You jump up in your chair. Eureka! – You just got a great idea for a project!
You excitedly run off to a shop, get all the supplies you need, and start working immediately. You work for 6 hours the first day, 10 hours the next, loving the project… but after a few days, your initial enthusiasm wears off. You’re faced with weeks, or even months of regular work before you finish. You lose your motivation and stop.
Sounds familiar? [click to continue…]
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Vladilles and the Tortoise were sitting at a table at Tortoise’s place.
Vladilles: Gee, Mr. T, thanks for inviting me over!
Tortoise: No problem. It’s been a while since we saw each other, and when you called me the other day, asking me for advice on why you never seem to have time for your goals, I thought I might as well invite you over and demonstrate it personally.
Vladilles: Awesome!
(Tortoise offers Vladilles a cup of coffee)
Tortoise: Here, take this cup of coffee.
Vladilles: Thanks Mr. T, but you know I don’t drink coffee!
Tortoise: No, no, that’s okay, I just want to use it to demonstrate something.
Vladilles: That’s very nice of you, but I really don’t drink coffee!
Tortoise: No, don’t worry about that. Just take it.
(Vladilles takes the cup, eyeing it suspiciously.)
Tortoise: Now, let’s assume you wanted some more coffee…
Vladilles: Whoa, hold on a second! Let’s not assume anything like that. I don’t want any more coffee… I didn’t even want this coffee in the first place!
Tortoise: Yes, yes, don’t worry, my point is…
Vladilles: No! Of course I worry! You’re making me assume I want coffee and that just doesn’t–
Tortoise: Aaargh! Just listen, okay? Let’s say you want more coffee, but the cup you’re holding is already almost full. Now–
Vladilles: Well, of course it’s full, I haven’t drank any–
Tortoise: NOW… you still decide to add more coffee.
(Over Vladilles’ muttering, Tortoise takes a kettle and starts pouring more coffee into the cup Vladilles is holding. It spills over the sides, and yet Tortoise keeps pouring. After a few seconds, he stops.)
Tortoise: Now, what does this show?
Vladilles: That you just spilled boiling hot coffee on my hand!
Tortoise: Yes, but apart from that…
Vladilles: Oh, great, now it’s dripping off the table onto my trousers. I just washed them yesterday! Oh, and did I mention my hand–
Tortoise: IT SHOWS that if you want to add more coffee to the cup, you have to empty it first. So…
Vladilles: Aaaargh! The coffee dripping off the table is still boiling hot! And my hand–
Tortoise: SO before you can worry about adding any more coffee, you need to find a way to empty the old coffee out to make some space.
(Vladilles curses and lets go of the cup, which shatters and spills boiling hot coffee all over the table and off the sides. Both he and Tortoise jump up to avoid the spilling coffee, then get some rugs to clean up the mess. Afterwards, they sit back down at the table.)
Tortoise: So, what did you learn today?
Vladilles: I learned that next time, I’ll make you answer my question over the phone!
…
While Tortoise’s metaphor was lost on Vladilles, you probably caught most of what was going on.
The coffee cup represents your week, and the coffee represents all the goals and actions you do that week.
Now, we humans have a funny habit of keeping our cups near full. Unless you’re a guru on a mountain who spends 5 hours a day meditating, you probably fill up most of your free time with your hobbies and stuff like watching TV or browsing the web.
Now let’s say you come up with a great idea for a novel, and decide to start writing. But you can’t seem to find the time! In the afternoon, there’s a TV show you just have to watch, then in the evening, you really need to read your e-mails, check various news sites and catch up on your RSS feeds, because otherwise you might be out of touch with current events! And at the end of the week, you wonder why you haven’t written anything for your novel.
That’s like taking a cup that’s already full, and trying to pour more coffee in. It just won’t work.
Even worse, your cup is often mostly full of cold, stale coffee, but you don’t realize you first need to let go of it to get that fresh, delicious, hot, fragrant coffe.
We humans often get stuck doing the same things week after week, simply out of habit, or a false sense of obligation. We keep our cups full of stale old coffee because it seems like too much effort to pour some of it out. Or we don’t even realize we could pour it out!
So here are some questions for you:
The answers to those questions might surprise you. Use them well.
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When was the last time somebody really listened to you?
You know, really listened, without interrupting you, jumping in with their own opinions and judgments, without offering advice, without simply taking it in and then going off on a related story about themselves, almost ignoring what you said?
If you’re like most people, the answer will be “A damn long time ago!”
