Getting through the challenges of personal development

I gave this advice to someone I coach going through a difficult period and got feedback it was "golden." So if you're someone endeavoring to develop personally or professionally and making progress but feeling despair, impatience, frustration, or something similar, I hope this advice helps you. I've come to believe all meaningful personal development has periods of self-doubt, wondering if it's worth it, and such. Anyone can sit on a couch and watch tv all day without feeling that way. They don't have to think for themselves. The media occupies their minds so they are pacified. These periods are what…

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The Method: exercise to transform yourself

This exercise transforms your life. It has you do the first three steps of the Method, prepares you for the fourth, and sets up accountability with others for step 4. Accountability is how things get done, so it can help a lot. I do this exercise halfway through my seminar. People get deeply into it, even after sitting in a room for five or six hours. When we review the exercise people sometimes tell me it gave them their first experience ever sharing some problems, then finding themselves surprised to find simple solutions to them. Requirements (or good-to-haves) You can…

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The Method: exercise in new beliefs

The Method's steps 2 and 3 have you conceive of new emotions, environments, beliefs, and behaviors for emotional cycles you want to change. The challenge How do you pick the new beliefs to crowd out the old ones? Choosing the opposite to existing beliefs rarely helps. You end up debating yourself in your head. Discussion I find complements to beliefs crowd out existing ones more effectively. For example, I found an effective alternative to rising anger is not to try to be calm, but to be curious about the situation causing the anger. The curiosity crowds out the anger and…

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The Method: exercise in knowing yourself

Many people feel they can't change themselves or that doing so is fake. Here is a quick exercise to show you how easily you can change yourself because you do it already. Step 1 First answer the question "Who are you?" by describing yourself with three or four adjectives. I know you're just reading a web page, but if you have pen and paper or can open a window on your computer to write in, write a few adjectives that describe you before going to the next step. No one will hold you to them, so you don't have to…

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The Method: long term

If you lined up all the cycles in your life by the amount of reward they brought you, you might represent them like this. The low bar on the left might represent something you can never get right -- like feeling helpless about your weight if you're overweight or about a big debt you have to repay. The high bar on the right might represent the joy you feel for your favorite hobby or spending time with your best friend. I'm only casually representing things. I don't know how objectively you can measure the amount of reward, but in general…

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The Method: improving your life as much as you want is all based on one cycle

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] As the Tao Te Ching says, A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Yesterday's post described…

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The Method: long-term growth from many transformations

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday's post showed how one transformation -- that is, one application of the Method -- not only cycles you…

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The Method: illustration of implementation stages

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Here is an illustration of the implementation stages of step 4 of the Method. Overview Transition (also a caveat)…

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The Method from another perspective

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Recalling the illustration of the Method from a couple posts ago, I present the Method as a four-step cycle…

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The Method: implementation stage 1: a caveat

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I should note a caveat for the transition stage. Since this stage involves conflict, feeling fake, and overcoming inertia,…

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The Method: implementation stage 3: regular life

Eventually a transformation’s new environments, beliefs, and behaviors synchronize completely with each other. The cycle you changed brings the emotions you want and reward. At this stage this cycle becomes a part of your regular life, a life now more rewarding for the change. You haven’t replaced the old you. In circumstances where the new you fits you crowd out the old part of you. In situations where the old you belongs, the old you comes out. In my life, for example, by the time I was a full-time CEO of the company I co-founded, I no longer identified primarily…

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The Method: implementation stage 2: support

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Once the elements of a transformation start supporting each other the transformation starts to feel like it will take…

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The Method: implementation stage 1: transition

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] You can usually do the preparation stages of transforming a part of your life easily since you can do…

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The Method: implementation overview

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] We've covered the preparation stages of transforming a part of your life to bring more reward by choosing environments,…

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The Method: summary of one cycle (with diagram)

We’ve now covered the examples and preparation stages of how to implement the Method. Here is a diagram summarizing these steps Know your emotional system Understand your relevant emotional cycles and constraints Conceive of new emotions Conceive of new environments, beliefs, and behaviors Implement the environments, beliefs, and behaviors

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The Method, step 4: Implement the environments, beliefs, and behaviors

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Now, with direction, boundaries, and goals set from steps 0, 1, 2, and 3 it's time to act. You…

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The Method, step 3: conceive of new environments, beliefs, and behaviors

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Now, with direction and boundaries set from steps 0, 1, and 2, we plan what we will do. Step…

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The Method, step 2: conceive of new emotions

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Step 2, the Method's first active step, is to pick your direction, the key word being your. You will…

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The Method: steps 0 and 1, awareness

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] The Method's first two steps -- knowing your emotional system and understanding your current emotional cycles -- involve little…

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The Method, step 1: understand your current emotional cycles

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] The Method's zeroth step was a once-per-lifetime step. Once you understand your emotional cycle once, you can remember it…

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The Method, step 0: know your emotional system

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Today’s post will be brief. The Method’s zeroth step is to know your emotional system. I call it step…

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The Method, step by step

This post is better covered by the series on The Method, where you'll get more value than reading just this post. Please click there instead. (I'm keeping the rest of this post for posterity). This post begins describing the Method, which is how to use the Model to lead yourself and others and to improve your life, in particular, using the elements you have voluntary control over. The Method, step by step Before anything else, the Method begins with you knowing your emotional system -- the foundation of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. You only have to learn it once in…

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This land was made for you and me

Like most American kids of my generation, I learned This Land Is Your Land as a children's song, never thinking much of its meaning. A decade or two later, I heard Bruce Springsteen's version of it on his Live 75-85 set. His introduction first got me thinking about its meaning, especially in contrast to God Bless America. I didn't know Woodie Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land as an angry song. Springsteen's version on the album sounds mournful but then rousing and inclusive. On the Live 75-85 album I have, he introduced it as follows. There's a book out…

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Understanding North Korea featured on Amazon

Amazon featured Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World's Most Misunderstood Country in the sidebar over the weekend. It was a "Hot New Release" in Korean History It was also a "Hot New Release" in Military Strategy History (although I wrote it on general strategy, not specifically military strategy). Here are the full pages those screenshots came from. I know it's coincidence, by I'm honored for Amazon to show my book with Sun Tzu's Art of War and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy. --- EDIT: Here’s the ebook, Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World’s Most Misunderstood Country. I wrote it to…

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A brief history of Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World’s Most Misunderstood Country

I wrote the following on Hacker News and thought it fit here. Last week I self-published my first book. My visit to North Korea last year amazed me at how much we base our impressions of North Korea on pre-conceived notions. I already blogged daily, but the experience affected me so much I started posting twice daily, one post on North Korea. Then Kim Jong Il died and tons of articles came out on North Korea, many or most had the same pre-conceived notions or assigned credit to the leaders that I thought were properties of the system, making understanding…

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