into the early hours, we’re participating in an ideal of what adult life is supposed to be like. And so, night after night, the bed is there, quietly waiting for us to draw back the sheet, turn out the light, lie down and close our eyes, but it’s half-past midnight or 2 am and we’re still up.

Associating Life With Late Night Adventures

The thrills that have implanted themselves in our memories were only by accident linked to being up late. The conviviality, the sense of discovery and adventure, the feeling of exploring big ideas and the experience of emotional intimacy have no intrinsic connection to the hours of darkness. The deeper engagement with a friend or a lover, the determination to investigate a neglected area of our potential: these aren’t late-night speculations; they are the tasks of our day-time selves – requiring for their proper accomplishment, our poised and well-rested minds.

Have A Thrilling And Complete Life In Day Time

We will, at last, be able to let ourselves turn in early – and get the sleep we need – not when our irritation with ourselves reaches an unbearable peak and we renounce as hopeless our search for adult happiness and finally submit to the banality of an early bedtime, but when we relocate our longings and seek our pleasures where they can more realistically be found: in the bright, energetic hours of the new day.

Read our article - How to Go to Bed Earlier. The School Of Life has a huge collection of interesting articles, read now.

How to Go to Bed Earlier - The School Of Life

“The United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental-health crisis. From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.”

Teenage Mental-Health Crisis

“In the 2020 Atlantic feature “What Happened to American Childhood?,” Kate Julian <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/">described </a>a related phenomenon that affects families a bit more broadly: Anxious parents, in seeking to insulate their children from risk and danger, are unintentionally transferring their anxiety to their kids.”

The “Rug Rat Race”

“I want to pull out two points from Julian’s complex essay. First, children are growing up slower than they used to. Today’s children are less likely to drive, get a summer job, or be asked to do chores. The problem isn’t that kids are lazy (homework time has risen), or that scrubbing dishes magically dispels anxiety disorders. Rather, Julian wrote, these activities “provide children with two very important things”: tolerating discomfort and having a sense of personal competence.”

Children Are Growing Up Slower In Real Life, But Faster Online

“Second, researchers have noted a broad increase in an “accommodative” parenting style. If a girl is afraid of dogs, an “accommodation” would be keeping her away from every friend’s house with a dog, or if a boy won’t eat vegetables, feeding him nothing but turkey loaf for four years (<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/">an actual story from the article </a>). These behaviors come from love. But part of growing up is learning how to release negative emotions in the face of inevitable stress. If kids never figure out how to do that, they’re more likely to experience severe anxiety as teenagers.”

Accommodation Is Breeding Anxiety

This article was amazing. Many of these ideas have been on my mind recently.

Four forces are propelling the rising rates of depression among young people.

Why American Teens Are So Sad

Find 100+ Psychology Facts about Human Behaviour, Mind or Nature - Curated from Videos, Podcasts, Books & Articles - Genuine Insights from Other People

𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝟻𝟶 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎:)

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It's time to
Read like a Pro.

𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝟻𝟶 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎:)

In Praise Of Habits – So Much More Than Mindless Reflexes

How developing mental immunity can protect us from bad ideas

Notebooks 1942-1951

How shops use psychology to influence your buying decisions

The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love with the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

How to Go to Bed Earlier - The School Of Life

Why American Teens Are So Sad

A Little More On Procrastination

The Secret to Stopping Fear and Anxiety (That Actually Works) | Mel Robbins

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.