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Don't dull the voice of your heart just to please your brain
As it swells into overthought and the desire to be right
Switch on the light of your inner lamp.
Listen to your heart so you can feel from your soul
Don’t discount your heart to make your logic fit.
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Christine Evangelou (Rocks Into Roses: Life Lessons and Inspiration for Personal Growth)
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Try to switch your mindset toward action and solutions rather than problems and mistakes.
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Peter Hollins (Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline)
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1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.
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Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business)
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threat condition state. Although Sheepdogs operate in “yellow,” they’re prepared to escalate to “orange” or “red” in a moment’s notice. Though the warrior trains for violence and can withstand the psychological impact of violence, he/ she abhors violence. Identifying and diffusing a threat is the largest segment of the Unbeatable Mind warrior training. Only when all else fails will the warrior engage in a violence to end the threat. When this happens, he/he terrifies their opponent with an offensive mind. Exercise Think about a violent and vicious animal - wolverine, lion, or bear. Sit in silence and begin your breath control. Count backwards from 100. At 50, invoke the image and psychological energy of your chosen animal. Feel the animal’s ferocious attack energy. Feel the animal’s emotions as it seeks to protect its offspring. Imagine yourself fighting a violent criminal with the same psychic animal. Now, practice turning this energy on and off, like a light switch. Repeat this exercise daily for a month. This will cultivate an offensive mind-set and provide an enormous amount of psychological energy to be used in the event of a violent encounter.
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Mark Divine (Unbeatable Mind: Forge Resiliency and Mental Toughness to Succeed at an Elite Level)
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For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting
differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team.
Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side.
You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way
for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP] → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround] → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD.
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Chip Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard)
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to create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. You’ve got to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team.
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Chip Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard)
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Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them. Just by knowing about the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways. People tell me they start to catch themselves when they are in the throes of the fixed mindset -- passing up a chance for learning, feeling labeled by a failure, or getting discouraged when something requires a lot of effort. And then they switch themselves into the growth mindset -- making sure they take the challenge, learn from the failure, or continue their effort. When my graduate students and I first discovered the mindsets, they would catch me in the fixed mindset and scold me.
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Carol S. Dweck
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When you switch into gratitude mode and focus on feeling grateful for all you have and all that’s coming your way, even if there isn’t any money anywhere in sight at the moment, you strengthen your faith that the money will be there for you and align yourself energetically with this belief, and you will start manifesting the very things and opportunities you’re grateful for.
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Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth)
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For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team. Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy] SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad] POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP] → MOTIVATE the Elephant FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target] SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant. [The 5-Minute Room Rescue, procurement reform] GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset. [Brasilata’s “inventors,” junior-high math kids’ turnaround] → SHAPE the Path TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. [Throwing out the phone system at Rackspace, 1-Click ordering, simplifying the online time sheet] BUILD HABITS. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. [Setting “action triggers,” eating two bowls of soup while dieting, using checklists] RALLY THE HERD. Behavior is contagious. Help it spread. [“Fataki” in Tanzania, “free spaces” in hospitals, seeding the tip jar] ————— OVERCOMING OBSTACLES ————— Here we list twelve common problems that people encounter as they fight for change, along with some advice about overcoming them. (Note
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Chip Heath (Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard)
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There was something growing in me. Something far more than the festering hate that had begun too many years ago. This girl that sits obediently in the bath, awaiting her master's return was just an image, a picture in a book with no accompanying explanation. She sits in silence, she answers his questions and she succumbs his touches without complaint. But in the dark recesses of her mind something continues to thrive. Like a switch flipped it had changed her from the pathetic, frightened girl into a soulless demon playing a sickening game. Dragging him in with her acquiesce until she could chew him up and spit him out.
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Roxanne Lee (The Devil Inside (Wolf Guard #1))
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There was something growing in me. Something far more than the festering hate that had begun too many years ago. This girl that sits obediently in the bath, awaiting her master's return was just an image, a picture in a book with no accompanying explanation. She sits in silence, she answers his questions and she succumbs his touches without complaint. But in the dark recesses of her mind something continues to thrive. Like a switch flipped it had changed her from the pathetic, frightened girl into a soulless demon playing a sickening game. Dragging him in with her acquiesce until she could chew him up and spit him out.
My mouth twitched involuntarily.
