John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist, gives us a taxonomy of the different kinds of knowing:<ul><li>Propositional knowing (knowing something is true). This is the stuff that's in the books or schools. But this is insuficient:</li><li>Procedural knowing (how to do something, our skills). "Knowing about bikes is different than knowing how to ride one"</li><li>Perspectival knowing (how it feels). Depending on our attention we can sense the room & make better decisions. </li><li>Participatory knowing (knowing how to be a participatory in an arena). I know how to play the father role at home and the leader at the office.  </li></ul>

4 Ways to Know

We tend to think knowledge is all about the books we read or diplomas we can collect. Not true. Our skills, our feelings, our being are forms of knowledge, even if they seem more subjective than their factual counter-part. 

John Vervaeke finally answers what we mean by "cognition."

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

John Vervaeke’s Ways of Knowledge

<ol><li>Talent requires deep practice;</li><li>Deep practice requires vast amounts of energy;</li><li>Primal cues trigger huge outpourings of energy. Safety and future belonging are two powerful primal cues.</li></ol>

The Talent Code

<ul><li>Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter.</li><li>Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them—as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go—end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it.</li></ul>

Deep Practice 

<ol><li>Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electric signal traveling through a chain of neurons—a circuit of nerve fiber.</li><li>Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy.</li><li>The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become.</li></ol>

How A Skill Is Formed? 

Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement : in order to get your skill circuit to fire optimally, you must by definition fire the circuit suboptimally; you must make mistakes and pay.

Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective?

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

<ul><li>Because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don't love it, you'll never work hard enough to be great.</li><li>The more we develop a skill circuit, the less we're aware that we're using it. We're built to make skills automatic, to stash them in our unconscious mind .</li></ul>

Why are passion and persistence key ingredients of talent?

Excellence is a habit.

Myelin wraps it doesn't unwrap. Like a highway-—paving machine, myelination happens in one direction. Once a skill circuit is insulated, you can't uninsulate it (except through age or disease). That's why habits are hard to break. The only way to change them is to build new habits by repeating new behaviors—by myelinating new circuits.

Why Are Habits Hard To Break? 

Every expert in every field is the result of around ten thousand hours of committed practice. Ericsson called this process "deliberate practice" and defined it as working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback, and focusing ruthlessly on shoring up weaknesses.

10,000 Hours Of Deep Practice 

“High motivation is not the kind of language that ignites people. What works is precisely the opposite: not reaching up but reaching down, speaking to the ground-level effort, affirming the struggle.”

<ul><li>ABSORB THE WHOLE THING. This means spending time staring at or listening to the desired skill.</li><li>It sounds rather Zen, but it basically amounts to absorbing a picture of the skill until you can imagine yourself doing it.</li></ul>

RULE ONE: CHUNK IT UP

<ul><li>There is, biologically speaking, no substitute for attentive repetition.</li><li>Myelin is living tissue. Like everything else in the body, it's in a constant cycle of breakdown and repair. That's why daily practice matters, particularly as we get older.</li></ul>

RULE TWO: REPEAT IT

"If I skip practice for one day, I notice. If I skip practice for two days, my wife notices. If I skip for three days, the world notices."

Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.1. Pick a target.2. Reach for it.3. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach.4. Return to step one.

RULE THREE : LEARN TO FEEL IT

<ul><li>Going slow allows you to attend more closely to errors, creating a higher degree of precision with each firing—and when it comes to growing myelin, precision is everything.</li><li>"I am slow to learn and slow to forget what I have learned," Lincoln wrote. "My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch anything on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out."</li></ul>

Why does slowing down work so well? 

<ul><li>Ignition: The moments that lead us to say that is who you want to be. We usually think of passion as an inner quality. But it is something that came first from the outside world.</li><li>Future belonging is a primal cue. </li><li>It's not as simple as saying I want X. It's rather saying: I want X later, so I better do Y like crazy right now.</li></ul>

Future Belonging 

“See someone you want to become? Better get busy. Want to catch up with a desirable group? Better get busy.”

Brains are always looking for a cue as to where to spend energy now. Now? Now? We're swimming in an ocean of cues, constantly responding to them, but like fish in water, we just don't see it."

Ocean Of Cues

"If we're in a nice, easy, pleasant environment, we naturally shut off effort, Why work? But if people get the signal that it's rough, they get motivated now. A nice, well-kept tennis academy gives them the luxury future right now—of course they'd be demotivated. They can't help it."