We live in a culture that’s all about instant gratification. It’s all about us, or we’re not interested. We have to filter through thousands of things demanding our attention every day, so it only makes sense we become intensely focused on what applies to us, and start filtering out everything else.
And so we tend to forget the art of deep listening.
There are 2 main types of listening. Neither of them is right or wrong. But once you understand them, you will realize when selfish listening is appropriate, and when deep listening will lead to much more interesting conversations.
1. Selfish listening
At the heart of selfish listening is this one question:
“How does this apply to me?”
This is a great mode of listening in many situations. When you’re at an airport, and you hear an announcement, you only need to know if it applies to you, and ignore it otherwise.
When you hear a mortgage advertisement, you only care if you’re thinking of getting a mortgage. There would be no point in deeply listening to the bank telling you all about them, and their mortgage plans, and how it would save you money on buying a house, if you’re not thinking of buying a house.
But selfish listening leads to problems when you apply it to people you’re just casually talking to.
Purely selfish listeners always interrupt you, keep offering unwanted advice, keep talking about themselves, and ignore anything you say that doesn’t apply to them. This makes you feel alienated and unwanted, so you stay away from selfish listeners, and they wonder why nobody wants to talk to them for very long.
2. Deep listening
Then there’s deep listening. This happens when:
…and you stay intensely curious about the other person, and keep asking probing questions.
For example, just yesterday, I was talking to a woman in her early twenties. I asked what she does for a living, and she mentioned that she has a PR job, but hates it.
Now, if I was in selfish listening mode, I would immediately say “Dude, why don’t you quit?!”, or go off about how I dislike my lectures. Which would make her feel I wasn’t really listening, and would soon end the conversation. Instead, I decided to ask some probing questions.
So I said, “What would you rather be doing? What would be your ideal job?”
And lo and behold, it turns out she already had it all figured out! She wanted to be a tour guide in Rome, but in order to get that, she needed to speak better Italian, and have Italian residency. So she was studying Italian, and had a plan to move to Italy next summer as an English teacher, which would give her Italian residency and allow her to apply for the tour guide job!
We had a very interesting conversation, and all because I listened to what is important to her, instead of constantly thinking about myself.
Obviously, you can practice deep listening the next time you’re talking to someone. There isn’t much trick to that, and I’m sure you can figure it out yourself. Instead, I’ll mention another really cool way I found to practice deep listening.
It’s on a website called reddit. More specifically, the AMA subreddit. (AMA stands for Ask Me Anything)
Basically, it’s a place where anybody with an unusual [occupation/hobby/relationship/whatever] can let others ask them questions about it. Then the community asks them questions, they answer, and the community votes on the most insightful/interesting questions and answers.
Two of my favorites are A mortician and A guy who’s been blind for two years. Check them out.
Just by reading through the questions and answers in the various AMAs, you will learn some really interesting stuff. You will also learn to suspend your judgment and just listen to another person’s experiences.
In every AMA, you will see a few people asking questions who are stuck in selfish listening mode. For example, the other day there was a spammer doing an AMA. And quite a few people just posted things like “I hate you. That’s all.”
They completely missed a chance to learn something really interesting from the spammer. Instead, they were completely stuck in judging the spammer by their own standards, and letting themselves to be consumed by anger. A great example of selfish listening to avoid.
Also, by reading all the insightful questions, you will see which ones usually lead to interesting answers, and get some ideas for questions to ask during your real-life conversations.
In summary, by reading the AMA subreddit, you will:
The only downside is that it can be a real time-sucker 
And to finish off today, I’ll share a quote:
“How to be interesting? It’s simple – be interested.”
- Gandhi
###
Update about life coaching:
Thanks to everybody who applied for the free life coaching! 13 people applied, so right now I’m re-reading the e-mails to decide which 3 people I will work with.
My schedule is packed from now right through the Christmas holidays, but I’ll probably be offering some more life coaching in late January.
If you missed the offer, or applied but didn’t get picked, check back in January
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Update 3: The offer is now closed. Cheers to everyone who applied!
I’m officially starting my life coaching practice!
Of course, I don’t expect you to immediately run to me, throwing hundreds of dollars at me begging me to life coach you, just because I say I’m a great life coach (I’m not going to say it, either). Instead, I’m looking for words from real life coaching clients. Which brings me to my offer.
I’m offering 3 free life coaching spots. Each one is 6 1-hour coaching calls with me personally, over Skype.
All I’m asking in exchange for the coaching is a testimonial. Which means a quick 1-or-2-paragraph summary of what you thought of the life coaching sessions with me. (If you don’t like them, that’s fine, feel free to say so. I want you to be honest.)
