The Negotiations Situation

Imagine there are three research companies A, B, and C. Because they’re in such an important field, the government is giving them a grant, but it’s structured a bit strangely! The companies are presented with the being able to pick only one of the following options:

Company A+B = $600,000
Company A+C = $800,000
Company B+C = $1,000,000
Company A+B+C = $1,100,000

Pretend you are one of the companies, what is your strategy to maximize your returns?

A Company Value Analysis

Because the government grants contracts to each pair of companies, each company has a certain value in the government’s eyes:

Company A = $200,000
Company B = $400,000
Company C = $600,000

You can do a quick check to see that these add up to the totals for the contracts above!

Of course this means that any of the companies can work with any of the other companies and come to this theoretical value for the deal. For example, Company A can work with Company B or Company C to get their $200,000 fair share. Or, the three of them can work together and split the $100,000 difference somehow ($200k + $400k + $600k = $1.2 mil, which is $100k more than the $1.1 mil offered by the government!)

So what’s the deal that should result?

A Loop For The 50-50 People

This is an interesting situation that presents a loop to the 50-50 people, assuming that everyone is going for these theoretical company values. Company A can offer Company B $400,001 and only take $199,999 to try to get the deal. However, Company C can in turn offer Company A $200,001 while Company C takes $599,999. Knowing that offer though, Company B might offer Company C $600,001 while Company B takes $399,999. But then Company A can….

This situation just never made sense to me in college. Wouldn’t the loop just go on forever and ever?

As I asked this question, the results for the class came in and a variety of deals developed. Some with Company A taking $150,000 and Company B taking $450,000. Some with Company B taking $380,000 and Company C taking $620,000. Some with Company A taking $210,000 and Company B taking $390,000. It all seemed so random!

The part that just kept bugging me was, why would Company B choose to take $390,000 when Company C is probably offering him $400,001? Wouldn’t it make sense to switch over to Company C’s deal?

Think about the situation for a second… what would you do?

How The Solution Makes Sense In The Context Of Generosity

After an hour or so of talking with the professor and my classmates, the answer to the burning question of “What does Company B get in exchange for that $10,001 difference?” finally emerged. It is… the deal! That’s right – by taking $10,001 less, Company B was able to secure the deal!

For some people, they’d probably much prefer to be in the situation where Company B took $450,000 and Company A took $150,000. However, in the long run, it might actually be better to be taking the $390,000! By taking $390,000 as opposed to going for the $450,000, Company B significantly increases the chance of getting the deal! Besides, life is a series of such “free” pies that are created. That $10,001 can bring a lot more of those!

Even from the perspective of the deal at hand though, by getting a deal, Company B gets $390,000 extra. By losing the deal, it gets nothing. It only needs to increase its chance of getting the deal by 1/400 in order for that $10,001 “loss” to be justified! This is not to mention the goodwill Company B would get from Company A by giving that $10,001. If such a situation arises again in the future, Company A might just go straight to Company B and not even talk to Company C! That’s what generosity does for you!

However, do note that this tradeoff does level off at some point. For example, if Company B only took $10, either the other companies would pretty much accept immediately. In this case though, it’ll need a lot more deals to make up for the $399,990 it missed out on!

This is not to say that’s necessarily a bad choice, as maybe it knows that there’ll be a $10,000,000 grant next year that it’ll need the goodwill of the other company.

Either way though, the main take away is that less than $200k/$400k/$600k may be the optimal choice for each of the respective companies!

The Solution When Everyone’s Generous

There is that special option where all three companies get some money though. However, it requires that the three companies each give up something and not get their “full” amount. It is a perfect example of how everyone benefits if they are generous! If each of the company is slightly more generous than 50-50, then they’ll all feel great accepting that slight loss so that everyone can be happy!

In the end, if they all cooperate and give a little extra, they get a bigger pie to share. If they do not, then they’ll have to fight over a smaller pie and one of them gets nothing! Not a bad reward for cooperating right?

If these are constantly the thoughts running through your head, then you probably feel worried and stressed out!

Why Worrying Is Bad

When you worry, you are essentially directing all your thoughts towards a possibility that you dislike. You imagine yourself standing in a court room and getting sued. You imagine yourself lying on a bed with a terminal illness. You imagine people disliking you for doing something you want to do.

When you do this, you start to form memories of all of these situations as discussed in the passage of time. If you do this long enough, then most of your memories will be of these situations. After all, those are the most recent and most thought about things, so it’s only natural that your brain holds on to them.