Greatness isn't born, it's grown. Here's how.....

What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything. • Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. • Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development. • Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students. These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished. Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

productivity

Productivity

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

books

Books

What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism.Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.• Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice.• Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development.• Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students.These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished.Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

Daniel Coyle is the author of the upcoming book The Culture Code (January 2018). He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race (with Tyler Hamilton), and other books. Winner (with Hamilton) of the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Prize, he is a contributing editor for Outside magazine, and also works a special advisor to the Cleveland Indians. Coyle lives in Cleveland, Ohio during the school year and in Homer, Alaska, during the summer with his wife Jen, and their four children.

Daniel Coyle

He published his for essential paper all in his one miracle year of 1905.He was 'meh' at poetry or violin playing. He refused the job of being the Israel's president (he didn't quite fit the job profile now, did he, with all that wild hair). :))

Was Einstein really all that smart?

Words cam with difficulty to him, but images came easier.He wasn’t mathematically brilliant, but could pull his weight. He was different. He had a clear way of thinking that wouldn’t register on an intelligence test. His first paper on special theory of relativity  can be understood by ordinary mortals: no jargon, just simple ideas, inescapable logic. Just brilliant in its simplicity.

Einstein was a bit of a weirdo.

He ran little experiments. At age 16 he wondered about riding alongside a ray of light. What does light look light for a moving observer? Light would always look like it was moving at the same speed. Other's were thinking about this also, but his thoughts were more visual.When thinking about theory of gravity, he imagined riding a falling elevator. He was also extremely stubborn. He didn't trust experiments not confirming his ideas. Trusting his instincts was mostly correct.

Einstein's way of thinking

Einstein seems like this larger than life figure, but his weirdness makes him likeable. Makes him more human and approachable.

How did a man who had been working as a patent clerk publish four groundbreaking papers about space, time, atoms and the strange nature of light -- all in one year? A look at Albert Einstein's unique intelligence. 

history

History

sciencefiction

Science Fiction

creativity

Creativity

How Smart Was Einstein?

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9484114-the-happiness-advantage">The Happiness Advantage </a>turns the tables on happiness, by proving it’s a tool for success, instead of the result of it, and gives you 7 actionable principles you can use to increase both.

Book Summary 

"I could care less about it's half full or half empty - as long as I can fill it up."-Shawn Anchor

Author Quote 

Since it was the next suggested book after <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/happiness-summary/">Happiness </a>, and I told you yesterday that after reading that book you can go deeper into specific happiness tools and topics, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9484114-the-happiness-advantage">The Happiness Advantage </a> is a great next step. <a href="http://goodthinkinc.com/speaking/shawn-achor/">Shawn Achor </a> is one of the youngest happiness researchers out there, but his work in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology">positive psychology </a> spreads like wildfire. It’s no coincidence he talks about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect">butterfly effect </a>, he’s living it – <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work">his TED talk </a> is among the <a href="https://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_all">20 most popular TED talks of all time </a>.

Book Overview 

<ol><li>Happiness comes before success, not after it. </li><li>You can train yourself to be optimistic with “The Tetris Effect”. </li><li>Fall up instead of down. </li> </ol>There are 7 principles in the book in total, but these 3 stood out most to me. Let’s take a look.

Top 3 Book Lessons 

This is the core message of the book. The book quotes a study done by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Seligman">Martin Seligman </a>, the “father” of positive psychology, where <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201007/how-workplace-happiness-can-boost-productivity">the happiness of 272 employees was monitored over 18 months </a>. Those who were happier before the study achieved more success later on. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Instead of trying to become successful, so you can finally be happy in the distant future, try to become happy right now, so you’ll be successful later .

Lesson 1: Happy people become successful, not the other way around.

Which sounds easier? Making a million bucks, or increasing your <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin">serotonin </a>levels a bit by watching a funny video, so you can score better on a math test later today, since serotonin also improves your memory? Of course this is oversimplified, but being happy is really all about your <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/mindset-summary/">mindset </a>. You can’t always influence what happens to you, but you can change your attitude.

For example, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090417084115.htm">research has shown </a>that just anticipating something you’re looking forward to (like that funny video), <a href="http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/04/12/get-ready-to-laugh-even-anticipating-laughter-raises-endorphin-levels.htm">can boost your endorphin levels by 27% </a>.

