Category: Personal Choice

How We Increasingly Use Avatars on Social Internet

In this excellent Quartz obsession piece ‘Avatars‘, the issue of the increasing usage of multiple avatars for ourselves in the cyberworld is explored at length. This is something we had identified early (think about how many email addresses you possess!) but it has now spread to full contextual persona and avatars.

“People love to see themselves rendered in many forms. Tech companies know this, and they’re not afraid to invest millions of dollars in the hope that this strange quirk of human narcissism can translate into serious cash.” Specific functionalities, and even start-ups, are created around this: proposing the best avatar options, allowing full personalization and allow us to explore various aspects of our personalities.

And it would seem that the rhythm of avatar creation is rather accelerating rather than slowing down, as well as the associated business value, showing that it really corresponds to a need profoundly linked with our identity.

I feel this trend is rather enriching, allowing people to test other parts of themselves in possibly a semi-social online context. In any case I can’t wait to read psychological research associated with this trend!

Share

How to Respond When You Feel Unworthy

I found a lot of personal resonance in this excellent post by Leo Babauta ‘The Universal Narrative: When You Feel Unworthy‘. I recommend the full read. How can we respond when in a certain situation (or more generally), we feel unworthy, we feel that we are not good enough?

The feeling of unworthiness has significant consequences on our life: from procrastination to lack of participation in a group to the quality and genuineness of our relationships.

Of course Leo Babauta reminds us that it is just a story we are telling ourselves. So he proposes two approaches to this issue:

  • write down a mantra that we can use whenever we feel unworthy, to make us believe otherwise over time (his mantra is “The world craves you and your gift“
  • ensure this narrative dissolves by wondering how it would feel if it would not be present

Next time you will feel unworthy, consider speaking out the mantra and dissolve this idea. We should not feel unworthy because we are not.

Share

How to Define Ourselves Responding Adequately to Our Mistakes

I very much like this post by Valeria Maltoni which reminds us a great truth! ‘Mistakes Happen. It’s What we do With them that Makes a Difference‘ In my mind it is a bit similar to the old saying that the worth of a sea captain is only to be seen in a storm.

We all make mistakes, some more important than others. The issue is how we respond when we realize it. Do we pretend not to notice? Do we try to hide it? Do we spend too much time bashing ourselves on the fact we have made a mistake? Do we own the mistake, apologize, and sort it out?

In this area like in many others, I believe of course that owning it and responding to it properly (not reacting to it) is the right way. And also, as Valeria reminds us, people will remember us more about how we respond to our mistakes than in the normal course of life.

Thus, in terms or trust and reputation, the situation where we have to respond to mistakes is a defining moment. How do you define yourself?

Share

How Low Expectations Is The Secret to Happiness

In the excellent TED talk by Barry Schwartz about the Paradox of Choice, he reminds us that modern society and the large choice in everything is increasing substantially our expectations, creating unhappiness (and depression) as a result. And there he reminds us that “the secret to happiness is: low expectations“.

As he exposes from the historical perspective, “The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. Nowadays, the world we live in — we affluent, industrialized citizens, with perfection the expectation — the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. You will never be pleasantly surprised, because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof.“

This wise thought about expectations is worse remembering from time to time. As I meet sometimes people who always want more, I wonder whether I should remind them that having little expectation is the key to wonder, amazement and finally happiness.

Share

How Not To Believe in Your Thoughts

I like this quote of Byron Katie: “I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that.”

Now the issue is of course, how not to believe in one’s thoughts. Leo Babauta in this post ‘A Simple Mindful Method to Deal with Tiredness, Loneliness & Stress‘ provides a step-by-step method.

The thing is that we need to “notice that the thoughts are causing our difficulty. Not the situation — the thoughts.” And then work to be in the moment, observe our thoughts and consider how different we would be without those thoughts. Sometimes it may require a good night’s sleep to overcome those thoughts, or maybe some entertainment to think about entirely different things for a while.

I understand it takes practice, but when one has gone through the exercise, it is very rewarding. Observe your thoughts, they have something to tell you. But don’t believe them!

Share

How We Should Join ‘Team Human’ in the World of Social Media

‘Team Human’ is a movement created by Douglas Rushkoff through its TED talk ‘How to be Team Human in the digital future‘. I’m definitely on!

It starts from a rather depressing statement about social media: “Does social media really connect people in new, interesting ways? No, social media is about using our data to predict our future behavior. Or when necessary, to influence our future behavior so that we act more in accordance with our statistical profiles. The digital economy — does it like people? No” I am not so extreme in opinion, but it is certain that in part, social media has been designed to be addictive for some purpose.

His concern is that technology moguls now seem to have stopped caring about the people. “It’s funny, I used to be the guy who talked about the digital future for people who hadn’t yet experienced anything digital. And now I feel like I’m the last guy who remembers what life was like before digital technology. It’s not a matter of rejecting the digital or rejecting the technological. It’s a matter of retrieving the values that we’re in danger of leaving behind and then embedding them in the digital infrastructure for the future. “

“Join “Team Human.” Find the others. Together, let’s make the future that we always wanted.”

Share

How to Be Aware that Stress Closes our Hearts

This beautiful post by Leo Babauta ‘The Beautiful and Scary Practice of Moving Closer‘ reminds us that when we are under stress we tend to close our hearts and this creates damage in our relationships.

