Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
I am a total sucker for a good conversation. This weekend I had a great pleasure of spending some time with a friend who is the most intellectually stimulating person that I know. A good dinner, couple bottles of wine, and good conversation led to a very memorable evening. Thinking of that reminded me of something I’ve noticed before – what different people tend to talk about.
There is a great quote by Admiral Hyman Rickover that seems to beautifully and elegantly capture what I have observed over time. The quote goes like this: “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
When I compare the topics of conversations that I have with people who I truly enjoy spending time with to the conversations that are neither here nor there, the quote totally applies. And people who gossip all the time? Well, I keep far away from them.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Human Behavior, Inspiration, Relationships, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships | No Comments »
Friday, July 30th, 2010
One time, early in my entrepreneurial days, I was dealing with a rather difficult and demanding customer. I was in a rush and happened to write an email that was straight to the point. There was nothing particularly wrong with it – it wasn’t offensive or anything – but it did not have the usual pleasantry fluff. She lost it at that point and showered me with a number of ‘compliments’, but there was one thing in particular that stood out and served me as a very good lesson in further communication with all clients (and people). She said that “you’ll attract more bees with honey than vinegar.” How true!
Scolding or lecturing people rarely works, and I would go so far as to say that it never works. People can’t stand criticism and rarely see themselves at fault anyway. We always justify our actions to ourselves and to others and find excuses to feel OK about them. Fighting this is to go against human nature, which always a losing affair. Instead, it is much more effective to find more constructive and positive ways to deal with people.
In other words, be nice! And enjoy the long weekend!
Until Tuesday,
V
Tags: Communication, Happiness, Human Behavior, Relationships, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships, Success | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
“Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.”
- John Hibben
What an elegant way to put it, don’t you think? For quite some time I had a misconception that it is the grades, diplomas, degrees, and your IQ that determined your level of education and predicted your level of success in life. I don’t believe that anymore; in fact, that is probably pretty far away from the truth.
I said several times before that knowledge by itself is rather useless. The application of knowledge is powerful. But it’s rare that the challenges life presents us with have a lot to do with our formal education. Most of the time, at least in my experience, I have to deal with things not related to Engineering. We do well when we are able to deal with, and overcome those challenges, and that is true ‘education’.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Communication, Happiness, Human Behavior, Personal Power, Relationships, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships, Success | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
This would be quite challenging for me to verify, so definitely do not take this as something substantiated; this is more of my gut feeling that has only been confirmed by a few people. My sense is that concepts of friendship are very different in Canada/US and some other places (I can only speak for Russia/Ukraine, but people who are familiar with other cultures have expressed similar feelings). How different? They seem to lack real warmth and a genuine connection.
The best analogy that I can come up with to relate approach to friendships to how where we live. In most of the world, due to lack of space, or money, or both, people live in smaller places and are closer physically to each other and to their neighbours. Here, on the other hand, people seem to strive to get their own houses, on large, fenced-off lots. Each member of the family has their own room and there is often even a room or two for when the guests visit. You kind of know the neighbours, but not really. Even though we still live in cities, we seem sheltered and removed from others by the physical barriers that we build.
What do I base this on? Mostly the gut feeling that I get from dealing with people and observing different relationships. For instance, the interaction between two best friends appears to me very different for someone ‘local’ vs two best friends back where I was born.
There is a good chance though that I am completely wrong here, and that my gut feeling arises from the fact that I was born and raised in a different culture, even though I was pretty young when I moved to Canada. Maybe it is simply that I still don’t fully understand the North American culture. Your thoughts?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Friendships, Human Behavior, Relationships
Posted in Relationships | No Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Relationships with other people play a vital role in our lives. It all stems back to the times our ancestors lived in caves, when creating, building, and maintaining relationships with other members of the tribe is what allowed them to survive in that environment. It simply was not possible to mature and leave offspring without it. As the society evolved, that basic importance of relating to others has not changed.
Today our survival, success, and even happiness depends on the quality of the relationships that we are able to develop. When we are born, it is essential for us to create a bond with our mothers in order to survive. Our happiness is correlated to the health of our relationships with other people. And success is really all about ‘who you know’.
Can you make it ‘on your own’? Sure. But it will never be as quickly, or to the same degree as when you involve other people. Connections are huge, and this holds true around the world. At the end of the day, people can open doors for you, and I’m willing to bet that there is a very strong positive correlation between the number of such people that you know and your success.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Communication, goals, Human Behavior, Money, Relationships, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships, Success | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
A couple of days ago I read about a study, done at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, that found post break-up symptoms similar to those of a cocaine withdrawal. No wonder people sometimes do crazy stuff after a break-up in an attempt to get the other person ‘back’. I guess the key is to be emotionally invested in the relationship; if one is happy that a relationship is over, this probably does not apply.
