Integrate!

http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/meet-the-canada-reads-2018-contenders-1.4505780 John Ginder is one of the founders of NLP (neurolinguistic programming) . He has said, "Difference is the difference that makes a difference."  What does that mean? It means that before you can grow or change, you need to let new information into your system. But your system (your brain/mind/body all working together) automatically filters out most new information.  It takes will power to pay attention to something you don't already expect. Which brings me to the picture above. Canada Reads just launched its books and their defenders for 2018.  Maybe you will take the time to read the five books and play along when the debates start. I will.  And I am pretty sure already that I will not like all five of the books. That's sort of the point. You might get stronger by confirming biases and over learning what is already familiar. But you won't grow. You won't change. Yo...

We have two illusions about solving problems. The first illusion is that smart people think best when they are alone. We imagine people hunched over computers or pacing in front of whiteboards until they have an AHA moment  and solve the problem using their solitary genius. The other illusion is that we only learn from experts.  We expect therapists to help us with emotional problems and subject matter experts to help us with everything else. After years of conditioning in schools, we think that the people who make us smarter are people who know more than we do. The result of these illusions is often that we stay stuck for much longer than is necessary. We wait for access to an expert. We beat ourselves up for not being smart enough or competent enough or confident enough to think it through all alone. But it's all based on a faulty premise: we believe that smart people think best on their own. Take a closer look at what really smart people are doing. They are hanging ...

Do you read fiction? I tried to search google to find out how many books the average Canadian reads. In my own life, I know some people who always have a book on the go, and they might read somewhere between 20 and 50 books a year. Lots of others read a few books a year, and some mostly read periodicals. There's lots of evidence that reading fiction does good things for our emotional intelligence.  But that's not why most people read novels. They read because they like to explore new experiences and perspectives through language. Reading a novel takes you into the lives of people who are like you and unlike you, and your response to the novel gives you new information about you (whether or not you liked it). Canada Reads finished yesterday. It's a kind of game show where 5 prominent Canadians each pick a book to represent in a battle to win the title of 'a book all Canada should read.' This year it featured an Olympian, an activist, a movie-maker, a wrestler tu...

I wonder what you really think when a work or social situation puts you into a connection with someone who is quite different than you in some way. Even if they are different in a way you admire, it might be hard for you to relate. You might find that you are quickly bored or tongue tied or simply unable to get any traction with a conversation. If you can only connect with people who are already like you, how will you ever have the different ideas needed to produce something better than what you already have? It takes work and practice to connect with the expectation that difference often leads to opportunity. You need to put yourself in a position to interact with different people and expect opportunity to arise from difference over and over again, tweaking your ability to connect until you reliably generate opportunity from difference. How do I know this works? It is one of the things I train people to do. I attract different kinds of people to the same courses and put them in ...