Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset – Get a better understanding of the state of the world today

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation – Get proof to show to your boss that there’s a better way to boost productivity

Michael Pritchard’s water filter turns filthy water drinkable – Scientifically proven sterile water in seconds from a water bottle. Has to be seen to be believed.

Enjoy.

Want to see more? Visit some of the most popular posts:

• Identification, Self expression, Conformity and a rant
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The basic version is free, though you can get the Pro version for just $15 for a few extra features.  For grabbing a quick jpg or png file though, this is beautifully simple and perfectly functional.

Thank you, Pearl Crescent.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• A Dancing Geek’s dream

If you’re struggling to figure out your life purpose and/or to choose a career direction, have you learned the lessons of being directionless? Do you feel grateful for the freedom and limitlessness of options you have right now? Or do you still resist your current experience of reality?

Do I resist my current experience of reality?

Well, let’s see…am I constantly trying to work out where I ought to be and get there, rather than being where I am?  Do I consistently arrive late and leave late because I don’t want whatever I’m doing to end, even though time has kept on ticking?

Gee, can you guess the answer to those?

So yeah, now I’m asking myself, what am I learning right now?

Do I feel grateful for the freedom and limitlessness of options I have right now?

Ah.

You mean rather than spasing out in terror at the fact that I have so many options that I completely freak out and get dizzy and feel nauseated?

Well, it’s true that after my weekend Shiva Party with Joely I realised the universe of options could be explored and wasn’t suffocating me.  But do I actually feel grateful?  Now that’s a good question.

Being grateful for where I am right now

It is like a step beyond acceptance.  It’s seeing the lessons and benefits in where I am and appreciating them.  Let’s see if I can find any:

• Practice getting guidance from myself
• Very few time constraints, freedom to just do whatever I’m feeling like at the time
• Experimenting with meditation, shiva nata, journaling, blogging – supporting structures
• Seeing that no structure or schedule/habits can leave you floating, learning the benefits of some sense of ritual and repeated behaviour
• Getting to spend lots of time with the rabbits
• Getting to spend lots of time in the garden and kitchen and reading and playing piano and going on blogs and twitter and doing bodywork
• Getting to see the patterns that come up when there’s nothing else to occupy my thought space
• Fewer distractions means less hiding from my thoughts – mindfulness is easier when you’re on your own in a quiet room

Am I grateful though? There’s still a part of me that desperately wants to be doing great work already.  Doing Epic Shit as Charlie puts it.  The irony here could well be that it’s not until I release my grip on the need to do great work that I will be able to listen to what that work will be.

So fine, I spend some more time learning to let go.  Some more time just being.

Ack – being!  One little word filled with so much hard work.

Still, unless I were to completely cut off from the world (which, eww, no) I will keep getting distracted by the fun stuff going on around me (the same way that a TV screen showing a story can completely capture my attention in seconds flat in such a way that I have a reputation for it amongst those who have seen it to believe it).  I keep practicing my mindfulness with this (and the tv thing) and try to just be.  Even though I still get confused as to how to be and do at the same time.

Being when I’m sat on my ass in a warm room is easy.  Which reminds me, I haven’t taken the load out of the washing machine yet.  TTFN

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Following a thread as far as I can
• There should be a meaning to life
• It’s ok to have the same stuff keep coming up?!

It talked about how the best way for an ecosystem to thrive was for each creature to be selfish.  It seems counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you think about how it would work.  More rabbits = more food for foxes.  More foxes = more dung for plants, etc. etc.

Yes, eventually there’s too many foxes for food and they start to die out, but that’s where intelligence comes in.  As thinking beings we can be aware of this pattern and work, in our own best interests, to improve the lot of other species on whom we depend.  As we get better at realising we depend on so many, we get better at looking after the planet as a whole.  Not because we suddenly love every living creature but because we realise that if they die, we die.