So what happens the next time you encounter a grey situation (which most situations are)? Your brain will fetch the most related scenarios from its vast store of memories. Since most of your memories are of these unpleasant situations though, you’ll probably just pick one of these. For example, say you went to the doctor and some tests came out inconclusive. If you had been thinking for weeks at a time about all the possible diseases out there, then the most natural reaction is for your brain to retrieve all these possible diseases and wonder if it might be one of them!

How would you feel then? If your brain keeps going over images of these bad things, wouldn’t you feel sad and worried and stressed?

Not only that, but this is a spiral process. Because you are worried and stressed, your brain will probably conjure up even more images of these things as you think about them more! Then, as you look over your life, the positive memories are all dim and vague, and life suddenly seems like it’s full of worry and stress!

When Worrying Is Bad

If worrying is so bad though, then why do we do it? Well, it’s not all bad. Worrying does have a purpose! It alerts you to possible negative situations that might happen so that you can adequately prepare for them.

The problem occurs when it’s a situation you can’t do anything about, when it’s trivial, or when you already have an adequate solution but continue to dwell on it.

When you can’t do anything about it – In this case, the worrying serves no purpose. For example, if you’re worrying about how the sun will go supernova in a few billion years and all the things you do now might not matter, that’s very pointless. The time spent worrying could have been put to living your life! It’s going to happen and you can’t change it, so focus your energy on something you can actually control!

When it’s trivial – Maybe you’re worried about losing a quarter, so you go around thinking up ways to prevent quarters from falling out of your pocket. Maybe you’ll constantly check your pockets to make sure the quarter is there. Maybe you’ll make sure all your pants don’t have holes. Sure, you have increased the probability that your quarter won’t be lost, but all that time and emotional energy could have been better spent elsewhere. You might lose the quarter, but do you really want to live life worrying about that? The same thing goes for dying actually – that’s another thing that might happen at any time, but don’t you have better things to do while you’re alive than worrying about the end?

When you already have a solution – This is situation that is a combination of the two above. When you already have an adequate solution, then the problem has already been solved and there’s really nothing more you can do. Therefore, further time spent worrying, like the first scenario, serves no purpose.

However, there is a possibility that you might come up with an even better solution. In that scenario, it’s more like the second case. The other solution might be better, but it’s probably only marginally better if the current solution is already adequate! Is that small marginal improvement really worth your time? Don’t you have other more important things to do?

How To Stop Worrying

Since worrying is just for the purpose of coming up with solutions for potentially unpleasant situations, the way to get over it as fast as possible is to focus on just that! Instead of turning the situation over and over in your head, only think about it long enough to identify the issue and come up with some possible resolutions. Once you have one, just pick one that works and focus your attention on something else.

If you can’t seem to think of something else to focus your attention on, then you should find out what you want. After all, there’s always something you can do if you have some long term goals. Once you decide on your resolution and your focus shifts, the negative feelings associated with the worrying should go away, leaving your mind free to tackle other problems.

It is worth emphasizing that you should make a habit to be decisive. If you continuously flip flop between your resolutions, then you essentially haven’t picked, and you’ll have to continue worrying! If indecisiveness becomes a habit, then issues never really get resolved, and your days will be filled with seemingly countless problems!

So to stop worrying:

1) Identify the issue you are worrying about
2) Think of resolutions quickly
3) Pick one and stick to it.

Hopefully, these three steps will lead you on your way to a happy and stress free life!

Get Enough Sleep

This is probably the most important one. Your body naturally wakes up at some point, so if that point happens before you’re “supposed” to get up, then there’s no problem! If you know you need to get up at 8 am, and know that you need 7 hours of sleep, then you just need to make sure you sleep before 12:50 am every day (giving yourself a few minutes to fall asleep). That way, you’ll wake up every day at around 7:55 am, give or take a few minutes, right before the alarm clock rings! Good timing right?

Of course, the amount of sleep needed varies from person to person. Therefore, if you’re not sure, just try sleeping earlier each day until you wake up without an alarm clock. Try this for a while, and you’ll eventually figure out what a good sleeping time for you would be, and you can then simply subtract to figure out the number of hours you sleep (plus or minutes a few minutes to fall asleep).

Get Up When You Wake Up

As an addendum to the above, when you wake up – get up! If you wake up at 7:30 am and think, “Hmmmm, I still have 30 minutes”, and go back to sleep, then you’ll probably wake up getting blasted by your alarm clock. After all, you’re trying to somehow create a sleep cycle that is exactly 29 minutes and 59 seconds long – kind of a hard task!

