“Want to eat more” and “tastes good” aren’t the same feeling

Do you notice the difference between something tasting good and something making you want to eat more of it? If you want to eat healthy, you'll care about the difference because companies that make junk food know the difference and use it to manipulate you. You end up spending money on unhealthy things that are profitable to them and you lose control of your eating habits. Most of the time these feelings overlap: a mango tastes good and when you have some you usually want more. But they don't always overlap. Eat too much mango and while the taste will…

Continue Reading“Want to eat more” and “tastes good” aren’t the same feeling

The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) series

I'm so swept up by SIDCHAs I made a series for them. Click here for the SIDCHA series. Do you want success or failure? Do you want to lead yourself or to follow others? Do you want a shot at greatness or mediocrity? Do you want resilience from feeling bad when things don't go your way or do you want your emotions to wreak havoc with you when things inevitably don't go your way? The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) is the foundation for success, personal leadership, your shot at greatness, emotional resilience, and more. While a SIDCHA alone…

Continue ReadingThe Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) series

An inspirational SIDCHA video

[This post is part of a series on the Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA). 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.] [It's also part of a series on Cold Showers. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] About twenty-five days into taking thirty days of cold showers I watched the following video by the guy whose blog motivated me…

Continue ReadingAn inspirational SIDCHA video

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on John Wooden — one of the best basketball players on one of the best coaches

You can learn a lot about leadership from what great leaders say about people who led them. I'll show a video of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on his college coach, John Wooden, and then describe how it teaches a lot about leadership -- specifically motivating others. First a few words on each. Who are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Wooden? Abdul-Jabbar ranks among the best basketball players (and athletes of any sport) ever. According to Wikipedia's page on him, he was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive…

Continue ReadingKareem Abdul-Jabbar on John Wooden — one of the best basketball players on one of the best coaches

Healthy food mostly replaced my unhealthy food. Here’s how.

How can you expect to lead others if you can't lead yourself? This post, like most of mine, is about leadership. If you can't lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others? If you don't understand your emotions and motivations and how to create the ones you want in yourself, how do you expect to do so with others? Alternatively, the better you can lead yourself, the better you can lead others and, for that matter, yourself the next time. Since most of us want to eat differently than we do and others are constantly trying to motivate us…

Continue ReadingHealthy food mostly replaced my unhealthy food. Here’s how.

How not to overspend on things you don’t want

I can't resist reposting a comment I posted on the forum of one of my favorite other blogs, Mr. Money Mustache. I'm reposting it because two other readers rated my response highly, one giving my response this animated image, making me proud. The post I responded to Alright mustachians [the term for people in the Mr. Money Mustache community who practice his principles of not spending money on stuff that doesn't improve your life] I need your sage advice. In the last three months I have really cut down on my bad habits. I pack my own lunch to work…

Continue ReadingHow not to overspend on things you don’t want

More on John Wooden

I found a couple more videos on John Wooden, whom I wrote about yesterday. First, some thoughts on him by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the top players of all time. He is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season MVP Awards. In college at UCLA, he played on three consecutive national championship teams, and his high school team won 71 consecutive games. At the time of his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA’s…

Continue ReadingMore on John Wooden

A few minutes on one of the best leaders in U.S. history

While searching for videos on Lou Gehrig for yesterday's post, I happened on a short video on John Wooden, one of the great coaches of any sport. According to Wikipedia John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball player and coach. Nicknamed the "Wizard of Westwood", he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period—seven in a row—as head coach at UCLA, an unprecedented feat. Within this period, his teams won a record 88 consecutive games. He was named national coach of the year six times. As a player, Wooden was the first to…

Continue ReadingA few minutes on one of the best leaders in U.S. history

Understanding leadership, values, meaning, purpose, importance, passion — Interlude on writing on emotions and emotional awareness so much

You've probably noticed I'm writing a series of posts on the main themes of this blog -- the words under my name at the top: leadership, values, meaning, purpose, importance, and passion. If you’ve gotten the idea now that I’m relating these concepts back to knowing your emotions and emotional system, I’m glad. I thought I'd take a post to explain why. The vagueness people throw terms around with makes it hard to work with them. When the terms in question are values, meaning, purpose, importance, leadership, and passion -- well, those aren't things you just vaguely want to hope…

Continue ReadingUnderstanding leadership, values, meaning, purpose, importance, passion — Interlude on writing on emotions and emotional awareness so much