Then my life might be for you!
If any of the above 3 points is true for you, I’m not the right person for you.
Other benefits of getting a life coach are:
In other words (the best summary of life coaching I’ve ever heard):
We figure out where you are right now, where you want to be and what’s stopping you from getting there. Then we get rid of whatever is stopping you.
If you’re interested, just e-mail me at me@vladdolezal.com.
Include:
While my offer is not on a strictly first-come-first-serve basis (I will pick three clients who seem the most motivated), I will probably close down the offer after I get a bunch of replies I would want to work with. So act quickly if you want a life coaching spot!
I’m only offering this for free because I have yet to establish any street cred as a life coach, so you have a unique chance to get the benefits of life coaching for free. You probably won’t get another offer like this anytime soon.
If you still have any concerns like:
Just e-mail me! My e-mail is me@vladdolezal.com, and I’m happy to answer any questions you have about life coaching.
And remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Update 3: The offer is now closed. Cheers to everyone who applied!
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Ever noticed how looking at a happy face makes you smile?
That’s because in our brains we have so called “mirror neurons”. Basically, whenever you see an expression on someone’s face, these neurons automatically try to replicate the expression on your own face.
And once you have this expression on your face, it makes you feel the emotions the other person is feeling. Funny thing, your body… feeling a certain way makes you hold your body and use your face muscles a certain way. But it works the other way as well – holding a facial expression makes you feel the associated emotions. (For more fun uses of that, see my article on Body Language Basics).
That’s why being around anxious or angry people makes you inexplicably stressed. The mirror neurons in your brain just can’t help trying to replicate their facial expression, and that brings you stress.
But today we won’t focus on unhappy people. Let’s focus on you being happy and excited, and how that affects everyone around you 
About the last bit – if you expect people to be fun and interesting when you first meet them, you will naturally smile and be positive towards them. This makes them think you’re a fun person to be with, so they smile and laugh more. That in turn confirms your initial suspicion, so you start smiling even more as you’re with them.
Voila, just you met a fun interesting person, just because you expected them to be that way!
Have you ever noticed how people who have been together very long (like 20 years) start to look alike? That’s because over time they use the same facial expressions, which lets the same muscles in their faces grow and others shrink.
Similarly, if you smile a lot, you will eventually get a permanent “friendly face”. You’ll get those little smile wrinkles in the corners of your eyes, and certain muscles in your face will become more prominent because you use them a lot.
People who look at your face will immediately get a gut feeling that you’re a friendly, trustworthy person. They probably won’t be able to explain why, or will say vague things like “she had a friendly face”. But we are all extremely good at recognizing facial features, and we’ll subconsciously get a good feeling about someone who’s happy most of the time – even if we can’t tell why.
You know how cracking a big friendly smile at someone just naturally makes them smile back? Try it with strangers on the street! It’s a ton of fun . It’s like happy elixir – you just create happiness out of nowhere.
Tim Brownson calls this a smile ripple. You crack a big smile at a complete stranger on the street, they just can’t help it but start smiling themselves, which in turn makes all the people who see them smile a little. A ripple of smiles spreads around you, like waves in a pond.
On a related note, the same works with high fives. When you put up your hand and just confidently say “high five!”, the other person will slap your hand about 95% of the time. Yes, even complete strangers. You can try it while walking down the street. Or, if you’re not that crazy, just try it in a pub. Walk up to a complete stranger, and just lift your hand and say “high five!”. I guarantee you’ll have a fun time from that, whichever way it goes
.
(Photo courtesy of fofurasfelinas.)
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A few days ago, I asked what was the most important advice that you ever received.
I was blown away by the response, to be honest. A lot of you guys really shared some great advice that made me think. So here, I’m sharing all the best advice for life put together by FLD readers!
1. Son, we are too poor to buy cheap things.
2. Material things can be replaced, so don’t value them higher then family, friends or your health.
3. Focus only on the essentials in your life, cut everything else out.
4. Benny shared The Sunscreen Song, which contains a ton of great advice, so I’ll just pick one that really stuck out for me: Do one thing every day that scares you.
5. Follow your gut.
6. You can do it.
7. Good health is one of the most important things. Take care of your body because when it’s not working right it will make you miserable.
8. No one can hurt you without your permission.
9. You are awesome.
10. Too much thinking complicates things….let go what’s inside.
11. There is always a sunrise after every darkness.
12. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
13. What you tolerate, you deserve.
14. Take the first step–no more, no less–then the next will be revealed.
15. Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
16. Change habits one at a time.
17. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
18. You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit even if you use Hellmann’s.
19. You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
And, I’ll throw in one of my own, to make a nice round number
20. You can read books, watch videos and read blogs… but nothing will change until you get off your ass and take some action!