Compassion is selfish.  There’s no such thing as altruism.  Again, these are not new ideas.  People do good because it makes them feel better, happier, more alive and connected, etc.  They do good because they hope to spread a culture of helping those in need, in case they too are in need one day.  There are other better, less cynical sounding, and probably longer explanations.  But this is one way of seeing the world that has yet to reveal a great flaw in it’s logic to me.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Living in the past
• Giving myself permission to be tiny
• My Tribe

The Wisdom of the Ages written as a school science report.

Yeah, exactly, but that’s what happens when you live inside my head.  I’ve broken it up with lots of pictures because a) that’s what school kids do these days, and b) it’s kinda long and chock full of goodness, so you don’t want to skip too much text.

Hypothesis

I will be truly happy all the time if I shed my negative mental models.

Happiness

• freedom to act from my truest best intentions for myself and others
• freedom to enjoy others company, giving value & being still
• freedom to accept all of what is, including myself

Negative mental models

• fear
• limiting beliefs
• negative prejudice & assumptions

(Take a moment to think about that while you look at this picture.)

Proof

Happiness is subjective, no objective proof can be given.  But if it is true for me then I can prove it to myself by trying it and testing the results.

Corollaries

• There is nothing one can receive to make one happy (wealth, love, respect)
• Happiness is not the result of an action
• Unhappiness is the result of certain thoughts
• There is nothing I can do to be happy except stop doing that which makes me unhappy

Methodology

The simple (but not necessarily easy) breakdown of steps to happiness.

• To be happy more often I need only change my thoughts.
• To change my thoughts I need only be aware of them and inquire about them.
• For the change to become lasting and effortless I need only do this repeatedly until I create a new pattern.
• To sustain this repetition I need only motivation and energy.

If I follow this reasoning in reverse I get the way to greater happiness:

1. Motivation and energy, which supports
2. Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

This leads to new mental models and if the hypothesis is subjectively correct, then I will be happier.  If I am not happier, it is subjectively false.

Step 1: Motivation and energy

My motivation

If I can truly yearn for the freedoms I listed under happiness I will have my motivation.  If I remember them, I yearn for them.

Energy

I need to balance the expenditure and replenishment of my mental, physical & emotional energies.  As well as refuelling these energies, greater efficiency in their use can improve performance, as can the quality of the fuel.

Refuelling: Food, sleep and the support of friends*

Efficiency: (reduce losses) Warmth, safety & comfort.
(more effective burning) Fitness, mental agility & emotional intelligence.

Quality of fuel: Quality of food (diet), quality of sleep and quality of friends and your relationship with them.

*Friends can include family and partners

Step 2: Repetition of inquiry about thoughts

Bringing awareness to my thoughts

• Shiva Nata
• Conversations with myself
• Mindfulness & witnessing

Inquiring about my thoughts

• Byron Katie
• Conversations with myself
• Exploring alternative mental models (e.g. the benevolent Universe)

Example thoughts to inquire about

• There is something that will make me happier if I get more of it
• That was bad and shouldn’t have happened
• People will not like me because I am selfish
• I should do things for others to be happy
• I’m incomplete, unfinished or broken

Notes

It is a practice, not a goal

I do not complete tasks so that when I have finished them & completed 100% I will be happy, but until then I am not.  Rather, the more I repeat these tasks the happier I will be overall.  There is no end point, except possibly death, and, as the small print goes, my happiness may go down as well as up, so I must keep my investment working over the long term if I seek the best returns.

Photo credits:

• Student in Class by foundphotoslj
• freedom by Guille
• Where thoughts are legible in the eye… by carf
• Resurrection by Untitled blue
• Pebble Art by pshutterbug
• I’m thinking of… by gutter
• Minimal perfection by Yago1.com

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Scheduling crisis: Finding a balance
• The journey to nowhere
• The Happiness Hypothesis: Progress report March 2009

I got the Yin Yoga DVD for Christmas (my mum found a UK supplier, which totally shamed me because I never even thought of looking!).  I tried it a few times and love it, it’s not focussed on muscles and strength but I’ve over 20 years of dance lessons which all focussed on muscles and strength, so I needed something new.  It’s about connective tissues, and I’m intrigued to see if it will be able to loosen up my hip joints (or whether my bone structure just says no to that happening).

