Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

The True Power of the Bible

May 10th, 10 / 1 Comment

The Bible is truly an interesting work. Written thousands of years ago, many people still hang on it’s every word today. Even more still find the Bible to contain great wisdom, though they would never dream of trying to take it literally. And everyone has their own interpretation of the Bible, skewed by the verses and stories they choose to highlight amidst the huge pile of contradictory text that exists within its pages.

It is this contradictory nature and the way people invest so much effort into it that gives the Bible the power it has. That power is to reveal the character of the person interpreting the Bible. Those who think of homosexuals as second-class citizens will harp on the parts that condemn homosexuality. Those who believe that people are evil will focus on the role of original sin. Those who believe in social justice will highlight the way Jesus tended to the downtrodden and the poor. Those who believe in equality will focus on the elements that proclaim everyone to have a right to enter paradise. You can justify just about anything by picking and choosing your Bible verses. What you choose to justify speaks volumes about your character, not God’s.

Consider the large variety of Christian churches. Then consider religions outside of Christianity that still read and interpret the Bible in their own ways. You will find groups who are liberal, centrist, and conservative. Authoritarians and libertarians. Groups that are inclusive and exclusive. Groups that believe in their own superiority, and those that believe in the equality of all people. Groups that believe we’re all evil, that believe we’re all good, and that believe we determine our own morals. They all interpret the Bible in their own way, and how they interpret it tells you a lot about them. It tells you what their organization thinks. And it gives you a good idea what most people in that organization think, though listening to personal interpretations will tell you more.

People full of hate will use the Bible to justify hateful actions they take towards other people, and other groups of people. People full of love will use the Bible to support others. Generous people will use the Bible to promote charitable works and likely donate what they can of their own time and/or money as well. People with a need for control will focus on those elements that let them assert control over others when those others buy into what is said.

Naturally, you’ll learn the most about a person who puts a lot of stock in the Bible. Still, you’ll even learn a lot about people who don’t really care much about the Bible if they’ll play along and put forward their own interpretations, or if they decide to enter into a debate with someone who does believe the Bible is an important book. How they debate this person will give you insight into what even they believe in terms of earthly morals.

The same could probably be said of many holy books. The Bible is what I am most familiar with, so that is what I chose to talk about.

In the end, the Bible isn’t the path that gets you into Heaven. The Bible is a path to explore your own heart. If you are vocal about your interpretation, you tell everyone else what is in your heart as well, whatever that may be. The interpretation you choose exposes what you believe.

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Personal Development, Religion, Spirituality

Agreeing With the Group and Consensus

Apr 29th, 10 / 2 Comments

In the circles I run with, people value independent thought. It’s considered a sign of intelligence when you can consider things from every angle and form your own beliefs. And I agree that it is.

However, consensus beliefs (that is, beliefs commonly held by a large group of people) remain quite common, and many people hold to them, by definition. So why do we have them?

The simplest explanation is that they have merit. If a lot of people individually come to hold the same beliefs and ideas, there’s a good chance there’s some truth to them. As such, I think any commonly agreed upon ideas are worth examining. This doesn’t mean you should blindly follow them, of course, but you should consider there might be a reason for the ideas to be so popular.

Of course, there’s also the possibility the ideas caught on somehow, and once they became popular, people used my reasoning above to think that if lots of people think in a particular way, it must be the right way. This only perpetuates itself unless people know how to think for themselves.

Of course, it’s also possible to have more than one set of consensus beliefs, held by more than one group of people. The example that comes to mind most readily is politics, in which we have a conservative consensus and a liberal consensus. There’s also a growing libertarian consensus in the U.S. This is still an oversimplification, but it illustrates my point of multiple groups of consensus.

So, why buy into it? Because it makes sense to you. To take an example, of all the political views I mentioned above, I most identify with the ideas of liberals. The idea that people should all have a minimum standard of living makes sense to me. But, that doesn’t mean I agree with liberals on everything. For instance, I think gun control laws should be minimal. The right to own weaponry is a Constitutionally protected right, and shouldn’t be given up. While I can see some laws limiting weaponry to be reasonable, they all need to be carefully considered and weighed against the Constitution, as well as be narrow in scope to not have unintended consequences later on.

I use this example to show that you can buy into the general idea a group espouses while still holding your own opinions. Gun control isn’t the only area I disagree with liberals on, but it’s a well known area and easy to explain quickly. I still like the general philosophy of liberals, and I picked it up because it was out there and well known because a lot of people agree with it and can explain it well. But then, I examined it more, and brought in my own experiences to refine it into a worldview that makes more sense to me.

