Ego is the Enemy

It’s finally time for another book review! I haven’t summarized a book in quite some time, but I finally got some inspiration after starting a book club with my mate Jono. I’ve also been itching to share some useful knowledge that you can read up more on yourself.

The book I’ll be diving into today is called ‘Ego is the Enemy’ by Ryan Holiday. As the title suggests, it’s all about why ego is our greatest opponent and how to fight it. It was actually an eye-opener for me, as I haven’t really realized the way ego can sneak into our worldview and affect almost everything we do.

The book is segmented into 3 main sections; Aspire, Success, and Failure. Each section is comprised of multiple subsections, but I’ll only focus on a couple that resonated quite strongly with me.

The book essentially talks about the different stages that we experience in life and how ego develops in every stage. Ryan Holiday explains the concept by bringing in real-life examples from his personal journey, and by speaking through the stories of other historically famous people.

Let’s understand more about the ego and what we can do to prevent it from crippling us.

Aspire

This is the phase where we set out to achieve something. We dream big, start chasing goals and begin a new journey. Yet, we oftentimes fall short of our ambition. Ego tends to be the culprit.

Talk, Talk, Talk

How often do we find ourselves talking endlessly about all that we want to achieve in life? Our wishes, our goals, our aspirations seem so much easier when we’re just talking about them. Getting to action or making other people have the spotlight seems less likely.

Silence is a crucial element here, especially when everyone else just seems to be a constant chatterbox. My previous post on The Art of Silence fits well into this section, as it highlights the importance of being comfortable in your own quietness.

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The point here is that talking is easy. What’s ultimately always harder is walking the talk. It goes both ways. As one of the partners at the company I currently work at always says: We need to talk the walk and walk the talk. It goes both ways, but the latter is definitely more important.

Become A Student

I think it’s quite clear why this one resonates so much with me. I’ve devoted myself to constantly trying to be a life-long learner. This means approaching life like a sponge. Absorbing as much information and knowledge that I can from people that I encounter and experiences that I face.

It’s crucial not to let ego get in the way of this. We can easily pretend like we know what’s going on or fake our way through certain phases of our life, but it prevents true learning and growth. Having a white-belt mentality at the start will enable us to rapidly develop and gain expertise.

Work, Work, Work

This point links very closely to the one on Talk, Talk, Talk, as it brings in the concept of working hard. What we often underestimate is how challenging it can be to push forward when we face setbacks. Ego often tends to come into the picture here and makes us fall into the planning fallacy. We try as best as we can to avoid doing the actual work, by spending time ‘preparing’ and trying to feel productive about it.

It’s not always going to be easy. We’re going to wish it was a straight and clear path to move forward and achieve that goal. But it’s not going to be that way. There will be challenges, whether we like it or not. The best thing we can do is embrace it and keep ourselves prepared to overcome the hurdles and become stronger.

“Every time you sit down to do work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this. I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of my ego.

Success

This is the part where we’re reaping the harvest of the hard work and enjoying success, or where the summit is potentially insight. It’s when our pride, arrogance, and ‘know-it-all’ attitude strike out. It’s where we have to be incredibly careful not to stop learning or undermine the challenges that are yet to come.

Always Stay A Student

“As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

It’s quite clear why this is so important once we start picking up a few wins. Becoming a student is one thing. Remaining a student is something else altogether. We need to constantly remind ourselves that we’re not ‘there’. There’s no specific end goal to learning. It’s a continuous and life-long process.

When we start to feel like ‘we’ve been there and done that’, we need to keep ourselves in check. There’s always an opportunity to learn from other people, it just depends on the perspective you have.

Beware Of The Disease Of Me

Another crucial humbling point is to remind ourselves that we’re not the centre of the universe. We should not make ourselves feel like we’re the most important person in the room. We need to realize that the privilege of success is not going to continue falling into our lap once we make it.

We have to constantly seek out new challenges and embrace the opportunity to struggle. Give other people credit where it’s due and focus on developing them as well. It’s not all about you. It never will always be about you. Let that sober you up a little bit.

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Meditate On the Immensity

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.”