Now I wonder, does this also apply to non-romantic relationships? And how about family members, when they pass on, for instance?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Break-up, Cocaine, Drugs, Happiness, Human Behavior, Marriage, Relationships
Posted in Psychology, Relationships | No Comments »
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
Maybe this stems from our pre-historic times where survival was dependent on staying with the group, but to this day people find it very difficult, if not outright impossible to go against the ‘group-think’. Essentially, if the group is doing something, an individual who is part of the group will find it very difficult to go against it. We see evidence of this everywhere.
Crowd control is a very serious issue for law-enforcement agencies, since if aggressive or violent behaviour gets beyond one or two individuals, the mob-mentality takes over and at that point it’s like the G20 Summit in Toronto. In companies group psychologists showed time after time that it is good to have a person on a team who is comfortable with challenging ideas. Otherwise, there could be a number of people who are afraid to speak up, and end up going along with the decision they don’t like. In a classroom setting, good teachers tell their students to ask any question that they may have, since chances are, there are other people in the class with the same question who are simply afraid to ask.
This also ties into personal growth. An individual will find it very difficult to succeed at anything, if the people around them are not supportive. That is why it is a wise decision to surround yourself with people who are where you want to be and have the things you want to have, or at least are heading that way. Otherwise, you’ll try a couple of things, and by doing so you’ll start to stand out from the group. That will feel uncomfortable for most people, and the group will pull you back to where you started.
I’m taking a day off tomorrow to enjoy the long weekend. Until Monday,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Money, Personal Power, Relationships, Response-ability, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships, Success, Taking Action | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Most of you have probably been in the situation when a romantic relationship comes to an end and you, or your ex, says something along the lines of “Let’s be friends!” Whether it comes out of guilt, or possibly the desire to be close in order to re-kindle the relationship in the future, or something else entirely different, people often try to be friends after the relationship goes to the pooper. Now let’s define ‘friendship’ as well here. By ‘friendship’, I do not mean that the two people are civil when they run into each other on the street or at some New Year’s Party; being civil is easy as long as the break-up was civil. What I mean by ‘friendship’ is when the two people actually continue to be friends and hang out, share stories, call each other, etc.
I personally have never been able to maintain a friendship with an ex. Frankly, I never really wanted to in the first place, so that’s not very surprising. However, I have seen people maintain a friendship for some time. I’m can’t speak to the quality of that friendship – it was probably different – but people still hung out and spent time together, so they were definitely more than just ‘being civil’.
So I wonder, what makes it possible to maintain that friendship? My theory is that the probability of having a post-break-up friendship is negatively correlated to how hurt/upset the people are due to the break-up. The more emotionally invested one is in the relationship and the more hurt one is when the relationship ends, the less likely the friendship is. What are your thoughts? I’d be very curious to hear what people who have been able to maintain a friendship after a break-up think.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Happiness, Human Behavior, Relationships
Posted in Psychology, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Do you consider yourself a risk taker in your personal life? How about in your professional life? Or are you careful all the time? There is definitely that trade off between staying safe and having some awesome experiences.
I know people who are very careful and always think twice before doing anything remotely dangerous. I actually used to be a lot more like that, except that at one point I said “what the hell, let’s do it”, and took my first leap of faith out of an airplane. To this day, that was arguably the best experience of my life. I took calculated risks a few more times that led to really awesome experiences – bungee jumping and riding a motorcycle are a couple of examples. There is an inherent risk that goes with such activities – I could hurt myself badly or even worse, and it is usually for those reasons that people never attempt anything remotely ‘dangerous’ and hold themselves back from experiencing something special.
Same type of behaviour easily carries over into other areas of life. One could be afraid of getting their heart broken and thus will stay away from any sort of romantic relationship. Or one could be concerned about the financial stability and never take a chance at a more exciting and fulfilling career.
What kind of risks have you taken that led to some wicked experiences? And on the flip side, what areas of life could you take more risks in to get some wicked experiences?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Human Behavior, Inspiration, Personal Power, Relationships, Success
Posted in Psychology, Relationships, Success, Taking Action | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
As a final project in the Science of Mind class that I have been taking, we were supposed to present our vision for a better world. Yesterday’s post gave me an alternative vision for a better world than the one I actually presented. To tell you the truth, there are a lot of things that can make for a better world, so this is only one of them. What is it? People taking personal responsibility for their lives.
Think about it…how different would the world look if every single person took responsibility for their lives, for their actions, and for their behaviours? Now we are playing that ‘what if’ game, but I think that if that was the case, people would not be complacent and would actually take action to change things they do not like – politicians, economics, relationships, etc. People would stop blaming others, which will result in more love and peace. People would live more happy and fulfilled lives as they would not remain stuck for long in any particular place that they do not like. People would pursue what they want in harmonious ways.
That would truly transform the world, don’t you think?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Energy, goals, Human Behavior, Inspiration, Personal Power, Response-ability, Responsibility, Science Of Mind, Success
Posted in Affirmations, Energy, Relationships, Success, Taking Action | 1 Comment »