I had no clue about this. Really cool. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect">The Tetris effect </a> is what happens when you spend hours on end doing one particular activity. Your brain becomes so engaged, that the environment of the activity spills over to the rest of your life. Shawn Achor says this can be positive or negative. In the case of Tetris, people started optimizing their environment, and <a href="http://bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-0500-2-174">became more efficient </a>.

Lesson 2: Train your brain to spot positives with “The Tetris Effect”.

Similarly, you can train your brain to spot the positive things in your life,  in order to <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/learned-optimism-summary/">become more optimistic </a>. For example you can start a gratitude ritual, where you write down 3 things you’re grateful for each day.  <a href="http://niklasgoeke.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/gratitude-streak.jpg">I’ve done this for 3 years now </a>and it puts a positive spin on your day, no matter what happened.

After each failure, crisis or catastrophe, 3 possible things can happen: <ol><li>Nothing changes. </li><li>You’re caught in a downward spiral, and more bad things follow. </li><li>You come back stronger than ever before. </li> </ol>

Lesson 3: Fall up instead of down, by using failures as a stepping stone.

Obviously, you have to shoot for scenario number 3 as often as possible. Speaking of scenarios: Following a bad event, your brain always makes up alternative scenarios. These are called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_thinking">counterfacts </a>and this is where you get to take control. You have to choose to believe the alternative scenario, that will lead to you working harder, instead of less.

Here’s an example: When <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/mindset-summary/">Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team </a>, he could have believed that if only he was taller, he’d have been picked. But he can’t influence his height, so that would not have made him work harder. Instead, he believed that if only he was better, he’d have been picked.  This led him to practice like a madman the next summer and the rest is history.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9484114-the-happiness-advantage">The Happiness Advantage </a> was really cool. I didn’t expect the major insight here, which was that happiness must come before success.  The idea is radical and eliminates the common excuses along the lines of “I’ll be happy if X happens”. Some of the principles felt like additional tips for <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/learned-optimism-summary/">Learned Optimism </a>, while others draw on the benefits of <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/better-than-before-summary/">better habits </a> or your <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-magic-of-thinking-big-summary/">perceived reality </a>.

The Happiness Advantage Review

As a video game nerd, I loved “The Tetris Effect”, and falling up, Achor has a great way of using metaphors and images to make his point. A great follow-up read to falling up instead of down is <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/the-obstacle-is-the-way-summary/">The Obstacle is The Way </a>by Ryan Holiday. Very refreshing set of blinks, thumbs up!

The 40 year old parents, who won’t let their 12 year old be consumed by video games or another seemingly unimportant activity, the 64 year old, who’s just about to retire, but still keeps complaining about how terrible politics are, and anyone who goes to bed already worrying about tomorrow’s problems.

Who would I recommend The Happiness Advantage to?

The Happiness Advantage summary shows you it's a tool for success, instead of the result, and gives you 7 principles to increase both. Read in 3 minutes.

health

Health

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

The Happiness Advantage Summary

Quantum mechanics or quantum physics, it is a theory that is concerned with studying the behavior of matter at the subatomic level, and interest in explaining everything related to the atom of components and particles such as electrons, protons, neutrons and other smaller particles such as quarks and gluons and describing their properties One of the most important departments of physics is classical physics. Classical physics is considered one of the branches of science specialized in studying and explaining the motions of large bodies such as planets, stars and Galaxies

Quantum Mechanics And Classical Physics 

But scientists found that the laws of classical physics do not apply to the subatomic world, and after attempts to search for a comprehensive theory and test it on a subatomic world, a new theory appeared to explain these phenomena, now known as quantum mechanics. One of the strange and interesting definitions that have been presented to mechanics is that it is the effect of consciousness on the observation process. From this standpoint, I will explain the most experiments that contributed to building this definition:

.The scientist Claude Johnson carried out this experiment to find out the behavior of electrons. Do they really behave like particles always? To describe this experiment, we take a device that throws electrons towards a wall with two slits, and behind this wall a screen is placed that can monitor the lines falling on it. We also know that electrons are physical particles, and therefore the result is expected in all cases. Two vertical lines (as the old expression says), but the result was stranger than imagination What appeared was that the entry of electrons through a double

Double-slit experiment

slit without monitoring it will form a state of interference (wave function), while when it is monitored, it will be embodied in the form of a particle so that two vertical lines are seen on a wall  The process of observing electrons makes it behave one way out of all possibilities, leaving its wave function to collapse in the monitoring process, and if it is not monitored, it will be anywhere at the same time. This state is known as quantum superposition

Quantum Superposition 

Hence the idea of ​​the multiverse theory, which says that there are an infinite number of universes, and in each universe there is one possible possibility for each.Existing in our universe (or in other words, everything that could happen here in our universe is happening in one of these infinite universes) if electrons can change their behavior according to monitoring and are formed in the form of only one particular possibility just because we monitor .

