Wednesday, December 17, 2008Question Thinking
I just started reading a new book that my boss lent me. It's titled: "change your questions change your life" by Marilee G. Adams.
I found it helpful as it helped me understand a number of things about myself and my own attitudes and even shed light on some things I had been doing intuitively. It also shed some light on some advice my uncle gave me last year.
A year ago this time, I was in Taiwan, Taipei. I was gathering with my mother, my uncle and my grandmother for dinner. My grandmother had made a great meal, but I was sick with food poisoning and in a foul mood. There were some jokes made at my expense and in a moment of weakness I quipped back something sarcastic.
I immediately apologized and smoothed things over. But that night, I tried to understand why I couldn't hold the comment back. I spoke with my uncle and he gave me a few bits of advice that I didn't understand at the time.
He told me that getting upset from time to time or even annoyed is natural. You need to accept it, and embrace it-- holding it in or back makes no sense. But what he said next caught me by surprise. He said that this approach really only gets you so far. Ultimately, the next level of self-thought is to simply not get upset at all. He said that the trick is to simply consider the positive aspects of whatever situational context you're in and move forward from that. He said to me that this is the most useful thing he's learned over the last few years.
At the time I felt that what he said was impossible. After reading this book, I think I have a small understanding of what he meant.
The book describes an extremely useful and practical active-thought framework to identify, choose and actively question your emotions and create positive outcomes. I found that I had used some of these items intuitively, but that the approach described in the book was stellar. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to get great results from life.
As the book states: "Great results come from great questions"
posted @ 10:25 AM PST [link] [No Comments]Monday, December 15, 2008The meter is always running
I'm turning 30 in a few months.
I think about it in a few ways:
1) What have I done in the last 29 years that I want to keep doing? 2) What have I done in the last 29 years that I want to stop doing? 3) What haven't I done that I should learn about and try to do?
I think there's a lot to be said about each of those questions. So maybe I should blog about them seperately.
It's kind've scary to consider the number of years spent already and infer the number of years remaining. Perhaps that's a good starting point-- in the big picture, I'm mortal. That's a good context to consider the three points above. I should remember that time is short, and that the meter is always running.
posted @ 09:41 AM PST [link] [No Comments]
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