A low panic started, my heart rate accelerating instantly, that pounding of rushing blood echoing in my ears. I sat still, concentrating on my mask. Isolating every single individual facial muscle I could find and shouting them down one by one. I had not had a slip up like this in a year. Wearing a mask so long it had changed from uncomfortable to normal.
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Roxanne Lee (The Devil Inside (Wolf Guard #1))
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Avoid switching tasks. Work on one task with complete focus and then move to another task. 2) Remove all distractions you can from the work you’re doing. Be completely focused on the task at hand. 3) Turn off all the non-important notifications on your phone.
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Library Mindset (The Art of Laziness: Overcome Procrastination & Improve Your Productivity)
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We trade off between judgment and morale. When you come up with a plan, focusing only on its positives (“This is such a great idea!”) can help you work up enthusiasm and motivation to carry it out. On the other hand, if you scrutinize your plan for flaws (“What are the downsides? How might this fail?”), you’re more likely to notice if there’s a better plan you should switch to instead.
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Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
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When you find your purpose, it's like a light switch turning on. Suddenly, everything makes sense and you know what you need to do.
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Itayi Garande (Paradigm Shift: Change Your Mindset and Live the Life of Your Dreams)
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Disempowering beliefs are what create the limits in your life, and empowering beliefs are what remove those limits. When you shift your focus from what you cannot do and instead choose to focus on what you can do, your life will become limitless.
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Tonya Rineer (Mindset Switch: Identify Your Triggers, Transform Your Limiting Beliefs, and Take Charge of What You Want)
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People get into a rhythm that makes
them resistant to change. To understand the
mind-set, try switching hands when
you brush your teeth in the morning. GARY GESME, DEERE & COMPANY
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Joe Pulizzi (Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less)
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You have to give yourself permission to accomplish your dreams, permission to get out of debt, and permission to overcome the obstacle. Your better days begin in your thinking.
Studies show that when you are negative and think said, discouraging thoughts, your serotonin level goes down, and that causes you to feel sad. It’s not just in your head. It affects your moods. But when you get up each day in a positive frame of mind, feeling hopeful and expecting good things, endorphins are released that make you feel happy. You will have more energy, because being positive puts a spring in your step.
If you go around with negative thoughts, they will drain you of your faith, your energy, and your zeal. It’s just like a big vacuum pulling out all the good things that God put in you. You’d be amazed at how much better you’d feel, how much more you’d accomplish, and how much further you’d go if you’d just switch over to this positive mind-set.
You have to think positive thoughts on purpose. “This is going to be a great day. This is my year. I’m expecting an abundance of favor.”
The scripture says, “Put on a fresh new attitude.” I’ve found yesterday’s attitude is not good enough for today. Every morning you have to consciously adopt a fresh attitude by thinking things like: “I’m going to be happy today. I’m going to be good to people. I’m going to go with the flow and not get upset. I know God is in control. He’s directing my steps. No obstacle is too big. No dream is too great. I am well able to do what I’m called to do.”
That fresh new attitude will put you in God’s jet stream. You will accomplish things that you could not accomplish on your own. You’ll be more productive. You’ll have more wisdom, creativity, and good ideas. You will overcome obstacles that were bigger, stronger, and more powerful.
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Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
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Then I got to thinking about the bigger picture: If I’m going to sit around and say I am “just surviving” every day, well, guess what? When a big wave comes along suddenly, I won’t be surviving—I’ll be drowning!
I mean, that’s life. Life is never predictable. Life is never really manageable. If your mind-set is always, “I’m just surviving,” it seems to me that would wind up being your mind-set for the rest of your life. You’d just get stuck in it.
So I finally flipped the switch in my mind. I said, “I have to choose to thrive, even in the pain. Even when it’s tough.” And it was tough.
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Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
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All these years later it’s not difficult for me to flip back to that mindset, if I want to. There’s a simplicity to it, as if the world switched from a Picasso to a Vermeer painting. There’s a certainty about right and wrong that comes from feeling you have God on your side. There’s a lightness that comes from being sure that the world is fair: if you work hard, you’ll be fine. I can’t stay there for long though. I’ve learned too much about history and science, and about the consequences of inequality and discrimination. Still, visiting that mindset from time to time helps humanize people who disagree with me.
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Keith Payne (Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide)