The book is based on the premise that we face difficult conversations daily. For example, apologizing to loved ones or telling your boss that you are looking for other jobs. Daily we have a decision to make: Do we avoid these difficult conversations, or do we tackle them head-on?

The Fundamentals

Various conversations can be considered difficult, and these will depend on the individual. Difficult conversations are not solely limited to common conversations about sexuality, race, gender, politics, and religion. They can be any conversation that makes us feel vulnerable, awkward, or uncomfortable. These are the conversations that we are likely to put off and leave for another time. For example, returning an item you recently bought can be a difficult conversation

In the first chapter of this book, the authors outline how each difficult conversation has three hidden conversations underpinning it. This concept is something that the authors noticed after studying hundreds of conversations. Importantly, they also identified that if people can understand the structure of their difficult conversations, they can make them more productive.

Sort Out the Three Types of Conversation

These conversations relate to disagreements over what happened or what should have happened. This type of conversation can take many forms. For example, the conversation could consider: who said what, who did what, who’s right, who meant what, and who’s to blame.

Type 1 – The What Happened Conversation

Additionally, every difficult conversation involves those involved wondering whether their feelings are valid. Should you be angry/upset? Is it reasonable if the other participant in the conversation does not acknowledge how you are feeling? Additionally, you might be wondering whether you have hurt the other participant’s feelings in the conversation. Emotions must be addressed in the conversation.

Type 2 – The Feelings Conversation

The identity conversation is the conversation we have with ourselves. This conversation covers what this situation means to you. With difficult conversations, we often second guess ourselves. We consider whether we are coming across as competent, kind, and lovable. These conversations involve questioning our identity. We worry these conversations will impact our self-image and our self-esteem.Every conversation involves confronting all three types of conversation. Each of them underpins difficult conversations and, therefore, we must learn how to manage each type simultaneously.

Type 3 – The Identity Conversation

Whether we like to admit it or not, starting a difficult conversation can often be motivated by selfish reasons. We want to prove a point, give somebody a telling off, or ask something of the other person. However, understanding the mistakes frequently made within the three difficult conversations should help you view them differently. You will start to appreciate the complexity of the perceptions and intentions you and your fellow conversation participant hold. By doing this, you will no longer be using difficult conversations to deliver a message based on yourself.

The Learning Conversation

Instead, you will be sharing information and asking questions. All in all, your conversation will be moving towards a conversation based on learning. This type of conversation will help you solve the issues surrounding the what happened conversation. You shouldn't approach conversations believing you are correct. engage in a learning conversation that involves accepting that each participant will bring different information & perceptions to the table. Each of us has essential information that we are unaware of. REMEMBER: the goal is to explore these differences productively.

First, Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. It's often easy to finish a difficult conversation confused about how irrational that person is without considering their perspective. You must learn to accept that the other participant is a different person with a different perspective. Therefore, it is normal for them to have inconsistent conclusions. View differences are often due to differences in the information you have been exposed to. Therefore, you should avoid being offended by someone who disagrees with you & investigate whether the other person knows something you don’t yet know.

Improving the What Happened Conversation

Secondly, this book’s authors encourage their readers to avoid assuming the other person has ill intentions. They provide an example of when a friend comments on how tired you are. Instead of perceiving this as an insult, consider how your friend is looking out for your health and well-being. They care for you. In sum, don’t always assume the worst of the participants in your conversations.

Finally, you need to stop blaming others. If the other participant misunderstands you in a heated conversation, it isn’t necessarily their fault. Identify each person’s contributions in the conversation and take responsibility for working through the situation together. Adopting this approach will allow you to come to an understanding.

Try to ask yourself the following questions:<ul><li>Where did the miscommunication begin?</li><li>How did you both contribute to the mess?</li><li>What can you both do to move forward?</li></ul>

Identify Your Emotional Footprint﻿Controlling our feelings and emotions during a difficult conversation is harder than it sounds. Our emotions are often uncontrollable. We also suppress our true feelings when we feel embarrassed or hurt. The learning conversation can help us address our feelings by acknowledging the importance of expressed and unexpressed emotions. However, this conversation requires specific skills.

Improving the Feelings Conversation

Firstly, you must address your own emotions during difficult conversations. Consider why you react the way you do within certain situations. For example, think about how you handled emotions as a child and whether this aligns with how you now handle difficult conversations. Plus, consider how those around you reacted to how you handled difficult conversations when you were younger.

This process identifies your natural emotional footprint during difficult conversations. After this, it is essential to negotiate these emotions. Your perceptions and views underpin your emotions. Therefore, attempt to reconsider your perceptions within these difficult conversations. Rather than reacting automatically to difficult conversations, try to consider other perspectives. Even considering an alternative perspective can calm down your automatic emotional responses to a difficult conversation.

Finally, the authors recommend sharing your emotions. Your difficult conversations will remain unproductive if you are unwilling to share both the good and bad emotions associated with those conversations. Do not just state, “I am angry.” Instead, ask the other person why they find this conversation essential and provide a deeper reason for your emotions. Additionally, avoid accusatory exaggerations when explaining how the conversation makes you feel and why you feel this way.

Share Your Emotions

You do not want to be accusing the other person through claims of “you always” or “you never.” These statements are unfairly labeling the person. Instead, try to help the other person understand your viewpoint and your emotional reaction. Then, ask them how their viewpoint and emotional reaction differs, as well as why.

Avoid Absolutes With Identity﻿When considering identity, it is easy for us to list a few terms that describe how we identify ourselves. The issue with identity conversations is when we only utilize absolutes. Often we perceive ourselves as either being loyal or a cheater, loving or hateful. Identities are never absolutes. Difficult conversations can quickly make us question our identity. Hence, as we identify through absolutes, we visualize difficult conversations as an attack on our self-image.