My point in this is to show that generally agreeing with a group consensus isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes, there is merit to consensus beliefs. That merit is how many become popular in the first place. The problem is only when you accept consensus beliefs blindly, without examination, simply because it’s popular. I have no problem with anyone who disagrees with me, so long as they disagree intelligently and not just because the group says it has to be one way. I’m certainly not saying that liberal ideas are the only ones that make sense, but it’s all in how you think about it and the process you use to come to your beliefs and ideas. I only used liberals as an example since that’s generally where I fall on the political spectrum.

So, if you commonly treat what’s popular, or common beliefs, as bad solely because it is common, I’d urge you to reconsider. Sometimes, there’s value to be found in beliefs that are held by a large group of people. Don’t take them all at face value though, just consider them and think about the merits they may have. Sometimes, the crowd really is there to see something good. Just don’t follow the crowd without thinking first.

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Personal Development, Reputation and Societal Perceptions

Everyone Has a Story

Oct 5th, 09 / 0 Comments

No one’s life is boring or a blank slate. Sometimes, our lives seem that way when we look at ourselves, because everything we do seems normal… to ourselves. But, for anyone looking into our lives, not everything we do is normal, and some things are going to stick out to them. These are the things that grab the interest of a lot of people when they look into the lives of others. I guarantee you that you have these habits and events in your life that, even if you find them positively bland, other people will find them fascinating.

Of course, not everyone will agree with which parts are interesting, but that’s not the point. The point is that people will find you interesting. Furthermore, there are some things people just don’t know, and possibly won’t ever know, about all of us. But if it were ever published as a story, people would love it. Learn to recognize this, and you may find your life less bland and more exciting. You may also learn to accept the bad in life as a challenge to overcome instead of something that’s dragging you down, though there are certainly other ways to do that.

Here are some examples from my life:

-I’ve informally studied various forms of magic and the paranormal since the seventh grade. I’m still learning new things about it and related topics over ten years later.

-I had a friend who got herself locked into a pair of real handcuffs, thinking we had the key to them. We didn’t. We needed to get help from a real police officer to get them off.

-I was an outcast when I was younger. I had no social grace and didn’t know how to empathize with others. As I grew up, I slowly learned to do these things. While I’m still a little socially awkward, I have tons of friends now and love getting out and being around others.

-On a related note, I’ve always had a strong sense of wanting to do the right thing. Unfortunately, when I was younger I thought this meant blindly following the rules. As I grew up, I learned that just as often, it means challenging those rules which are unjust or immoral. And actually discovering what is moral and just.

-I went to college to learn more about things that interest me and to push my social boundaries. Finding a job was of secondary importance to me. In hindsight, this may have been a bad idea, but it still led to me growing a lot as a person, and I don’t think I’d take back that decision.

I may elaborate on some of these in the future (if I haven’t in other posts already), and I also may not. To me, this is just normal, but other people I’ve talked to seem to think it’s either cool, or find themselves identifying with me on a particular point because it’s something they’ve found others don’t relate to as well. Some of you may find one or more of those things I mentioned interesting. Others may think they’re positively bland. I’m willing to bet most readers will be interested by at least one point though.

In any case, if you really think life is boring, examine your personality and events in your life and think about the story they all weave together. I bet you’ll find your life isn’t as boring or normal as you think it is.

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How I Got My Final Canceled

Jul 16th, 09 / 0 Comments

A few years ago, I took an introductory electrical engineering course as I was considering becoming an EE major. Most of the class found our teacher rather unreasonable. I think he meant well, and I certainly took some useful skills out of the class, but he was a little out of touch with all of us. He explained to us that he expected us to treat his class like a full time job. Just his class, not even considering our other classes. Of course, if all classes did this, it would literally be impossible for a student to carry a full course load. It would be impossible for any student who had to work to help pay for college to do this as well.

When he said he wanted us to treat his class as a full time job, he meant it. We had a group project, to build a voltmeter, ammeter, and ohmmeter. We were expected to do this on our own, with occasional input from our lab instructors who really never gave us any assistance. So we basically built the meters using Ohm’s Law, the two equations V=IR and P=VI. We also had the relations needed to determine how current and resistance changed based on using series and parallel circuits. If this is all gibberish to you, don’t worry, the upshot is we had a couple equations, knew basically what they meant, and had to build something useful from that.

We had “board meetings” to discuss our project, complete with prepared PowerPoint presentations and progress reports, and he expected these presentations to be of the same quality that would be found at engineering companies. This was on top of normal homework and class.