Reflect on how far you’ve come. How much you’ve grown. How much more there is to grow. Try and see the bigger picture amidst all the distractions. Think of your purpose. Who you are. What you are doing. Your role in this world.

Meaning does not only come from activity, despite how often our ego makes us feel that way. We don’t have to be the centre of attention. We need to look beyond our own success and the rat race, and keep the real objective in mind.

Failure

We then hit a roadblock. Things don’t always work out. We might fall short of our achievement. But how do we respond and pick ourselves up? What is the inner dialogue? How do we react?

Alive Time or Dead Time?

We are almost certainly bound to experience failure in some form or the other, at some point in our life. This can be somewhat of a daunting thought, but there are always ‘make or break’ moments that follow those experiences. We either rise above the circumstance and grow, or we let it crush us and stagnate (or even deteriorate).

Alive time or dead time refers to the concept of either utilizing a negative experience to stay alive (to the learnings, the lessons and potential to grow), or to die out (by falling into bad habits, losing hope and giving up).

When faced with any form of fear, we should constantly try to look at how we can learn from it. Almost all our experiences have some form of value to offer. It’s up to us to extract it. Choose alive time.

The Effort is Enough

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

“Do your work. Do it well. Then let go, and let God.”

To me, this section focused on having a growth mindset. Ryan Holiday brought it up in a slightly different way though. When it comes to missing our targets or not achieving our set out goals, we should focus on the effort we put in. It’s not always about the result, it’s about the dedication.

He brings it up in the context of appreciation and not getting all the praise we deserve for what we set out to do. We should remind ourselves that it’s not our objective to be put on a pedestal. That’s the ego’s goal. Our goal is to try our best and keep pushing, whatever that may mean.

Always Love

When things don’t go our way, it’s easy to hate. It’s easy to blame other people and not take responsibility for the outcomes. We should keep in mind, however, that it doesn’t get us any closer to our goal. In fact, it may even arrest our development entirely.

What we need to do in moments of difficulty is to choose love. To choose forgiveness. To let go of resentment and arrogance. This is definitely easier said than done, but the outcome will always be better. Maybe not for everyone involved, but definitely for your own well-being.

Choosing love is hard because the ego convinces us that we have every right to hate and stay bitter. Which is probably true. Your anger might be justifiable. But it doesn’t mean that lashing out will help you progress. In moments of failure, always love.

Throughout our life, we’ll always be in one of those three stages. Ego will invariably try to play a role in directing us. It’s up to us to be conscious enough in our decisions, to remain humble and to always remain a student.

Who Moved My Cheese?

Why is it so difficult to deal with change and uncertainty? What’s up with the world and wanting to move our cheese? Wait, why is there an emphasis on cheese here?

Today’s post is another book summary! A lot of you may already be familiar with it: ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ by Dr. Spencer Johnson. It’s a tale about 4 mice in a maze who have different approaches to the inevitable changes that they experience. I won’t dive too much into the story itself, but rather the nuggets of wisdom that I gained from it.

We experience change on a continuous basis. Most recently, the era of Covid-19 has disrupted the way we do everything. From social distancing, to wearing masks, constantly spraying our hands with vinegar smelling sanitizers, having curfews and working from home.

It certainly has been a struggle for almost everyone. But it is less of a struggle for people who manage to adapt rapidly and expect change. Let’s talk about the nature of change, its consistency in life, how we can learn to expect change and embracing a growth mindset (yet again).

The nature of change

What exactly is the nature of change? This is such an interesting way of thinking about things. It’s essentially what evolution is all about; the ability to adapt to unexpected circumstances. As human beings, we love predictability (I suppose all living things do). When we experience situations that disrupt those predictions, we feel uneasy. Yet the essence of life is continuous change.

In the story, the 4 mice experience a radical shift in their living situation. They no longer find cheese in the same little station within the maze. Two of the mice decide to move on and search in new places to potentially find cheese. The other two get stuck in their old ways and start complaining. They become furious and agitated because their cheese is no longer there. They feel like they deserved and earned it. It’s unfair that this is happening to them.