Furthermore, that extra time in bed really isn’t that restful! You woke up at 7:30 am wide awake, but you’re trying to return to a sleepy state. Well, that process takes a while – say 10-15 minutes. Then, you get 15-20 minutes of sleep, but get knocked out of it by your alarm clock. It might take you another half hour or more to recover from that and be wide awake again. In total, you’ve spent about an hour, but only got 15-20 minutes of very light sleep!

Compare that to just getting up! You feel wide awake and you get an extra 30 minutes to spend on something productive!

Know Your Sleep Cycle

While the sleeping earlier method works for finding out how much sleep you need, it’s not too useful if you accidentally passed your “bed time”. Let’s say you were talking with someone or something, and you slept at 1:15 am instead – what do you do? Well, if it’s possible, you can just set your alarm clock to 8:25am. That way, you can wake up at 8:15 am and still be okay. However, what if you need to catch that train in the morning and have to wake up by 8:00 am?

Well, this is where it helps to know your sleep cycle. In general, sleep has 4 stages:

Stage 1: Drowsiness
Stage 2: Light Sleep
Stage 3: Deep Sleep
Stage 4: REM Sleep

This comprises the average 90 minute sleep cycle. Note that as the night progresses, REM sleep becomes longer while light/deep sleep gets shorter. If you wake up during deep sleep, you get that feeling of “OH MY GOD!! WHY AM I AWAKE?” It might take you the rest of the day to get out of that sleepy mode. Therefore, it’s actually better to avoid that entire sleep cycle!

So how do you find out your sleep cycle?

One way would be to keep track of your sleeping times, and note it down if you naturally wake up during the night. Or on those nights where you pass your sleep time, set your alarm clock in 15 minute increments and see how you feel in the morning. For example, if you slept at 1:15 am, you can try setting your alarm clock to 8:00 am, 7:45 am, 7:30 am, etc. to see how you feel when you wake up. It’s actually relatively flexible, as you just need to make sure you don’t wake up during deep sleep.

For me, I know that if I wake up in 2 hours, 4 hours, 5.5 hours, or 7 hours, I would feel very awake. So if you wake me up in just one hour, be prepared for the wrath of Warren! Therefore, if I was supposed to sleep at 1:00 am and wake up at 8:00 am, but it’s now 1:15 am, I would just go to sleep at 2:30 am instead. It’s extra time for me and it yields about the same amount of rest!

Figure Out Why When You Wake Up At Weird Times

If you’re waking up in the middle of the night, try to figure out why before going back to sleep. Your body likes to sleep the whole night, so it’s probably complaining about something. “I can’t rest like this”, it’s telling you. Here are a few common ones I’ve experienced:

The mattress is uncomfortable – Maybe you’re always tossing and turning on your mattress. If you’re sleeping 6-8 hours /day, that’s a quarter to a third of your day you’re spending in bed. The quality of that time directly affects the other 66-75%, so why not make a good investment into a mattress? If you’ve ever been sleepy while doing work, you know how unproductive that can be! You can sit in front of the computer for hours, and not get anything done. Whereas, if you’re awake and alert, that same amount of work might be completed in only a few minutes with some good creativity and intuition.

Personally, my mattress is about $1000, king sized, a foam mattress, and quite soft. However, I do feel some muscle tension in my back, so it’s actually a bit too soft. Ironically, it doesn’t seem to be as good as a spring mattress with foam padding for me. I’d suggest if you’re buying a mattress, by all means use their 90 day money back guarantee trials.

You feel numb or cramped when you wake up – This probably is due to the mattress, so getting a new one or a foam layer would probably solve it. However, it could also be due to your sleeping position. If you’re sleeping on your side, then all your weight is along a smaller surface area, increasing the tension on each part of your body. To maximize surface area, sleeping on your back works very well, with your arms and hands laying flat. If it doesn’t feel too weird, you can even flatten your feet out. In this position, your neck is quite unsupported, so getting a pillow with neck support (or just folding the pillow a little so that there’s something under your neck) helps tremendously with that.

You need to go pee – Well, by all means, go pee!! Next time, pee before you go to sleep, and make sure you don’t drink too much water an hour or two before bed.

Something is in your mind or you wake up with a strong emotion – So in short, you wake up from the stress of thinking about something. Unfortunately, this is probably the hardest one to solve. You’ll have to work on a long term solution of trying to decrease the amount of stress in your life. For example, if you’re in love, worried about a big event tomorrow, excited about a vacation, etc., those things are very hard to change. You might have to resolve these issues first before you can get a good night’s sleep.