So you read the above list, nodding at many of the pieces of advice.
And right now, there’s about a 90% chance you’d just go on with your life as you did before, not changing anything. That’s the trouble with list posts – they’re easily digestible, and make you feel smart… but they don’t inspire change!
So I challenge you right now to actually take these pieces of advice and take action on them. Like this:
1. Go back over the list, and pick three pieces of advice that really resonated with you. Ones that made you think, ones that make you feel inspired to make changes in your life.
2. Write them down!
3. Figure out how, within the next 24 hours, you can take specific action on at least one of them.
Then think about how you can apply each of your 3 pieces of advice over the coming week. Write down a couple of ideas for each of them.
And now all you need to do is take action!
For example, I chose the one that said “Do at least one thing every day that scares you.” There’s this girl in some of my lectures I wanted to get to know better for a while (occasional 5-minutes conversations between lectures can only get so deep). Anyway, yesterday I kept the advice in mind, decided to do one thing that scared me, and asked her to meet me for lunch today. In fact, I’m off there right after I post this post
Good luck with your own life, and I hope you apply some of the advice from our great readers!
###
Quick update about my goals (life coaching!):
Remember how I said taking action is key to making changes in your life? (Hell, I even put a free 7-day e-mail course on the topic).
Well, one of my dreams is becoming a life coach, but I haven’t been doing much about that. So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me: “Why don’t you just offer a few free life coaching spots? Just get it out there that you’re a life coach!”
I thought about his question, and realized I didn’t feel 100% confident I could handle helping real life coaching clients. So I got in touch with Tim Brownson, who’s a professional life coach with years of experience, and he gave me tons of great tips and support. Long story short, I’ll be opening up a few free life coaching spots a week from now!
tl;dr Free life coaching offer (from me) coming on Wednesday 18th November, stay tuned!
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Normally, I write about ideas that helped me the most. But I’m just one person, and it’s quite possible that what made the biggest difference to you is different from what made the biggest difference to me.
So today, I’d like to hear YOUR point of view. What piece of advice changed your life the most? What single insight made the biggest impact on your quality of life?
It could be something you read on a blog or in a book, a quote from a famous person, or even something your grandfather told you when you were a kid. Any advice that really changed your life.
I don’t want to skew your answers by sharing my personal answer – so I’ll share that in a few days, when I sum up the most interesting answers I get from you.
Please share your answer below in the comment form (you can do it anonymously). (If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, click through to the site.)
Thanks for your input! I’ll see you again in a few days.
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I haven’t shared any of my crazy fun ideas in a while.
So today, I’m putting that in order. I’m going to give you 5 at once! 5 great ways to bring tons of fun into your everyday life. Let’s rock!
Imagine you walk past a bakery, and smell the freshly baked bread…
Does it bring back memories? Or maybe it’s the sound of a cow moooing, or the feel of a feather pillow, that brings back the best memories in you. It makes you feel great, far out of proportion to what’s happening in the moment.
Like Pavlov, who got his dogs to associate ringing a bell with food, you can associate pretty much anything to anything, just by having them happen one ater the other repeatedly.
So let’s use that to have fun! First I’d like you to think of a couple of ideas or memories that always make you smile . It can be movies you’ve seen, jokes you’ve heard, or something that happened to you personally. Pick somewhere between 3-5 of these.
(Personally, I picked FPS_Doug shouting “BOOM HEADSHOT!”, the Monty Python sketch about Four Yorkshiremen, and a couple of personal memories that would take too long to explain.)
Next, we’re going to pick everyday objects to associate these with! For example, you could pick your bathroom door, or a chair in your room, or something you see out of your bedroom window. In any case, pick something you see several times every day. We’ll turn these into your fun triggers.
Okay? Let’s get started! (If you haven’t yet, pick at least one fun memory and one mundane object, right now!)
Take one of your fun memories. Take one of your everyday objects. Look at the object, then close your eyes and think of the fun memory until you crack a huge smile. Then open your eyes and shake it off – think of something completely unrelated (If a quiz is quizzical, what is a test?).
Then look at the object again, and think of your fun memory until you have a huge grin on your face. Then break your state again by looking around and thinking of something unrelated. Repeat 10 times, which should take you a few minutes in total.
