Category Archives: Life Skills

Push and Pull Your Way To Success

I knew a guy once that I hadn’t seen in a long time before I ran into him recently. It was one of those relationships that fall kind of halfway on the border between a friendship and an acquaintance. Like when you first meet somebody, and you kind of hit it off, but for some reason, you don’t usually hang out on purpose, you just kind of bump into this person whenever you are involved in whatever mutual activity through which you met in the first place. And when you go a while without seeing this person, you can remember them enough to put them in the category of some pretty cool guy that you used to know, but they haven’t been elevated into real friend status where you make it a point to keep up with each other and find out how each other is doing at least a couple times of year. Because the feeling in these relationships is generally mutual, when you bump into each other, it’s usually with mutual happiness, and there isn’t any guilt or implied anger at each other for not keeping in touch.

Like I used to live in this small town that had this really cool Mexican restaurant. They were right on the beach, and their business was about fifty/fifty take out and eat in. They weren’t that expensive, but the tacos they make are probably in the top three most delicious I’ve ever eaten, including the ones I’ve eaten in Mexico.
But every time I went away, I would quickly forget about that little restaurant, and even Mexican food completely if I happened to be traveling in a foreign country.
Only when I come back in town do I remember how delicious these tacos are and how happy I am that I can remember that that little restaurant is always sitting there waiting for me.

When I saw my old acquaintance again, it took me a while to recognize him. He seemed different, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was different about him. After a few minutes of catching up, I tried to work in a polite question about what had changed. I didn’t want to blurt out that he looked different. I made that mistake before with an old friend who had some kind of hair replacement surgery. This was many years ago, when hair replacement surgery wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today, so it was an awkward situation.

It turns out the guy had an incredible amount of success recently. He changed careers, found a really fantastic woman that he fell in love with and married, and he has one kid, and another one the way. He actually didn’t lose any weight, and there was nothing else physically different about him. He just had this glow like he had finally found out the secret to life. Like when you walk into a supermarket and they tell you that because you are the one-millionth visitor you can have anything you want from the supermarket for free. Or you are walking up to a big department store, and your hands are full, and you are trying to figure out how you are going to open the doors in front, but just as you approach them, they open completely automatically, making it a lot easier than you expected.

I asked him what his secret was, and he said it was because of a goal-setting seminar that he went to. He said he was convinced to go to this seminar because of the advertisement that claimed that life would look completely different after the seminar than before, and you will forever be changed. The instructor at the seminar was very skilled in these matters. Because he was such a nice guy, he told me what the secret was. The secret is to choose three or four specific goals you want to achieve. And everything you come across in your life, you can use as either a positive motivation to pull you to your goals, or a negative motivation to push you away from where you are towards your goals. If you see a really successful person, you can imagine that you are them, and use those feelings to pull you towards that good feeling. If you are in an unhappy situation, you can fully embrace it and use the bad feelings to push you away from where you are and move you towards where you want to go. When you begin to see everything in your life as either something that is pushing you away from bad things and towards good things, or just pulling you towards good things. Then the whole world and everything in it takes on a whole new meaning. All of a sudden the whole world is conspiring to help you, no matter how messed up you used to think your situation was before you came to this realization. And I thought he was pretty nice to share this wonderful insight with me, and I hope that you can do the same.

Sail Your Way To Pleasure

I have a friend that has just been promoted at work. He works for a large, multinational company that designs, makes and sells many different kinds of consumer products. The company has been around for over a hundred years, and is pretty much a household name. My friend was just promoted to the regional distribution manager for the entire western United States. He is in charge of making sure that there is a clear connection and communication between the designers, the needs of the marketplace, the manufacturing centers around the world, and the end points of sales in various cities in the United States. He frequently flies all around the world in many capacities, and is well known in the industry as an authority in his field. Needless to say, he makes a ton of money, and gets a great deal of respect from those that he works with and even competitors in his field

It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t know this guy before he became successful, I only met him afterwards. We actually me at a seminar that taught different aspects of communication not taught in any business school. There was a huge range of people at this seminar. One of the great things about being able to meet so many people is that you get so many different ideas and viewpoints on the same things. And it really expands your mind to the idea that there are really many ways to look at one situation. Sometimes I think I learned more that seminar from the other participants than I did from the actual instructors. It wasn’t uncommon for several us to sit up until the early hours of the morning in our hotel lobby just talking different aspects of why we were there and how many different ways there were to accomplish what it is that you want to accomplish something.

