Richard's Reader

Treatise on Parents and Children

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:39:03 +0000

Here we have come to the central fact of the question…the true explanation of the monstrous system of child imprisonment and torture which we disguise under such hypocrisies as education, training, formation of character and the rest of it. This fact is simply that a child is a nuisance to a grown-up person. – George Bernard Shaw. View entire treatise at online-literature.com.

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The 4 Principles of Bliss

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:27:59 +0000

“He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of Bliss. That which he considered chief, was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. ‘The health,’ he said, ‘attainable by other means than this is scarcely worth the name.’ He pointed to the tillers of the earth–the only people who, as a class, are proverbially more happy than others–and then he instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. His second principle was the love of woman. His third was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of happiness was proportioned to the spirituality of this object.” – Edgar Allan Poe, “The Landscape Garden,” 1850

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Duke University Professor Explains Self-Compassion vs Self-Esteem

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:09:04 +0000

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Humankind Waking Up

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:52:48 +0000

Robert Anton Wilson on the next great evolution…. you may ignore the 2012 reference applied by the video’s author.

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Quantum Psychology

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:00:04 +0000

In an amusing yet starkly frank look at the nature of reality as experienced by humankind, Robert Anton Wilson ambles along the corridors of physics, philosophy, psychology and sociobiology, stopping along the way to peer into doorways and cheerfully introduce the layman to Einstein, Bohr, Wheeler, Jung, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Aristotle and Buddha (and, at times, to introduce them to each other).

Wilson has described his life’s work as an “attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth.” This book could be described by some (but not all) as one thinking man’s response to certain, sometimes wishful theories regarding the observer-created universe and Subjective Reality. View this book in its entirety at abovetopsecret.com.

p.s. The above website’s name seems a tad ridiculous, but so seems Robert Anton Wilson at times, and so seems reality most of the time. So, although I have no idea what else currently resides in that particular cul-de-sac of the interwebs, it seems somewhat fitting to this particular reader that this happens to be the source of our pdf file. Enjoy.

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No Cars Go

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:14:18 +0000

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The Creativity Crisis

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:28:43 +0000

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. View article at newsweek.com.

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But Are You Experienced?

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:05:43 +0000

This amusing cartoon makes reference to one of rock’s most influential albums, Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced.”

If you’re struck at all by the image of Jimi Hendrix sitting at a job interview at what appears to be Walmart, take a moment to try and define what you’re feeling. Would this scenario seem shocking? Sad? Simply inconceivable? Now back up even further…just why would it be so shocking, sad, funny, or utterly impossible?

I think most of us would agree that it would have been a tragedy if Jimi Hendrix had traded in a passionate, one-of-a-kind, inspiration-fueled existence for one of reasonable, responsible, staid, pragmatic survival.

Now take Jimi’s face out of that cartoon, and replace it with your own.

How do you feel now? If that picture were a reality would it strike you as just as incongruous to see yourself sitting down at that particular job interview? Maybe it would seem a bit odd, but not *that* strange — after all, you’re no Jimi Hendrix. Maybe it wouldn’t seem odd or funny at all. Leave a comment and let me know.

[p.s. I'd like to link to the original cartoonist's web page, if there is one -- please let me know if anyone out there has a clue about who to credit.]

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Why Psychiatrists Have It All Wrong

admin — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:45:31 +0000

HABITS: The Future of Mental Health Care

All too often, traditional psychiatry neglects basic, simple truths about the keys to a healthy mind. Psychiatrists and mental health counselors heavily underestimate the effect our daily activities have on our emotional well-being, leading to short-sighted, ineffective care.

A professionally-trained and sympathetic ear, along with supportive medication, can certainly create significant breakthroughs in self-awareness and mood regulation. But more often than not, creating a steady state of strong mental health requires more than this. A resilient mind requires that we adopt an effective set of lifelong physical and mental habits.

We Are Creatures of Habit

It has often been said that we are the sum of our habits. To be more exact, we are the sum of our habitual actions, feelings and thoughts.

As much as we would all like to think that we are masters of our own minds, and that we think deep, creative, and original thoughts across the full spectrum of human existence on a daily (if not hourly) basis, the truth is a little less exciting. Most of our time, thought and energy is spent doing, feeling and thinking the same exact things we did, felt and thought yesterday, and the day before that. (Set a timer and stop to observe yourself on a regular basis for a day or two if you don’t automatically see the truth in this statement.)