Improving the Identity Conversation

Perhaps you consider yourself a loyal person. Imagine receiving an offer to work at a high-salaried competing firm in a more enjoyable role. Accepting this offer could lead you to become confused about your identity if you work in absolutes. Accepting the position would make you disloyal, right? Instead, you should challenge that thought. Consider how you've been loyal in the past & still been grossly underpaid in your job. Plus, you would be prioritizing more loyalty to your family by providing for them through a better-paid job. The e.g - showcases how identity is not all or nothing.

These examples offer support for the book’s notion that we should stop wasting our time and energy on challenging others who question our self-identity. Instead, accept that you will make mistakes. Accept that your intentions are complex and that you have probably contributed to this problem’s difficulty. Doing this will help you accept that the other participants can also make mistakes.

Mistakes are Inevitable

The authors encourage the readers to remind themselves that they cannot control another person’s actions. Instead, you can only control the way you react to the person’s actions. You can imagine how the other person might respond and how these responses might question your identity. Also, try to review the conversation on balance. This conversation will probably be unimportant in the long-term. Therefore, instead, use these conversations to learn rather than somewhere to place all your importance.

Finally, the book recommends sometimes taking a break from a difficult conversation. It is easy to become emotionally overwhelmed during difficult conversations, as these conversations are often linked with both of your identities. If you feel overwhelmed, you should ask the other participant for some time to think about what they have said.

When beginning a difficult conversation, you must remember to never start with your side of the story. Starting with our story risks threatening the self-image of the other person. Instead of telling the story from your point of view, start the story by explaining the situation from an impartial observer’s perspective. Speak objectively about the situation.

Tell the Third Story

After you have done this, you can extend an invitation to the person you want to have a conversation with. In this way, you start the conversation with an understanding of solving a problem. This understanding allows the conversation to start without judgment. Plus, the conversation will be framed like you are working together to find a solution.

The conversation should then start by explaining to them how you want to understand their perspective better. Try to emphasize that you want to come to an agreement together. You want their help to make the outcome a productive one. Finally, make sure that you are persistent. Likely, defensiveness will still creep into the conversation. Be open to these responses and let them share their defensive emotions, and then you can share yours. Ensure you listen to the other person’s responses, demonstrating that you understand what they are saying.

Final Points﻿As humans, we often shy away from difficult conversations. However, they are some of the most important conversations. We need to approach these conversations in the right way to make them productive. Try to transform each conversation into a learning conversation. Accept that others will have a different perspective. Remember, each person has strengths that will help make the conversation a productive one.

Final Points and the Five Steps to Successful Difficult Conversations

Recognize the emotions you often experience during difficult conversations, consider why this might be, and learn to share them. The other person’s emotions are just as valid as yours. Finally, remember that your identity does not work in absolutes, and it can also change.

Before every difficult conversation, make sure that you have in mind the following points:<ol><li>Prepare yourself for the conversation by considering the three conversations for both sides. So, think about what happened from both points of view. Be clear on your emotions and ground your identity.</li><li>Decide whether it is even worth raising the conversation. For it to be worthy, it must be underpinned by good purposes. These are learning, sharing, and problem-solving. Avoid difficult conversations that are merely for blaming and judging others.</li></ol>

The Five Steps to Successful Difficult Conversations

3. If you decide the conversation is worth engaging with, make sure you start with the third story. Start the conversation as an impartial observer and move towards inviting them to join you in solving the problem.4. Explore their three stories, and then yours. If the conversation goes off-course, then be sure you reframe it back on track.5. Problem-solve throughout the conversation. Identify ideas that could solve both sides and ways in which future conversations could be engaged in productively.

This book is based on the premise that we face difficult conversations daily. Have a read

The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask" We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to: · Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation · Start a conversation without defensiveness · Listen for the meaning of what is not said · Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations · Move from emotion to productive problem solving

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

books

Books

Difficult Conversations

Self-help gurus have a knack for encouraging people to create and stick to goals. But Adam believes goals are for losers. According to him, the reality is that even the clearest goals have two problems that will always persist:Goals are future-orientedGoals can become overly-specificFirstly, there is the issue that goals are placed in the future, but we have to work in the present to achieve them. This means you are unlikely to see any results from your actions until much further down the line. Most people would find this reality frustrating and discouraging.

1. Goals Have Two Major Problems

The specific nature of goals can also lead to similar frustrations. For example, people often feel like failures if they don’t accomplish exactly what they set out to do. They may still be highly successful, but not meeting their goals leaves them feeling they haven’t accomplished anything. An example of this would be losing weight by a specific date. This goal prevents you from feeling successful during the journey of losing weight and will leave you feeling like a failure if you fall even one pound short by that date.

Adams believes that systems are more effective than goals. Systems are firmly grounded in the present. This means they can be grounded in your life right now, and you will get daily pleasure from successfully operating them. Adams describes the time he first learned of the power of systems. He sat on a flight next to a man who explained to Adams how systems had transformed him from an employee to a CEO.

2. The Effectiveness of Systems

The CEO said he became successful by always looking for a better job. You see, most people wait until they need a job to start looking for one. When they reach their goal of finding a job, they stop. The CEO followed a system by constantly looking for the next promotion, even when he didn’t need it. In the long run, this was a much more effective strategy.

An exercise system would focus less on an end goal and more on day-by-day improvement. For example, committing to daily exercise. This shows one of the greatest strengths of systems, which is that it helps establish habits.Adams used systems as a young man to help him achieve the success he now has. He created a system around writing and drawing things people were receptive to rather than having a clear end goal. This meant he did not feel like a failure if it was not successful, which helped him keep going. This continual motivation meant he could create the hit comic strip Dilbert.

