My anxiety: It’s not FOMO but FOOL Last week, I was given the thoughtful gift of a book “How to be Bored“. It describes the anxiety arising from the Fear Of Missing Out, made famous as FOMO. I have a hard time sitting at home doing nothing productive. I have a sense that I am … Read more
I drink coffee. It helps me wake, it helps me focus. It helps me write. I love the smell. (I don’t think I have ever had a coffee that tasted quite as good the smell.) Coffee smells good. On a good day, I’ll have 3. On a tough day, where my concentration is not good, … Read more
This post was originally published on Alternet and it is written by coaching guru Cloe Madanes. The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People Most of us claim we want to be happy—to have meaningful lives, enjoy ourselves, experience fulfillment, and share love and friendship with other people and maybe other species, like dogs, cats, birds, and … Read more
In 2001 I spent a weekend in Denmark with 3 friends. We spent Sunday morning in the sunshine visiting the Louisiana modern art museum 40 kms north of Copenhagen. The setting was beautiful, right on the coast with views over the water to Sweden. One of my friends said “this place is beautiful, its a … Read more
In my 8 years as a management consultant at Accenture, preparing a presentation was synonymous with preparing the Powerpoint slides. “Hey Neill! Proposal presentation this Friday…” – I immediately opened Powerpoint and started creating slides… A lot of powerpoint is not Great Powerpoint. Great Powerpoint can be a powerful addition to a great speech. As the saying … Read more
In a recent article Tom Friedman of the New York Times ponders whether we have evolved from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption, in which the “malady of modernity” is that we are now all afflicted with chronic multi-tasking and chronic partial attention induced by cell phones, email, the internet, handhelds, … Read more
There are 4 ways of dealing with Anxiety Remove the source of anxiety – avoid the stress. This is a poor coping strategy. There is no growth in capability. There will always be a reduction of my performance levels when the stressor is present. Manage my level of anxiety – learn to auto-adjust down (relaxation … Read more
On Friday I heard a story about values and the importance of not just accepting other’s value systems without ensuring they are right for me. I remember reading a book on psychotherapy and the “pathological critic” (Self-Esteem by McKay and Fanning) that described four criteria to evaluate my personal values that allow me to check … Read more
I was reading a book by Professor Richard Wiseman (nice name for a professor) where he quotes a study by Ellen Langer of Harvard University. Half of the residents in a nursing home were given a houseplant and asked to look after it. The other half were given an identical plant but told that the … Read more
The brain: 3 pounds, you could hold it in the palm of your hand… but it can contemplate the vastness of the universe, the reason for its own existance or why I am writing this post at midnight when I need to be up at 5am tomorrow. How? There are 100 billion neurons in the … Read more