The Parallel Universe 

Quantum Mechanics 

It doesn't take long to figure out if something is worth reading. Skilled writing and high-quality ideas stick out.As a result, most people should probably start more books than they do. This doesn't mean you need to read each book page by page. You can skim the table of contents, chapter titles, and subheadings. Pick an exciting section and dive in for a few pages. Maybe flip through the book and glance at any bolded points or tables. You'll have a reasonable idea of how good it is in ten minutes.Then comes the crucial step: Quit books quickly and without guilt or shame.

1. Quit More Books

One way to improve reading comprehension is to choose books you can immediately apply. Putting the ideas you read into action is one of the best ways to secure them in your mind. Practice is a very effective form of learning.Choosing a book that you can use also provides a strong incentive to pay attention and remember the material. That’s particularly true when something important hangs in the balance. If you’re starting a business, for example, then you have a lot of motivation to get everything you can out of the sales book you’re reading.

2. Choose Books You Can Use Instantly

Keep notes on what you read. You can do this however you like. It doesn't need to be a big production or a complicated system. Just do something to emphasize the important points and passages.You can do this in different ways depending on the format that you're consuming. You can highlight passages when reading on Kindle. You can dog-ear pages and transcribe notes when reading a print book.But here's the real key: store your notes in a searchable format. There is no need to leave the task of reading comprehension solely up to your memory.

3. Create Searchable Notes

One way to imagine a book is like a knowledge tree with a few fundamental concepts forming the trunk and the details forming the branches. You can learn more and improve reading comprehension by “linking branches” and integrating your current book with other knowledge trees.

4. Combine Knowledge Trees

As soon as you finish a book, you can challenge yourself to summarize the entire text in just three sentences. This constraint is just a game, of course, but it forces me to consider what was really important about the book.Some questions you can consider when summarizing a book include:<ul><li>What are the main ideas?</li><li>If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?</li><li>How would I describe the book to a friend?</li></ul>

5. Write a Short Summary

If you only read one book on a topic and use that as the basis for your beliefs for an entire category of life, well, how sound are those beliefs? How accurate and complete is your knowledge?Reading a book takes effort, but too often, people use one book or one article as the basis for an entire belief system. This is even more true (and more difficult to overcome) when it comes to using our one, individual experience as the basis for our beliefs.

6. Surround the Topic

I'd like to finish by returning to an idea I mentioned near the beginning of this article: read great books twice. The philosopher Karl Popper explained the benefits nicely, “Anything worth reading is not only worth reading twice but worth reading again and again. If a book is worthwhile, then you will always be able to make new discoveries in it and find things in it that you didn’t notice before, even though you have read it many times.”Additionally, revisiting great books is helpful because the problems you deal with change over time.

7. Read It Twice

One book will rarely change your life, even if it does deliver a lightbulb moment of insight. The key is to get a little wiser each day.

It's important to read books, but it's just as important to remember what you read. Read this article to learn three reading comprehension strategies.

writing

Reading & Writing

strategy

Strategy

7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read

In the average adult human, the brain represents about 2% of the body weight. Remarkably, despite its relatively small size, the brain accounts for about 20% of the oxygen and, hence, calories consumed by the body. This high rate of metabolism is remarkably constant despite the widely varying mental and motoric activity.