Sleep At The Same Time Every Night

Your body adapts naturally to your habits. If you slept every day at 1 pm for a year, then you would start getting drowsy at 1 pm, even if you didn’t plan on sleeping! By the same token, if you wake up every day at 8 am (and sleep at the same time so that it’s a sleep cycle of the same length), then you would naturally wake up at 8 am. You’ve probably have experienced this effect at one point or another when you “sleep in” on Sundays. You know how you wake up at your normal work hours and then decide to go back to sleep? Yeah… that’s just your normal pattern.

Since most of us already are trained to wake up at a particular time (if you have a fixed work schedule), it’s just a matter of making sure that you get the same amount of sleep cycles in. That way, you send a clear message to your body – I’m sleeping now! Otherwise, your body might be like, “Uh.. what time do you want me to wake up? Ahhhh!!”

The Road To Waking Up Without An Alarm Clock

Hopefully, with these tips, you’ll be able to wake up without your alarm clock soon! It might take a few weeks, or a few months, but think of all the extra time you would save and the happier days you would have with a good night’s sleep!

Learn To Calm Down

Recently, having to deal with my “in love” feeling all the time as documented in A Falling In Love Experience Part 5, I have found various techniques useful for calming myself down. It’s very useful to calm down when you need to reorient yourself and focus on something without being overwhelmed by your emotions. So here are my top 4 methods:

Calm Down By Deep Breathes

I’m sure we’ve all heard this one before, but it really works pretty well. Take a very deep breath and hold it there. Then, very slowly let your breath out. As your breath slowly escapes, try to pretend it is a fiery jet, like you’re a dragon breathing fire! If you put your hand underneath your nose, the air coming out should feel extremely hot.

Various studies have been done that suggests your body posture can affect your mood. I think this is kind of an extension of that. When you’re angry, or in love, or agitated, or just stressed in general and get that burning feeling in your chest area, I think your body actually is warmer there. When you are “burning”, you really, literally, are hotter!

Doing deep breathing allows you to keep that part of your body at a lower temperature, in turn affecting your mood.

Calm Down By Going Somewhere Cold

In the same vein as the idea above, if the air you are breathing in actually is a lot colder, then it would be much easier to lower the body temperature of your lung area. Plus, the cold numbs you a bit, making you feel things less in general.

I had actually first noticed this effect when I was playing online poker at home. One day, my heater was turned up really high (it was actually the same setting, but the outside temperature rose), and the temperature was something like 90 degrees. I was sitting around sweating in my underwear, and suddenly realized that I felt very tense and reactive. Every pot I lost seemed to anger me more than it usually would. Needless to say, it was not a good poker session.

However, as soon as I left my room, I started to feel better. Before long, I realized that the hot air itself is actually affecting my mood. It seems like such a surprising idea, but it makes sense that as we are creatures of the earth, environmental factors should affect how we behave.

Calm Down By Exercising

In my experience, this is the best method of calming down. When you go out and do vigorous aerobic exercise for an extended period of time, almost nothing else in the world matters. When you’re running, you don’t feel love, you don’t feel pain; in fact, you don’t feel much at all besides a strong desire to finish. If you really push yourself, for a while, everything else in the world becomes just a distant speck. Your mind focuses on only that one thing – finishing.

I’ve always found running to be extremely helpful in maintaining my discipline. Beyond just the physical discipline, it shows me that I do have the mental capacity to control my body. Additionally, it shows me that I can improve and grow, building my self confidence. This also helps build mental discipline, and generally have effects that last for the rest of your life.

Calm Down By Stepping Back

The last method for calming down is to step back and examine the world in which we live. Appreciate that you are a spiritual being who just happen to be in this reality at this particular time. Look up into the sky and look at the stars. There are billions of stars out there, probably filled with even more planets like ours, amongst one of many dimensions, in one of many realities. How big is your problem compared to that? Your problem might as well be a fight between two ants. In the grand scheme of things, whatever problem you have, it’s really not that big of a deal.

Reframing your thoughts this way allows you see the problem as a small thng, which it is. When we frame problems like that, they become small and solvable. This is actually worth doing from time to time anyway, just to focus on the important things.

Well, there you have it – my top 4 ways of calming down! Combined, they give you a good tool to maintain your emotional self control. However, remember that these are just tools! If you want to establish underlying peace, you need to tackle and solve the source of your emotional distress.

Until then, these should keep you afloat!

The Weakness Of Overconfidence

We’ve all experienced it before. You take a test that you think is ridiculously easy, so you put it off until the last minute, and end up getting a B. You get into a relationship and start taking your significant other for granted, resulting in a breakup. You invest in a stock thinking there’s no way it’ll go down, and lose a big chunk of your money. It’s just so easy to make these mistakes, even after years of training to guard against it, as I recently experienced in A Negative Score On A Homework Reveals Some Interesting Things About Myself.

