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Rands In Repose: The End
Remember, they never remember the beginning. They only remember how it ended. A pure repeat of the high points of the beginning and the middle is a total cop-out. You need to find a different way to say the same thing. The beauty of a good ending is that you can’t find it until you’ve written, spoken, or built a good part of your beginning and middle. For me, that’s the high in building a thing – the moment of clarity when you’re hopelessly lost somewhere in the middle and you suddenly discover the slide, the paragraph, or the design that immediately and simply encompasses everything you’ve just been trying to say. You need to save that discovery for the end. The action items aren’t world changing, but your ending, the reminder that we actually love working here, explains to everyone that there is no crap work when you’re doing what you love.
tags: presentation starred
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Abraham Verghese: A doctor’s touch | Video on TED.com
if my patient gave up the quest for the magic doctor, the magic treatment & bagan with me on a course towards wellness, it was because i had earned the right to tell them these things by virtue of the examination. something of importance had transpired in the exchange. rituals are all about transformation. of one individual coming to another & telling them things that they would not tell thier preacher or rabbi and then incredibly on top of that disrobing and allowing touch …and if u shortchange that ritual by not undressing the patient, by listening with ur stethoscope on top of the nightgown, by not doing a complete exam, u have bypassed on the oppurtunity to seal the patient-physician relationship. we seem to have forgotten with the explosion of knowledge we are lulled into inattention forgetting that the ritual is cathartic to physician, necessary for the patient- forgetting that the ritual has meaning & a singular message to convey to the patient : i will always always always be there. i will see u thr this. i will never abandon u. i will be with u thr the end
tags: starred clinicalmed
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The Last Psychiatrist: How To Draw (This Is Not An Article About How To Draw)
perception
tags: books starred
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Love and Negotiation | Psychology Today
"When people feel valued, they tend to cooperate. When they don’t feel valued, they resist what feels to them like submission. If you want cooperation, you must show value. If you want resistance, all you have to do is devalue, criticize, demand, or otherwise show ill-will. But don’t think about showing value – that can smell of manipulation. Focus instead on feeling value for your partner. This will lower emotional intensity and shrink the subject under negotiation to manageable proportions. Regardless of your stance on any specific behavior, always remember that you are negotiating with someone you love, who is more important to you than whatever behavior request you want to make."
tags: marriage
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The Last Psychiatrist: The Abusive Boyfriend
But why so much energy controlling the world? Why not just let things be and see what happens? Is he so afraid things will get worse? No. He’s afraid things will get worse or they will get better. He is afraid of change, any change, not just because the relationship may change but because if it changes then he would have to change. All that matters is keeping the relationship intact. Even if you both end up miserable, better misery and stability with him than the tachycardia of something else, something unknown, something he can’t control or defend against. At any moment there is only one person in the room no matter how many people are in the room, and that one person, you, is lugging around the same man you’ve lived with for years. The abusive boyfriend I’m describing is your unconscious. The unconscious doesn’t care about happiness, or sadness, or gifts, or bullets. It has one single goal, protect the ego, protect status quo. Do not change and you will not die. And all the missed opportunities– maybe I shouldn’t, and isn’t that high? and he probably already has a girlfriend, and I can’t change careers at 44, and 3 months for the first 3/4 and going on ten years for the last fourth, and do I really deserve this?– all of that is maintenance of the status quo, the ego. And when all else fails, it will beat you down with apathy. The men, or women, aren’t lying to you, and you’re not even lying to yourself. You are being lied to, by yourself.
tags: psychoanalysis writing starred
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The Last Psychiatrist: Osama Bin Laden Has Been Killed
"Your father is manifest superego, if he tricks you or hurts you enough and you don’t trust him anymore, then you can’t trust anything. So you either find a proxy for a superego– a boyfriend, a religion, political ideology, Dianetics– or you recede into the comfort of narcissism. You surround yourself with image and images, you create narratives that pretend to explain reality but really protect your individuality ("I see what they’re up to, man!") And you rot from the inside out, which is exactly the state of affairs in America. No outside force can touch us, but they don’t need to. They just need to wait it out." Not releasing the photos is getting you in the habit of not expecting photos to be released. Having terrible information mangled by the news media is getting you used to having terrible information mangled by the media. when you repeatedly elect a government that cries wolf, the problem isn’t the government, the problem is you.