This guy mentioned that he used to be unhappy. Although he had a pretty decent job, with decent pay, something was missing. He seemed to be just going along without any real purpose. When he was in college, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do, and he just kind of fell into his job, and slowly moved up the ranks without really paying attention to where he wanted to go.

Then one day he was in a bookstore, and for some reason he ventured into the area of the bookstore that he didn’t usually go into. I don’t know if you’ve ever actually counted the different sections in the bookstore, but there is a lot. He got a book on sailing. He had never sailed before, but for some reason he thought that sailing would be an interesting thing to learn. The book talked about how important it was to be able to read maps, and be able to use a compass, and how to properly steer the boat in the right direction. The book said that one of the biggest dangers was just kind of going in a direction that seemed to be ok, but after you’ve been traveling for a while, you realize that you are in the middle of nowhere. And if you end up in the middle of nowhere without any supplies, it can be pretty dangerous. So the book recommended that you choose a direction, and take your time choosing. And you make sure you know how to get there, and realize that you are likely to get blown off course, so make sure you have extra time planned on your journey to where you are going.

After he studied sailing for a couple of years, he really started to discover his passion. He went and talked to an HR manager at his company, and asked him about a possible career path. The HR manager told him that it was a big company, and there are many opportunities. You can choose whatever path you want, and if you do the proper training and build your skills, there is no reason why you can’t choose your own success. They both discussed what he needed to do in order to succeed, and where he needed to learn more skill and improve on the skills you already have.

That conversation took place about a year before I met him at that seminar, and he told us the story of how he was able to create his own success, simply by taking the time to choose a direction, a destination, and the proper tools that would get him there.

People Skills are Money Skills

The other day I was sitting in an airport waiting for a friend of mine. As soon as I realized that I’d forgotten to bring the scrap of paper on which I wrote down her flight number and arrival gate, I had a flash of insight. I used to do something a certain way, and then after that I did something else. But then I realized that if I could organize things a little bit differently, I would be able to actually do them both better, as one was a natural extension of the other. I was doing them in the opposite order, not because I thought they naturally went that way, but because I was doing the first thing because although I recognized that it was necessary, I also realized, on some level, that it was uncomfortable, and I wanted to get it out of the way.

I don’t know why I had this flash of insight while I was sitting there in the airport, but I took out my notebook and scribbled it down, hoping that I’d remember to look at my notebook later so I could reverse the order of the way I was doing things in hopes of doing them better.

I read this in a book by about developing creativity. Always keep as small notebook with you, that way when you have a flash of insight, you’ll be able to remember it later, and use it to help yourself get whatever it was you wanted to get.

After I wrote this down, I couldn’t help but notice all the people milling about in the airport, waiting for people. Some looked happy, some looked a little sad. You could tell which people were separating, and which were reuniting. It is always nice to see people get together and express an open appreciation for each other, and it always makes me a little sad when is I see people saying goodbye.

It reminded me of a book I was reading the other day, which was about job relocation. The author was talking about how when people change jobs, which in this day and age should be a given, considering that the average person has at least five careers in their life. When you change jobs, the skills that are the most important are not the technical skills that change with every job, but your people skills. Those that have the best people skills will always be in demand, and always make the most money. So the bottom line, according to this book I was reading was that you need to always be working on and improving your people skills.

One way to do this is to always make it a habit of talking to strangers. I think it is an exercise that was inspired by Ben Franklin, who said to “Always look for the virtue in others.” The exercise is to start an innocent conversation with a complete stranger, and try to covertly extract a virtue or two from them, and then share their own positive qualities with them. This will greatly increase your self-confidence and ability to interact with others to get what you want and to promote yourself.

And when my friend finally showed up, I was surprised that I had remembered the correct gate. Imagine that.

Easily Reduce Stress to Enjoy Life More

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like there is a giant conspiracy of the gods to make sure you experience as much friction as possible? You don’t get any green lights, all the parking spots you get are at the far end of the lot, even when you are putting on your shoes, your sock picks up some piece of lint from the carpet, and you don’t notice it until later when you are at a place where taking off your shoes and shaking them out would be a bit of an inconvenience. And eve the people you interact with seem to be distracted and just can’t understand what it is that you are trying get across.