Needless to say, he was sorely disappointed, as absolutely no one in the class had 40 hours a week to burn on just his  class for an entire semester.

I say this to set the tone. We were all very unhappy with his expectations, and when we told him we thought he was being unreasonable and why, he basically said to suck it up and gave us a lecture about the real world. Ok, fine, it’s one class, we’ll triage and deal as best we can.

So, partway through the semester, he announced that presentations for our projects would be held on our school’s one reading day, used to study for finals. This is actually prohibited by university rules. When we cry foul, he just explains that we don’t have any classes that day, so it’s the ideal time to do it. Since we clearly couldn’t use class time for that. Somehow, he convinced us this was ok. If we were smart, we would have dug in there, but we didn’t. Still, he knew we were not on board with the plan.

Then, later in the semester, he explains that we’re all going to be sitting through everyone’s presentations and rating them. This will take a total of six hours. On our reading day. Which we’re supposed to use to study for our finals. Most of our class has two finals the day after the reading  day, and two more towards the beginning of finals week. I had learned the virtues of study the previous semester, the hard way, so I wanted to make use of this time, and I was less than pleased about this new development. I knew everyone else in the class was also very displeased about this.

I raised my hand. He called on me. With polite steel in my voice, I asked, “You seriously expect us to sit through six hours of presentations when we’re supposed to be preparing for finals?”

That did it. The class pretty much exploded at that point, echoing my statement and talking about the studying they needed to do as well. Eventually, he managed to calm the class down. Then he explained that surely, we could study for our finals another day of finals week, since we wouldn’t have classes. We countered with the fact that we had two finals the day after our reading day. This was, in fact, the truth, as almost everyone in the class was taking Computer Science II as well. The two finals were in CS and the engineering class we were having this discussion in.

We then pressed the point that he wasn’t even supposed to have presentations scheduled for our reading day for this reason. We hadn’t opposed it too strongly before because we didn’t expect him to require us all to be there for all the presentations. We had expected to take an hour our of study time to go present, then get back to it. He wasn’t very happy about this, because he felt this project was extremely important, as was having us all there to help grade everyone else. (Incidentally, what is this, the 2nd grade?)

Now, the goal here was to have a more reasonable amount of time spent on presentations. He proposed a different solution. He asked us if we’d do the presentations if he canceled the final. While I would have rather had less presentation time and taken the final, I felt this was reasonable, as did the rest of the class, so we agreed. We canceled the final and did the full presentation session.

Later on, back in the dorms, a student from the class informed me I was the man for getting our final canceled, and that it was awesome that I stood up to our professor as things were getting out of hand. As I’m not usually one to speak up, I thought it had felt pretty good too, though it was also really scary. I’m not generally one to directly challenge an authority unless I feel something is going very wrong, and when I do, it’s very uncomfortable for me.

However, sometimes, that’s exactly what needs to be done. This was one of those cases. It should be said that while we found him unreasonable most of the time before this point, after this incident, he did start to pay more attention to the fact that we were college students and became a lot more willing to listen when we had an issue with his very strict businessman style. This led to more compromises to meet our needs as students (who couldn’t dump 40 hours a week into a single class, for instance) while still making sure we hit the important things he was trying to teach us. In general, this made us all feel better about the class.

And we did pick up a lot of important skills in that class too. We learned to apply book knowledge to real life problems, we learned to present our progress in a businesslike fashion, and we learned a lot of time management. These last two are skills we likely wouldn’t have picked up or improved upon had we had another teacher.

I also learned to take a more active role in challenging an authority figure at appropriate times when things get out of hand.

Most importantly, I learned how one person really can make a difference. It’s all a matter of knowing the situation and then applying that knowledge appropriately so we all get what we’re looking for.

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Stop Being In Such a Rush

May 9th, 09 / 0 Comments

If you’re one of those people who can’t stand to lose five minutes of your time because it will make you late for your next engagement, and this is a habitual thing for you, I have some news for you: you need to calm down. Plan your time a little better than you are now. I’m not saying you should micromanage everything for more efficiency… actually, I’m saying exactly the opposite.

Micromanaging your time for absolute perfect efficiency is a bad idea. If you do this, you’ll leave no time for the unexpected, because you’re filling that time up with things to do. And the unexpected will happen, because you can’t control other people, and most people don’t micromanage their lives to that level. So even if you do micromanage your time, the person in line ahead of you at the supermarket probably doesn’t. And will probably spend the next three minutes looking for exact change, only to realize he doesn’t have it and hand the cashier a twenty instead. Now, sure, this can be irritating, but if you don’t have those three minutes meticulously planned, you don’t have to pop a vein over it.