There are practical reasons for this. Our unconscious habits allow us to to go from task to task without expending precious (and limited) mental and emotional resources. If we had to think carefully and purposefully about every single thing we did throughout the day, we’d all call ‘Uncle!’

How Habits Can Help Conserve Mental Energy

When we have to tackle an activity that isn’t habitual — something that requires some thought, so to speak — we call upon our “executive functions.” Executive functions are the brain processes used for higher-order thought activities such as planning, abstract thinking, decision-making, and consciously sorting through sensory information. This stuff takes effort and energy (literally – scientists can measure the drop in glucose that occurs when we invoke an executive function such as utilizing willpower to accomplish a distasteful task).

That drop in blood sugar hints at something researchers are now paying close attention to: there is a very clear physical component to willpower and self-discipline that we need to better understand. Clearly, exercising these executive functions uses up our limited supply of “brain juice,” and it is foolish to expect to function consistently over long periods of time on pure determination alone. Researchers are finding that if we “use up” our willpower in the a.m. trying to force ourselves to get into our sneakers and head to the gym, chances are very high that when faced with another tough decision later in the day (like whether or not to have that donut, or to succumb to depression in the face of a rude comment), we will fail to conjure up enough discipline to put that donut down or cheerfully shake off an unintended insult.

Our habits can help relieve some of the pressure on our executive functions. A set of daily routines can virtually eliminate the necessity of using brute willpower when accomplishing anything from exercising to monitoring and transforming unhealthy and unhelpful negative thoughts. Habitual actions slowly but surely

“…turn the impossible into the possible, the difficult into the easy, and the easy into the pleasant…only those activities that are easy and pleasant will become part of a man’s habitual life and will serve him at all times. Actions that are hard to carry out, for which man must force himself to overcome his inner opposition, will never become part of his normal daily life….” -Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais

One New Habit, and One New Habit Only, Every 30 Days

Until a routine becomes a truly habitual, you will most definitely need to call upon your limited reserves of willpower to “get ‘er done.”

Understanding this, it is commonly recommended that one should attempt to develop no more than one new healthy habit in a 30-day period. This period may seem a bit arbitrary, but it’s a reasonable estimate that works for many. Use it as a rule-of-thumb, and adjust as you become more attuned to your own habit-building processes.

So, when habituating yourself to your daily morning walk, do not attempt to quit smoking, or radically change your diet, until that walk is absolutely locked in. You’ll know you’ve got it when you’re putting on your sneakers peacefully, without the slightest bit of, “Am I going to walk today?” creeping into your thoughts.

Until the 30 days are up, give yourself 100% permission to ignore the remaining myriad of imperfections that you are itching to correct, knowing that you are dedicating one month to transforming an hour of your day into a positive, life-giving ritual. You have your entire life to slowly but surely tweak your lifestyle until it’s just where you want it — and if you think about it, you only have 16 hours to work with, aside from sleeping. So make sure you take your time and do it right.

Where Do I Start?

Chances are you already know what you need to do to improve your lifestyle, and what habits would best serve you. In the past, you may have had trouble consistently following through using brute willpower alone to accomplish your goals. If you’ve now come to a clearer understanding about how habits can help you in that eternal struggle to do-what-we-know-we-need-to-do, then my job here is almost done.

But understanding without action is like reading books about mountain climbing without ever setting foot outdoors. So let me suggest 3 jumping off points to get you started:

THREE STEPS TO GET YOU STARTED

1.) A Daily Exercise Habit: The First Step Toward Good Mental Hygiene

In the following video, John J. Ratey, M.D., author of Driven to Distraction and Spark, presents research proving that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADHD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer’s.

It’s simply a no-brainer that a morning exercise routine should be the first habit we permanently embed into our shiny, new lives.

2.) One Good Meal: Transform Your Nutrition in Just 5 Minutes a Day

For many of us, our nutrition (along with our exercise habits) can rule our mood. If you pay attention to the low spots in your day, you’ll often begin to see a pattern. Have a sugar-laden coffee drink at 2pm, crash and burn at 3pm. Eat a huge roll with your lunch, and crawl under a desk for your nap a half hour later.

Even if you can’t imagine giving up your favorite processed carbs, I highly recommend that you try going through a single day on only fruits, vegetables and meat/fish. Observe your energy levels and your mood. That experiment alone may remind you why you actually *want* to put down that donut. Rather than feeling like you’re short-changing or denying yourself, you may find yourself remembering your high-energy day and deciding you’d rather hold off on the sweets for another time.