The cheese can mean different things to each of us, but it essentially represents something in our lives that we hold onto. Something that we deserve. Something that we’ve earned. Something that should permanently stay ours. Something that makes us happy. This could be a job, a relationship, freedom, recognition or even an activity.

The problem with that mindset is that it makes us clingy. We stop seeing the world for what it truly is. We become egotistical in a sense. It causes us stress, it drains our energy, and it makes us unpleasant to be around. So what can we do instead?

Expecting change

We should be more like the mice who decided to move on and look for new cheese, immediately after the calamity struck. What’s interesting thing about expecting change is that we basically have to ‘expect the unexpected’. You never know when something could show up and re-direct the course of our life. It just happens. We don’t necessarily get a choice in that specific event, but we always get to choose how we respond to it.

When it comes to anticipating change, the key is to stop holding onto things. We need to learn acceptance. I’ve spoken about that several times before, but it’s always so relevant. Acceptance is what enables us to become more adaptive.

Another way to expect change is by actually imagining the worst-case scenario. This kind of exercise isn’t always easy, but it allows to consciously think of how we would overcome terrible scenarios. It’s actually quite a common practice in stoicism. Again, the point here is to embrace the unknown. Start leaving your comfort zone more often. You’ll be surprised at how resilient you are.

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Growth mindset

The last point I want to make about change is that being adaptive is fueled by having a growth mindset. Everything that I mentioned before is primarily driven by our mindset and approach towards things. If we believe that our experiences will help us develop new skills, make us stronger and allow us to grow, change becomes a necessity.

Constantly think of the impact your struggles have on the neural connections in your mind. Being adaptive can actually become physically ingrained into who you are. The next time you face an unexpected change, embrace it. Accept it. Think about it this way:

“What have you come to teach me?”

You’ll realize soon enough that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, to become who you’re destined to be. It’s okay that you find it tough. It’s okay that you enjoy planning for things. It’s okay if you’re comfortable in your routines. Just anticipate that it won’t always be that way. You’re better off when you stretch yourself past the discomfort. You got this.

“Be like water, my friend”

Why We Sleep

A lot of you seem to dislike the concept of sleep. A lot of you absolutely indulge in it. Today’s post is going to be another book summary on ‘Why We Sleep’ by Matthew Walker. All I have to say is that we need to start taking naps more seriously.

The book is broken down into 4 main parts. I’ll briefly touch on the first 3 sections in more detail and talk about some of the ways we can improve our quality of sleep.

• This Thing Called Sleep
• Why Should You Sleep?
• How and Why We Dream
• From Sleeping Pills to Society Transformed

This Thing Called Sleep

Have you ever thought to yourself “I’m just really not a morning person”? Well, apparently that could be true. We can divide people into more or less 3 categories; ‘morning larks’, ‘night owls’ and a combination of the two. Morning larks account for 40% of the population, night owls and the combination account for 30% each. This is known as a chronotype and it’s heavily determined by genes.

From an evolutionary point of view, it kind of makes sense. We needed people to stay up late at night to defend the tribe. If everyone went to bed at the same time, it would increase the risk of being vulnerable and getting attacked. However, in this day and age, being a night owl isn’t necessarily as advantageous. The systems and work schedules we have in place are biased towards the morning larks. This needs to change to accommodate those who are naturally inclined to work better at night.

So how does your body physically know when it’s time for bed? Melatonin. This chemical is released after dusk indicating to your body that it’s time to get ready for bed. It should be noted that it has little influence on the generation of sleep. It just informs your mind that it’s night time.

What actually does influence your tiredness and ability to sleep is a different chemical called adenosine. It essentially accumulates in your body from the time you wake up and increases your desire to sleep. This is known as sleep pressure and is what makes you feel sleepy.

How have we managed to overcome this urge for slumber? A lot of you might be familiar (and perhaps addicted) to the answer, caffeine. Just so you know, caffeine is classified as a psychoactive stimulant. It works by blocking the adenosine receptors; diminishing the sleep pressure. The problem is that the amount of adenosine in your system will continue to rise. So once the caffeine wears out, you often feel even more tired. Caffeine also has a half-life of around 6 hours. This means that after 6 hours, 50% of it will still be lurking in your system.