So cut some of your less important things out of your busy schedule. Sure, the bills need to be mailed out, but if they don’t need to be mailed for a few days, leave them in the car and mail them out next time you’re out by the post office, or when you just have some extra time to kill. You don’t need to squeeze mailing them out into the five minutes between leaving work and meeting that cute girl for dinner. In fact, you shouldn’t, because it’s just a recipe for more stress when there’s a long line at the post office. This goes for all sorts of other things that could be done now, but really, it won’t kill you to do them tomorrow. I’m not advocating procrastination, just realizing things don’t need to be done right now, this instant when you have other things to do too.

Also, leave early when you want to be on time. Remember that five minutes I mentioned above before the date with a cute girl? Make it fifteen. That way, if there’s traffic, or just someone who actually drives the speed limit instead of ten over, you don’t feel a case of road rage coming on. This goes back to my earlier point, in which not everyone micromanages their time, and some people really just aren’t in a rush. The world isn’t going to revolve around you, so don’t act like it will. Leaving that time will make your life a lot easier when the unexpected happens.

This leads me to another point: your time isn’t more important than my time. Seriously, I just don’t care. And no one else does either. For those who talk like they just have too much to do and not enough time to do it, I have news: most people do have too much to do and not enough time. We manage to work it out anyway, without popping a gasket when something comes up that takes longer than we would like. My time is just as valuable as yours. That doesn’t mean I won’t let you go ahead in line if you have one item and I have a cartload. Kindness is a good thing. Just be aware, I’m not going to bend over backwards for you, and most other people won’t either… some won’t even offer you the kindness I just mentioned, and you should be prepared for that.

So, just remember, the world doesn’t revolve around you, and you shouldn’t expect it to. Plan accordingly, because sometimes, things aren’t going to be as efficient as you try to make yourself. Drop some things from your busy schedule until you have some extra time to deal with them. The unexpected happens, so if you have some extra time in there, you won’t be in such a rush. Then maybe you can stop getting so frustrated everytime something doesn’t go according to plan.

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Establishing a New Habit the Lazy Way

Apr 18th, 09 / 0 Comments

So there’s something you’d like to start doing more often, but you just can’t seem to find the motivation. Perhaps it just seems too daunting, or you don’t have the time for it. If you have a good deal of discipline, and want to make it a daily habit, you could try a 30 Day Trial. But perhaps you don’t want to establish a daily habit, and you aren’t sure how to carve time out of your busy schedule for such an endeavor anyway. I have an alternative that has worked well for me.

Deprive yourself of the activity you can’t motivate yourself to make a regular habit. I recently used this idea to start exercising regularly. An hour three days a week seemed like a big commitment to me. The truth is, it isn’t, but it felt like it would be. In fact, when I told myself I was going to work out for one hour three days a week, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But, I did something different this time. I told myself I’m only going to do one half hour workout no more often than two days a week. That way, I won’t burn out on the activity.

Of course, there’s an interesting psychology at work here. I’m not allowed to work out more than two days a week. You know what you want to do when you aren’t allowed to work out? Suddenly, you want to work out! People want the forbidden fruit. I’ve been working out for a month now, and there’s no desire at all to stop. In fact, I want to work out more. I’ve already dropped my requirement for limiting exercise to a half hour each day I allow myself to exercise. I’m still maintaining the two days a week requirement for now, but I’ll likely drop it at some point, and do three days a week as is generally recommended.

Of course, this reverse psychology isn’t limited to just working out. You could do this for any habit you’d like to establish on a basis of a few times a week. Perhaps you want to start updating your website more often. Or spend a few days a week outside. Deprive yourself of it, and it will start to seem like something that’s really worth doing.

Of course, this still takes some discipline in it’s own way. You still have to actually get up and do something. However, if you miss a day, you can make it up later, or forget about it guilt free, because you haven’t broken any of the guidelines you set up. For me, it wasn’t frustrating to miss a work out going about it this way, because I wasn’t failing to meet my goal. Though later on it was frustrating to have missed that work out because it was one less workout I’d done, but engendering the desire to do so more often is the overarching goal of this. So it ended up feeding my want to work out more in the end.

This method won’t be for everyone. However, for some people, I imagine this will be an effective means to establish a new habit without a lot of up front effort. Forcing yourself to do something seems like work. If you force yourself to do the opposite of what you want, eventually you’ll establish the habit you want, because doing the habit you don’t want will just seem like too much effort.

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