Why Is Overconfidence Bad?

Confidence is a great thing. It allows us to get past our doubts and take action. So why is slightly too much of it so bad?

Well, let’s first take a look at why we get overconfident. Generally, if something requires the full extent of our abilities, we find it challenging and need to use all our resources to overcome the problem. That’s a really hard thing to do, and we generally feel not too confident about it. When things are at about our ability level but don’t strain it too much, we find it interesting and maybe even a bit relaxing. In this case, we can feel confident about our ability to accomplish the task, but know that we still have to work decently hard. However, when the task is extremely easy or below our abilities, we may often feel that it’s barely worth our time. That is where the danger of overconfidence becomes a menacing threat. Since it’s so simple, why not just put it off? You can just finish it with minimal effort later… right?

Well, kind of. The key thing to realize is that the task is only easy assuming you use your resources and ability fully. You might think walking across the street is an easy task, but what if I tell you it has to be done within 5 seconds and you can only use one foot? It suddenly becomes a much harder task!

That is exactly what happens when you start to procrastinate on these easy tasks! By putting it off, the amount of time you have to finish is decreased, increasing its difficulty level. By not concentrating on it fully, the chance of making a mistake goes up significantly. It’s like only having half your brain available to you, making the problem harder. Additionally, resources that were available may no longer be available to you later. For example, if your task was to travel from NY to CA on the 4pm flight, it’s pretty easy to do at 3:00pm. It becomes a much, much harder task at 4:01pm.

Let’s look at some examples of common areas of overconfidence, to see if we can avoid these problems.

Overconfidence At School/Work

You start taking a class or start a project that is so easy you can laugh. It’s practically child’s play. You already know what to do and how to do it. A few weeks pass. The old work starts piling up, as you scramble to do them. Suddenly, it’s not so easy anymore, as there is a time constraint on finishing all that “easy” work. Additionally, the project/class has been getting harder throughout the last few weeks, and now the material requires your full attention. Instead of spending the few hours you needed on this class/project, you’d spent tens of hours on some other harder class/project.

An extra 0.6 on your GPA is the same whether it’s in a hard class or easy class, but that extra 0.6 may only take 2 extra hours a week in the easy class while it may take an extra 15 hours a week in the hard class. Wouldn’t it be such a shame to not get those points from the easy class?

Overconfidence In Relationships

You start out as two happy people, considerate of each other’s feelings and making an effort to connect. Then, as the relationship progresses, you forget the reason it formed in the first place. You figure, “Oh good, the other person’s going to be with me forever, so there’s no need to do the nice things I use to do anymore”. You stop providing value to the other person which was the reason for the relationship in the first place. What happens then?

The relationship starts to rot. The two people start to disrespect each other, and soon, they part their ways.

I speak of this from personal experience. I had a friend who I shared ideas with for a few years. As we communicated differently, mutual respect allowed us to overcome some behavior barriers and learn from each other. One day, however, he indicated to me that he longer wanted to talk in my frame of reference because he liked his better. It wasn’t long before that resulted in communication where I didn’t feel understood. Soon, I end all communication for exactly that reason.

Relationships are about an exchange of value. No matter what the agreement is, when that exchange stops, the other person can and probably will leave.

Overconfidence In Poker

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced this. You sit down at a table thinking that you’re better than everybody. As a result, you’re not thinking about what other people have or why they’re doing what they’re doing. You shove globs of money into the middle, being overaggressive, because you think you are better. Soon enough, most of your money is gone.

Another common variation of this is that you have been lucky or skilled and have won a large stack of chips. However, all that winning has made you very “loose” and you start taking unnecessary risks because you can’t seem to lose. Before long, your huge stack of winnings dwindles to just a smallish stack of winnings. Hey, that’s even worse than losing your small stack from the first scenario (even though you won a little bit of money, you still lost more money)!

My friends and I refer to this phenomenon as “win tilt”.

Overconfidence In Investing

“That stock can’t go down! Warren Buffet bought it!” Or maybe you did two weeks of research and learned about all sorts of technical analysis tricks. Of course it has to go up right? Um right… down it goes. This isn’t exactly new to anyone who has ever invested in the stock market. Yes, stocks go down. They can always go down.

How To Overcome Overconfidence

Remember that when things are easy, you are expected to win. From an emotional perspective, when things are hard, it’s okay to lose. No one makes fun of you for not being able to solve a hard problem. However, how does it feel to take a 1st grade arithmetic test and get a 90? Yeah, you’ll probably get at least a couple of chuckles from your friends!

