After back-and-forths with some Thinking Labbers, I've got a lead to what causes some people to bog down in thinking about issues and never get into action. It's popular to say that such people are "overthinking" and need "a bias for action." But inaction is a symptom...
Some people muddle together values and emotions when they discuss motivation. These are two very different (though causally related) phenomena. Some people get confused about the roles of thought and action in forming values and triggering emotions. I thought I'd sort...
When I was a graduate student studying Objectivism, my professor, Harry Binswanger, required that I memorize all of the definitions that are mentioned in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. One or more of them appeared on every exam. Thanks to this assignment, I...
As soon as you finish reading this article, I recommend that you take out your smartphone, open the stopwatch app, start the timer, and then march out of the building. Keep going until the stopwatch hits 90 seconds, then turn around and come back. You will have...
When the desire for approval is driving many decisions, it is a "defense value." It distorts your choices and actions and undercuts your successes and sense of self. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be remedied by taking an active approach to reprogramming your...
Big decisions can be made quickly and easily if you simply compare the best-case scenarios — and commit to doing the work to achieve the best outcome. This is a brilliant idea of Brooke Castillo's that cuts through fear, doubt, and uncertainty and propels you into...
Everyone can benefit from making a list of 25 amazingly big goals they wish they could accomplish in their lives. What counts as an "amazingly big goal"? By an "amazingly big goal," I mean something that seems audacious to you to set as a goal. It is something you...
In helping some Thinking Labbers make accurate, precise value-judgments, I was reminded of a song I learned as a child. The lyrics as I remember: Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I'm going out and eat worms! The first one was easy. The second...
Moral self-criticism doesn't need to be deeply painful, not if you interpret virtues as telling you how to be happy, not what kind of person you are. What??? I'm not saying moral self-criticism is going to be pleasant. A moral person is always going to feel some guilt...
We had an interesting conversation about "failure" on a Launch call recently. One of the coaches for the program asked if we shouldn't call a "failure" a "setback" instead. Calling the result a "failure" brought up a lot of old baggage and feelings of discouragement...
I recently answered a query on LinkedIn: New LinkedIn data shows that the number of “boomerangs,” or employees who left a company for a certain amount of time and then returned, is rising — and it’s even higher at top employers. We’d...
As part of improving my sleep, I'm on a campaign to jump out of bed at a standard wakeup time each morning. Although I'm pretty consistent at getting up, sometimes I resist getting out of bed. I have applied everything I know about motivation to creating a process for...
Based on some comments I made in a coaching call, a Thinking Labber wrote to me as follows: I'm fascinated by the idea that self-sacrifice is an easily activated context and not a habit. I'd love to learn more about that, but I'm not sure of the...
In preparation for a new series of classes on "The Work of Happiness" in the Thinking Lab, I have been doing some high-level thinking about how you raise your baseline happiness. As I wrote in How Do You Measure Happiness?, your "baseline happiness" is the overall...
There are three kinds of actions that mark a person as having an active mind. 1. You look beyond the obvious options and the obvious explanations to make sure you've got the full picture. 2. You do the introspective work to make your own values explicit, especially...
When you read self-help books, you can expect that you will need to analyze them carefully to separate the wheat from the chaff. Many such books can be very helpful if you look at the practical advice and rethink the validation of it for yourself. Too often, the...
I derive my ideas on happiness from Ayn Rand, who wrote, among other things: "Morality...is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life." (AR, The...
Curiosity is not just a penchant for asking a lot of questions. It is a specific kind of interest in a topic, which is critical to thinking and problem-solving. What is curiosity? Curiosity is the emotion you get when you have a sense that there is a phenomenon to...
Asking yourself questions is a critical part of thinking. But it's possible to become mentally paralyzed if you ask yourself unhelpful questions. You can easily figure out that a question is unhelpful if you do your thinking "on paper" as I recommend in the Thinking...
I was recently asked to explain the difference between "emotional presence" and "self-esteem." Emotional presence "Emotional presence" is an intense awareness of your values and their importance to you at the moment. You get it, not just from identifying your...
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