Rich insights delivered to you each week from various resources that I have read and enjoyed. This week's episode is about the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning.
“Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy — it must come as an unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.”
— Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust. The reason he survived, from his perspective, is because he maintained a sense of “purpose” for himself. He saw a future beyond the Holocaust for himself.
Without having a “future,” Frankl’s torture and suffering in the concentration camps would have had no meaning. Without meaning, it would have been unbearable. Hence, Frankl discerned that when people lost a sense of hope in their future, they quickly decayed and died in such circumstances.
It is for this reason that Frankl regularly quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Once you become fearless, life becomes limitless
Stand around and watch opportunities pass you by…
Pondering...
Wim Hof, also known as The Iceman, is a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. holder of 20 Guinness World Records for withstanding extreme temperatures. He has climbed Everest and Kilimanjaro in only shorts and shoes, stayed comfortably in ice baths for hours, and run a full marathon in the highest desert (50 degrees celsius, 122 Fahrenheit) with no water & food.
The Wim Hof Method breathing techniques have been developed by Wim Hof, who is also known as The Iceman. He believes you can accomplish incredible feats by developing command over your body through use of specific breathing techniques.
This is said to help you improve your productivity, performance, and overall well-being. Hof believes that learning to develop mastery over your nervous, immune, and cardiovascular systems will help you be happier, stronger, and healthier.
Some of Wim Hof’s reported achievements include:
Climbing some of the highest mountains in the world while wearing shorts, standing in a container while immersed in ice cubes for nearly two hours.
Running an entire marathon in the Namib Desert without drinking water and ran a half marathon north of the Arctic Circle with bare feet.
His Book -
The ‘Iceman’ Wim Hof shares his remarkable life story and powerful method for supercharging your strength, health and happiness.
“In the Bhagavad Gita, they say, “The mind under control is your best friend, the mind wandering about is your worst enemy.” Make it your best friend, to the point where you can rely on it. Your mind makes you strong from within. It is your wise companion. The sacrifices you make will be rewarded. Life doesn’t change, but your perception does. It’s all about what you focus on. Withdraw from the world’s influence and no longer be controlled by your emotions. If you can grab the wheel of your mind, you can steer the direction of where your life will go.”
~ Wim Hof
Wim Hof has become a modern icon for his astounding achievements, breaking world records withstanding extreme temperatures and running barefoot marathons over deserts and ice fields. Most of all, he’s shown us that these feats are not superhuman – but that all of us have the ability to be stronger, healthier and happier than we’ve ever imagined.
His vision is a world without sickness.
Watch his interview - click here
“We can do more than what we think.
It’s a belief system that I have adopted and it has become my motto. There is more than meets the eye and unless you are willing to experience new things, you’ll never realize your full potential.”
— Wim Hof
In The Wim Hof Method, this trailblazer of human potential shares his simple three-pillar approach that anyone can use to improve health and performance – and see real results within just a few days. Refined over forty years and championed by scientists across the globe, you’ll learn how to harness three key elements of Cold, Breathing and Mindset to master mind over matter and achieve the impossible
What science says about it
Hof has worked with scientists to gain credibility by proving that his techniques work to bring about health benefits.
Scientists are learning about how Hof’s breathing techniques affect brain and metabolic activity, inflammation, and pain.
Participants in a 2014 study performed breathing techniques such as consciously hyperventilating and retaining the breath, meditated, and were immersed in ice cold water. Results showed that the sympathetic nervous system and the immune system can be voluntarily influenced. This could be due to the anti-inflammatory effect produced by the techniques.
Scientists believe this could be especially useful in treating inflammatory conditions, especially autoimmune conditions. People who learned the Wim Hof Method also had fewer flu-like symptoms and increased plasma epinephrine levels.
Thought-provoking...
“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”
— Charlie Munger
Here’s a simple axiom to live by: If you do what everyone else does, you’re going to get the same results that everyone else gets. This means that, taking out luck (good or bad), if you act average, you’re going to be average. If you want to move away from average, you must diverge. You must be different. And if you want to outperform others, you must be different and correct.
Our world has become far too average. We need original ideas and unique thinkers to establish new outcomes.
Five Simple Notions that Solve Problems - Click here
Charlie Munger is one of the great minds of the 20th century.
Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American investor, businessman, former real estate attorney, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, One of the largest companies in the world. He’s also one of the smartest people on the planet — his lecture on the psychology of human misjudgment is the best 45 minutes speech on how behavioral psychology can be applied to business and problem-solving.