Logically, working extra hard on the easy tasks is also very important. If you are hired for a job, there are assumptions about what you know or what you need to do. If you demonstrate that you don’t actually have a fundamental grasp of the most basic concepts (even if you actually do), it could have severe negative effects with your boss, much more so than being unable to solve the latest hard problem.

Therefore, it is even more important to work hard when the task is easy than when the task is hard!

Just be extra careful when the task is easy to guard against overconfidence. After all, working through an easy problem 6 times probably takes less time than working through the hard problem once. That and they’re generally worth about the same!

Love Yourself

From the previous post Why You Should Show Appreciation, it’s clear that it is very important to give ot people appreciation whenever we get a chance. The irony is, while we do sometimes do this for other people, we often forget to give it to the one person that matters to us the most – ourselves! While we may step around on tip toes to avoid hurting other people’s feelings, we often forget to appreciate and love ourself for the things that we’ve done.

Why Should You Love Yourself?

So why do you need to appreciate and love yourself? Like, you are you right? It’s not like you don’t know what you’ve done. You are already reaping the benefits of your previous actions and sowing the seeds for your future welfare.

Well, while this is true, you maybe taking the fruits of your previous labors for granted. Strangely, all the relationship stuff between two people applies here as well. Your previous self didn’t have to work hard for you. He didn’t have to stay up until 3 am getting that project done just so you could get an A and get a good job. He could have gone out and eaten lots of ice cream, leaving you jobless and really fat.

The thing is, we only exist in the present moment, so the present you, the past you, and the future you aren’t really the same person. The past you is a memory of the present you. The future you is your imagination of him. By the same token, the present you owes your existence to the past you. That person had the courage to imagine you as you are instead of imaginingg you as a corpse!

All that stuff that person has done was mostly for you. You are one of the primary recipients of the benefits of his/ actions. In fact, in most cases, you are the sole recipient of the benefits of his/ actions. Doesn’t that person deserve your appreciation and love? Nobody else can fully appreciate the things he/she has done except you!

Love Yourself – It Matters

Now, you may ask, “What difference does it make? My past self is in the past! How am I supposed to thank him, and even if I do, why does it matter?” Well, that actually gets to the point of this article! Remember that your past self at the present is just your memory of him. That means you are in complete control of how you perceive that person! This means that while you are a product of his imagination, he is also a product of your mind. Therefore, your perceptions of him colors your perception of his perception of you (which is what his imagination is).

For example, you could think of your past self as an angry, stupid child. However, would an angry, stupid child dream of being an honest, reliable person? Then doesn’t that mean you don’t think of yourself as an honest, reliable person? Contrast that with thinking of you previous self as a child with an amazing amount of potential. That person can dream of being a nobel peace prize winner, an olympic track star, a billonaire. And since you are his dream, you can be those things too.

How To Love Yourself?

So, how do you show your past self your honest, sincere appreciation? Well, you can do it the same way you do it for other people.

Think of something you have today that you’re really proud of having. Perhaps, you’re really glad that you have a job. Think of the things that you previous self has done to contribute to that. Maybe you worked hard to get out of college. Maybe you came up with a great, witty idea that won over the people at your interview. Make up a list of these things in your mind (and maybe write them down).

Now, imagine yourself at the end of each of these situations. For example, if you worked hard to get out of college, imagine yourself at your graduation. There is no one else around, but just you and your past self. You see him, with his diploma in his hand, tired but clearly happy at his accomplishment. You walk up to him, and tell him, “Warren, I really appreciate the hard work you have done for me. Because of you, I now have the skills necessary to hold on to a good job and contribute to society. No matter what anybody says, you have done me a great service and I really appreciate you for it. You have also shown me what I am capable of accomplishing. Thank you for inspiring me to be a better person. I will strive to live up to your expectations!”

Effects When You Love Yourself

When you really do this exercise sincerely, the parts that you like about yourself will take up a larger part of who you are (since you think about it more). Also, because someone will always appreciate each and every little thing you do, it becomes easier to do those things that you might normally procrastinate about.

After all, why would anyone do anything, if nobody thinks it’s of any importance? The truth is, a lot of things we do only have importance to our future self. Don’t deny your past self the appreciation he deserves!

Show Appreciation

In Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People, one of the most important qualities he mentioned in getting along with people is honest and sincere appreciation. This has proven to be quite true in reality for me, from both the giving and receiving end. I have noticed people’s eagerness to help out when little things they do are remembered, and also experienced first hand the devastatingly de-motivating effects when my efforts go unnoticed.

Why Show Appreciation?

So why is appreciating people for their efforts so important? This goes back to the meaning of life and finding out what you want. People are programmed to want to exist, with their feelings guiding them towards the path of “most existence”. Some of these ways of existing include existence in other people’s memory, existence by altering history, and existence by contributing something to society. Let’s examine what messages you are sending when you appreciate someone’s efforts versus when you don’t care what they are doing.

When You Don’t Show Appreciation

When you don’t care what other people are doing, you are basically telling them that what they are doing doesn’t matter all that much to you. After all, if it did matter, you’d notice it, wouldn’t you? Since they are doing it, they obviously think it matters. Add in the fact that part of their existence is tied up in what they do, what else can they conclude but that you think they are not all that important. Obviously, if you find them unimportant, their existence in your memory is minimal. Additionally, since what they do is unimportant, you are basically telling them that they’re not really significantly affecting history either, decreasing that aspect of their existence. Along the same lines, it also implies they’re not really contributing anything to society.

When You Do Show Appreciation

Contrast that to acknowledging people’s contributions and appreciating them for their efforts. That sends a completely different message. It shows the person that what they are doing is so important that you remember every little detail. Their existence in your memory is indelible! Not only that, if you are so excited about what they are doing, it must have similar effects on some other people too. That must mean what they’re doing is creating a lot of value for some group of people and irrevocably altering history.

When To Show Appreciation

One says the other person is nothing; the other says the other person is everything. The difference? Only a few words expressing how you feel (assuming that you do feel that way).

Of course, that begs the question, what if you don’t really think some of the things that the person does is all that important? How do you show appreciation then? Well, in that case, you don’t! Remember that the appreciation has to be honest and sincere. A fake show of appreciation is just for your benefit, which doesn’t indicate to the other person they are actually important to you at all. In fact, it will probably offend him/her since if you’re not showing real appreciation, then you’re basically showing a lack of appreciation, resulting in the same feelings as those in the “When You Don’t Show Appreciation” section above.

How To Show Appreciation

So what do you do in this case? Well, you simply ignore the things that you don’t appreciate and focus on the things that you do appreciate. Did people say something nice to you? Tell them that you appreciate how nice they are. Did they do something unique that excites you? Tell them you appreciate how excited they made you feel.

Showing appreciation doesn’t have to be some gesture where you bring a ton of flowers or anything like that. All the “fluff” is just icing on the cake, but be sure to have the cake! The core of showing appreciation is to convey the message to the other person that you appreciate something they have done for you. Usually, just saying it sincerely is sufficient to convey the message.

Go ahead and thank someone for something they’ve done for you. It costs you so little, but it might mean the world to the other person!

In these cases, consulting your short term feelings might get you motivated.

Start by imagining yourself tomorrow. What would things feel like if you didn’t do anything? Wouldn’t that assignment still need doing? If you are stressed about it now, wouldn’t you feel even more pressured then? You and your teammates would be all frantic to get stuff done; your boss would keep asking you for your progress; you may not even have time for food or sleep. Now, imagine yourself having somehow finished the assignment by then. Think about how peaceful you’d feel and how free you would be. Your teammates would be happy with you; your boss/professor would be proud of you getting your project done early; you can sit down with a pina colada in peace. Doesn’t that sound a lot nicer? The truth of the matter is – you have the power to put yourself in either one of those situations! Why not pick the second one?

Not only that, but between now and the time you do your project, you’ll have to keep worrying about it. Every second that passes, you’ll need to worry more about whether the project can now be completed within the shorter amount of time that you have. You’ll have to worry about what your partners would say, what your professor would say, what you would do if you fail, etc. That sure sounds like a pretty unpleasant period. Why put yourself through all that worry and doubt? You’re going to have to “suffer” through the project later anyway, so why not just “suffer” through it now and save a day of worrying? Besides, the project is often easier than it seems. The effort it takes to start the project is often the hardest part.

Go ahead – get that project started and finished. You’ll be really glad you did. When you’re lying around stress free tomorrow, be sure to thank yourself. Good job!

Alone Time In A Busy World

In today’s busy world filled with all sorts of flashy things, it’s quite easy to get distracted. You get up in the morning and an alarm clock greets you with a series of loud beeping sounds. You check your email and 42 spam emails pop up and ask you if you’d like some viagra. You microwave a sandwich and an annoying flashing clock reminds you that it’s time for work. You buy a sandwich and all sorts of signs and cardboard thingys hanging from the ceiling tell you that you probably want a drink with that. You go to sleep and the buzzing of your fridge reminds you that there’s stuff to be eaten in there.

It seems like everywhere you look, there’s something yelling “Do Me!!”, “Buy Me!!”, “Look At Me!!”, etc.