3. Examples of Systems

We must understand our talents, but we must also be willing to favor new skills over our talents to become a generalist. The business world was previously obsessed with specialization. Adams points out that general knowledge about several fields is more useful in the modern world. This does not make you mediocre or your average Joe. Adams explains that he has always been a generalist. When he started Dilbert, he was not a talented writer, artist or businessman. He was just relatively proficient at each skill.

4. The Benefits of Being a Generalist

This general competence is what allowed Dilbert to become a success. A wide range of skills like this will help you adapt to the constant changes of the world. That said, Adams notes that not all skills are created equal. There will be some skills that are more relevant within a specific field. So, consider your passion and identify all the relevant skills. Also, think about skills that will be useful in every field, like grammar, vocal techniques and the ability to hold engaging conversations.

As well as developing general skills, you must use introspection to identify your unique skills. Parents and teachers often pressure people to pursue specific careers. You are in the best position to notice your special skills and think about which career would suit those skills. If you are struggling to notice these skills, Adams recommends thinking about what you like to do. It is generally the case that the activities we enjoy the most are the things we are good at.Suppose this doesn’t help you recognize your unique skills.

5. Specialize in the Areas You Enjoy

In that case, you should consider the areas in your life where you have always been comfortable taking risks. Adams uses an example from his own life to reinforce this point. As a child, he would draw humorous comics in class. Adams knew he could get in trouble if the teacher found out what he was drawing, but Adam was willing to take this risk as he enjoyed it so much.Once you have found your skills, you have to find a career that matches this skill. This process requires sampling, which means trying many jobs until you find one that is both enjoyable and uses your particular skills.

You have likely experienced occasions where you have gone on a run when you have felt drained and unmotivated. These circumstances occur when you adhere to a schedule rather than listening to your bodily rhythms. Adams believes this is an inferior approach and recommends using your energy levels as a metric for allocating tasks. You will feel far more energized and become more efficient if you allocate the right tasks to the right time of day.

6. Allocate the Right Tasks to the Right Time of Day

As well as timings, you should also consider how a location makes you feel and the order of activities. For example, you should avoid working in spaces where you feel relaxed. You can also couple activities which help each other. By identifying the tasks that drain you, you can pair this task with a primary task you find energizing. Adams’ energizing task is blogging, while his draining task is shopping. So, he tries to blog as much as possible and shop as infrequently as possible. If he must shop, he will pair it with a blogging session.

7. Allocate the Right Tasks to the Right Location

Instead of worrying about which task to prioritize first, you should always make personal energy your priority. This is because personal energy allows you to achieve all your other priorities. Exercise, food and sleep are all essential for looking after your energy levels. So, these should be the first buttons to push to elevate your attitude and raise your energy. Adams recommends experimenting with food to learn which food groups and diets will improve our personal energy levels. This means he also advises against just taking health experts’ knowledge as gospel.

8. Prioritize Personal Energy

There will always be certain foods that work for you while others don’t. Adams calls this the food-is-mood hypothesis. For example, white carbs make him sleepy and lethargic, but this is not the case with pasta. Adams often eats pasta as a source of carbohydrates.

Adams also recommends spicing up foods that you know are healthy but find bland. For example, vegetables and grains are clearly healthy. That said, he doesn’t find them tasty when they are by themselves. He uses nutritious additions to make them tempting, e.g., by adding honey, lemon, soy sauce or pepper.

9. How to Maintain Healthy Eating and an Exercise Routine

Adams offers similar advice for those struggling to establish an exercise routine. Spice up your exercise by joining a group that meets consistently weekly. This will keep you accountable but will also add an enjoyable social side to your exercise. Adams uses an example from his own life to push this point. His wife plays tennis every Thursday, and because there are only four people in their group, she must turn up; otherwise, they can’t play.

A final tip for maintaining an exercise routine is to use food or drink as a motivator. We are like dogs. We strive for rewards and try to avoid punishment. So, Adams recommends giving yourself a healthy snack or tiny indulgence as a reward once you have completed a workout. Adams uses an indulgent cup of coffee as his motivator.

Moods are infectious, so the moods of those around us heavily influence us. This is called associate energy and means we should always strive to associate ourselves with people we want to be like and people who give us energy. This idea was brought to Adams’ attention when one of his friends decided to live in an affluent neighborhood, as he felt this would push him to become affluent himself. Adams was initially skeptical, but then read a scientific article explaining how spending time with overweight friends can lead to weight gain.

10. Use Association Programming

Adams started implementing the law of associate energy into his life. He worked with three aspiring writers before writing Dilbert. He believes these writers’ energy helped inspire him to write his most famous comic.Adams still doubts whether associate energy is a physical concept. That said, he does not get why that matters. Many successful people have delusions in their routines that they believe have a positive impact on their performance.

For example, athletes may have pregame superstitions. These delusions can still have a positive psychological impact that keeps you focused on your priorities. This is why Adams used and still uses positive affirmations like “I, Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.”

Society tells us that selfishness is something we should avoid at all costs, and you should make other people’s desires your priority. Adams challenges this view and points out that there are three kinds of people in this world: stupid, a burden on others, and selfish. Stupid people are solely interested in satisfying others before themselves. The reason Adams believes they are stupid is that it is impossible to please everyone. So, these individuals end up living an unsatisfactory life.

11. Selfishness is an illusion

Those who are a burden on others are not necessarily a burden because they want to be. These individuals have often been dealt a difficult hand and left to struggle with an illness or something similar. In these situations, you might become a burden, but you should remain selfish to cure yourself. Finally, selfish people focus on what they want from life. This doesn’t mean they neglect others. They are simply focused on doing what they want, succeeding in life, and then helping others once the first two are accomplished.

