What Is Your Genius?

I enjoyed two posts recently about “WHAT IS YOUR GENIUS?” – Evelyn’s and Dwayne’s.

The way my friend H asks this “What is your genius?” question is
What is the one thing that you do that ONLY YOU can do?

Evelyn Rodriguez writes a couple of weeks ago in “What is Your Genius?” that she was at a party and was asked to write down the answer to the your-genuis question in fifteen minutes. Evelyn writes that this is a question that she would think it takes years and much insight to answer, and so was initially resistant to trying to do the same thing with minutes and a pencil? She writes that the way she jumped into it is through her curiosity and by thinking:

(Write what Allen Ginsberg calls “first thought”, first impulse, go for the raw unpolished unedited uncensored spew your guts forth wear your heart on the page just write as if no one is watching and no one needs to see it. Forget grammar, forget sentences that make sense, quickly before any “but” can sneak in.)

That’s the way to get to your subconscious is by asking details, and not giving yourself time to find a “but.”

And if you want to think about your wonder and genius in a more logical way, Dwayne Melancon of Genuine Curiosity writes how he does it. He writes the post “When are you at your best?” Dwayne says:

“At the recommendation of a mentor of mine I’ve been interviewing people I work with and asking them four simple questions, developed with help from my office mate Gene. The questions are simple and humbling […]:

  • In your opinion, what am I good at? […]
  • What am I not good at? […]
  • What is the highest value I provide to you or the organization? […]
  • How could I double or triple my value to you or the organization? […]

Obviously, I picked people I trust (to be honest, to keep my best interest in mind, etc.) but it’s still difficult to have these conversations with people you admire or respect. Trust me – it’s worth it to power through the anxiety.”

So, whether you want to PLAY (i.e. Evelyn’s style above) or DISCOVER (i.e. Dwayne’s style), it would be fun to try yourself out on this one! In both cases, though, just keep going. You know the little child who asks his Mom, “why is the sky blue?” and she answers that it is the only color that is reflected to our eyes, and then he says, “well, why is that the only color?” and she tells him about how the eye works, and he asks “why is the eye like that?” – be like that little child…. in both the intuitive PLAY and the logical DISCOVER cases, go deeper. Don’t stop at the outer level. Find out what your genius really is.

As Dwayne says:

One thing that can be challenging is to simply listen during these sessions. Fight your impulse to dispute what you hear, or play it down, or even lead your interviewee down a different path. Try to limit your commentary responses to, “Thank you,” or, “I didn’t realize that,” and make liberal use of phrases like, “Tell me more…,” and, “What do you mean by that?”

ENJOY!!!!

Read These (wk of Jan 15, 2006)

Here are some great links. Read these! :)

IDEA: The best role of a boss.
SOURCE:MabelandHarry

(via Anna Farmery and via the ThoughtsPhilosophies carnival):

Robert Altman says the the role of the film director is
“to create a space where the actor or actress can become more than they’ve ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being”

Now if you replace actor/actress with employee…isn’t that what business is all about? You are a dream creator, a dream coach, a dream maker…..now tell me that you have no power!

IDEA: How to measure what you’ve been doing.
SOURCE: David Maister’s summary of the words of Deborah Szekely, founder of the Golden Door Spa.

(via Anna Farmery and the ThoughtsPhilosophies carnival):

Among her pearls of wisdom was the advice that, every week, we should take an hour or two to examine what we have done with our time in the previous week, marking everything in one of five colors.

* Green would be used for anything that was a challenging growth experience
* Black would be used for things that were a waste of time
* Blue should be used for things that could have been delegated (even if the other person could only do it 85% as well as you could.)
* Red would represent something you did that was a deposit for your health
* and your own favorite color would be used for time spent on family, friends and fun

IDEA: Why smiling makes you happy.
SOURCE: Bob Sutton

(via Life At the Bar which was emailed by Stephanie of Idealawg.)

There is now compelling evidence that smiling causes people to feel happy. Requiring people to smile, no matter how they really feel at first, results in increased positive feelings; frowning conversely decreases positive feelings. Robert Zajonc and his colleagues show that smiling leads to physiological changes in the brain that cool the blood, which in turn makes people feel happy. [A series of experiments] show that positive emotion and cooler facial temperatures result when people saying the letter “e” or the sound “ah” over and over again, apparently because making these sounds requires a smile-like expression. …

These [experiments] also show that negative emotion (and hotter facial temperatures) result from repeating sounds like the letter O or the German vowel ü, apparently because making these sounds require a frown-like expression to pronounce. This effect was found to be equally strong in both German and American research subjects. These researchers also found direct effects of temperature on emotion, demonstrating that people who have had cold air blown up their noses are happier than those who have had hot air blown up their noses. Hundreds of other studies show that hot temperatures are a powerful and reliable cause of foul moods and interpersonal conflict (especially aggression and violence).