I’ve tried each of the series on the DVD, but (as I just mentioned) I’m interested in the hip one mostly.  So last week I got it out again after a bit of a break because I was starting to feel a bit more active.  I’m getting a bit more of a feel for balance between getting stuff done and spending time reflecting. I did the hip series, but this time I got a tightness in my chest.  Now this feeling is not new.  I sometimes get it when stretching my glutes.  Well, I was getting it in a number of different positions, so I just rubbed my chest which seems to help relieve it, came out of the pose if it got too much, and kept going.

I then spent the week feeling crappy and run down.  I look ill, though I’ve no yucky symptoms; my calves and biceps ache (despite not really using them) and I’m tired.

Good news

It turns out that the tightness in my chest is a message that crap is being shifted, and I just worked it out.  This is a good thing, because now I have a clear way to query how my body is doing. I can do yoga in the future and if I feel the tightness coming on I can reduce what I’m doing to loosen up a little without killing myself for a week, and if it doesn’t come on I know that I can really release into the postures (still being careful of course).

One more bit of info in the journey of learning to listen to myself.

Want to see more? Visit some of the most popular posts:

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Short version: choice is good, but too much choice is bad for us.

He talks about ‘maximizers’ and ‘satisficers’, and that in general we’re usually one in some situations and the other in others. (You following so far?)

As an example: when I shop for underwear, I go to Next (because that’s just where I always go) and get a few packs of whatever looks fun and not too ‘trendy’.  But when I bought my laptop, I spent hours constructing spreadsheets and comparing details and studying minutae.

Can you guess which is supposed to be better?

Of course, there are times when very careful analysis is best, however we tend to overuse it in our culture (US or UK and others).  His analysis is obviously much more supported by argument, but you can get a copy from the library if you insist on all that (like I do).  But he makes a very good case for working out what is good enough for you in any decision and then stopping once you’ve found it.

Just think about that for a second.

Yeah, wow, and ouch, and yuck, and holy crap, and oh my gosh.  Think of the free time you’d get, and the reduced stress of not trying to get ‘the best’ and ‘be perfect’ all the time.  Or even most of the time.  Or even only in certain areas.

So yeah, I wrote out where I thought I was maximizing (like my whole I-must-know-where-my-life-is-going journey type thing, and lots of other stuff) and then wrote for each one what good enough would look like.  And what do you know, some of them I’m already there!  Others are just a small distance away and others I can see I’ve still got some work to do to even get to good enough, but stick the 80/20 rule on that and hey presto my to do list just shrank by like 93%!

So, you willing to try taking something that’s been bugging you and ask yourself what good enough would look like?

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Too fast to write about it
• The journey to nowhere
• Following a thread as far as I can

I had a fresh start to the week this morning. I rose early (read ‘normal’ hours for most people) and have spent the day in a generally nurturing, productive way. I spent a couple of hours this lunch time working with Havi’s Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic with the full intention of writing all about it and sharing the process with you all. However, it turned out that I went deep. Very deep. Just-looking-at-my-notes-makes-me-feel-kinda-queasy deep. So there’s been a change of plans and instead I’d like to share a different side with you that I haven’t really blogged about before.

The dancing geek likes dance

Shocking news I can imagine, but since I hardly ever write about dance I realised that I wanted to change that and had this video tucked away as a talking point. Well now seems like as good a time as any to bring it out.

This is the kind of dancing that I aspire to. The strength and physical grit required to pull off this with such an air of ease and grace is awe inducing. And to get me to gush about dance is *very* difficult; I’m a fussy dance spectator.

So, after the world’s longest introduction, allow me to give you Pilobolus’ performance at the fascinating TED conference.

Pilobolus

Awe. Magnificence. Beautiful. Power. Gentility. Synergy. Connection.

14:31 long and worth every second.