Adams believes affirmations should be used by all individuals with aspirations for their life. An affirmation is a positive statement about what you want to achieve. You can engage with an affirmation in whatever way you want. Still, the affirmation should be imagining what you want and repeating it several times.Adams was initially skeptical of affirmations, but he decided to test them after being recommended by a MENSA member. He still agrees affirmations lack scientific evidence, but he has several examples where affirmations have come true.

12. Use Affirmations

Here are four examples of affirmations that came true for Adams:<ol><li>“I, Scott, will become rich.” He received two flashes of insight, telling him to invest in two specific stocks. Both these stocks grew like crazy over the next year.</li><li>To date a woman he’d encountered briefly at work. She was out of his league, but they ended up briefly dating.</li><li>To score 94 on the GMAT test. This was the score required to enter MBA programs. He’d only scored 77 previously, but this time he received the exact score of 94.</li><li> “I, Scott Adams, will become a famous cartoonist.” This was the affirmation that changed his life. </li></ol>

As well as examples of positive affirmations working, Adams also explains he has had several failures in life. These have all occurred when he hasn’t used positive affirmations—for example, his failed business ventures with restaurants.

Adams credits himself with an advanced BS detector based on his experience in the business industry. He believes this detector is based around six filters for truth. The more filters something can pass through, the truer it probably is.

13. The Six Filters for Truth

The Six Filters for Truth are:<ol><li>Personal experience: Because human perceptions are iffy.</li><li>Experience of people you know: Because they are even more unreliable.</li><li>Experts: Because they work for money, not truth.</li><li>Scientific studies: Because correlation is not causation.</li><li>Common sense: Because it’s an excellent way to be mistaken with complete confidence.</li><li>Pattern recognition: Because patterns, coincidences, and personal biases look alike.</li></ol> Combine these filters to refine people’s ideas and understand who is likely telling the truth and who is BSing.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a guide to succeed despite your failures. Adams admits he has failed at more things than anyone he has ever met. But, he managed to transition from working in an office to being the creator of a world-famous comic strip within a few years. The key to this success were fundamental principles that he picked up along the way. This book outlines these principles and how they will benefit you more than what society suggests is best for you and your future.

'Everything you want out of life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out.' Scott Adams has probably failed at more things than anyone you've ever met. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world's most famous comic strips, in just a few years? In this brilliant book, Adams shows us how to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. What is the key to success? Hire the right employees! How do you know you hired the right ones? You know because the business is successful. So the key to success is circular reasoning? Yes, because circular reasoning is the key. No career guide can offer advice that works for everyone. Your best bet is to study the ways of others who made it big and try to glean some tricks that make sense for you. So here Scott Adams tells how he turned one failure after another - including a corporate career, inventions, investments and two restaurants - into something successful. Along the way he discovered some unlikely truths. Goals are for losers; systems are for winners. Forget 'passion'; what you need is personal energy. While you laugh at his failures, you'll discover some helpful ideas for your own path to personal victory. As he puts it- 'This is a story of one person's unlikely success within the context of scores of embarrassing failures. Was my eventual success primarily a result of talent, luck, hard work or an accidental just-right balance of each? All I know for sure is that I pursued a strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me.'

productivity

Productivity

education

Learning & Education

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Although Peterson describes himself politically as a British liberal, he insists liberals need to remember that social institutions exist for a reason. The reason they are maintained over long periods is that they offer many benefits. At the same time, Peterson offers advice to conservatives. Although social institutions are important, conservatives should be open to new ideas and ways of thinking. We should not marginalize those who are seeking to improve and innovate how society works. The world will change, and you have to be ready to adapt.

1. Let Innovators Inspire You

So, Peterson suggests the readers look at successful individuals and creative inventions as inspiration. All thriving societies feature a bottom-up hierarchy. This structure enables having an impact on the world but only on the condition that you accept the balance of society. Once you accept this balance, you must seek beneficial solutions. However, only those solutions to important problems are viable that can be repeated without decay across repetitions.

Your mind has the potential to change your future self. Peterson describes it as a key to self-improvement. The most successful individuals had visions of things nobody had seen or done before. They challenged the social order and offered their chaos. We are all part nature and part culture. From the cultural side, a fantastic story has the potential to inspire us with unrivaled motivation. This is why our imagination is a priceless asset. It allows us to voluntarily confront the unknowns of the world around us.So, encourage your imagination and use visualization to make these ideas a reality.

2. Imagination Is A Key to Success

Peterson describes the fear we develop as we grow older. Many of us are nostalgic about our younger years when things were easier and trust had not yet been broken. As we grow older, many of us become scared of ourselves, others, and the world we live in. According to Peterson, dark times in your life are like fog. We are afraid of not knowing what we want or knowing exactly what we want but failing to acquire it. We fear that failure is the most likely outcome.

3. Life Can Make Us Scared to Grow. 

Finally, we are often terrified to define failure. This is because when we fail, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were to blame. The outcome of these fears is that we don’t let ourselves understand what we want. Along with this, we are afraid of letting other people know our desires. This is because:<ol><li>We worry that others are going to tell us what we want, even though we would like to remain ignorant.</li><li>These people might decide to prevent us from fulfilling our wishes.</li></ol>

According to Peterson, people tend to hide things they don’t like in the so-called fog. This fog is the refusal to consider emotions as they emerge, and a failure to communicate them to yourself and the people around you. To be successful, you should be able to notice and convey your emotions regarding the things you want and don’t want to do. If you manage to do this, you and your loved ones are able to help you determine your purpose. This is particularly important because Peterson believes you cannot have happiness without purpose.

