Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Five

by Leave a Comment

How often in your life has your personality changed? Benjamin Hardy makes the case that it certainly doesn’t have to stay the same in his book, “Personality Isn’t Permanent.” A bookish weapon for sure. I mean aren’t they all?

You tell yourself that you are who you are and there is nothing you can do about it. You tell others you are “authentic.” You took a personality test and that’s that. Well, this book will make you stop and rethink everything.

The Case Against Personality Tests

The first part of the book is a well thought out case as to why personality is not permanent. He presents you with stories of individuals that totally changed themselves. He debunks the intricacies of personality tests as myths. Myth number one is that they are personality “Types.” He says these are “social or mental constructions, not realities.” Did you know that personality testing is a $2 billion industry?

Personality tests label you and labels are not good. They create tunnel vision. He quotes a Harvard psychologist, Dr. Ellen Langer: “ If something is presented as an accepted truth, alternative ways of thinking do not even come up for consideration.”

He also quotes Dr, Katherine Rogers, a personality psychologist that said, “We know that personality doesn’t work in types….I wouldn’t trust Myers and Briggs to tell me any more about my personality than I would trust my horoscope.”

Personality Is Not Fixed

I found this section to be powerful. He once again quotes a Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert who says, “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished.”

Hardy says, “Your personality changes. It has changed and it will continue to change in the future. Consequently, it’s time to start thinking about who your future self is going it be. You don’t want to be surprised, or frustrated by where you’re at and who you become. You don’t want to leave your future self hanging due to neglect, bad planning, or poor decisions on the part of your present self.” He goes on to say that to say, It’s best to make decisions based on what your future, not your present, self wants.” Read that again. Then read it once more!

What to do?

Hardy says that you need to “…distinguish your present self from your future self. They aren’t the same person.” He continues, “The analogy of the future selfs another person may seem like a strange one, but it is rather powerful when it comes to understanding long term decision making.”

“Who you want to be in the future is more important than who you are now. Your intended future self should direct your current identity and personality far more than your former self does.”

Purpose

Hardy thinks everyone should have a massive purpose. “Spending your days on activities leading you to something incredibly important, something you truly value, is how you live without regret.”

He advises to select one major goal and use it as a filter for everything else. “One goal creates focus. Focus creates momentum.”

The author advises us to use a journal. I like that as it is one of my four strategies in “Attacking Adversity.” While journaling he says to ask these questions: 1. Where am I now? 2. What were the wins from the past 90 days? 3. What are the ins I want from the next 90 days? 4. Where do I want to be in three years? 5. Where do I want to be in one year?

More

There is so much more to this book and that is why you should read it. Hardy discusses trauma and how it affects people. Also, the need for a professional counselor when you have no one else to “witness” your feelings. He discusses how to shift your life story so that when you tell people about you it is your future self that shines.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Four

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes a book is a lot of work. Mastin Kipp’s, “Claim Your Power” was a lot of work. Exercises to do. Lots of list-making and thinking. Then “Best Self” was like that too. So much to do that I was worn out after reading it. This book, “Loving What Is,” by Byron Katie doesn’t have a lot of exercises, but it does exercise your mind. It was written in 2002 when I was in my 50s. I wonder if life could have been different if I had read it then?

Your mind gets a workout. It doesn’t seem that complicated at first, but then once you start using “The Work” it requires a lot of thinking.

What’s “The Work?”

“The Work” is a series of four questions you ask yourself anytime you don’t like what someone is doing or not doing or some idea that upsets you. Any thought or situation.

Here are the questions or inquiry:

Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it is true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?

And

Turn the thought around. Then find at least three specific genuine examples of how each turnaround is true for you in this situation.

How Easy Is It?

Not so easy. Certainly is simple, right. So try it out. See! Katie gives you lots of help in the book so you can become decent at doing “The Work.” It makes my brain hurt, but maybe that is just me.

She presents whole sections about each of the questions even the first and second. These seem so obvious but they are not.

There are dialogues with several people in the book where Byron Katie asks them these questions and then guides them through it all. It can get complicated.

There is a chapter about doing the work on the body and addictions. There is a chapter about doing the work on money and work. One about doing the work with children. The book covers all the bases. At the end of the book, there is a section of questions and answers.

Is this book a weapon. You bet! It is a bookish weapon.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Three

by Leave a Comment

Bob Goff’s new book “Dream Big” is inspirational. It actually got me to start dreaming again. Surely it is a Bookish Weapon. You need weapons like this if you are going to Stay on Offense. Dreaming is essential.

The Bible says something about old men dreaming dreams and young men seeing visions. I would say that dreaming big is a vision. Especially if it is something that will captivate others.

Ambition

Goff says, “If ambition had two handles, they would be love and hope.” He says you should grab hold of love and hope and never let go. That makes sense. My experience has been that they are very easy to lose.

His main ambition has been to love God and people without an agenda. I suppose an example of this is him giving his personal phone number out to everybody and then taking the calls.

Who, Where and What

One of the first things you need to do according to Goff even before you start dreaming is to find out who you are, where you are, and what you want. That seems reasonable. He uses his experience as a pilot to explain this and I identify with that because I am I Private Pilot as well. However, Goff owns a small airline so he has a few more hours than myself. When you are landing you need to let the tower know who you are, where you are, and what you want.