Your sleep can be categorized into 90 minute cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) which occur one after the other. This can be seen in the Figure below. REM sleep has similar brainwaves to your waking state. It’s essentially your dreaming state – where you’re temporarily paralyzed (if you ever sleepwalk, there’s essentially a disruption during your REM sleep). It’s also when you’re able to integrate your memories and solve problems. The NREM cycle is when you’re in a more logical, slow-waved and reflective state. It’s when you save memories and make sense of your experiences. Both cycles are extremely important and can only be utilized when you sleep for over 7 hours sufficiently.

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Why Should You Sleep?

• To be a functional human being and contribute to society
• To remember stuff
• To help your body recovery – especially if you’re active
• To solidify your immune system
• To get smarter (problem-solving and creativity)
• To control your body weight
• To enhance your social awareness (and emotional intelligence)
• I could honestly keep going on…

I’ve gone into the previous chapter in enough detail. The abovementioned bullets provide enough evidence to support the claim of requiring at least 7 hours of sleep. Everything in moderation, obviously. Don’t go for more than 9-10 hours of sleep (if you’re a young adult).

The rate race will tempt you into sacrificing this invaluable coping mechanism. It’s not worth it. Find the right balance.

How and Why We Dream

It’s quite incredible how similar the state of psychosis is to dreaming, considering that you were:

• Hallucinating
• Delusional
• Disoriented
• Affectively labile (extreme swings in emotion)
• And suffering from amnesia

These are normal biological and psychological processes that we experience when we dream. REM sleep specifically is associated with the active, conscious experience of dreaming.

We don’t just dream about the events of our day, but rather, the emotions that we’ve experienced. This allows us to effectively keep our mental health in check, alongside many of the other benefits I mentioned previously. The problem-solving and ability to form logical connections all occur during our dreaming state.

“Dreaming takes the approach of interrogating our recent autobiographical experience and skillfully positioning it within the context of past experiences and accomplishments, building a rich tapestry of meaning.”

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Tips for getting better sleep:

• Have a consistent time to go to bed and to wake up
• Keep away from blue light at least 30 minutes before you sleep (don’t get into the habit of staring at your phone as you’re trying to sleep)
• Keep the room temperature relatively cool (around 20°C)
• Cut out your last cup of coffee more than 6 hours before you plan to sleep
• Exercise regularly (not too late in the evening)

To summarize everything I’ve learned from this book: If you don’t get enough sleep, you will literally die. I’ve barely gone into the same level of detail as the book, so I highly recommend you give it a read for yourself to truly maximize the benefit you can gain from understanding the importance of sleep.

Moving forward, we need to really start appreciating the impact a consistent amount of good quality sleep can have on our lives. If you know anyone who argues against the requirement of over 6 hours of sleep, please recommend this book to them. More often than not, they haven’t done adequate research.

Have a great night and rest well! You deserve it.

The Tipping Point

A book summary, when last! I’m on my third book of the year and I thought I should write a book summary, considering how long it’s been.

The Tipping Point is a book by Malcolm Gladwell about how little things can make a big difference. It’s an idea about how certain concepts like fashion trends, messages and behaviours spread in a similar way to viruses.

The key components are:

• The three rules of epidemics
  • Contagiousness
  • Little causes can have big effects
  • How changes can happen in one dramatic moment
• The law of the few
• The stickiness factor
• The power of context

Considering we’re in an actual pandemic, let’s go through these key components and make sense of them within our own context.

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The Three Rules of Epidemics

The three rules of epidemics essentially speaks to the ingredients of how things spread. Firstly, it needs to be contagious. Whether it’s a virus or an idea, it requires an effective method to travel and spread.

Secondly, the concept of how little causes can have big effects describes how once a virus enters your system, it can completely take over. The same logic applies to fashion trends when certain influencers promote a new look. It’s a small change, but it can have a monumental impact on the industry.

The third rule speaks to how changes doesn’t necessarily have to be gradual. It can happen quite erratically. This essentially speaks to exponential growth. We’ve seen that with how the number of Covid cases started to rise.