Once you establish your purpose, you should invest your effort into achieving it. Ask yourself how hard you are willing to work to achieve things you are passionate about. The degree of effort you associate with your passion will determine whether it can become an effective purpose.

Taking upon responsibility offers a chance to excel in the areas where others abdicated. People tend to avoid responsibility and procrastinate because they are looking for easier ways to satisfy their desires. A prime example of this is social media. Likes, subscribers, and comments provide us with an instant dose of dopamine. Meanwhile, when we do the necessary work, we expose ourselves to more opportunities.

4. Taking Responsibility Encourages Happiness

Oftentimes, we get more benefits tomorrow when we sacrifice the pleasures of today. At the end of the day, nothing can compare with the feeling of accomplishment that arrives when we reach our goals. Responsibilities, no matter how formidable they can be, create meaningful paths that encourage happiness.

Peterson believes that life is too short to be spending time doing what you hate. Although there will be times that you have to overcome challenges, you should not make a deliberate decision to do things that are not to your liking. For example, you should find a career you enjoy. Work takes up such a significant proportion of your time that it makes no sense to do a job that makes you miserable.

5. Find a Career You Enjoy

This rule recommends moving away from strict ideologies. Although we should respect ideas that have stood the test of time, we cannot follow them blindly. Instead, we ought to admire people and their ideas but challenge them nevertheless. Along with that, it is beneficial to be open to people and groups who have opposing views. We are shifting toward a world in which only our opinions are perceived as good. The issue with this is that it creates a dichotomy where individuals with different views are considered the enemy.

6. Never Blindly Follow Ideas

This leads us to an imaginary world where we are surrounded by enemies who want to destroy us, hence we must fight back. Something similar is happening with modern politics. The good news is that we can change it by respecting the ideas of others rather than accepting or rejecting them.The solution to the problem of blindly following ideology is focusing on small tasks that we can tackle on an individual level. We should then accept that we are responsible for the outcome of our actions at the individual level.

Specifically, Peterson recommends having some humility by cleaning your room and taking care of your family. These individual responsibilities give your life meaning without God and ideology. If you can find something significant to you and commit to it, you’ll feel fulfilled. Once you master these responsibilities, you can start considering tackling bigger problems that affect more people.

Peterson uses diamonds as a metaphor to explain the importance of working hard. When exposed to extreme heat and pressure, coal can turn into diamonds, and these are one of the hardest and most beautiful substances in the world. So, place yourself under pressure by working hard and see what the outcome is.

7. Diamonds Become Beautiful When They’re Put Under Pressure

This rule builds on one of the fundamental features of Peterson’s first book, 12 Rules for Life. In his first book, Peterson talks about how you must sort your own house before helping others. A practical example of this is making sure your bedroom is clean before doing anything else. Peterson believes that making one room as beautiful as possible is not merely useful for aesthetic reasons. This room can actually act as motivation. He believes that beauty shows us how the world could possibly be. Eventually, a tidy room becomes a motivation to go out into our imperfect world & make it better.

8. Start Your Day By Making a Room Beautiful

Peterson also notes that beauty can be scary. If we are surrounded by beauty, this can further highlight our own imperfections. That said, having just one room in your home offers a balance where you don’t feel overwhelmed but are prompted to consider ways you and the world can improve.

Memories can upset you as a perpetrator or a victim. Either way, you should not let these memories impact your life today. The best way of addressing these emotions is to write them down carefully and in lots of detail. This allows you to be in a better position to face your emotions and stop them from influencing your decisions. If you are emotionally influenced by memory, then you have not fully processed it. Articulating this memory and writing it down in as much detail as possible accelerates processing it.

9. Don’t Let Memories Prevent You From Progressing

Most people rely on intuition and passion to maintain their relationships. These approaches will lack consistency and ultimately lead to an unhappy relationship. So, Peterson recommends relying on your willingness to listen and negotiate instead. This allows you to better communicate your wishes to your partner. You should respond with seriousness if your partner isn’t communicating with you effectively.

10. Communicate Your Needs to Your Partner

You must also avoid being naive about the beauty of love carrying your relationship. Relationships require hard work, and you should act as if all-out effort at all times is essential for the relationship’s success. You should divide household duties in a manner that you both find acceptable. So, do not subject yourself to slavery, but also do not expect your partner to do more without repercussions.

Finally, Peterson points out an essential key change that all partners should implement in their relationship. Talking to each other for at least 90 minutes per week gives the much-needed time to develop moments of romance and intimacy.

Being a human is strongly associated with uncertainty. Nature can hurt us in painful ways. Society and individual acts of evil can make us suffer. However, this doesn’t mean that we can’t be good people or that society can’t be improved. If we all held back our resentment, deceit, and arrogance, the world would be an infinitely better place. The best way to defend yourself against these negative concepts is through diligence and continual purpose. Find purpose in your life and reject resentment, deceit, and arrogance.

11. Find Your Purpose to Stay Positive

We often love other people despite and because of their limitations. Peterson encourages readers to think of suffering in the same way. We can be thankful for our existence despite our suffering. At the same time, we can be thankful that our suffering makes our experiences of love, happiness, and trust even more special. Being grateful for your suffering can help you discover an antidote to the abyss and the darkness.

12. Be Grateful For Your Suffering

Beyond Order is a follow-up to Peterson’s International bestseller, 12 Rules for Life. In Beyond Order, he provides 12 more rules for living happier, more fulfilling, and successful lives. While 12 Rules for Life offers an antidote to chaos, Beyond Order asks the reader to go further. Neither complete order nor complete chaos will bring you fulfillment. So, Peterson’s 12 rules in Beyond Order encourage the readers to reach out into the domain beyond. Doing so is essential for adjusting to an ever-changing world.