If you’ve done this right, now every time you look at your boring everyday object, you get a huge grin on your face because it brings back that fun memory!
Repeat this with the other fun memories you picked, and you’re done! You’ve just brought a ton of fun into your life for every day in the foreseeable future… and it only cost you a few minutes of your time and a bunch of happy thoughts! 
If you’re shy and introverted, this can be a tough one. But I’m putting it here anyway, because there’s so much fun potential in it!
We’re talking about having fun here, so forget for a moment that meeting random strangers can be great for your business and personal life. Let’s just focus on the fun part of it.
The first step would be to not take yourself too seriously. You’ll likely never see this stranger again, so forget about what they think of you.
Second step – realize that weird/crazy is much more fun than boring. So don’t try to stay inside your comfort zone by having boring conversations about the weather. Instead, start talking to a random stranger, and immediately go for a completely crazy topic! For example:
[scene: you're standing at a road crossing, waiting for the light to turn green. You turn to the person next to you.]
You: Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
Stranger: Uh-huh.
You: Who do you think would win a fight between Iron Man and Godzilla?
If they just look at you like you’re crazy, don’t worry about it. They’re just a stuck up bore. And even if they look away and ignore you, they will later get to their office, say “Guys, you won’t believe what happened to me today!” and have a good laugh with their friends at your expense. You just brightened up their day!
As long as you have a fun and positive attitude with it, you can’t go wrong. And if someone answers “Duuuude! Are you nuts?! Of course Iron Man would win, he can frickin’ fly!” – you might have just found a friend for life!
I first started playing around with using my senses after reading Feynman’s experiments with smelling. In fact, I wrote about this here on FLD before:
Richard Feynman read that people are a lot better at smelling than they think. So he proposed a little experiment to his wife. In her room, there was a shelf with old books she hadn’t touched in a while. Feynman would go out for two minutes, she would take a book off the shelf, hold it in her hands and then put it back. Feynman would then come back in and try to figure out which book she took by smelling them.
He got it right.
Later he got three of his friends to try a similar experiment. Each of the friends would touch a book, and Feynman would try which friend handled which book. He got it right again!
Of course, after hearing this story, I had to try it myself. So I got a friend, and we both took turns going out of the room as the other held one book in their hands. Then we tried guessing which book it was, just by smelling them. We both got it right on our first try.
As Feynman said, the books that havent been handled in a while have a dry, uninterested smell. But the ones that have been touched, they have a sort of moist smell. More alive.
Try it yourself sometime. It’s silly, it’s fun, and at the same time it’s quite amazing!
You’re a lot better at smelling than you think! And while we’re talking about smelling… try thoroughly smelling other things. Ever tried smelling your computer screen? (Do it right now!) A glass of mineral water? A fresh newspaper? An old newspaper?
There’s a lot more fun you can have with using your other senses in unusual ways (like blindfold eating), but this article is already long as it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.
When I was a kid, we used to ring strangers’ doorbells and run away, or leave coins on the ground, propped up on a small stone, with the underside covered in mustard. And we used to laugh when we thought about how annoyed the strangers would get.
Then I grew up.
I know that because now instead of doing small things that will annoy someone I’ll never see, and giggling about that, I do small things that will make someone I’ll never see feel good, and I giggle about that!
A very simple fun way of doing this is put-pocketing (do this to friends):
Put-pocketing is like pick-pocketing, except instead of stealing stuff, you put something in the pocket. So take a small piece of paper, write (or draw) some positive message, and try slipping into one of your friends’ pockets without them noticing. For added fun, write that they’re supposed to pass it on to someone else, again without the recipient noticing.
I describe my experiences with this in detail in my article Read Minds and Lift Your Mood – Body Language Basics. But the basic idea is that smiling makes you have fun! So just put a big grin on your face, and fun will follow shortly
(Random note – when psychologists want you to feel happy without realizing they’re making you do that, they’ll ask you to hold a pencil in your teeth, without letting it touch your lips. This forces your lips into a smile, which makes you happy!)
Oh, and since we’re having fun with this – if anybody asks why you’re smiling, make up some crazy reason! Like…
“My doctor discovered an imbalance in my blood chemicals. He prescribed me one hour of forced smiling each day.”
or…
“I’m scaring away polar bears.”
“Polar bears?”
“Well, do you see any polar bears around?”
“No…”
“See? It’s working!”
And that’s all for today. Have a funtabulous day!
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Hi, I'm Vlad, and I love the human mind! I believe anyone can live their life in a way that makes them feel deeply, passionately alive. So that's what I blog about - coming alive with passion!
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