Brain's Oxygen Usage

Your brain uses 20% of the total oxygen and blood in your body.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Brain Oxygen Consumption

We are living in an age of immense connectivity & digital entertainment – multiple streaming shows, countless social media platforms, 24/7 newsfeeds, all instantly available at your fingertips.
The technological advancement that enabled social connectivity & ease of access to information came with a huge prize: mental distress. How does access to information and social connectivity cause mental derangement in the human psyche?
Distractibility , or a fleeting attention span! The seventeenth-century Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “All of man’s problems arise from an inability to sit quietly in a room.”
Sent By Sabith Mohammed

Cerebrate Weekly: Your Attention shapes your reality

But from what are we absolutely distracted? “Verily in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest! “  Chapter 13:28.  It is indeed this state of distractibility from God, that is the root cause of most of the mental health issues that we are facing. God Himself revealed in His Book that the peace of mind that we are longing for lies in our remembrance of Him. He also says in another verse: “And whoever turns away from My remembrance – indeed, he will have a depressed [i.e., difficult] life, and We will gather [i.e., raise] him on the Day of Resurrection blind.”  Chapter 20:124

We usually tend to blame our distractibility on social media & streaming channels  — but these are all just proximate causes of distraction. We blame them, while the root causes stay hidden as explained by Nir Eyal in his book Indistractable. For the past ten to fifteen years, there has been a huge increase in the degree to which that human vulnerability has been exploited for profit. Huge enterprises, and entire economic sectors, are dedicated to preying on our attention and focus. They have merged the sciences of Psychology, algorithms & information technologies to create habit-forming products that hook us onto their infinite pool of content.

They don’t call it “surfing the web for nothing”. In reality, this is what’s happening. Nothingness! Just think about the idea of a Web! What do you do with a web? A spider knows what it does with a web. He captures flies, liquidates their innards, then suck the life out of them, and then there’s just a shell lying there on the web. This is exactly what surfing the web does to you. Also, the interesting thing about the sport of surfing is that you’re just trying to stay on the wave. The wave has you. You’re not controlling the wave, the wave is controlling you. You’re just trying to stay afloat. The first step in combating this is to be conscious of the fact that our desire for comfort may easily bleed into general apathy and the potential to be manipulated leading to our attention being bought and sold in destructive ways.

The first step in combating this is to be conscious of the fact that our desire for comfort may easily bleed into general apathy and the potential to be manipulated leading to our attention being bought and sold in destructive ways. Hence it is important to be mindful of our attention.

Mindfulness

Let’s get into the Etymology of some of these words. Advertisement:  The word “advert ” means to turn towards, so an advertisement means to divert your attention to something the ad campaign (a military term) wants you to be mindful of.Distraction : What exactly do you mean by “distraction”? One of the definitions we find in the dictionary is “mental distress or derangement”. Isn’t it interesting that we also live in one of the most mentally deranged periods in human history, with people unsure of what the ultimate purpose of life is?

The best way to be mindful is to delve deep into Etymology

Another meaning in the dictionary for distraction is “that which divides attention ”. The word “ Decide ” in English comes from a word “decidere ” which means to cutoff. Why would “decide” mean “to cut off”? because what you decide cuts off everything else. Once you’ve made your decision you’re actually cutting off other things. So make conscious decisions on where you spend your time. The Arabic word for distraction is ‘ilha ‘, which means to pull someone into entertainment. Therefore, whatever receives our attention influences the reality we experience.

Entertainment , according to the dictionary, means “agreeable occupation of the mind, diversion, amusement.” Who or what is occupying your mind? Our Prophet ﷺ occupied his own mind with the remembrance of God. He said, “Whoever makes his concerns (what he or she is mindful of) one concern (God), God will take care of all his other concerns.”

Who or what is occupying your mind? Our Prophet ﷺ occupied his own mind with the remembrance of God. He said, “Whoever makes his concerns (what he or she is mindful of) one concern (God), God will take care of all his other concerns.” One of the Arabic words for mindfulness  is “muhtamm “, which means “what one is concerned with.” The Arabic word for attention is ‘tiba ‘, which means to be awake and aware. It also means to devote. So We should try to be mindful and present in order to direct our attention & devotion to God. Source:  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZHj5O-eKaU">The Mindful Messenger </a> ﷺ, Hamza Yusuf, Zaytuna College

Podcast Episode: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/221-how-to-train-your-thoughts-tame-the-hidden/id1208024744?i=1000512138284">How to Train Your Thoughts & Tame the Hidden Dragons</a> With Dr. Daniel Amen & Kwik Brain with Jim Kwik.
Blog: <a href="https://www.akramnadwi.com/shaytans-tricks/">Devil’s Tricks.</a> An excellent take on “Distraction” from a Psycho Spiritual perspective on how human’s are lured to distraction by the devil.