But rather than focusing on eliminating foods from your diet, I would recommend that the first nutritional habit you install be an addition instead. Denying ourselves is difficult. Adding something in is less so. And as you slowly insert good components into your diet, the foods that don’t serve you will gradually be crowded out.

Green shakes are all the rage these days, and with good reason. In just a few minutes, you can create a smoothie that almost encompasses an entire day’s vitamins and minerals in one shot. (A bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.) Start by googling “ultimate green smoothie” to find a recipe that appeals to you, then enter the ingredients into a website like Fitday to tweak the recipe until you’ve optimized it for nutrition. Keep an eye out on Craigslist for a used Vitamix blender, or a Magic Bullet.

For many people, one morning shake may be ten times the nutrients they were getting on an average day previously. Talk about leverage — this is a great example of a habit that takes a minimum investment of time and offers an incredible return on investment.

3.) Mental Models: The Key to Adopting Healthy Mental Habits

As important as physical energy is our mental and emotional energy. Our habitual thoughts can either feed or drain us.

Srikumar Rao makes a very interesting observation in this important talk (see video below) given to Google employees: anything that anybody says, virtually any claims or assertions they make, can be convincingly argued to be false. So it is up to us to actively and thoughtfully choose what we are going to believe. We might as well choose beliefs that are helpful to us.

I highly recommend that you set aside the time to view this 50-minute video in its entirety:

Here are a few mental models to try on for size:

I am in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. This is all happening for a good reason, which I may or may not understand at the moment.
Deep down, I already know what I should be doing with my life. I just have to pay attention to my inner voice, my intuition.
Fear and anxiety is useless. I notice I’m feeling it, and then I let it go gently, when I’m ready.

Looking at these beliefs, you may at first think, “Well, that’s just silly rosy thinking, false optimism.” Perhaps. But ask yourself, will believing this make my life easier or harder? Will it help me get things done, or will it slow me down? Would believing this make me less productive…or more? Your answers may surprise you.

Positive thinking is only helpful if we can call it into play when we most need it. Habitualizing effective thoughts and attitudes should be a goal for anyone who suffers from depression or anxiety. Reading self-help literature or online forums, for example, can be a frustrating exercise in futility. We’ve all read something and thought, “Yes, that makes total sense!” then forgotten about it not fifteen minutes later. Just as with our physical actions, “You don’t own it until it’s a habit.” Pick a single empowering thought, and practice it daily for 30 days. Then move on to the next.

As you become accustomed to paying more attention to your habitual thoughts (and in particular, to those thoughts that lower your mood), you may start to notice patterns–sticky beliefs that keep cropping up again and again, the kind of stuff that deflates us. “I’m so lazy.” “Why even bother starting, I know I can never finish anything.” “If so-and-so would just change, I could be happy!”

Pay attention to these thoughts. If certain thoughts continually arise, that probably means you’ve been thinking them for a very long time (perhaps for a lifetime), and they’ve become embedded habits. Undoing these mental habits is a bit of work, but it’s definitely doable.

There are many methods for reacting in a positive way when you recognize an unhelpful, mood-lowering thought. In this short article, Steve Pavlina talks about a method he used to gradually eliminate negative thoughts from his repertoire. As Steve states, “Whenever I uncovered a negative thought, I plucked it out and redirected it. Within a few days, I had reprogrammed dozens of negative thought patterns, and pretty soon it became hard for my mind to even produce a negative thought or emotion.” This type of process isn’t new (ask NLP coaches or cognitive behavioral therapists). The technique is concrete, quick, and just plain doable. Pick it up and practice it for 30 days and it will remain with you for life as part of your mental health toolkit.

Give Decisions a Time and Place of Their Own

Decision-making is one of our most important — and strenuous — executive functions. Having to make decisions can sidetrack your rituals. It’s easy to let fear creep in when deciding, and decision-making can drain us of that magical fairy dust that we call willpower or self-discipline.

So it’s a good idea to make decision-making a separate ritual of its own. For example, don’t include the task ‘Decide what should I work on today,’ as part of your on-ramp to your first hour of work. Instead, set 15 minutes aside the night before to handle that thought process. Having to make the decision right before you start work can derail your ritualized process of sitting right down to your first task of the day. You can also tack a decision-making process to the very end of your final work session of the day when your todo’s are fresh in your mind.