tags: psychoanalysis
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The Last Psychiatrist: When Is It Okay To Rape A Woman?
false consensus bias, in which one assumes others share the same beliefs as you do. no amount of data or solid evidence will convince– the false consensus bias guy– that he is wrong. That’s because it’s not a belief, it is a maneuver, it is an act to protect the self, an act that they will take as far as they need to. "No, they’re lying, they’re just not willing to admit it." When you hear that– "I speak for others who are too frightened"– run; because if they had a gun, they would speak for you. One of the biggest mistakes we make when arguing with dummies is that we don’t take their own words at face value– we allow them pretend that their initial move was meaningless in comparison to the revisions, like a bank robber who says to the police, "yeah, but I’m giving it back right now." The initial volley is always the most relevant: everything afterwards is defense. How easy is it to empathize? Easy. How easy is it to sympathize? Not so easy. think about how many fantasies and scenarios you’re actively running every day about a million things, and think about how many of those things you’re actually attempting in real life. I know the popsicleogists will say you’re running the scenarios to make yourself feel better, but they are what’s holding you back. Those thoughts, in the absence of any action, have defined you. Just because no one else can see it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
tags: psychoanalysis
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Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Book Review: Loyalty by Eric Felten
"Try not to renounce your old friends except when they exhibit an excess of wickedness." An excess of wickedness was Aristotle’s trigger for disloyalty. Or as Sir Walter Scott said, "I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right, but when I am little in the wrong." A lot in the wrong is different; too much loyalty and soon we’re talking about a vice, not a virtue.If we’re not willing to untangle loyalty conflicts as they arise, we give up on loyalty altogether, and life becomes impossible.
tags: attitude loyalty starred
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Rands In Repose: You Are Underestimating the Future
"You are underestimating the future. You are fretting about the now; worrying about little things that don’t matter. You are wasting precious energy obsessing over irrelevant details. You don’t believe that a better future is out there and can be built, that it can exceed people’s expectations, because you’re spending so much time considering the truth of the present and the seemingly important lessons of the past." -steve jobs
tags: attitude career starred
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Quotes From Atlas Shrugged « Scott H Young
Money is the material shape of the principle that men who deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. when we’ll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won’t be of any earthly use to them.
tags: books
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6 So-Called Rules for the Badass Creative Woman | Justine Musk
Take your work – and yourself – seriously enough to create a proper environment for it. Find or CREATE A WORKSPACE – whether it’s a studio or a basement or a corner of the kitchen – that makes you feel safe. Find a few personal talismans or other items that connect you to your playful side – and make you feel good about who you are and what you do. Have a strict "NO ASSHOLES" policy. Your body can tell the difference between constructive criticism (even if we don’t want to hear it) and the kind of bullshit that’s intended to tear you down, knock you off-balance, or keep you in your placeToxic people are crazy-making people, and even if you have to deal with them in other areas of your life, keep them out of your physical and mental creative space. if something starts out perfect, without going through the fail-forward-faster learning process, it’s most likely derivative and uninteresting. "What is the uncertainty you are dealing with?" Get it out there. Let’s try REFRAMING the situation so it works for you, not against you. when you don’t tell your story, someone else tells it for you, or distorts you in a way that serves their own. (What is one of the first things that a tyrant takes away? Freedom of expression.) When you OWN YOUR STORIES, you know who you are. You recognize where you end and someone else begins: the things in yourself that you won’t give up for anyone, and the things in someone else that you won’t tolerate for any reason.
tags: identity starred writing
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Why Do Some People Learn Faster? | Wired Science | Wired.com
"a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong the mind will never revise its models. We’ll keep on making the same mistakes, forsaking self-improvement for the sake of self-confidence.
tags: learning
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18. Crazy in Love: When Is It More than Heartbreak? | Psychology Today
""infatuation," when the passion is pumping but in the absence of any intimacy or commitment." "empty love," when a couple is high in commitment, but lacks any intimacy and passion high intimacy and passion is on the road to "romantic love." limerence =involuntary and incessant state of "compulsory longing for another person." hormone levels eventually return to normal after six to twenty-four months of romantic love. However, those who suffer from Limerence are permanently trapped in this stage of euphoria and their cognitions and behaviors become obsessive and compulsive. usually individuals suffer Limerence for three to five years.