So, if you want to be really weird, try increasing happiness (and thus creativity) by having your people say “ah, ah, ah,” “e, e ,e, e,” or perhaps saying “cheese” over and over again, blowing cold air up their noses, or just keeping the buildings cold where creative people work. Or as Jane Dutton at The University of Michigan told me after she heard Robert Zajonc talk about these ideas: “When I want to get in a good mood, I’ll just go home and stick my head in the refrigerator.”

IDEA: A website about the good things in life.
SOURCE: Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg
about DarynKagan.com. Stephanie writes:

Without identifying it as such, the article mentions confirmation bias. Because so much sensory data hits us each moment, we have to filter much out to maintain our sanity; we tend to let through that which confirms what we already believe.

“Bad things happen in the world,” Kagan says. “But I believe everyone has this life filter, this life view. We all run around collecting stories in our head to support whatever that life view is. I’m choosing to have the life view that good things are happening.

We cannot get rid of our confirmation bias but, with managed and focused attention, we can change the bias. How do you see the world? Whatever your answer to that question, you will continue to see through that lens. If you don’t like what you see, trade in your bias for a new one.

IDEA: Being good. Returning library books.
SOURCE: Man returns book overdue since 1960

What’s your advice for good sleep?

What is your advice for good sleep?

I suggest these three things:

  • Create a relaxing bedtime ritual. Create cues for sleep.
  • Go to bed 10-11pm.
  • Read in bed until you’re tired enough to fall asleep.

Q: What do you find are the best things for you to do to get great sleep?

This is Quetion Friday. Thanks and happy weekend! For fun, check out yesterday’s quotes on sleep.

TONIGHT on Letterman – Josh Ritter!

Josh Ritter is the musical guest tonight on Letterman!

Definitely give a listen and a watch to this great guy who started off like the rest of musicians, singing at coffee houses and logging in miles on a beat-up car. He made it big in Ireland first, and now in the U.S. A few years ago, we could see Josh regularly when he used to play open mikes at Club Passim in Boston. Great guy – couldn’t be happier for him!!! I describe his music as a young Leonard Cohen. Joan Baez has already covered one of his songs on a CD of hers.

11:35pm CBS
Tonight, Jan 12
The Late Show with Dave Letterman

Josh Ritter on Letterman Dave Letterman

How to Get to Sleep on Time

I’m getting married in the mornin’!
Ding dong! The bells are gonna chime.
Pull out the stopper!
Let’s have a whopper!
But get me to the church on time!

~ My Fair Lady, Get Me to the Church on Time

How can you get to sleep on time? On your time. At the time you want to fall asleep? WebMD has 12 tips for better sleep. I completely agree with one of the tips:

Allow yourself one hour to unwind before bed. Brush your teeth one hour before getting into bed and wash your face slowly with warm water. Set the mood for relaxation before bed. This is not a time to be rushing about or planning the following days events. Do this earlier in the evening.

What can you do to relax as completely and as simply as you can before bed?
Can you
* Light a candle,
* Have some camomile tea,
* Brush your hair,
* Meditate,
* Breathe,
* Read some poetry?

What can you do to prep your body that it is about to go to bed? What cues can you give to your body (smell – light-fragrance candle, sight – darken the lights, touch – put on pajamas and night clothes, taste – brush your teeth, hear – put on classical music)? Or other cues? How can you give your body a clue that sleep is about to happen?

That is the single-best thing you can do for your body to get ready for sleep – to put it in the mood for sleep. I suggest getting ready for bed between 10 and 11pm. You need to be in bed by 10 or 11pm for optimal functioning, in my humble unscientific in this case, opinion.

And, yes, this will take longer than your usual routine, and yes, you’ll need to factor that time into your day, but it will pay off in healthy, full sleep.

One more tip: get ready for bed, get everything ready (including all these above cues), and then just get in bed and read. Read books for fun, not necessarily books for work or for homework. Marsha Norman says that if you’re a writer, you should read for four hours every day, and if anyone asks you what you’re doing, tell them that you’re busy and you’re reading. And for those of us who are not writers, reading is so opening, so exhilirating, so freeing, so full – it is the ideal pre-bedtime activity. Reading takes us into different worlds. And by doing so absolutely prepares us for bed.

IN SUMMARY:

  • Create a relaxing bedtime ritual. Create cues for sleep.
  • Go to bed 10-11pm.
  • Read in bed until you’re tired enough to fall asleep.

Note: I know these above won’t work for everybody. That’s why they’re my opinoons and my suggestions only.