If you have trouble making quick decisions, use this as an opportunity to create and practice some new mental models. Think of deciding as choosing, like choosing appetizers off a menu that you can return to time and time again — rather than terminal decisions that cut off all other possibilities.

Eliminate Friction

Eben Pagan notes the importance of eliminating friction when we are trying to establish new habits or focus on important work. This can be anything from family conflicts that have gone unresolved for too long, to cell phones that need to be turned off during our most productive hours.

Anticipating and eliminating sources of friction can be incredibly helpful when attempting to instate a new exercise habit, for example. Make your new habit as easy to slide into as possible. Wear your workout clothes to bed. Lay out everything you need the evening before. Give yourself a treat just for heading to the gym. (For example, when I first cemented a walking and exercise routine, I used a coffee pot on a timer and took my java to go. As any caffeine addict can attest, I definitely had a reason to look forward to my morning walk. I may someday replace the coffee habit with a healthier alternative, but it’s definitely served its purpose. Use your weaknesses to your advantage.)

From Routine to Ritual

We’ve pointed out that every decision you have to make, every wasted motion or thought, is an unnecessary energy drain when inculcating a new habit. A practical way to tackle this problem in the broadest sense is to focus on turning our habits into rituals. The more we ritualize the motions we go through with respect to our new habits, the more quickly they will become easy and automatic — a part of us.

Create specific, detailed on-ramps and off-ramps to every habit you instate. Make sure everything you need is available where and when you need it, do things in the same order (you may want to write the steps down in a checklist), and pay attention to the little things that can cause ‘friction’ as you carry out your new activity.

Ritualize your entry to your exercise routine by always placing your sneakers in the same place. Take the same route to the gym. When you’re making your healthy morning shake, keep all your ingredients in the same place and make the same one or two meals until you’re absolutely tired of them.

Good Habits, Boring Life?

Our rituals serve to make certain parts of our life smooth, easy, and automatic, so we can get our daily must-do’s taken care of while reserving most of our precious mental and physical energy and willpower.

Establishing new, healthy habits — like a lifelong exercise routine — can strike some as a recipe for a boring and predictable existence. But if you can accept the fact that you are already a creature of habit, it’s a small step to the realization that purposefully choosing your daily habits is perhaps the only way to slowly but surely changing your life.

“The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. ” – William James

James’ point can’t be emphasized enough. Healthy habits will give you the physical and emotional resources to tackle experiences that require high mental and physical energy, courage, and self-confidence — the exact opposite of all that is boring and predictable.

The way you spend your daily time and energy can be imagined as a peg board that can only hold so many pegs. By necessity and design, the majority of the holes in your board are shaped to accommodate habits. One-by-one, you can fill your board with pegs of your own choosing, rather than those handed to you by your parents, your genetics, or your environment. Replacing a longstanding peg can be an intoxicatingly powerful experience.

Show Me Your Past 90 Days, and I Can Accurately Predict Your Next Year

As Steve Pavlina recently pointed out, we can predict what the next year has in store for us (or for almost anyone we know) simply by looking at the past 90 days and extrapolating from there.

What’s happened to your weight over the past 90 days? Your muscle strength? How many times did you allow circumstances to throw you into a foul mood, ruining an entire day or even a whole week? How many hours of Truly Good Work did you complete in the past 90 days?

12 Months, 12 New Habits

The flip side of the 90-day rule is this: if you successfully adopt one new habit each month, within a year you can undoubtedly transform your life — your mood, your energy, your productivity. Choose high impact habits, and explore changes in every area of life, from your diet to your social life.

In Summary

In Rhode Island, recently, homeless advocates have been advancing a shocking new tool in America’s arsenal against homelessness. The idea is that the chronically homeless, who are often facing mental illness and/or addiction, cannot be helped until they first have a home — stability and safety. Then, and only then, can social workers effectively offer other services:

“Housing First, or rapid re-housing as it is also known, is an alternative to the current system of emergency shelter/transitional housing…The methodology is premised on the belief that vulnerable and at-risk homeless families are more responsive to interventions and social services support after they are in their own housing, rather than while living in temporary/transitional facilities or housing programs. With permanent housing, these families can begin to regain the self-confidence and control over their lives they lost when they became homeless.”

I challenge healthcare professionals and patients alike to expand the currently stunted view of what constitutes effective mental healthcare. Like Housing First, holistic, pragmatic self-care must start with a supportive, strengthening, lifegiving foundation — in this case, the foundation of effective physical and mental habits.