The Unanticipated Alone Time

Usually, this effect isn’t even noticed. We kind of tune out all this stuff and barely notice that it’s there. However, a recent even made me realize that they do have their effects.

The last two days, Pacific Gas & Electric had the good sense to remind me that I had forgotten to pay my electric bill – by turning my electricity off. It resulted in a day without electricity, but eventually a little adrian monk got my power turned back on. The surprising is that while my power was off, I felt completely unstressed and relaxed.

There’s no whirling of my computer fans when I’m sleeping. There’s no buzzing of my fridge. There’s no clocks to tell me that it’s time to do something. In fact, since it was night time, there wasn’t even any light to show me the stuff in my room. There’s just me.

Clarity In My Alone Time

In this peaceful state, I found it very easy to focus my thoughts on the things I wanted. I thought about doing a good job at work and making my boss proud. I thought about the large, happy family that I’m going to have some day. I thought about the billion dollars I’m going to make in the next 30 or 40 years. I thought about the great problems I’m going to solve with those resources and the example that I would set for future generations.

These are thoughts that would not have flowed so naturally if there had been all kinds of distractions around.

Why Have Alone Time?

This experience made me realize that it is extremely important to have alone time. With so many distractions around us all the time, it’s very important that we know what we want. Otherwise, we get into the habit of going where these distractions tell us to go, without thinking about it. They suck up your time from the things you want the most, without you even realizing it.

You can’t be thinking about helping your family when you’re deciding if you want large fries with your drink. You can’t be thinking of buying your wife a flower when you’re thinking about being late to work. You can’t be thinking about your purpose in life when you’re trying to figure out what someone else is saying.

Just try it once. Turn everything off. Sit around for a while. Are you a different person in the dark?

Being alone really allows you to find out who you are as a person. Who are you when there is nobody around? What do you want to do? There’s nobody to impress, no approval to gain, no work to be done, no schedules to be followed. At this moment, there is just you. What do you want?

Having alone time allows you to re-experience being this person. You can really think about whether the things you are doing during the day are truly the things you’d like to be doing. It allows you to focus on your needs and wants without the distracting input of other people and devices. You get to think about how you are becoming (or not becoming) the person you want to be and have time to make the necessary adjustments for the next day.

Scheduling Your Alone Time In

This is clearly a pretty important process. After all, how do you know you’re doing the things you’re doing because you want to and not because someone else wants you to? Don’t you deserve to do the things you want?

Make a resolution now to take some time out every once in a while and go somewhere without distractions to reflect. Think about what you want and make sure that you are doing them. After all, you only have one life to live!

Seeing the stern look on his face, I begrudly checked all the boxes to the multiple choice question that asked, “Which of the following is nutritious?” I wondered what I was going to say when the teacher asks me why I picked all the vegetables in the list.

It had been a tradition ever since I was little. I would do my homework the moment I got home from school each night, and my father would check my homework for mistakes. He would tell me how many mistakes I had made in my homework, and I would need to find all of them before going to bed. Of course, in situations like the one above, where we disagree on the answer, it may take many many passes before we sit down and discuss the problem in question.
“Warren, will you come up to the table please?” my teacher asked me in front of the entire class.
I gritted my teeth and walked up to the table, knowing exactly what this was all about.
“For this question, why did you check all the boxes?” the teacher inquired. I had been the #1 student in her class for the entire year, so her confusion was quite understandable.
“Because everything is nutritious,” I replied, remembering exactly what my father had said the night before.

The teacher couldn’t help but laugh, at what I presume to be the strangeness of the situation. After all, I’m sure she could see how that answer made sense. Yet, she asked me, “So, is a table nutritious?”

Unsure of what to say, I returned to my seat.

While this experience wasn’t particularly pleasant for me, it’s really not nearly as bad as it sounds. Memories like these form the basis of my character today and is probably why I am a scientist. That day, my father handed me a very important lesson. He taught me to stand up for what is right, even if the stance is unpopular. He taught me to question the things that I have been taught, because they may be incorrect.

I also learned that standing up for what is right often meant taking an unpopular stance and earning the disapproval of my peers. However, disapproval is really not all that bad. Sure, the teacher and the whole class laughed at me, but so what? Life went on the next day, and I am all the better for it. Nothing was lost, while I probably earned the respect of my classmates.

Don’t be afraid to do what you feel is right. Most of the time, the worst thing that will happen is that some people will disapprove. However, like most of people’s opinions about stuff, it’s usually a fleeting thing. Just let some time pass and people will forget. A few weeks (or maybe months/years) from now, no one will care except you. Why not make your long term memories ones you are proud of?