More Quotes on Sleep

Here are some earlier quotes about sleep!
Here’s a silly riddle for you from riddlenut:

I weaken all men for hours each day. I show you strange visions while you are away. I take you by night, by day take you back, none suffer to have me, but do from my lack. What am I?

Answer in the comments.

And a couple more:
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
~ Edgar Allen Poe

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
~ Egdar Allen Poe, “Nevermore

Sleep is the best meditation.
~ Dalai Lama (1989 Nobel Peace Prize)

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.
~ Aldous Huxley

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
~ Mark Twain

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.
~ Homer

Sleep

Why does a day sometimes start the night before? For example, in religions, if tomorrow were a fasting day, then the fast would start at nightfall today. Also, in sports, your coach will often tell you what you eat the night before and how you sleep the night before are very important. Folks often arrive to far away meetings the night before to “be fresh” the next morning. Another example: Christmas EVE. Evenings are the precursor to days.

Recently, a group of researchers led by Nobel-prize winner Daniel Kahnemann has been studying people’s happiness in a very simple-to-grasp way: people were asked to write down at the end of each day which activities they enjoyed and which they didn’t (as you can imagine, “intimate relations” was highest and commuting was lowest on the list). Most interestingly, “Events such as a poor night’s sleep had a large impact on how people felt about what they did the following day,” says this study summary.

This reseach appeared in the Dec 3 issue of Science Magazine (abstract here). The method of asking to sum up the enjoyments of the day is called the Day Reconstruction Method, and the researchers asked about 900 women in Texas to complete these forms. Because the data was for women only, the researchers do not claim that it’s generalizable to the entire population.

The fascinating book Sleep Thieves talks in detail about the physical harm to the body that happens when deprived of sleep. The author Stanley Coren talks about people being more accident-prone and increasingly exhausted. One of the more interesting parts of the book is when Coren describes the fact that sleeping less one night and trying to “catch up” the next night or few nights does not get your body back into its balance: there is something lost when sleep is lost.

Today we’ve talked about why sleep is so important. And tomorrow, we’ll talk about how to get more full, healthy sleep.

Some fun thoughts on sleep:

  • CNN reports that stock strategist James Montier recommend in ’04 that people focus less on stocks and focus more on things that really make them happy – love, sex, exercise and sleep.
  • “Sleep in the City” study (summary here) that finds that people get the best sleep in cities including Minneapolis , Detroit, Anaheim, San Diego, raleigh, DC, Chicago, Boston, and Austin, and the worst sleep in cities including Detroit, Cleveland, Hashville, Cincinnatti, New Orleans, NY, Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco.
  • There is a recent study in the UK that looked for what gives people “a sense of well-being”. One of the results is that “a good night’s sleep [is]… linked to contentment” (article here)

Happiness 101

Hi, here is the new topic that I’ll be covering in depth: What can make you happiest? What is happiness for you in practice? How can you be happiest, most productive, most successful?

In this series,

  • I’ll tell you about research that works.
  • I’ll tell you about books you can read for more info.
  • I’ll tell you a general order that generally works, and then you can fit it best to yourself.

Ready?

Here’s the syllabus:

At the end, we can discuss whatever else we decide by the time we get here.
You can read all the Happiness 101 posts by going to this hidden Happiness 101 category.

Why This Blog?

Hello! You’ve been reading my blog for a while. Why do you visit this blog? I am going to write down the reasons I think you visit this blog:

* You have a positive, fun outlook on life, and you’re interested in more of the same
* You are interested in Positive Psychology
* You’re a friend of mine from pre-blog times
* You’re into some of the topics I cover: stories? questions? quotes? getting to know yourself? self-help? personal development? intuition? success? improving your life?

I would love to hear more (and I’m NOT looking for “you’re great, Senia”… more about why the blog interests you). I am especially interested in hearing more since I want to implement a bit of structure onto the blog for the next month or two. I want to cover a couple of specific topics in depth – having to do with making choices, the new year, going after your goals.

Thank you very much!
Best,
S.

Question Friday: What are you optimistic about for 2007?!

I am playing off the Edge question of the year for 2007.

Q: What are you optimistic about for 2007?

My answers:
* I am optimistic about the fairly steady state of the world.
* I am optimistic about my friends making a good living this year.
* I am optimistic about a healthy life this year.
* I am optimistic about the idea that more people will give philanthropically this year.
* I am optimistic that I will publish a book this year.
* I am optimistic that the world is changeable.
* I am optimistic that I can be who and how I want to be this year.

This is Question Friday. I’d love to know what you think. You can make your answers anonymous if you like by writing ‘A–‘ or something like that at the name prompt of the comments.