Weekly Compass

Book Summary: <a href="https://www.thinkabled.com/dopamine-detox/">Dopamine Detox</a> by Thibaut Mueriss. This book explains the role of the Neurotransmitter “Dopamine” in our behavior & how its functioning has been hijacked in modern world.
 Article: <a href="https://www.thinkabled.com/pavlovs-experiment-the-reason-why-you-are-distracted/">Pavlov’s Experiment: The Reason Why You Are Distracted</a> . In this article Omer Mohammed revisits the Pavlov’s Experiment & explains how environments trigger our behaviors.
Video : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIkyP9WOdQ">I Left Social Media For 14 Days</a> : Afterbreaking his phone accidentally, Omer was forced to undergo a social detox. In this video he shares his experience on dopamine detox after quitting social media.

Read & Rise

Or were they created without there being anything, or are they themselves the creators? ―<a href="https://quran.com/52/35">Quran 52:35</a>

Food for Thought

<a href="https://www.khaleejtimes.com/books/book-lady-of-dubai-celebrates-third-anniversary-of-booktopia">Book Lady of Dubai:</a> This article tells the story of a voracious reader and book enthusiast who went on to become a successful entrepreneur in Dubai.

Weekly dose of Inspiration

<a href="https://readwise.io/">Readwise </a>: Do you want to remember everything you read ? Then check out this app named Readwise   to grow wiser and retain books better. Readwise  helps you get the most out of what you read by making it fun & easy to revisit your highlights from all your favorite reading platforms in one place Get more wisdoms and actionable ideas in our weekly newsletter: Cerebrate . Sign up here to join our growing community of readers.

Tools for Thought

Cerebrate Weekly: Your Attention shapes your reality We are living in an age of immense connectivity & digital entertainment - multiple streaming shows, countless social media platforms, 24/7 newsfeeds, all instantly available at your fingertips. The technological advancement that enabled social connectivity & ease of access to information came with a huge prize: mental distress. How does access to information

meditation

Meditation

Your Attention Shapes Your Reality

Solipsism revolves around the idea that there is nothing you can confirm except your own existence. If you think about the brain’s capacity for hallucination, and just good ol’ dreaming, it’s not that hard to imagine outside manipulation being possible as well. For all we know, we COULD be stuck in the Matrix, or maybe you’re the only person that exists and the entire world and your experience of it is just an illusion.

Solipsism

The philosophy of idealism has nothing to do with being idealistic. It has nothing to do with ideals, but rather ideas. It revolves around the thought that reality is fundamentally something that exists on a mental level. Kant once defined idealism as “the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining.”

Idealism 

Is the idea that nothing can be said to exist beyond the observation of the thing itself. So, for example, you could not argue that the stone exists, only that your sense of it exists. You could say: “I saw a stone.” but not: “The stone was there.” The only thing that one is able to confirm is the sensory data of the stone, but not the stone’s existence independent of your own.

Phenomenalism

The idea that only the present exists, and that both the past and future do not. A Buddhist scholar named Fyodor Shcherbatskoy said the following: “Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental . . . is unreal. . .. Ultimately real is only the present moment of physical efficiency.” The belief that our way of experiencing time is it’s true and only nature. So, for a presentist the idea of time travel is ridiculous, as there exists no destination to travel to, where other philosophies and theories might suggest otherwise.

Presentism

Contrary to presentism, eternalism is the belief that all moments in time, past, present and future are equally real. Some eternalists believe that because of the nature of time, in this case that time exists as a whole, not in separate parts, the existing future already exists in a set and final manner, and therefore we are only capable of experiencing the future, not able to change it in any way, which one could interpret as the existence of fate. Modern scientific theories seemingly support the eternalism over presentism, but with our ever-developing understanding of the universe.

Eternalism

The most well-known form of nihilism, existential nihilism is focused on the assertion that life has no inherent purpose, goal, or intrinsic value. (Intrinsic value is the idea of something having value in and of itself.) Simplified, it’s the belief that life is utterly pointless. The difference between nihilism and hedonism is that pleasure, or joy, is seen as worthless as well, and therefore is often characterized as leading to a feeling of despair. Some modern interpretations of existential nihilism conclude that precisely because your life has no intrinsic value, goals or purpose.

Nihilism

Hedonism is centered around the belief that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Basically, a hedonist makes pleasure the ultimate goal of any and all of his actions and choices in life. Hedonism is perhaps the philosophy that is closest to our original instincts, in that it embraces the response of pleasure to things like eating and fornicating wholeheartedly. Instead of bringing morals into the picture, it focuses on feasting on pleasure, a sensory response that probably played a vital part in our survival as a species.

