How To Make Difficult Conversations Easy - Barking Up The Wrong Tree. Someone is screaming in your face at the top of their lungs.
Or ranting angrily and you can’t get a word in edgewise. Or maybe they’re sobbing so hard you can barely understand what they’re saying. We’ve all been there. These situations don’t happen a lot (thank god) but we all feel helpless when they do. And because they’re rare we don’t ever seem to get better at handling them. Problem is, these moments are often critical because they’re usually with people we care about. What’s the best way to handle these difficult conversations?
I called someone who knows: Dr. Dinosaur Brains: Dealing with All Those Impossible People at Work Am I The Only Sane One Working Here? Emotional Vampires: Dealing With People Who Drain You Dry Here’s what you’ll learn in this post: Okay, time to wage war with the crazy. 1) First, You Need To Keep Calm You already have one person overreacting.
Al calls the emotional side of our mind the “dinosaur brain.” If you stay calm, you can help someone escape its grip. Hot Dogs And Economics: How Great Teachers Guarantee Learning. “When I go to a baseball game, I can eat six, maybe seven hot dogs.
I love hot dogs more than anything on Earth.” This is the opening line from Mr. Hourigan, my high school Economics teacher. We’re learning the law of diminishing returns. He goes on to explain how, though his love for brats runs deeper than human understanding, he starts to get tired of them after a while. Admittedly, a strange comparison. The law of diminishing returns, put simply, describes how you can’t achieve endless efficiency in any system.
Santé. Sport. Méditation. These are the most common life mistakes that young people make. I quit college and used the money to buy a car.
The car was a used Honda Civic. I drove around for a few hours and then I dropped the car back off at the dealership and cancelled the check and went back to college. Two huge mistakes in one day. One was fun and stupid. The other cost me years and money. There’s two types of mistakes: ones that eventually make you a better person. Some mistakes are out of your control. Having them and complaining about them and blaming others and not learning from them is the worst mistake a young person can make. And here are some other mistakes that young people (i.e. me) make: What opinion can you possibly have? War? She/He should treat me better! A friend of mine works at The New Yorker and no longer speaks to me (so maybe she is not my friend).
Oh really? “Manure” 4.5 million tons of manure were being dropped on the streets of Manhattan in 1890, EVERY YEAR, by horses carrying people to work. That was the big environmental problem of the day. Work. Four Rules I Followed to Stop Being a Pushover and Make Myself More Powerful. Study Hacks - Decoding Patterns of Success - Cal Newport. On Sam Harris and Stephen Fry’s Meditation Debate February 19th, 2019 · 44 comments A few weeks ago, on his podcast, Sam Harris interviewed the actor and comedian Stephen Fry.
Early in the episode, the conversation took a long detour into the topic of mindfulness meditation. Harris, of course, is a longtime proponent of this practice. He discusses it at length in his book, Waking Up, and now offers an app to help new adherents train the skill (I’ve heard it’s good). What sparked the diversion in the first place is when, early in the conversation, Fry expressed skepticism about meditation. Harris’s response was to compare meditation to reading. Fry, who is currently using and enjoying Harris’s meditation app, conceded, and the discussion shifted toward a new direction.
I wonder, however, whether Fry should have persisted. Read more » Minimalism Grows… February 8th, 2019 · 31 comments Before I do, two quick notes: On to the publicity updates: The Beginning of a Digital Revolution? Myth Confirmed. How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book” The other day I was reading a book and I came across a little anecdote.
It was about the great Athenian general Themistocles. Before the battle of Salamis, he was locked in a vigorous debate with a Spartan general about potential strategies for defeating the Persians. Themistocles was clearly in the minority with his views (but which ultimately turned out to be right and saved Western Civilization). He continued to interrupt and contradict the other generals. Finally, the Spartan general threatened to strike Themistocles if he didn’t shut up and stop. When I read this, I immediately began a ritual that I have practiced for many years–and that others have done for centuries before me–I marked down the passage and later transferred it to my “commonplace book.”
In other posts, we’ve talked about how to read more, which books to read, how to read books above your level and how to write. What is a Commonplace book? Some of the greatest men and women in history have kept these books.