Watch his lecture - click here
Besides his work co-headlining the Berkshire affair and a variety of other business and philanthropic ventures, Charlie is known for his fluent, multidisciplinary mind. Trained as a meteorologist during World War II and as a lawyer at Harvard before devoting himself to business, Munger has drawn heavily from the study of psychology, economics, physics, biology, and history, among other disciplines, in developing his system of “multiple mental models” to cut through difficult problems in complex social systems. It is a system like no other.
As a result, his insights on business and life are unique, rare, and correct with unusual consistency.
To learn more about this absolutely unique human being read:
Wisdom/ What I'm Reading...
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking fast and slow
“If there is time to reflect, slowing down is likely to be a good idea.”
— Daniel Kahneman
A book about how we make decisions and why we so often get them wrong.
Kahneman is one of the fathers of the field of cognitive biases and a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics.
SYSTEM 1 & SYSTEM 2
The main emphasis of the book is that we have two basic ways of processing our thoughts, which Kahneman calls System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is our intuition. System 2 is our more logical, deliberate way of processing thoughts and thinking things through.
System 2 is lazier than System 1, which causes us to use hunches based on System 1 when we are presented with too much information.
System 2, in Kahneman’s scheme, is our slow, deliberate, analytical and consciously effortful mode of reasoning about the world. System 1, by contrast, is our fast, automatic, intuitive and largely unconscious mode
We spend most of our time in System 1: Gut reaction.
Kahneman wrote:
“Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification. You generally believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is fine — usually.
“When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer… System 2 is activated when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains.”
So System 1 is continuously creating impressions, intuitions, and judgments based on everything we are sensing. In most cases, we just go with the impression or intuition that System 1 generates. System 2 only gets involved when we encounter something unexpected that System 1 can’t automatically process.
Key Takeaways:
System 1 (Thinking Fast) often leads individuals to make snap judgments, jump to conclusions, and make erroneous decisions based on biases and heuristics.
System 1 is always-on, and constantly producing fast impressions, intuitions, and judgments. System 2 is used for analysis, problem-solving, and deeper evaluations.
Most of the time, we go with System 1 recommendations because of cognitive ease. Sometimes, we evoke System 2 when we see something unexpected, or we make a conscious effort to slow down our thinking to take a critical view.
We will never be able to avoid system 1 thinking (fast) in the major part of our daily lives, but we need to learn when to evoke system 2 thinking, (slower) when more logical decisions need to be made.
Excellent review of this book - click here
2 minute review - click here
Here’s a video featuring Kahneman explaining System 1 and System 2 -
Widget of the Week...
This weeks widget is not a gadget, its a word…. And an incredibly powerful and extremely under utilised tool.
NO
“No” – It’s a small word that packs a lot of power. But its not used often enough.
When we say "yes" to everything and do not set boundaries with people, we often feel stressed, overwhelmed, and burned out. Most of us want to be well liked and to please other people. It can be difficult to turn down opportunities or requests that others have made of us.
Wielded wisely, No is an instrument of integrity and a shield against exploitation. It often takes courage to say. It is hard to receive. But setting limits sets us free.
No is both the tool and the barrier by which we establish and maintain the distinct perimeter of the self. No says, "This is who I am; this is what I value; this is what I will and will not do; this is how I will choose to act." We love others, give to others, cooperate with others, and please others, but we are, always and at the core, distinct and separate selves. We need No to carve and support that space.
Saying no makes time for what you love.
When your schedule is stacked and time is invaluable, it’s so important to only say yes to the things that you really love and want to do. Otherwise, it’s just not worth it. It is important to give your life the attention it deserves. Don’t let anyone or any situation take that away from you.
There is no shame in saying no.
Ditch the feeling that you need to substantiate or validate your no. You don’t owe anyone an explanation or an excuse. You may fear your reasons aren’t good enough or valid, so you end up giving in. But at the end of the day, if you can’t or don’t want to do something, regardless of the reasoning, that’s your prerogative and that’s all the reason you need.
…But it’s worth keeping in mind that sometimes we all have to say yes to certain duties at work, at home, or with our health. Trust your intuition, conscience, and reasoning to do the right thing.
Have you ever noticed that truly successful people have little trouble saying “no”. They may do it politely, but they do it and do it often. And they’re on to something – it’s the power of saying NO.
No, is a control word, a word that has real power. When we use it, we are in control. When we don’t, we’re open to the control of others.
By saying “no”, we guard our time, our efforts and even our money.
There’s even a book to teach us how to use it - Read here
Watch Sarri Gilman’s TEDx talk on boundaries - Click here
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