tags: marriage
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Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Admiring Excellence
"consciously admiring and recognizing the excellence of someone is the first step to becoming a master yourself. If the key to mastery of any skill is deconstructing what current masters did to get to where they are, then step one is knowing when you’re around professionals–and letting yourself admire them!"
tags: strategic learning
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Oh Those Fabulous James Boys!
not to question and to have no opinion was to shirk not only one’s intellectual duty but one’s moral responsibilities. personality emerges out of the family constellation. Individual identity is forged not in isolation but in the context of relationships. The Freudians say that family relationships are the template for how you are going to act with everyone else later on. sometimes your bonded sibling knows more about you than you do. One of the big secrets of the brothers’ success was that they were always ready to give the most candid and unvarnished opinion of the other’s work.
tags: books identity sibling
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personality emerges out of the family constellation. Individual identity is forged not in isolation but in the context of relationships. The Freudians say that family relationships are the template for how you are going to act with everyone else later on.
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birth order is no guarantee that the oldest always comes out on top.
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The Sibling Effect — By Jeffrey Kluger — Book Review – NYTimes.com
"childhood is a fascinating mix of innocence and cruelty, brilliant intelligence and painful ignorance, expanded consciousness and narrow experience."
tags: writing sibling
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how to flow with the go to get what you want + give the world what it needs | Justine Musk
You find your Way by sorting out what exactly is within your control and what is not, and then finding the particular thoughts and actions…that best fit what is beyond your control…You do what you can, not what you want. Your aim, in the beginning, isn’t to present to the world a perfect and perfectly completed Thing (that the world may not want in the first place), but to test the assumptions your Thing depends on to find out what is true, what works – and what doesn’t.Build-Measure-Learn: you build the minimum viable version of whatever it is that you’re working on, show it to people, find ways to measure reaction and impact, and learn, learn, learn. You then apply that learning to the next version of your Thing.you are not asking people what they think they want. People are generally resistant to change and don’t know what they want until they have it — and then wonder how they lived without it in the first place. you’re studying the conversation between you and your audience. Change doesn’t happen with one individual, but in the spaces, the interactions between them.You search out those spaces where your strengths and desires naturally intersect with that conversation, instead of falling beyond it where no one is listening. you stay closely connected to that world through observation, experimentation and insight.you focus on the journey: what you learn, how it feels and how it changes you. You let your Vision arise from that.Journey first, destination second.
tags: writing attitude starred strategic
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Being the Better Person Will Teach People To Treat You Like Crap
"When someone does something that bothers you, it’s important to take that immediate opportunity to tell them. you do have to confront the situation or risk encouraging the bad behavior you’re seeking to prevent."
tags: attitude communication
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James Bovard: My Summer Job Road to Perdition – WSJ.com
"The government has always been radically incompetent at imparting job skills or good work habits. Unfortunately, as long as politicians can profit from handing out jobs and paychecks, the waste and character damage will continue."
tags: writing
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Marty Nemko: Favorite Communication Tips
smile;eyecontact; put urself in the shoes of the listener; utter<45secs; anecdotes;tact;bold; ask for just a a small piece; "first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie"; praise their insecurities; script leaches chemistry.
tags: communication
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Marty Nemko: Becoming an Effective and Beloved Boss
selection process should focus on simulations. get the right people on the bus & wrong people off before figuring out where to drive it. present yourself – strategy,ethical,focus on solutions,improving company not aggrandizing yourself. restructure ur job to ur strengths. those that are insufficiently productive – move them to where they’ll do least harm. treat ur supervisees not equally, but fairly. one size does’nt fit all. some take lots of candid feedback, others would shutdown. be only mildly nice. for positive reinforcement orelse will be shrugged off as business-as-usual. get things done than insisting on getting credit. candor is key when its an imp problem. run crisp meetings & serve food. strat on time, keep to the agenda & time-limit. embrace & win at office politics.
tags: leader starred