Are there people out there who have never had to work hard to consciously tweak their habits in order to enjoy a productive and satisfying life? Certainly. But if you suffer from issues such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, chronic indecisiveness or procrastination, you’re simply not one of those people. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, you’re in the majority.

We all know one or two people who can eat just about anything and yet remain impossibly thin. Most of us are not those people. Being aware that they exist, wishing we were like them….none of that is going to change who we are and what we need to do to be healthy and happy.

Habits are the rarely noticed but deeply powerful forces that drive our lives. Choose your habits and create the life of your dreams.

One final note. Do psychiatrists and therapists truly all “have it all wrong?” Of course not. (Hey, didn’t we already establish that absolutes exist only in our own minds?) But hyperbole can grab attention and ignite discussion, and discussion can be a very good thing.

Guest article by Florian P.

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The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Animated)

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:07:35 +0000

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How to Squash Negative Thought Patterns

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:13:55 +0000

I did a lot of this type of mental conditioning during the early 90s. Whenever I uncovered a negative thought, I plucked it out and redirected it. Within a few days, I had reprogrammed dozens of negative thought patterns, and pretty soon it became hard for my mind to even produce a negative thought or emotion. View article at stevepavlina.com.

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The Past DOES Equal the Future

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 17:38:54 +0000

How will different aspects of your life evolve over the coming year — or longer? Imagine that you’re in a court of law…Goals and intentions for the future are inadmissible as evidence because they aren’t hard facts. They’re merely opinions or speculation. In order to make accurate predictions of where you’re headed, you must look to your past and only your past. View article at stevepavlina.com.

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“Postbox” and “Things” for Email/Task Management on the Mac

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:11:01 +0000

Many of the task-management apps out there have difficult learning curves and require you to master the program’s intricacies before you can even start using it. On the other hand, many of the programs that are simple to use don’t scale well—once you need to track more than a few lists or projects, you run into the limits of that simplicity. Cultured Code’s Things is the unique exception. At $50, it’s the most expensive to-do-list apps I’ve tested, but it’s a true standout thanks to a great set of features and an interface that makes it a good fit for nearly any level of task management from basic to-do lists to Getting Things Done (GTD). View product review at macworld.com (no affiliation with richardsreader.com).

Everything that I really like about Mail has been added by plugins, and those plugins require a certain performance and stability sacrifice. It would be bittersweet to part with everything I’ve built there, but it would be a welcome change if it were a step up. With better task management, great search features, tabbed views, a plugin architecture and more, Postbox has always struck me as a serious challenger. View product review at tuaw.com (no affiliation with richardsreader.com).

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Great Work

admin — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:40:58 +0000

Imagine everything you do could fall into one of three buckets:
   Bad Work.
     Good Work.
     Great Work.
I’m not talking about the quality of the work you deliver—I’ve no doubt that’s fine. I’m talking about the meaning the work has for you and the impact it makes. View manifesto at changethis.com.

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:13:05 +0000

This full-length Harvard Business Review article by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy explains proven techniques for managing our physical and emotional energy and, ultimately, transforming our productivity. View complete article at smith.edu.

Pale Blue Dot (Carl Sagan)

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:46:53 +0000

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The Power of Words

admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:44:17 +0000

One element is missing from all of your stories: You have to be willing to risk your identity for a bigger future than the present that you are living. - Fernando Flores View article at fastcompany.com.

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Healthy Habits

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:21:32 +0000

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A Good Day’s Sail

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:35:53 +0000

“What does a man need –- really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in –- and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all –- in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.” – Sterling Hayden View essay at oldsalt1942.wordpress.com.

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Plug into Your Hard-Wired Happiness

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:54:40 +0000

Richard's Reader

Treatise on Parents and Children

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The 4 Principles of Bliss

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Duke University Professor Explains Self-Compassion vs Self-Esteem

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Humankind Waking Up

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Quantum Psychology

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No Cars Go

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The Creativity Crisis

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But Are You Experienced?

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Why Psychiatrists Have It All Wrong

THREE STEPS TO GET YOU STARTED

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The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Animated)

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How to Squash Negative Thought Patterns

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The Past DOES Equal the Future

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“Postbox” and “Things” for Email/Task Management on the Mac

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Great Work

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Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

Related

Pale Blue Dot (Carl Sagan)

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The Power of Words

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Healthy Habits

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A Good Day’s Sail

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Plug into Your Hard-Wired Happiness

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