When this happens, the best thing to do is just to take a step back, and laugh. Yea, I know sometimes that seems the least popular idea in your mind at the time. The automatic response for some is to pick up whatever is bothering you and fling it across the room, or out the window. I’m reminded of that scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when the hero is having all kinds of problems, and coming down the stairs he puts his hand on the banister, which promptly falls apart. He picks up a section of it, and is about to throw it across the room when he grabs hold of himself, calms himself, and gently places it back down where it belongs.

While it usually does one more harm than good to hurl a piece of broken furniture across the room, keeping your anger bottled up can have deadly effects. High stress is the major cause of many illnesses today in western society, in some form of another. Your doctor may tell you your hypertension is from your smoking or your overeating, but those two are almost always caused by stress.

So if you can’t launch a nearby inanimate object into a low orbit every time you feel some friction or anxiety? What can you do? Planned expression of anger is one way. I’ve heard different takes on this, with different philosophies underneath this, but they all seem to share on thing in common. Find a place where you can be alone (so nobody calls the cops when they see what you are doing!) and find a way that is appropriate for you to let out your anger.

Screaming, banging on your steering wheel, hitting a heavy bag a few nights a week all can help to reduce the stress and anger that has been building up. I tried one method a few years ago that worked fantastic. You get an old tennis racket, and kneel in front of your bed (while nobody is home, of course) and then pound on your bed with the tennis racket while screaming at the top of your lungs a the person or situation that is giving you the most grief. It has a great calming effect. If you have nosy neighbors, this might be troublesome, as they might think you are murdering somebody. You can also go to a park, and bang a tennis racket in to the grass (but be careful about screaming at the top of your lungs, you might scare some kids).

The best way is to get into the habit of laughing at yourself whenever you encounter those situations that might have caused you stress before. Laughter has a proven medical benefit to release stress an anxiety. From a structural standpoint, when you let out a good extended belly laugh, the tightening of the muscles has a calming effect. When you finish laughing, all the muscles of your body move to a relaxed state, loosening the walls of your blood vessels, and effectively lowering your blood pressure in the short term. The more you laugh, the lower you will consistently lower your short-term blood pressure.

Of course, lifestyle habits like smoking and drinking and eating french fries cause a serious long term increase in blood pressure, but by training yourself to find the humor in situations, you will lower your overall stress which may lead to some of these lifestyle behaviors.

Another great exercise is called the rubber band. Whenever you feel yourself getting angry, imagine your body as one giant rubber band, and just go limp. But loosening and relaxing all your muscles, you are sending a message to your brain that all is well, and there is no reason to get upset. The great thing about this exercise is you can practice it by remembering things from your past that caused you anxiety. Just sit in a comfortable chair, or lie back on your bed, and start to bring to mind some situation that really raised your hackles (whatever a hackle is). When you feel yourself getting upset, just switch to imagining yourself as a giant rubber band, and release all thought. The more you practice, the easier this gets, and sooner or later you will be able to do this real time, even when somebody is in your face yelling about some thing that used to concern you. Just rubber band yourself, and you’ll be able to relax and enjoy the situation.

These are just a few tips to help you to release anger, and reduce stress. Nothing saps your ability to really enjoy life more than stress, anxiety, and anger. The more you practice these techniques, the smoother your life will become.

Life Long Learning

The other day I was talking to my neighbor about general things you usually talk to your neighbor about. (Usually the other neighbors!) The weather, how the temperature is rising and becoming more humid, the days getting longer, how hard it is to sleep in with the light of the sun blazing into your bedroom earlier and earlier. She was telling me about this class she’d been taking recently at the learning annex downtown. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to the learning annex, I’m not sure how they operate or how many of them there are, but they are a great way to learn new things. Many times they are set up in conjunction with a local community college. I’ve taken classes in Tai Chi, Piano, Assertiveness as well as many other interesting subjects. One of the great things about them is they are fairly inexpensive, and are usually held in the evenings so you can easily work them into your schedule.

We started talking about the benefits of continuous learning, and how the smartest people in the world are the people that make a decision to always be learning something. People can, for instance, learn pretty much anything at any stage in life. There is a general misconception that we can really only learn things when we are really young, say under five years old. You don’t have to go very far to find somebody to tell you that you can’t learn as easily as you can when you were younger. But then again, you don’t have to go very far to find somebody who will happily tell you that you can’t do whatever it is you want to do. It seems that some people spend all their energy trying to find as many reasons as they can why something is not possible.