Vince Lombardi: What It Takes to be Number One

After a couple posts on sports, I'm putting up one of the great sports coaching quotes, by Vince Lombardi. According to Wikipedia Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American football coach. He is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight league championships and five in seven years, including winning the first two Super Bowls following the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons. The National Football League's Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor. He was enshrined in the NFL's…

Continue ReadingVince Lombardi: What It Takes to be Number One

Common objection 1: I want to understand the root of the problem before solving it

[This post is part of a series on internal objections and blocks and how to overcome them. 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.] Objection People usually state this objection with something like I want to understand the problem before acting. I want to get at the root first. If I don't, it will just happen again. You can also call this objection Analysis Paralysis since it leads people to analyze over acting. Again, some problems require analysis, but I…

Continue ReadingCommon objection 1: I want to understand the root of the problem before solving it

Sports and passion

I ask people about their passions a lot. Many tell me they have no passions, which makes me sad for them. I don't think passions are something you find lying around but something you create and build from small interests through self-awareness, effort, and dedication. It means they haven't created something they could have. They either never invested enough to find out what it took to create a passion or, if they did, capitulated on the effort. Or they're young enough not to have had the chance yet. I've written before about the sink-or-swim moment experience in college that taught…

Continue ReadingSports and passion

Why food matters

I don't know if I have to explain how shopping for, preparing, and eating food qualifies as fundamental to self-awareness and therefore leadership. A few years ago I would have considered food shopping irrelevant to self-awareness. I've changed. I'll start with an aside on how big an effect just gardening can have with Victory Gardens. During the World Wars, when mainstream food production dropped, governments promoted their citizens planting so-called victory gardens -- using whatever spare land anyone had, even window-sills, to plant fruits, vegetables, herbs or whatever you could grow. They started them in parks, some continuing as gardens…

Continue ReadingWhy food matters

If you want to change something you do, its opposite usually is no better. Look for its complement.

People seem to want to change a lot about them. I see them trying to do the opposite of what they are trying to change. Sometimes it works. More often trying to do the opposite of what they want to stop reinforces doing it more. Food For example, overweight people often think if they eat too much they should try the opposite and try to eat less. But dieting seems to predict obesity more than prevent it -- that is, people who diet tend to be more obese than those who don't (sorry I don't have a source, so feel…

Continue ReadingIf you want to change something you do, its opposite usually is no better. Look for its complement.

Why don’t they teach emotional intelligence and self awareness in school? (part 1, K-12)

I write a lot about leadership skills and how to improve your life through understanding how emotions work in general, how yours work in particular, and becoming aware of your emotions as well as everyone else's. As a result of focusing on leadership, my community has become full of people with similar interests (you, perhaps?). They all tell me learning and practicing it improves their lives. We prefer having each other in our lives to people who complain all the time or complacently never improve things they could. People complain they don't like their jobs, relationships, identities, hobbies, and so…

Continue ReadingWhy don’t they teach emotional intelligence and self awareness in school? (part 1, K-12)

There will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 2

Continuing yesterdays' post... In the examples above, the categorization schemes worked because they categorized something with an underlying structure -- the photon and its wavelength, the atom and its nucleus and electrons, natural selection and DNA, the (so far) fundamental particles and the laws governing their interactions. But not everything with patterns has an underlying structure. Let's look at anatomy, for example. As we'll see, it will reveal a lot about emotions and motivations. Notice that despite common characteristics across life, no one has created a periodic table of anatomy. Why not? Because anatomy has no underlying structure like those…

Continue ReadingThere will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 2

There will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 1

Discovering the periodic table of the elements told us wonders about chemistry and pointed the way toward understanding atoms. Figuring it out pointed the way toward tremendous understanding and improving our lives. We found similar structures that revealed underlying structure in the spectrum of light, life's family tree, the standard model of particle physics, and others. Wouldn't it be great to find such a structure for our emotions and motivations? Wouldn't we expect discovering such a structure reveal our emotional system and create tremendous progress in psychology, personal development, achievement, motivation, and well-being? Why can't we find such a structure?…

Continue ReadingThere will never be a periodic table of emotions, part 1

Should you get a coach?

If you're reading my blog you may be considering getting a coach, maybe even considering me. I've observed that the people who perform best at things tend to have coaches whereas the people who don't do so well remark that they don't need coaching or bristle at the prospect of getting help. Derek Jeter has multiple coaches. Forty percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have personal coaches. This week's New Yorker features a long article on coaching. While not scientific, it covers many of the important points one might want to consider on coaching, describes observing successful coaching describes the author's…

Continue ReadingShould you get a coach?