“The sad effect of these habitual reactions [to stress] is that they move us further away from others, and from the direct experience of the moment.” and this has many consequences: “Closing our hearts to others and creating distance from them out of habitual reaction to stress is the heart of aggression, violence and pain.” This in turn creates deep unhappiness.

I fully concur with this observation as under stress I tend to turn inward to myself and cut out relationship with others.

Leo Babauta goes on to propose to be more mindful in our reaction to others in particular when stress is involved. And make the effort to move closer rather to move further away. That’s tough for sure, but I will try it out. “It’s an incredibly beautiful practice. And yes, it’s filled with shakiness. That makes it even more courageous“

I am not sure I will be able to overcome instant emotional reactions, still it is worth trying, don’t you think?

Share

How to Practice at Our Edge to Progress More Quickly

Following up on our previous post ‘How We Need to Dose Our Self-Transformation Effort‘, I like this post of Leo Babauta ‘The Rule of the Edge‘. It is quite simple actually: “practice at your edge most of the time“. “And this rule is what will help you grow the most, over time“.

The idea is to stay just on the edge, but not more: “Your edge isn’t pushing yourself until you’re ready to collapse. It’s not pushing to injury, pushing so that you can’t practice tomorrow. It’s not studying all day long until your brain has melted. It’s going to the edge, not diving off it.”

What I like in Leo Babuta’s approach (and I encourage reading the full post) that what is proposed is to accept that it is not possible to be at one’s edge all the time. We need to be mindful about our body and mind, and accept that we need some rest from time to time.

What’s amazing of course is to see how our edge shifts over time when we are practicing at the edge often!

Share

How We Need to Dose Our Self-Transformation Effort

Following on our previous post ‘How to Accept to Stop Chasing Perfection – a New Trend for Self Help?‘ and the
Guardian article ‘Want to transform your life? Stop chasing perfection‘, I want to share an interrogation that pervades my study of self-improvement. There are a number of philosophies that encourage passivity and acceptance, while obviously some effort is needed to improve; on the other hand it should not become a struggle. How to encounter the just middle? How to dose our effort?

This is well expressed in the Guardian article: “Transformative self-reinvention may be an overoptimistic dream, but defeatism about change is its own kind of false comfort, too: both are forms of absolutism that serve to justify passivity.“

It seems obvious to me that passivity is not the response. Self-improvement is needed, a minimum being what is required to adapt to changes in the society and environment that surrounds us. Some effort is thus needed. Too much effort will lead to suffering, and possibly be counter-productive by cutting us away from important social ties.

It seems to me that the answer is given by the theory of flow: flow is achieved when faced with a somewhat difficult task, but not so difficult that it strains us too much. It is all a question of dosage – being just outside our comfort zone but not too far.

How is currently your dosage? Are your objectives too challenging? Are you rather too easy on yourself?

Share

How Songs Are Becoming Shorter – and this Reflects our Increasingly Frequent Switching

Did you notice that songs are on average getting shorter? That there are less words in their titles? That is just part of a series of trends that reflect our modern usage of digital access. More details are to be found in this excellent Medium post ‘Music is Getting Shorter‘. A more general discussion on this issue is contained in this excellent post by Mitch Joel ‘Welcome To Toggle Economics‘.

The controversy lies in whether this trend is due to the economy of music distribution (streaming), or in our shorter attention span. The latter explanation has received much attention. Mitch Joel argues however that there are indications that our attention span can remain substantial if we want (such as book reading); and that what really makes the difference would be our ability to switch more frequently from one center of attention to the other.

And it is becoming less and less difficult to switch from one internet browser tab to the next, or from one phone app to another.

Whether it is an intrinsic shorter span of attention, or the disturbance of too much choice and a too easy possibility to switch, when it comes to roaming services such as music, the result is clearly that we crave shorter durations. And the trend is just starting!

Share

How Pain and Suffering Must Be Distinguished

There is a substantial distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is what is, and suffering is what we think it is. While pain will happen, depending on circumstances, suffering is optional.

I am always impressed by how much suffering impacts the behavior and balance of people. We tend to imagine how things could be and this creates often immense suffering, while there is no reality in this imagination, or at least no tangible realization. We tend to worry too much and this creates suffering.

This distinction is absolutely essential, and I find that too often people to mix both concepts. We can do something about suffering; it involves personal discipline, and living more in the present.

In your personal circumstances, can you identify what is pain and what is suffering?

Share

How To Apply Prioritization Properly

Robin Sharma writes “The real key to getting great things done is to stop doing so many good things“. Easy said, not so easy done! He complements this statement with “Success has less to do with hard work and more to do with massive focus on your few best opportunities“

While I concur with these statements overall, and do struggle to prioritize like most of us do, I still have some reservations on some aspects.

The first one is that I believe it is important, while focusing on our current projet, to keep one’s mind open on other things and the general environment. They might well transform into even better and more exciting opportunities! Therefore, it is essential to reserve time for personal education and meeting new people, and identifying new opportunities, even if that’s only for limited time. It’s what I call a diversification strategy (it might even allow you to identify ways of doing your current project more effectively).

The second is that even if you focus on your best opportunity (or opportunities), lots of hard work is still required to get where you want to be, because it is probably something nobody has ever done before, at least in the specific situation you try to apply it. So don’t believe focus does not mean hard work!

Still at the end, it is true that prioritization and focus is a key to success, even if it remains important to be aware of one’s environment and how it shifts.

Share