The companion volume to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life. In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes. In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless. While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.

philosophy

Philosophy

Beyond Order

No matter how intelligent you are or what life has thrown at you, there is no way to become more deserving of success than anyone else. If a person loses their business and feels indebted, they’re inviting more frustration and anger into their life. Mentally strong people can shift their focus away from their debt. Hence, they can help people in need. Mentally strong people keep themselves busy doing good deeds.If you follow this guidance, you can stop wasting time, stop feeling like you are owed something and stop resenting others’ success.

1. Mentally Strong People Don’t Feel the World Owes Them Anything

By far, the most harmful drug is self-pity. It is addictive, provides only temporary pleasure, and disconnects people from reality.No one is immune to hard times. However, it is how you react to these situations that is important. Mentally strong individuals do not spend precious time pitying themselves. They replace self-pity with gratitude. Amy Morin provides an example of an American long-distance runner, Marla Runyan. She ran the New York Marathon in a little over two hours. Marla also has a master’s degree in education and has written a book.

2. Mentally Strong People Don’t Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves

The most impressive aspect of all this is that she is legally blind.The key to her success lies in her refusal to indulge in self-pity. She’s always refused to identify her illness as a disability. Rather than dwelling on what her illness took away, she’s grateful for what it gave her. In addition, research suggests that developing your gratitude capacity can strengthen you on many levels. In the first place, gratitude improves your physical well-being. A 2003 study found that grateful people suffer less from aches and pains.

When you see a colleague receive a promotion, feelings of envy may come to the surface. While this may be normal, feeling jealous of others’ success eventually leads to resentment, which can distract you from your path.Instead, overcome your envy of other people’s success and learn how to use their success to your benefit.

3. Mentally Strong People Don’t Resent Other People’s Success

Let’s take the example of Milton Hershey. His employee, H.B. Reese, began building a rival candy company in the same city while still working in Hershey’s chocolate factory. Hershey, however, didn’t become angry or resentful. Instead, he gave Reese his full support and allowed Reese to use Hershey’s milk chocolate for his experiments. Throughout those experiments, Reese created a peanut buttercup surrounded by Hershey’s milk chocolate.

Instead of viewing each other’s company as competition, the two men celebrated their successes. They used one another’s power to their advantage. They supported their strengths, and in the end, they both built thriving businesses. The two men continued to collaborate throughout their lives, and after their death, the two companies finally merged. When people enjoy and celebrate success, they attract other successful people, creating opportunities for collaboration and continued success.

When you allow your boss to make you feel a certain way, you give them power over how you think, feel, or even behave. No one should have power over your feelings. You should change your daily vocabulary to recognize that the choices you make are yours.Avoid phrases like “He made me mad,” or “I have to work late today.” One of the biggest factors in taking control of your feelings is forgiveness. When you hold on to anger and resentment, you allow others to limit your ability and disrupt your life. Therefore, it’s important to forgive others for their wrongdoings and focus back on yourself.

4. Mentally Strong People Don’t Give Away Their Power

Forgiveness is also psychologically beneficial, like gratitude. For instance, when people forgive others, their blood pressure decreases, and their hearts beat more calmly. Additionally, those who practice unconditional forgiveness are likely to live longer lives.

When you feel your life is out of control, take out a piece of paper, and draw a horizontal line through the middle. In the top section, write, “What I can’t control.” In the bottom section, write, “What I can control.” When populating the top section, remember you can’t control what has happened. However, you can control what you focus on, what things mean, and how you behave. After you’ve listed the things you can and can’t control, rip off the top section.

5. Mentally Strong People Don’t Focus on Things Beyond Their Control

Many people feel haunted by their past and the legacy of their families. However, it’s possible to find constructive ways to move forward despite one’s origins.Take activist and social worker Wynona Ward. Born in a small village in Vermont, she grew up with a sexually and physically abusive father. Ward didn’t tell anyone about this abuse but worked hard to get ahead in school and escape her hometown. She got married at 17-year-old and began working as a truck driver with her husband. But while she’d worked hard to free herself, others in her family struggled to do so.

6. Mentally Strong People Don’t Dwell on the Past

E.g: Ward discovered that one of her brothers was now abusing his children.She decided to went back to university in Vermont & study every moment of her free time. After significant hard work, she managed to get a law degree. With some financial aid, she founded Have Justice Will Travel, a traveling legal service for families in the countryside dealing with domestic abuse problems. Her actions show us a vital mindset of mentally strong people. Coming to terms with the past doesn’t mean acting as if certain things never happened. You must accept and forgive the past so that you can build on it.

Pleasing everyone can negatively impact mental strength. Suppose you worry too much about pleasing others. In that case, you should learn to make choices that align with your values and act accordingly, even if that means disappointing or upsetting others. When you accept you won’t please everyone, you become stronger and build courage when you anticipate displeasing others.

7. Mentally Strong People Don’t Worry About Pleasing Everyone

Mentally strong people don’t just pick themselves up and get back on their feet. Before that, they take a moment to find out why they fell off.When you own and study your mistakes, you’re less likely to slide back into your old ways. Experience less resistance to owning and studying a mistake you’ve made by imagining it was performed by someone else. Identify the factors that led to the mistake: thoughts, behaviors, and external factors. Then, write an alternative action for the next time those thoughts, behaviors, and external factors arise.

8. Mentally Strong People Don’t Repeat The Same Mistakes

It’s not as if some people have more willpower than others. It’s just that some people are willing to adapt while others aren’t.Judge Greg Mathis is an excellent example of a mentally strong person. Arrested several times as a teenager, he promised his dying mother he would change. After being released from jail on probation, he started working at McDonald’s and eventually got accepted to Eastern Michigan University, and later, law school. However, due to his record as a criminal, he was barred from working as a lawyer.