You may already have started to become aware of the times in your life when you’ve been able to really learn something new. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the greatest things you learn are the things that sneak up on you, and take you by surprise. It’s a sad fact that many people spend their whole lives avoiding the unfamiliar, effectively shutting themselves off from future learnings and experiences. I don’t know exactly some of us got into that trap, but when you can find a way to get around it, you will find that the world is a lot more forgiving than you think. I’m wondering if most of the things that we think we are afraid of are really just things that we make up in our minds. How does it feel when you face something you are afraid of, only to discover that simply by facing it, the fear completely disappears, and all you are left with is energy and excitement?

Maybe you haven’t gotten around to doing this consciously yet, but I’m sure you can find some opportunities to take care of this sooner or later. You won’t have to go very far to find an opportunity. A great place to start is at a public speaking club like toastmasters. Because almost everyone is deathly afraid of public speaking it is a great place to realize that those fears are completely imaginary. It’s not like some hungry tiger who just escaped from the circus is going to jump out from behind a potted plant during your speech and eat you, although I admit that might make for an interesting news story.

Fear is probably one of the reasons many people don’t take classes at the learning annex or at their local community college. Of course people won’t come right out and say “I’m afraid,” they usually come up with excuses like they are too busy or something. When you realize that everybody else that takes those classes are just like you, you can really enjoy discovering how wonderful it is to embark on a journey of life long learning. What happens when you take something you’d like to learn, but up to now have coming up with excuses for not learning it, and imagine yourself five years in the future having studied it as a hobby for the last five years? How does it feel to have developed such an advanced skill set by only approaching it as hobby? How much better is your life? How many other things can you imagine yourself doing, now? How does that feel?

Word Power Can Move Society Towards New Directions

I was very happy to hear recently about a new bookstore opening downtown. I don’t when it is going to open; I suspect it will be at least a few months, judging by the stage they are in the construction. Nevertheless, by the looks of it, it is going to be a doozy. Everyone who has ever been able to enjoy a bookstore has at one point or another realized that the more books there are, the better the choices you have. Really successful bookstores, and bookstores chains (you know the one’s I’m talking about) will even order books for you that they don’t have on the shelf. And some bookstores are well known for their customer support. I’ve generally found that the people that work there are lovers of books, as well as me.

I feel sorry for those who have never set foot into a bookstore, although I understand books can be intimidating to some people. The great library of Alexandria wasn’t burned to the ground by accident. Ever the printing press and books were invented; the written word has had an almost magical power over people. I remember a great line in a movie I saw recently, and two different characters were talking about the difference between the printed word and the electronically displayed word. They had just broken a fantastic story, uncovering a big conspiracy. They were debating on publishing it in their newspapers print version first, or on the newspapers blog. The blog writer conceded and said “People need to have ink on their hands after reading this.” I thought that was a great play on words.

It is generally believed that the Germans first invented the printing press, and the world has never been the same since. And for a long while, it was the people that controlled the printing presses that controlled the thought and beliefs of society. Who knows what would have happened to Western Society had the owners of the printing press been Moslems of Buddhists. You can certainly appreciate the wonderful effect words have on your daily life, can you not?

Once a society has words spread throughout, they can never go back to their previous beliefs and way of living. The first thing that occurs in a society when a printed word is introduced is that there is a subtle shift of power. And nothing is more powerful that a printing press to sway the masses. Can you think of anything as persuasive as a well-written piece of work in your very hands?

Again and again, great religions and governments throughout time have referred to the written word to propagate their power and influence. It’s not wonder that the Gideon society replaces their hotel bibles every so often. And it’s not only the Gideons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons and other religions have relied heavily on printed material to promote their faith.

When you really stop and start to realize the power and prevalence the written word has over every aspect of your life, you can’t help but to wonder what life could have possibly been like if you could only rely on word of mouth, and stories past down from generation to generation to keep ideas alive. And when you really become aware of your own power to create and promote your own written words, you will really feel a sense of awareness of how much power you have, literally at your fingertips.

Luckily we live in day and age when it is fairly easy to set up a blog and write several times a week or even several times a day to get your ideas out there. Should you not realize how powerful this concept is, just count how many blogs there are today versus how many there were five years ago. And when you think of how much money you’d be making today had you started blogging a few years ago, you can really feel motivated to start now.