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The Law of the Few

• Connecters – People specialists
• Mavens – Information specialists
• Salesmen – Persuasion specialists

Connecters, mavens and salesmen are critical individuals involved in allowing trends to ‘tip’ past a certain point. Connecters are people who are incredibly gifted socially. They have an enourmous network and know everyone. They’re comfortable having ‘weak ties’ with many different people and form acquaintances. These people are important because they help spread ideas through their network. They help us connect with important people

Mavens are people who typically accumulate knowledge. They also have a relatively large social network. They don’t just passively collect information, they actively try to share it. They find out about the best deals and want you to know about it too. Their motivation is to educate and help.

Salesmen are people who are effective at convincing us about things we are hesitant about. They’re extremely effective at using subtle non-verbal cues, physical harmony and motor mimicry. These are forms of body language and communication that allow us to feel comfortable, heard and understood.

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I suppose in the context of our pandemic, mavens provided the virus, connectors spread it and salesmen convinced us that we were in trouble.

The Stickiness Factor

The stickiness factor is about how messages, ideas or trends actually stick to their target audience. It’s presenting it in such a way that people can’t seem to let go – or constantly want more of it.

It’s the way TV shows get viewers hooked; presenting the show in a way that makes people crave more. It’s the anticipation of another season. The keenness to expect another plot twist. The willingness to binge.

For a virus to spread effectively, it needs to have a stickiness factor. Given their biological nature, viruses essentially evolve to ‘stick’ as efficiently as possible. They spread from host to host, with the aim of reproducing and spreading their genes as much as they can.

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The Power of Context

The last idea discussed in the book was on the power of context and how our environment impacts the way we behave. What we need to understand here is that specific and relatively minor elements in the environment play a role in the Tipping Point.

Context matters because it also helps spread (or prevent) certain ideas and behaviours. It’s also why you often hear people talking about de-cluttering your work space. Because it affects your state of mind and how you interact with the world around you. It’s why your social circle matters. Because the people you surround yourself with influence you to do (or not to do) specific behaviours.

For any kind of pandemic to spread, the context in which it can grow matters. The type of people and the way they interact with each other matters.

It should be noted that all these concepts are explained in a much more profound way in the book. Gladwell uses incredible real-life case studies to argue his point. So far, we’ve looked at the Three Rules of Epidemics, The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor and The Power of Context.

Each of these elements can dramatically help us spread ideas and to start trends. It also helps us understand the way in which the world functions. I hope you’ve managed to get a little bit curious about these concepts and to maybe read the book for yourself.

As for now, I hope you have an incredible week and find something interesting to learn.

12 Rules For Life

An Antidote to Chaos.

I haven’t written a book summary in quite sometime. I’m excited to share the incredible wisdom and life lessons that I’ve gained from Jordan Peterson.

Today’s post will be a summary of the book ’12 Rules For Life’. I’ll try not to make this too long, but it was just such an exciting read that I have a lot to share. Each of these rules dive into a lot more topics than I cover here, so I’d recommend you give the book a read yourself if you find this interesting.

Here’s a summary of those 12 rules:

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Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back

The core lesson from this rule is to understand that life is dangerous. Chaos is always around the corner. We have a choice each and everyday in how we respond to the emerging chaos. It’s about building the habits that are required to make progress on a constant basis.

“It is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.”

Pay attention to your posture, quit hunching and acting defeated. Don’t beat around the bush. Speak your mind and put your desires forward. Dare to be dangerous. Accept the burden of existence with courage and use it to find joy and meaning in your life.

Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

This is something that I often find myself thinking about. Why do we not treat ourselves as well as we treat other people we care about? Some of us even treat our pets better than we do for ourselves.

You deserve respect. You are important to other people just as much as you are to yourself. Keep the promises you make to yourself. Determine where you are going. Discipline yourself carefully. Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. Consider what is truly good for you. Not just what you want or what would make you happy.

The main concept here is that your Being is intrinsically connected to others. If you mistreat yourself, it may have negative consequences for other people. Take care of yourself as if you were a child.

Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you

This is connected to the previous rule, in the sense that you’d want to surround yourself with people who care for you and help you grow.

There are people we keep in our lives because we want to help them. We want to be heroes and rescuers. But there’s a limit to that. You need to distinguish between people who genuinely want help and those who are exploiting a willing helper.