9. Mentally Strong People Don’t Shy Away from Change

It would have been easy to let this obstacle from the past stand in his way. But Mathis was always ready for change, even when it seemed improbable. He quickly found other ways to serve the city of Detroit.After a period as the Detroit Neighborhood City Halls manager, he and his wife founded a nonprofit organization. This organization helped young people find work. A few years later, he was elected a judge by the people of Detroit.Mathis’ success is a testament to mentally strong people’s characteristics: embracing change in your life. But how can you embrace change?

The first step is to ask yourself which change you’d like to execute in your life. Think carefully about how this change would make you feel. Pay special attention to negative feelings and thoughts. Once you’ve learned to ignore these types of thoughts, you can create a plan for successful change.

It consists of five steps:<ol><li>Set yourself a 30-day goal.</li><li>Decide on concrete, daily changes in your behavior to help you reach that goal.</li><li>Create a list of anticipated hurdles along the way.</li><li>Create accountability.</li><li>Measure progress.</li></ol>Be more mindful of your feelings around change and use the five steps to prepare for change. In doing so, you’ll be on your way toward your goals.

Don’t be too afraid about what you’re going to do. Every moment of your life is an experiment. The more you experiment, the better.Many people fear taking risks. You must consider life decisions and assess risks carefully. Therefore, it’s essential to learn how to minimize risks and determine which risks are worth the benefits. Calculate risks by asking yourself: “What are the potential costs?”, “What are the potential benefits?”, “How will this affect my goals?”, “What are the alternatives?”, “What is the best thing and the worst thing that can happen?”, ...

10. Mentally Strong People Don’t Fear Taking Calculated Risks

“How much will this matter in five years?” If you write the answers to these questions, you can review and scrutinize them. Later, this will help you calculate the risks and reach a decision. Taking risks and stepping outside your comfort zone makes you stronger. Perhaps those risks aren’t as scary as you once imagined. Additionally, begin to practice taking risks and facing your fears. Open yourself up to new opportunities and start facing your fears.

Many people experience significant fear of failure. Many will avoid failure at all costs, so they fear taking risks. However, almost every success story begins with a long road of failure and perseverance. Simply put, those who succeed view their failures as stepping stones for improvement. Failure is simply a part of becoming a success and is a sign you are being challenged.

11. Mentally Strong People Don’t Give up After Their First Failure

You are likely surrounded by noise most days. Many seek to maintain those noise levels by turning on the television. They aim to fill those uncomfortable silences, but when you fill your life with noise, you miss a powerful opportunity.

12. Mentally Strong People Don’t Fear Alone Time

Research shows that spending time alone and quietly results in renewal, rejuvenation, inspiration, and reflection. Avoid drowning your thoughts with technology or sounds. Instead, build your mental strength by designating ten minutes each day to be with your emotions. During these ten minutes, you can think about your life goals and determine if you are on track to achieve them. You can also use the opportunity to think about new goals or dreams. Adopt visualization techniques to imagine the life you want. Don’t forget these thoughts by writing them all down in a journal.

You can even take your mindfulness a step further and turn to meditation to become comfortable in silence. Studies have shown that meditation positively alters the brain’s structure by regulating cognition and emotion. Even more, meditation has been proven to positively affect those who struggle with breathing difficulties, tumors, insomnia, chronic pain, and cardiovascular diseases.

A 1972 study looked at whether people succeeded in their New Year’s resolutions. They found that 25 percent of participants had abandoned their resolutions after 15 weeks. In a similar 1989 study, that number had gone down to only one week.The underlying issue is that our goals and expectations are unrealistic.

13. Mentally Strong People Don’t Expect Immediate Results

Here are a few simple rules to help you set realistic goals:<ul><li>Don’t think that change is easy. Accept from the start that reaching your goal will be tough. You’ll have a greater chance of succeeding if you simply accept it’s going to be tough.</li><li>Don’t create a fixed deadline to reach your goal. It’s healthy to have an approximate idea of when you would like to get your result, but don’t make it an all-or-nothing situation.</li><li>Finally, don’t anticipate that achieving your goal will suddenly make your life wonderful.</li></ul>

Sometimes improvements are well-hidden, and occasionally, they even look like steps backward. For example, the author once worked with parents of young children, teaching them how to manage tantrums. The standard advice was to studiously ignore the kids when they threw themselves on the ground and started howling and kicking.

Many parents initially complained. They said the tantrums were getting worse, as the children were screaming louder, making more of a fuss. But if the parents persisted in ignoring them, the tantrums inevitably improved.This example shows that it’s important to be patient, stick to your goal, and keep working at it. You must maintain these actions even when you do not appreciate any progress at a given moment.

"Kick bad mental habits and toughen yourself up."—Inc. Master your mental strength—revolutionary new strategies that work for everyone from homemakers to soldiers and teachers to CEOs. Everyone knows that regular exercise and weight training lead to physical strength. But how do we strengthen ourselves mentally for the truly tough times? And what should we do when we face these challenges? Or as psychotherapist Amy Morin asks, what should we avoid when we encounter adversity? Through her years counseling others and her own experiences navigating personal loss, Morin realized it is often the habits we cannot break that are holding us back from true success and happiness. Indulging in self-pity, agonizing over things beyond our control, obsessing over past events, resenting the achievements of others, or expecting immediate positive results holds us back. This list of things mentally strong people don't do resonated so much with readers that when it was picked up by Forbes.com it received ten million views. Now, for the first time, Morin expands upon the thirteen things from her viral post and shares her tried-and-true practices for increasing mental strength. Morin writes with searing honesty, incorporating anecdotes from her work as a college psychology instructor and psychotherapist as well as personal stories about how she bolstered her own mental strength when tragedy threatened to consume her. Increasing your mental strength can change your entire attitude. It takes practice and hard work, but with Morin's specific tips, exercises, and troubleshooting advice, it is possible to not only fortify your mental muscle but also drastically improve the quality of your life.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Ultralearners are people who can learn and acquire new skills in a short time frame. These people must be aggressive and strategic with their learning approaches. An example of this is Eric Barone. Eric was a theater usher who decided to create his own computer game. He was a recent IT graduate who had to compete with huge companies with massive budgets. That said, Barone refined his mechanics over five years by adopting an aggressive trial and improvement approach.