How many ideas do you have that are worth sharing with others? How many ways can you imagine putting your figurative pencil to paper and getting your thoughts out in the collective consciousness to literally change the direction of society? Are you not just as worthy as some other random blogger out there? Who cares if nobody reads it or not, there is still a plethora of benefits to writing down your ideas every day and publishing them for all to see. I wonder if you are no already more convinced of this than most people. Because when you leave behind your old ideas of what you used to think was possible, you can really enter into a whole new reality, a reality of your own construction.

Where’s my Burrito?

The other day I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant downtown. It was remarkable in that my city doesn’t have very many Mexican restaurants, and I am a huge fan of Mexican food. Maybe because I grew up in Southern California, or maybe because I’ve traveled to Mexico several times, I just can’t get enough of the stuff. My favorites, of course, are the tacos you can buy from street vendors.

I’m sure you’ve eaten several different ethnic dishes in the past that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Just sitting there now, reading this, you can remember some of those dishes now. Maybe you ate them recently, or maybe it’s been a while, or maybe you’re even planning on eating soon. I think one of the greatest things about living a world with so many opportunities for cultural interchange is the incredible variety of food that you can enjoy. Realizing this can really give you an appreciation for different cultures. Most women know that the path to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but most people aren’t aware that the quickest way to the heart of another culture is through their kitchen.

When you realize this you can automatically begin to feel a great sense of appreciation for the other wide variety between cultures that is available to you, right here, right now. In this day and age, it is easy to understand this. And by eating the food of other cultures, it allows you to find other avenues to explore.

I have a friend who is a seasoned world traveler. She tells me the cuisine of a particular country has a great impact on her overall opinion of the place. Her favorite places are where she enjoys good meals. I don’t know if you can feel the same way or not, but when you understand the vast richness that cultural exchange can afford, you can easily begin to understand the benefits of world traveling.

Many people have realized that traveling is the best way to enrich your life. I was at a seminar a few years back, and the instructor was saying that people who have been to other countries tend to have an easier time learning new things. When you go to another country, and find yourself surrounded by people that look and dress and talk differently that you, you can find those things that you thought were important starting to drift away, making space in your mind for new and better ideas and beliefs. Of course, while few people have the time and resources to travel abroad extensively, everyone can find ways to expand your mind in your own neighborhood, even if it is going to an authentic restaurant, or studying a foreign language in your spare time.

Studying foreign languages is much easier than most people expect. People feel that can’t easily learn something new, but they realize that they can, you can begin to wonder how you may apply new ideas to increase your skills. And when you do this, you might be able to realize how easy this is.

Of course, most people realize the importance of learning. The understanding that most people don’t have yet, and you are receiving now is that learning never stops from occurring. There are those that say the biggest block to learning is education, because it removes your natural ability to learn things on a regular basis, so that you may easily and consistently improve yourself. You can understand this, can’t you?

One thing that can make the most pervasive changes in your life in several areas is the idea of continuous and conscious learning of new things. Whether it is of new cultures, new food, a new language, expanding your mind will always benefit you in the long run.

Now, back to my burrito.

How To Choose a Good Role Model

The other day a friend was telling me about his superhero collection. He doesn’t have actual superheroes, only those action figures that you used to play with when you were kids. Or maybe you didn’t. Or maybe you still play with them. Or maybe you know somebody that either played with them then, or still plays with them now. Either way I’m sure you can understand this.

They are small plastic representations of large representations of our collective imagination’s metaphorical representation of somebody who will defend us against even more metaphorical evils. Which is a lot of metaphorical levels of representation, if you ask me.

I recently read a book on metaphors by a guy named George Lakoff, titled Metaphors We Live By. If you happen to be getting over an addiction to hallucinogenic drugs, and you need a fix, I’d recommend this book. This will spin your mind in directions you didn’t think possible. He explains how our whole model of communication is based on metaphors, as we cannot adequately describe our reality, simply because our body/mind systems can only see such a small sliver of reality. Our words themselves are only metaphorical representations of thoughts, mostly abstract, though some can concrete and discrete.