“If you have a friend you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, father or son, why would you keep such a friend for yourself?”

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today

When we have standards, we’re undoubtedly going to experience failure. That’s the consequence of striving above mediocrity. It’s important to value and appreciate what you currently have in your life and the progress you’ve made thus far.

The point here is that you should see yourself as a stranger. Get to know yourself better. You need to pinpoint your mistakes and failures, because you can’t fix something unless you know it’s broken. Be very cautious when you compare yourself to others. We’re all at a different stage in our personal development.

Pay attention. Focus on your environment. Notice the things that bother you and figure out how to fix them. Ask yourself whether you even want to fix them. Ask yourself how your life will be improved if they end up being fixed.

“What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?”

Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

The lesson here is about disciplining your children or people under you care to become better members of society. To allow them to experience failure, to learn from it, to gain independence from it. To say ‘No’ when it needs to be said and stick to it.

Limit the rules and then figure out how to deal with a situation where it’s broken. Use the least necessary force to enforce those rules. Never let things degenerate to the point where hatred is formed. Parents should understand their own capacity and limits just as well.

“Parents are the arbiters of society. It is an act of responsibility to discipline a child.”

Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

We’re all incredibly flawed, this should come as no surprise by now. The point is to clean up our lives as best as we can. Ask yourself a few important questions before criticizing others:

• Do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention?
• Have you taken full advantage of the opportunities offered to you?
• Are you truly shouldering your responsibilities?

Stop doing what you know to be wrong. That’s something that will profoundly change the quality of your life. Say and do things that will make you strong and honourable.

Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

A central theme in the book is sacrifice and delaying gratification. This is extremely important, because sacrifice and work are pretty much the same thing. We’re giving up something valuable in the present for something even more valuable in the future.

Expedience is avoiding responsibility, hiding from your problems and lying to yourself about what’s not working out for you. It transfers the curse on your head to someone else or to your future self. Expedience is impulsive and limited.

Meaning is the balance between order and chaos. When you’re at the right place, at the right time and where everything lines up as best as it can. Meaning is aligning your life with purpose.

“Practice sacrifice and sharing, until you become expert it, and things will go well for you.”

Rule 8: Tell the truth -or, at least don’t lie

What should you do when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth.

Being truthful is imperative to having good character. If you’re not truthful and honest to yourself, how can you do the same for others? Being truthful includes avoiding willful blindness; that is when you refuse to know something that could be known.

If your life isn’t as good as it should be, try being truthful. Stop deceiving yourself.

“A man’s worth can be determined by how much truth he can tolerate.”

Rule 9: Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Listening is a form of paying attention. It’s not thinking or doing, it’s being present to the information you’re receiving. Don’t judge or formulate a response, just pay attention. Restate the ideas and feeling of the person you’re listening to as accurately as you can, before speaking.

The point is that you can always learn by listening to other people. What you know will never be enough.

Thinking is a form of listening to yourself. That’s why true thinking is so rare, because it’s difficult and most of us don’t have the patience for it. You have to try and be two people at the same time.

“You can be pretty smart if you can just shut up.”

Rule 10: Be precise in your speech

Having arguments are necessary to solve problems, which requires us to confront our chaos. Linking this back to the concept of ‘willful blindness’; we need to realize that not thinking or speaking about something doesn’t make it go away.

Specifying the problem will enable us to find a solution. This can only be done when we admit that the problem exists in the first place. You need to determine where you’re going in your life, because you won’t get there unless you move in that direction.

Note your errors. Articulate them and strive to correct them. Don’t be afraid of conflict or suffering, they’re inevitable and can help you grow. Specify your destination and take sail. Admit to what it is you truly want and let those around you know who you are.

“Everything is intricate beyond imagining. Everything is affected by everything else.”

Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

We often think we’re doing people a favour when we protect them excessively. This is especially true with regards to children. What we need to realize is that we’re all constantly seeking some form of danger. It invigorates us and makes us feel alive. We need to push ourselves past certain limits to grow. We need to push ourselves to even understand what our limits are.

