Tag Archives: distinctions

Context, Mindset, Backdrop… why should you care?

Context, Mindset, Backdrop… why should you care?

This is going to be a mind-bender, and at the end of it you’ll come up a lot smarter, and with a lot more power over your life… interested?

It is all about mindset! Context is decisive… and what the heck is a backdrop?

Let’s start with backdrop. Why? Because it’s the easiest to see what’s going on.

I say that the backdrop is more important than what happens in the foreground.

Someone says something to you and you are hurt.
Your boss assigns someone else to an important assignment.
Your experiment at making money with your first product is a flop.
You continually have trouble and emergency in your life.

The above statements are the foreground.

Depending on your mental attitude (mindset) you say it’s bad, or it’s good, or you have no opinion.

So far so good… are you still with me? Good.
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Beingness is invisible, but it is the key to happiness…

I am learning what to teach, what is missing, what is needed from my students.

There is something I struggled with for decades, I have, it seems, overcome it, and have never seemed to look at it again… ponder it, and then teach it.

A different look at distinction reveals a different way lack of distinctions make life more difficult.

Imagine a surgeon in the operating room talking like this: Nurse, give me that little thingie… you know the one with the curved blades that aren’t blades at all, but look like blades… you know?

If things don’t have exactly defined names, the surgeon will kill the patient.

Half of being a surgeon is to know what tool to use and what it is called.

The same is true in every area of life, especially when it also concerns other people.
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Do You Think You Can Tell WHAT You See?

Most of us are sure we can. We make decisions based on what we see, and our decisions and actions take us to live the life we live.

Most of us live a life of quiet desperation. It was true at the turn of the last century, and it is true now.

There was a discipline and coaching paradigm I studied and used about 9 years ago. It is based on axiology, the Nobel Prize nominated work of Robert Hartman.

Axiology is the study of value or quality. It is the science that deals with what is good and what is not. Beyond and independent of subjective judgment.

The test (Value Profile) we ran in axiology had 4 parameters by which we could map out the potential for success of any individual.

One of them relates to the title. The parameter is called “clarity”.

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Make your plane go where you want it to go… or what one thing you want to learn from Babe Ruth

Make your plane go where you want it to go…

This is probably the most shocking sentence in the whole 67 step program.

I literally don’t know anyone who lives that way.

People try to succeed, try a diet, try this and try that… while their plane crashes in every area.

So what is the difference between who are like that, who are on their way to become that kind of person, and others who never ever land their plane on the landing strip?
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When all your efforts result in no learning


“It’s easier to evaluate your results through drunken delusion than to gaze soberly in the mirror and face the truth.”

I had a conversation yesterday with one of my clients, and as it is predictable in many conversations, weight came up.

Weight is a universal source of grief, effort, disappointment, and self-hate.

But why would that be so?

I can recall, in my life, four “campaigns” to regain control over my body.

The most recent one is successful and is going to last. The previous ones included one or two elements that were not sustainable. for example the first time I was on a starvation diet, and I maintained it for 10 years, until I came to the United States, where the plenty beat me on my a**.
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Your vocabulary is predictive of your success, happiness, and life enjoyment?


If what we need is a larger vocabulary so we don’t fall into the trap of the mind where everything is the same as everything else, that it makes a lot of sense to start, as soon as you can, building a larger vocabulary.
With every new word a large chunk of the invisible reveals itself… priceless.
Here is the first word:

Jaunty. 1. könnyed and 2. vidám in Hungarian, I have to admit that in the past 37 years since I left Hungary, I haven’t seen anyone being jaunty… Maybe I saw people obnoxiously loud and too much smiling… but jaunty?

Jaunty is having or expressing a lively, cheerful, and self-confident manner, cheerful, cheery, happy, merry, jolly, joyful, gleeful, glad. It is not the forced jolliness of pretense. And it is not the drunken glibness of the party. It is beautiful and it is natural. And I am, occasionally that, but haven’t had a word for it.

When I look at people’s reaction to it, they cheer up and smile with you…
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Just hang in there! Your reactiveness is destructive!


Whether you know it or not: you are reactive… It is part of the human condition.

Reactiveness: Hastiness coupled with easy resignation is the death of any dream.

Although you can kill a dream in many different ways… whether it is a dream for a superb business that allows you the time to work on the business and not in the business… whether it is a dream for self-expression, fulfillment, and making a difference, whether it is for fame and fortune, whether it is for health, vitality and mobility in your later years… you can kill it in many many many ways.

And god knows we do everything in our power to kill our dreams.
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Understanding, mental representation, wrapping your mind around things


What big words, Sophie… ugh. Mental representation? huh?

But it is important to understand what your words mean, the words you use.

I am not sure what understanding is… I never use this word about myself. I either get it or I don’t. I either see it or I don’t. And something I cannot see how it connects to other things… but I don’t use my “mind” to approach things.
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