I asked my friend which was his favorite superhero, and said Spiderman, without any hesitation. I asked him why, and he said Spiderman isn’t like all the other superheroes, at least not the most popular ones. Spiderman is an ordinary, average guy, that has ordinary average struggles. Girls, money, work, boss. Things that you can relate to. Things that make you identify with him. So when Spiderman takes on some hugely evil criminal with all kinds of magical evil powers, he is taking him on as an ordinary average guy, and not some guy that came here when he was baby in a spaceship.

I think it’s important to have good role models at any stage in life. In fact, I think the term “role model” is kind of a misnomer. It’s generally thought of as somebody that kids can look up to. A solid father or mother figure that can live by example and show you how to make the right decisions. How to realize that you can learn to do anything. The best way to overcome life’s struggles and slowly but surely become a better person as you move on.

I read another book (that was a while ago, so unfortunately I can’t remember the name or the title) that recommended ALWAYS having a role model. Some people recommend having role models as children, and then mentors as adults. The problem with looking for a mentor, is that you actually have to be in contact in some way with the person who is mentoring. The great thing about role models is you can watch them on TV, or read about them in the newspaper or a book, and still benefit from their guidance. You don’t even have to be alive at the same time. Many people choose religious figures from history as role models.

This book went on to describe that is important to choose role model that is not so far out of reach that you can’t see yourself as this person, but not so close to you that it’s not a stretch. And the book recommended having different models in different areas of life. For example, you can use Bill Gates as your role model if you are starting a business, and you can use Tiger Woods as your role model if you want to improve your golf. Another great thing about choosing role models is that you can choose them for any behavior at all, regardless of whether or not that is their most widely acknowledged skill. For example, most would people would model President Obama for his public speaking abilities, or charisma, or skills of negotiation. But what about his posture, or his fashion sense? You could even by a dyed in the wool Republican and still benefit from modeling him for certain behaviors that you would find beneficial in your own life.

When you begin to get creative with the people you choose to model, you’ll realize that anybody, from anywhere, anytime can be modeled for you to take on some of their characteristics. You don’t even have to speak their language. The world is filled with billions of people that have untold resources of behaviors that you can tap to vastly improve your life. All you need is some imagination.

The best way to do this, is to simply watch them, or imagine that you are watching them perform the behavior you’d like to take on. Watch them a few times, and then substitute an image of yourself in their place. Then watch yourself a few times. Then float into yourself, and feel yourself doing the same action. This might seem strange at first, but you can quickly get the hang of it. The more you do this, you sooner you’ll realize yourself starting to take on characteristics of your model.

But, yea, I agree that Spiderman is a great role model for a number of reasons. Courage, commitment, justice, just to name a few.

How to Speak the Local Language for Powerful Success

I was hanging out in a coffee shop the other night. It was one of those coffee shops that is attached to a large bookstore. The large bookstore is inside of a large mall. So the area of the coffe shop kind of bleeds into the bookshop area, which in turn melts into the mall area. I happened to be sitting at a table near the back, facing outward, so I had a fairly good view of the bookstore, and coffee shop table area, and the area just out in front of the book shop inside the mall. As I was sitting there, watching people walk by and read their various magazines and drink their various coffee drinks and other things, I saw a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I motioned for her to come and sit down, as she was alone and seemed to be wandering around aimlessly, as people like to do during their free time.

She had just come back from a trip to Europe. She had bought on of those multi-country rail passes, and had traveled through various countries. She spent lots of time telling me about the different food and culture she’d experienced, as well as some of the new words in various languages that she’d picked up. She said that people really reacted well to her when she spoke the local language. She also said that the words “Please” and “Thank you” were very powerful. She mentioned that a few times she ran across some tourist that seemed to have a condescending attitude, which didn’t get them very far. She even was able to secure a table in a restaurant that had been refused to two tourists just in front of her.

We started talking about how important it is to speak to others in their own language. It would seem that this would be obvious to most people, but apparently her experience says otherwise. Some people when they speak to others assume that everybody has same experience and frames of reference as they do. This can be extremely unhelpful, and the person listening has to work twice as hard. One to figure out exactly what frame of reference the person is coming from, and two to try and figure out exactly what the message is.