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Going where I know…
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Urna by ·júbilo·haku·

Voting seems so pointless

Steve Pavlina recently wrote about the current financial situation in the US. More importantly, for me, he mentioned that he’s never registered to vote and that “Voting as an individual in the USA seems rather pointless to me at this time…I honestly don’t resonate with either Obama or McCain.”

I totally get this stance. In fact this stance was mine when I turned 18. I remember being in Edinburgh with an orchestra from University (they let anyone play – no really) the evening of the May 2001 General Election here in the UK and having long debates (you know the ones that turn into random mumbling at about 3am) about why I couldn’t be bothered to vote, with friends passionately trying to convince me (and failing miserably) that it was an important part of the democratic process (yawn).

I later changed my mind.

What convinced me to vote even when I don’t believe in any of the candidates?

So let’s be clear. I’m still disillusioned with politics. It seems irrelevant, boring, stuffy, nonsensical, unethical, pathetic, tired, depressing, frustrating, spurious and really very lame. But it isn’t inconsequential.

So what caused me to start voting? I had a shock the following year.

I was very lucky to get to spend a year as a Uni student in Strasbourg. A beautiful city in north-east France on the border with Germany. I love Strasbourg, and could wax lyrical about it for hours. I won’t. The point of this story is that I was in France in April 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the second round of the French Presidential Election.

[In case you're not up on French politics from 2002 here's what you need to know. 1) The French President is elected in two rounds, the first whittles the contenders down to two choices, the second picks who gets to play with the choo-choos for the next 5 years. 2) Jean-Marie Le Pen was running for Le Front National (National Front) a very right-wing party. Think de-legalising abortion, deporting non-european immigrants, citizenship only to those of French origin, no rights for gay marriage or adoption, return of the death penalty. Really nasty people by my standards.]

The response was huge

It was crazy watching the reaction from my friends and people who worked at the university. I had been told previously not to discuss the election with students (I was helping teach English) and then there were flyers and posters everywhere. It wasn’t that they were hypocritical. It was that they felt education itself was under attack and that meant the usual stance of neutrality was no longer viable. Protests were made (well, they are French) and people were talking about it everywhere.

It came down to the lesser of two evils. And I realised that although people didn’t support Chirac (the other guy in the election) they sure as hell were going to vote for him to make sure Le Pen didn’t get in. It sent a very strong message to Le Pen (who disturbingly still got 17% of the vote) but also to me.

What I learnt. Why I vote

In the second round of the elections a lot of people didn’t so much vote for Chirac as vote against Le Pen. To abstain would have meant saying it was ok for Le Pen to get into power, that you didn’t mind either way! So now I vote, even if it’s only to say that I dislike the other people more than the person I’m voting for. At least that way I can be sure to send a message that I don’t want some crazy fascist %#@*!$%* to get into power.

If you don’t vote for the best of a bad lot then someone else may well vote for the worst – and that can be very, very bad indeed.

So what do you think? Would this convince you to vote if you don’t already?

Want to see more? Try one of these posts:

• Doing what you want vs Being miserable
• The journey to nowhere
• It’s ok to have the same stuff keep coming up?!

1. Anyone will read this
2. Anyone will be horribly offended by this who does read it

I need to ask a question though.

Peer pressure and guilt trips

Whilst it’s not only American soldiers who are fighting in other countries at the moment, as a Brit it seems the issue of ‘supporting the troops’ is a very American one.

I got an email today from a British friend which was basically a genuinely important and serious message wrapped up in a guilt trip.  There is one thing that is really annoying me though, and it is this that has caused me to write.

Assumptions need to be questioned

There appears to be an assumption, and an incorrect one at that, that not supporting a war, means not supporting the people fighting that war.

It seems that supporting the war has been muddled up with ‘supporting the troops’; the people on the front lines and their families.  The more sceptical part of me thinks that this may not be an accident

Is the difference not obvious?

Why is it not possible to give your full support to people who are prepared to risk their safety in order to protect others, whilst at the same time criticising the decisions that led to them being put in that position in the first place?

Am I missing something?

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