Being overprotective can be hindering to development. We need the freedom and ability to make mistakes, in order for us to learn from them.

“Too much protection devastates the developing soul.”

Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

What I took from this rule is that we need to be mindful to the little blessings in our life. There is so much that we take for granted on a regular basis, that it makes us bitter and resentful.

If we can focus more on our blessings and truly incorporate gratitude, our perspective and experience of life will significantly change. We’re imperfect, we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to fall, but we’ll learn, we’ll grow and we’ll adapt.

“When you love someone, it’s not despite their limitations, it’s because of their limitations.”

I hope you managed to gain some wisdom from all these rules. They’re definitely applicable to our every day lives, especially because they have to do with our perception.

Keep growing. Keep learning. Keep pushing. You got this.

Atomic Habits

Have you ever gotten stuck trying to implement a really important habit? Why is it so hard to stay consistent? How often do you start a new activity with lots of energy, only to just stop after a few days?

Today’s post will be all about habit formation and how to incorporate consistency into your life. I’ll use the techniques I gained from ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear and some of my own little life hacks. You’ll probably want to get a journal out and take down some notes, this will be very interesting!

I’ll discuss what, how and why to form habits, then I’ll introduce you to a concept called habit-stacking and the 2-minute rule.

What are habits? –> Outcome

A habit is essentially a behaviour that is performed automatically or on a regular basis. They are mental shortcuts learned from experience. Your personal feedback loop to living more efficiently.

“Success is the product of daily habits, not a once-in-a-lifetime transformation.”

Let’s identify the different between goal-oriented habits and system-oriented habits. Goals are essentially about the results you’d like to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. You need to be more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

It’s your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. I think most of the time we become obsessed with achieving a certain goal, without putting much thought into how we’re actually going to get there. So how can we form systems that will allow us to reach those goals?

“If you can get 1% better each day, you’ll end up 37x times better after 365 days.”

How do you form habits that last? –> Processes

It starts with trial and error. The feedback loop involves trying, failing, learning and then trying differently. The emphasis here is on the failing, because that’s often the most demotivating part. You need to realize that failure is part of growth. Progress requires you to unlearn and then relearn. It’s all part of the plan.

There are 2 phases each containing 2 subcategories to the habit loop; a problem phase and a solution phase. The problem phase consists of Cue and Craving, whilst the solution phase consists of Response and Reward.

To put it simply: the cue is about noticing a reward (trigger), craving is wanting that reward (desire), response is about working towards the reward (motivation) and reward ultimately satisfies us or teaches us. This in turn associates the reward with the cue.

Four laws of behaviour change:

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

If you combine that concept with the four laws of behaviour change, you’ll amplify the habit formation process. So why form habits?

Why should you form habits? –> Identity

When a habit becomes part of your identity, it feeds the loop that will continuously motivate you. Decide who you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small consistent wins.

Keep the benefits of the habit you’re about to form at the forefront of your mind. You want to remind yourself on a regular basis how this will serve you and why you’re pursuing it.

Familiarize yourself with the concept of failure, because pain is an effective teacher. The more you identify as a ‘perfectionist’ or someone who never fails, the less likely you are to overcome the fear of failure.

Habit stacking

This is a simple trick whereby you pair a new habit with an existing one. For example, if you want to start reading more every night before you go to bed, start immediately after you brush your teeth. This makes it easier for your mind to remember when to do it.

“We are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying.”

You’re pairing those habits together so that you can stay consistent. Let’s dive into how to develop that consistency.

The two-minute rule

You need to make it as easy as possible to get started. This is one of the most important concepts to learn, because we are often very resistant to habits that seem like mountains to climb.

The two-minute rule is essentially sticking to the new habit for 2 minutes everyday. Want to start reading? Do it for 2 minutes. Want to start meditating? Do it for 2 minutes. Want to start exercising? Do it for 2 minutes.

Master the habit of showing up. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You just need to do it. Once it starts becoming part of who you are, you can optimize and push yourself a little more. The key is to get comfortable with consistency.

“A thousand mile journey begins with a single step.”