It reminded me of a lecture I saw on a memory expert. She was saying that everybody has a different “memory map” inside their brains, and we all operate from different memory maps. Even people that grew up in the same family in the same circumstances can have very different memory maps. The lecturer explained that one of the biggest failures of western style education is that it is assumed that every student that enters school has the same memory map, as they are all taught the same way. Teachers can become frustrated when they are trying to teach students that have vastly different maps than they do. I guess it’s not so bad when teaching something as straightforward as mathematics or hard science. Even then you have to be careful and make sure the person you are talking to is at least one the same level as you, and not higher or lower.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having an argument with somebody, and you were both arguing about two completely different things, for two completely different reasons. I can remember several heated engineering discussions I’ve had in the past with an engineering manager of mine. On the surface, it would seem that something as cut and dried as engineering would be simple to talk about. But when you add in two different egos, expectations, and experiences into the mix, and you suddenly find yourself in a heap of trouble.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. The biggest hurdle to overcome is getting over your need to be right. Getting over your need to get your opinion heard so that you can maybe get some recognition and ego gratification out of the deal. The paradox is that by focusing on imposing your opinion, you actually get less validation and ego gratification. By stepping back enough to make you sure you understand the other person enough to more effectively present your opinion, so that it is actually heard rather than argued with, you will be much more successful. And you actually might learn something.

The Brave Little Gator

Once there was an alligator. He was a small alligator, only a few weeks out of the egg. He was still kind of feeling his way around, only venturing a few meters from his nest. He hadn’t reached the stage where he had to get his own food, as he was still receiving food from his mother. She would periodically leave the nest to go out hunting, and bring back small bites of zebra and kangaroo to feed to the kids. There were sixteen alligators in all. It was a particularly large nest, as most alligator nests only contain seven or so. This alligator mom was particularly lucky with not only the amount of eggs, but that they had all hatched and produced healthy baby alligators. Usually when a mother alligator has so many eggs, there are a few that need to be sacrificed for the good of the many. The mother was quite relieved, to say the least, when she discovered that all of her eggs were healthy.

On the particular day in question of this story, the mom had been gone for longer than normal. She would usually go out for about an hour or so, and then come back with the good. However, it had been over four hours since she left, and they were starting to get hungry, and scared.

“What should we do?”
“Wait. We should wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“But we have to wait. We don’t have any other choice.”
“Maybe she got mad and left us!”
“She didn’t get mad at me, she got mad at you!”
“Did not! Did too!”

And so they previously happy and well taken care of alligator began to argue. Pretty soon, it became dark. The mother alligator still hadn’t returned.

“We are going to die!”
“Maybe she got lost?”
“Maybe she was eaten by another alligator!”
“You idiot, alligators don’t eat each other!”
“She’s lost!”
“How could she get lost, she’ s our mom, she knows everything!”

The more they tried to ignore their hunger and fear in their tiny little alligator nest, the worse it became. Soon they began fighting, and biting each other. Simon, the young alligator who is the focus of this story, decided to climb over the edge of the nest, just to see what was on the other side.

“What are you doing? You want to get killed?”
“I’m just gonna take a look and see what is here.”
“Be careful!”

He climbed up, and looked.

“What do you do see?”
“Nothing, just a bunch of stuff that looks like the same as in here. Except…..bigger. Much bigger.” He had an idea. He looked back down at the young, scared alligators, and then turned to look again at the vastness of the swamp outside of their protective nest.

“Hurry up, and come down before somebody sees you! You’ll get in trouble!”
“I’m not coming down. I’m going out. There has to be food out here, someplace.” Then he disappeared over the edge of the side. The young alligators were horrified. They were sure that he died.

A few days later, two more small alligators climbed up and over the edge, their fear and trepidation overcome by their hunger. They two were never seen again. Another couple of days passed, and a few others got the courage to climb up and over the edge of the next.

A week and a half later, there were only four remains alligators. They were too weak to move by now, and had long given up trying to come up with a reason that their mother had abandoned them. They didn’t noticed when the birds began circling overhead. Nor did they notice, or really care when they came down and perched on the edge of their nest. They had already given themselves up to fate. One by one, the birds leaned in and ate the remaining alligators, until they were all gone.

It only took Simon and his brothers and sisters, a few hours to realize the abundance of food that outside, just waiting to be eaten, waiting to be taken. As Simon grew, and swam through the swamp, his strength and determination increasing with every morsel he hunted, killed, and ate, he realized how wonderful it was to be an alligator. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to his brothers and sisters. But he usually spent his time going after what he wanted. Which was fine with him.

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