Posts Tagged ‘Relationships’
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 »
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
We all heard that before, right? What’s interesting is that it is totally true, and it is true because we do not approach arguments and debates with an open mind. We can be convinced of an opinion when we are yet to form a belief system on the subject, but when we have made up our minds about something, having debates and arguments will not help bridge the belief gap.
If we approached different points of view rationally, being exposed to arguments by the other side should make us re-consider our position. This cannot be further away from the truth. There was an interesting experiment done where two people with different points of view were given two academic papers to read. Both papers were written equally well by equally qualified experts in the field. One paper presented a set of arguments for one view, while the other presented a set of arguments for a conflicting view. Again, if we approached this rationally, reading two expert papers on the subject that present opposing points of view should have made the two parties move closer towards the middle ground on the issue. What happened, thought, was that the two people moved even further apart as they became even more convinced of their own point of view. They praised the ‘well-written’ paper that supported their view and ruthlessly critiqued the other ‘poorly-written’ paper for even the minor things.
The human nature is fascinating, don’t you think?
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Communication, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Relationships
Posted in Psychology | 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 »
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Last week I wrote a post on how high emotion leads to low intelligence and results very often in poor decisions. At the end I said that there are very few instances where emotions have a place in making decisions. In the time that followed, I got a couple of comments on the post, so I thought I’d take another stab at it. What I was trying to say last week was that really strong emotions, like when we are head-over-heels in love, or when we are so angry that steam is coming out of you ears, strongly affect the quality of our decisions. Very often we look back and regret the things we have done or said. These are the situations that the ‘high emotion – low intelligence’ comment refers to.
Emotions in themselves, when they do not take control of you, are actually vital to sound decision making. Reason and emotion go hand in hand. In 1848, there was a remarkable case of Phineas Gage in Vermont. Phineas Gage survived a head injury that took out his abilities to experience emotions, but left his reasoning capabilities perfectly intact. The accident made it very difficult for him to make any decisions, even trivial ones, whereas prior to the injury that was not the case.
We rely on emotions to tell us whether something ‘feels right’ or somehow just doesn’t. We trust that gut feeling and without it we seem unable to reason our way to a conclusion. So emotions are not bad unless they start to overtake you.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Decision Making, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Relationships, Response-ability, Success
Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 25th, 2010
To me ‘emotional decision making’ is equivalent to ‘irrational decision making’. It is the best way that I can sum it up. I don’t remember where I first heard it, otherwise I’d give full credit, but I do recall someone saying that high emotion leads to low intelligence. Another great way to put it.
I recently had a chat about this with a couple of friends in relation to soccer. Refs use yellow cards to calm the players down and make sure that the game does not get out of hand. There were a few games that I have seen where refs lost control of the game by giving out too many yellow cards. At some point, the players start to intentionally be more physical and aggressive in their challenges, as to dare the ref to show another card. Since two yellow cards get you sent off leaving your team short-handed and earn you a next-game suspension, why would anyone want to dare the ref to give them a card? Well, simply because they are angry and frustrated with the ref and high emotional involvement leads to stupid decision making.
Soccer, obviously, is not the only place where this applies. We even have a different classification for murders that occur in ‘the heat of the moment’ and punish those offenders differently. So there is recognition in our society of emotional decision making and we try to account for that. However, the most valuable thing that you can do is to recognize that tendency in your own life, and give yourself time and space to cool off before making a decision. Easier said than done, but it is a very valuable skill to have. There are very few places where emotions have a place in making decisions.
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Action, Decision Making, Human Behavior, Irrational Behavior, Relationships, Response-ability, Success
Posted in Psychology, Success, Taking Action | 3 Comments »