Hedonism

Unlike what seems to be popular belief, stoicism is not about faking not having an emotional response or becoming completely emotionless. It is a philosophy that focuses on training yourself to improve through training and conditioning. From everything to your outlook on life, to knowledge and perhaps especially minimizing your negative emotional responses. Stoics believe that emotions like anger, sadness and frustration are based in your own, fixable faults rather than justified responses to outside influences.

Stoicism

One could perhaps argue that skepticism is the basis for all other philosophies. Because if we didn’t question, if we didn’t ask, then where would the answers be? But philosophical skepticism, unlike methodical skepticism, does not focus on questioning individual statements to validate or invalidate; rather, it questions if there is a possibility for a certainty in any knowledge. And given the constant changes in our understanding of the universe and even what’s directly in front of us, it might not be as “overly skeptical” as you might think.

Skepticism

philosophy

Philosophy

mindfulness

9 Philosophies That Will Change The Way You Look At Life

We can all probably agree that procrastination isn’t wise. While most of us procrastinate from time to time, we often chalk it up to poor planning. When you understand what’s going on in your brain, though, a failure to plan isn’t the root cause.“Procrastination is an emotion-focused coping strategy,” says Tim Pychyl, associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, and author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: a concise guide to strategies for change. “It’s not a time management problem.”

Procrastination Is A Brain Thing, Not A Mind Thing

Pychyl says researchers in Germany compared the brains of procrastinators to non-procrastinators using functional MRI. It found that the brains of procrastinators have a larger amygdala, which is part of the limbic system known for fight or flight.“What’s happening is what we call the ‘amygdala hijack,'” says Pychyl. “The procrastinators are reacting emotionally, and the emotion-focused coping response is to escape. It’s saying, ‘I don’t want these negative emotions I’ll experience during the task,’ and so it avoids the task.”

The Brain Of A Procrastinator: “I Don’t Want To Do That!”

Another important brain reaction is how it perceives the future. Research done by UCLA social psychologist Hal Hershfield found that the brain views our future self in the same way it views another person.“[Hershfield] used a functional MRI to look at the brains of people when they were thinking of their present self, their future self, or the other,” says Pychyl. “When we think of future self, the same parts of the brain light up as when we think about the other.”

The Brain Of A Procrastinator: “Let That Stranger Do It!”

It’s also human nature to seek pleasure. “We want to feel good now,” says Pychyl. “It’s hedonistic over eudaimonic, which is the happiness we feel when we achieve meaningful goals.”

The Brain Of All Of Us: “I Want My Pleasure NOW!”

Putting it all together, when we face a task that presents boredom, frustration, or fear, the limbic system lights up, and the amygdala hijack overrides the prefrontal cortex, which is the home of executive function that includes things like impulse control, planning, and organization.“All of a sudden, we’ve got all this input from the amygdala and we’re not able to recruit those higher order processes,” says Pychyl. “Even when we do, we think about our future self as a stranger. All those things come together to drive procrastination.”

The Amygdala Hijack

Some of us are more prone to procrastination than others. Pychyl says this group often has high traits of neuroticism, such as worry, and depression, and self-consciousness. They have over-active, dominating amygdala.People who are better at planning use another area of their brain. “This group is high in executive functioning,” says Pychyl. “Instead of so much limbic system activity, they’re getting more prefrontal cortex activity, which reflects with planning and impulse control. Any down regulation of the prefrontal cortex, leads to problems with following through on things.”

Limbic System VS Prefrontal Cortex

Fortunately, there are things we can do. The key to getting control over procrastination is emotion regulation, and one method is practicing mindfulness.Research out of the University of Pittsburghfound that people can learn to control their emotions through mindfulness. Participants practiced using nonjudgmental awareness over the course of eight weeks. The study found that their amygdala shrunk and the connections to the prefrontal cortex changed.

Fighting “Flighting”: Nonjudgmental Awareness

Procrastination is an emotion-focused coping strategy. It’s not a time management problem.

When you understand what’s going on in your brain, you can break the cycle and start to get things done.


This Is What’s Going On In Our Brain When We Procrastinate

Find 100+ Facts about Science - Curated by others from trusted sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!