I hope this has served you in some way. It’s not easy to form habits that last, but once you make it part of who you are, you’ll never be able to let go. Remember to focus on processes not just goals when forming habits. You will slip up here and there, but don’t give up. You will get there, just keep trying your best.

“The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”

If you have any thoughts or questions that you’d like to share, feel free to comment below.

Talking to strangers

Why do we tend to make false assumptions about people we know so little about? Why are we so bad at detecting lies? Why do we ignore context when analyzing people?

This will be a book summary, a type of post I haven’t written in a while. The book I’ll be discussing is called ‘Talking To Strangers’ by Malcolm Gladwell. It will be a study of our common misconceptions when understanding strangers, not so much a guide on communication.

I’ll discuss 2 of the puzzles brought up, a theory about defaulting to the truth, transparency, and how we confuse coupling with displacement. (It’ll all make sense further down).

Puzzles 1 & 2

#1: Why can’t we tell when when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?

Is it that we’re just gullible? We might seem to fall for lies more easily than other people. But without us realizing it, it’s in our nature. We tend to trust and believe people readily, because it provides an evolutionary advantage.

We have a default to the truth. This allows us to form communities and structure within society. The downside to that? We have to tolerate an enormous amount of error.

#2: How is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of them, than not meeting them?

Judges, lawyers, interviewers and many other professions including doctors, seem to work on the basis that seeing the person face to face would allow for a ‘fairer’ judgement or diagnosis of them. But what if that isn’t always the case?

Getting more information or seeing a person’s facial expressions, only adds to the complexity of our judgment. This may make us at worse analyzing them, not better. It’s because we have an issue with transparency.

Truth default theory

We’re better than chance at correctly identifying people who are telling the truth, than identifying those who are lying.

We have a default to truth. Our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest. This works alongside puzzle #1. So when do we believe people and when do we not?

Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts. Essentially, there’s a threshold of doubts that need to be triggered for us to figure out that someone is lying.

Were there enough red flags to push you over the threshold of belief?

Transparency

“This is the idea that people’s behaviour and demeanor – the way they represent themselves on the outside– provides and authentic & reliable window into the way they feel on the inside.”

Transparency is one the biggest flaws we make when making sense of strangers. We think that they way they ‘look’, indicates how they really ‘feel’. When we confront strangers, we have to replace our idea of them, with our direct experience with them.

It’s being conscious of stereotyping and assuming certain things about people you have absolutely no idea about.

We are bad lie detectors in situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched. When they aren’t transparent. We’re intolerant of emotional responses that fall outside our expectations.

Mismatched: When a person’s behaviour/demeanor doesn’t match how they feel.

Coupling vs displacement

Displacement: Assuming that people would go to any measure to achieve a certain objective. > Changing the conditions won’t stop them from trying to find an alternative.

Coupling: The idea that behaviours are linked to very specific circumstances & conditions. > If you change those circumstances, the behaviour would no longer prevail.

We need to understand that there’s a fundamental difference between coupling and displacement. Most of us have a natural tendency to think in terms of ‘displacement’. We need to start seeing how ‘coupling’ is a more realistic way to think, and that changes our entire perception of those around us.

We need to start understanding the importance of context, in which the stranger is operating. Two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who a stranger is: where & when.

“We think we can transform strangers without cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and known, and we can’t.”

We should stop penalizing one another for defaulting to the truth. It’s in our nature to believe people are being honest, and it only becomes ‘clear’ to us that someone is lying when they’ve passed our threshold of belief.

There are certain individuals who are naturally mismatched -their demeanor doesn’t represent their feelings- and we often interpret them in the completely wrong way.

This was a rather difficult topic to discuss, considering that the book is filled with real-life examples that exemplify the concepts. If there’s anything you can take from this, is to be conscious of your assumptions. Analyze them before projecting them, and understand that your mind works in mysterious ways.

Everything isn’t as simple as it seems. The world doesn’t run transparently. People are often mismatched and we can’t blame them for our misinterpretations. Sometimes less is more, and acquiring too much information only adds to the complexity of the judgment.

So next time you talk to a stranger, smile & approach them with caution and humility. Accept that the search to understand them has real limits. You will never know the whole truth, but that’s what makes life interesting.