That is sort of true. I remember when my wife and I were flying back from Abbotsford in Canada in a Piper Cherokee 140. As we were approaching Paine field in Snohomish County on our way to Boeing Field, a 747 was taking off below. It began to ascend and looked like it was going to hit us. I contacted the tower to tell them who I was, where I was, and what I wanted. I was Piper Cherokee four four four niner uniform, at 3,500 feet heading south and I wanted to know what to do since it looked like I was going to get hit. The tower told me to keep going at tht altitude and all would be well.

Technically when you are above 2000 feet you are not officially under the tower’s authority so once I could see the 747 pilot’s teeth, I decided to do a 180. I told the tower my plans and they wished me a good day. We survived.

Goff says, “An unexpectant life is one that is merely on repeat.” I like that. You need to have some expectations. You need to know what you want. One of the great pieces of advice I read was to ask yourself over and over, what you feel, what you want, and what’s your next move.

Sleepwalking

This part of the book was my favorite. Many of us sleepwalk through life. It is easy to do. It is difficult to realize who the Universe/God has designed you to be in this world. At least it is for me.

Goff says, “I fully engage life and the people around me with love, honesty, and an unreasonable, almost annoying heap of expectation. What would happen in your life if you started to do the same?” He says you need to live in “constant expectation of what might happen next.” That’s very good! Read that again!

So what About the Dreams?

List them. Goff says to get a pen and paper and list your dreams. How long has it been since you did that? Have you ever done it? So do it! Then, “…ask yourself which one of your ambitions is more beautiful and lasting and impactful than all the others.”

“Ask yourself what would make you happy and fulfilled.” Go ahead do it. Don’t just read it. Are there any themes in your list of dreams/ambitions. Anything you keep coming back to? If there are then those are clues. Stick with it.

Goff says, “…your dreams come in three sizes: easy, kind of hard, and seemingly impossible. The size of your ambitions doesn’t necessarily indicate the difficulty of achieving them.”

The author talks about so many more things in this book. Like putting yourself into the “stream of possibility.” Yes, you can do that. And figuring out how God wired you. Being a real dreamer and not a daydreamer. How? Take action.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Two

by Leave a Comment

“Falling Upward,” by Richard Rohr is about, as the subtitle says, “A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.” It is a thoughtful book by a well known Franciscan priest.

It is a good book for people who are in the second half of life and are wealthy enough to be able to partake in all that the second half offers. In fact, it is also an interesting book for those that are just old, but are still living in the first half.

First Half

Rohr points out that we are a “first-half-of-life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. I would add, or just surviving. He says, “We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.” Yet, many, will not accomplish the first half of life in their entire lifetimes, clinging tenaciously to basic survival.

“You need a very strong container to hold the contents and contradictions that arrive later in life.” If you don’t have that strong container it’s tough. He says, “In fact, far too many (especially women and disadvantaged people) have lived very warped and defeated lives because they tried to give up a self that was not there yet.”

Tragedy

“The Tragic Sense of Life,” is the title of one of the chapters in this book. I thought it made a lot of sense. He says that the Greek word for tragedy means “goat story.” I thought that was funny because I have been referred to as a “Billy goat,” due to my hiking. The idea however is that we can grow from tragedy. Rohr says, “It all depends on whether we are willing to see down as up; or as Jung put it, that “where you stumble and fall, there you find pure gold.” “Lady Julian put it even more poetically: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.”

He says, “I am personally convinced that Jesus’ ability to find a higher order inside constant disorder is the very heart of his message – and why true Gospel, as rare as it might be, still heals and renews all that it touches.” That is a profound statement and it certainly rings true. Order and chaos are a part of life, in constant ebb and flow.

Second Half

“In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us and truly influence us.” What a great way to live! The older I get the less I think I know for sure about anything yet I have met many older men who have set their opinions in stone. Rohr says, “It always deeply saddens me when old folks are still full of themselves and their absolute opinions about everything.”

People who do the second half of life well have combined their occupation and their life so that their “delivery system” is one. He says, “Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore but to love what you have – right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.”

This book continues with a look at the shadow self. Shadow work is a topic in many books these days, but I think this one offers unique insight. So buy the book! You will be glad you did. After all, it is another bookish weapon.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-Two

by Leave a Comment

Jim Kwik is a well-known speaker and author who hangs out with the likes of Tony Robbins and other life coaches. His latest book, “Limitless,” is another great contribution to the self-help genre. It is almost three-hundred pages long.

Even though this is a great contribution, I expected more. Maybe it is because I have taken other speed reading and memory improvement courses so I was looking for something I did not already know. The older I get the more I run into this.

Motivation

One of the additions Kwik made to this book is contained in the title. The idea that we can become limitless like the popular movie with Bradley Cooper from 2011. Who’d doesn’t want to be limitless? I like what he says at the beginning of the book, “If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force life begins. Great things always begin from the inside.”