1. Ultralearners Are Quick Learners

Eventually, Barone released Stardew Valley. The game sold over three million copies in its 2016 release year. This monumental sales rate placed him on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. So, ultralearning can help you stay competitive within the professional world.

Meta-learning should always be the start of your ultralearning journey. Meta-learning is the process of learning how to learn effectively. To start implementing meta-learning, you must first establish how information is structured in your chosen field. This means you should avoid just absorbing random information.Meta-learning requires you to look at the big picture and develop an optimal learning strategy.

2. Develop an Optimal Learning Strategy

Scott Young offers three approaches to help you identify your optimal learning strategy:<ol><li>Create a Metalearning Map</li></ol>These maps should break your topic down into 3 categories: 1.1 - Concepts: relate to what you need to understand.1.2 - Facts: relating to what needs to be memorized.1.3 - Procedures: relate to what needs to be done. You must appreciate that not all skills will require all 3 procedures. E.g; learning a basketball shot will require you to focus on the procedure almost entirely. Once you have considered each of the categories, you should focus on the most relevant category.

2. Use the Map to Identify ChallengesAfter establishing your meta-learning map, you must identify which aspects of learning might prove challenging. After noting these challenges, you should brainstorm techniques to overcome them. These techniques often require you to engage with a specialist activity, like spaced repetition, if you have to remember lots of information.

3. Establishing How You Are Going to LearnThe best way to establish how you will learn is by researching others who have already acquired a similar skill. Their approach can be used as a benchmark. You can then replicate their methods and techniques with your own unique twist.

Sharpening your knife is Young’s analogy for refining your focus. One of the most effective modern approaches to sharpen your knife is removing electronic temptations. For example, switch off your email notifications and stop binge-watching Netflix. The first challenge to refining your focus will always be getting focused in the first place. The author suggests tricking your brain into thinking you are focused. Set a timer and promise yourself that you can stop working when the timer goes off. You may find that you have built the momentum to continue working by the end of these three minutes.

3. Identify a Clear Focus

The Pomodoro technique is potentially the most effective way to use timers like this. With this technique, you need to set a timer for 20 minutes. After these 20 minutes, you can take a five-minute break. After the break, set another timer for 20 minutes and repeat.After using these techniques to develop focus, you must learn how to sustain your focus. The issue with building momentum while working is that you may fall into autopilot. Autopilot tricks you into thinking you are productive, but in reality, you have lost your focus.

The best way to tackle autopilot is to use interleaving. Interleaving is the act of breaking a project into several short and regularly-spaced sessions.Finally, monitor your attention and arousal levels and decide on which task to tackle based on these levels. For example, if you feel intense with a narrow focus, you should choose a repetitive task. Conversely, if you are relaxed with a wide-ranging focus, you should choose a creative task.

Formal education provides knowledge related to an indirect path between your learning context and the target environment. For example, we learn French in a classroom, rather than asking a French person for directions. So, it is unsurprising that we struggle to apply our French schooling in the real world. Scott Young recommends making the path between your learning experience and application experience as direct as possible.

4. Learning Helps Make Your Journey More Direct

To hone your directness, you need to start learning things by doing. Young also calls this approach project-based learning. Situating your learning directly in your target environment means you skip the challenge of transferring your skills. Arguably, the most effective way to adopt project-based learning is immersive learning—for example, a French student spending a year working in France. The author admits that some skills are unsafe to immersively learn, like flying a plane. But you can engage in a similar environment to an immersive environment through simulations.

Elite athletes, piano prodigies, and successful ultralearners all perfect their techniques to maintain their competitive edge. Start practicing a skill by adopting what Young calls the direct-then-drill approach. Start with a direct approach to your skills, so you can identify the areas you need to hone in on. Then, drill through the skills you need to hone and return to direct practice until you notice more skills that need drilling.

5. The Direct-Then-Drill Approach

To optimize your drilling, apply yourself to a rate-determining step. In ultralearning, this is the step that unlocks the next level of knowledge. Identify these steps and then adopt one of the following approaches: First, you can time-slice by isolating one step & repeating it until perfection. But you can only adopt this approach if you can easily isolate a step from the entire process. If you can't, you can always separate a skill into cognitive components and time-slice them. Alternatively, you can use the copycat method. Choose an idol who excels in the area you want to improve & emulate.

Testing yourself is often an effective way to improve your ability to retrieve a skill. Young offers two methods to improve retrieval rates. Firstly, you can review your learning materials. Specifically, go back over the materials you used when you first studied this topic. The alternative to recall facts and concepts from memory is significantly more effective. Young cites a 2011 study from Purdue University that found recall is far more effective for long-term learning retention. Despite this, most learners fall back on reviewing old material.

6. Improve Retrieval Rates Through Testing

Ultralearning is a strategy for aggressive, self-directed learning. Self-directed means you can take back control, rather than wait to pay for expensive tuition and tutors. Aggressive means that instead of spending years at something without getting great, your limited time and effort are always directed towards what works.

Now a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education. In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention. Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French. Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life. Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs. Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

Difficult Conversations

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Beyond Order

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Ultralearning

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