Later in his chapter on motivation, Kwik breaks down the “Why” into three areas, Mindset, Motivation, and Methods. The chapter is called Limitless Motivation. He discusses the importance of purpose, but first gives us a formula: Motivation = Purpose x Energy x S (to the 3rd – cubed). The S-cubed stands for small simple steps.” Good formula.

I like his discussion about goals and how he adds HEART goals to SMART goals. “Heart” stands for H- healthy, E – enduring, A- Alluring, R – Relevant, and T-Truth.

He doesn’t leave out discussing belief systems either. Anyone that Tony Robbin’s influences are going to discuss limiting beliefs and how to overcome them.

He also brings up “Primary Questions,” which are a trademark of Tony Robbins, but Jim Kwik calls them ”Dominant Questions.” A primary question or “dominant” question is the question we ask ourselves over and over across contexts. For example, “How can I survive,?” could be a Primary Question. Then you take yourself through the process of finding a better Primary Question.

Reading Fast

Kwik has a lot to say about how to read faster. It is one of his staples. So here is a recommendation: Use your finger to scan the lines. That by itself will increase your reading speed. It makes me nervous and I read to relax so it doesn’t work for me although it does work.

Another tip is how to reduce subvocalization by counting while you are reading.

He quotes Mark Twain at the beginning of this chapter and I love this quote: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

Remembering

You remember better if you test yourself on the material by asking questions to force you to recall and related study. Spaced review increases learning. Reviewing is key. If you do not review material you will eventually forget it.

Of course, Kwik and other memory experts all use the Memory Castle approach to memorizing phone numbers or names or lists of any kind. It was initially discovered in Roman times. You have many “castles” in your life. They are “locations” where you have spent time. Your living room, bedroom, the grocery store you frequent. You begin in one corner of a room and pick out objects in the “castle” or room like a bookcase, advancing in one direction around the room. Then you use your imagination to tie something you want to remember to that location. Simple! Not necessarily easy. You need to develop your imagination. Kwik discusses this in detail.

There is so much more in this book so please get it and read it! It is a great bookish weapon.

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-One

by Leave a Comment

“The Pleasure Prescription,” by Paul Pearsall, Ph.D. was written in 1996. It is still timely and I think a classic self-help book. So here we go.

Aloha vs Haole. Aloha besides meaning “Hi,” is the word for our seventh sense, the instinctive drive to do what is pleasurable and healthful. Haole means “without health.” The author says his book is about “rediscovering your sense of aloha.”

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

Pearsall says you can get enough exercise just by walking a few times a week. I disagree with this, but won’t belabor it. There are a lot of things in the book the make sense.

I liked this. “If you want to bring pleasure into your life, be a person who brings great pleasure into life – and into someone else’s life.” I agree! If you think you are adding to someone’s day even if it is just to make it a tiny bit more enjoyable then it will make your day too.

Relationships

One of the most impactful observations Pearsall makes is about relationships is drawn from the Polynesian culture. He quotes a Polynesian kahuna, “All bonds are forever. Divorce never annuls a relationship, and if you want to find joy, stay closely related to others and the world. The brain may think it has voided a commitment, but the heart does not think that way. Like a loving child, once it has loved, the heart loves forever, no matter what. You can never truly separate, even if you live a world away. It is a law of physics and a law of Polynesia. Once things join, they are transformed by their joining and are One forever.” That has stuck in my mind over the years and I think it is what really sets his book apart from the rest.

If you take the above statement to heart you will approach relationships with a far more serious and thoughtful mind. How many people are you One with that you thought were just a pause that refreshes? Think about that.

Urgency

Now here is something to consider. In the world of time management, they tell you to separate what is urgent from what is important and to know the difference. Pearsall discusses urgency in a different light. He calls it the “Urgency Response.” Some people are always under its spell. If you were raised in a violent home then you are constantly “ready.”

Pearsall says, “The urgency response is not just a psychological state, but also a physiological one. A state of prolonged urgency gradually kills us and threatens those around us by weakening our immune system, stressing our heart, and prematurely aging all of our bodies ’ systems.” Then he quotes Albert Camus who says, “If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

Balance is the key says, Pearsall. “Healthy balance and oscillation is the key to the pleasure prescription. Just as too much happiness too often and too long can cross over to psychotic delusion, chronic unhappiness and internal stress from perceived helplessness and lack of joy can cross over to serious clinical depression.” We need to keep the parasympathetic system balanced with the sympathetic. So go get the Nature Beat App and a chest strap so you can check yours every morning.

Pain and Loss

This book is a couple of hundred pages long and I have only taken a few ideas from it so please read it yourself. There is much more to learn between these pages.

However, there is one more quote from the kahuna on pain and suffering that I thought was excellent. “When you are dealing with pain, loss, and suffering, you must remember five things. Be patient, for this too shall pass. Stay connected, for relationships must be strong to make the passing possible. Be pleasant through your pain, for that will bring you the aloha you need to heal and give healing to others. Silence your self-pity and avoid self-blame, for you are only doing what we all must do. Most of all, keep giving your aloha. Don’t use your suffering, share it by opening up to others, teaching them what you are learning from your pain, and holding and comforting them to let them know that they too will be safe when it comes to their turn.”