We all get a dopamine hit from feeling self righteous, but it adds a
level of stress that we don't need. And it is pretty easy to stop doing
it. I have a suggestion of what you can do instead.
Listen to The Adam Bomb podcast here:
Episode 10, An Easy Thing You Can Do To Lower Your Stress Level: Judge Not
Listen to The Adam Bomb podcast here:
Direct Your Mind: What Else?
The following is part of a series called Direct Your Mind. Good questions can be used effectively to direct your mind so you're using your mind to work for you rather than against you. Read more here about how to use the technique.
Psychologists have tried many different things over the years to try to curb this disorder, but not very much has been successful. How do you change a problem child into a healthy, happy, productive youngster? Theories abound. Results are rare.
So Kazdin tried something unusual. He taught the troublemaking kids and their parents how to think up options for handling situations, and to come up with different ways of interpreting situations — other ways besides using hostility.
The result: Significantly less troublemaking. Fewer problems. It worked.
The question is, “Why did it work?” Think about it for a moment. When the only response you have is hostility, that’s what you do, regardless of whether it gets you the results you’re after. Kazdin trained these people essentially to ask themselves, “What else?” The parents and their kids learned to say to themselves before they responded to something, “Okay, I could do that (what I’ve always done), but what else could I do?” He taught them to think of new options they’d never thought of before.
And also he taught them to ask, “What else could it mean?” When someone bumped into one of these kids, for example, instead of immediately interpreting it as a hostile attack or a threat, he learned to ask himself, “Okay, it might mean that, but what else could it mean?”
It seems such a simple solution to a difficult problem. But it’s harder than you might think. Our minds naturally streamline our mental processes. Asking “What else?” makes the decision-process more complex. So it takes some deliberate effort to turn your mind to the task of coming up with alternative ideas. It isn’t really difficult, but it doesn’t come naturally.
This question is useful in many different ways. As I’m writing this, it’s really cold outside, and even though a little while ago I had the heater turned up and my feet covered, my feet were still as cold as ice. Turning the heater up and covering my feet were obvious solutions. But, I asked myself what else might work? What else could I do?
When you ask yourself a question, it awakens a part of your brain that answers questions. Ask a question, and your mind seems to search through all the things you’ve heard or know, and it often comes up with something.
I suddenly remembered something Klassy told me years ago: “If your hands are cold, cover your head.” She used to live in Lake Tahoe, California, and she learned how to deal with very cold weather. I grew up in Southern California and didn’t know much about it.
So a little while ago I put a wool hat on my head and my feet aren’t cold any more.
What else? It’s such a valuable question. It is especially useful when you’ve been doing something a certain way for a long time.
I’m always surprised when someone comes up with a new way to do something familiar, because it makes me think, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Once you see the new way, it seems kind of obvious. But it took somebody asking “What else?” to come up with it.
“Unaware of Mind’s effect in patterning and enslaving their lives,” wrote William Bartley III, “people live in a state of waking sleep, in a state of enchantment, of mesmerism, most of the time. Every day, in every way, they become more and more the way they have always been.”
A couple of days ago I saw measuring spoons, but rather than having a separate spoon for teaspoons and tablespoons and halves and fourths, it was a single spoon with one end of the cupped part capable of sliding back and fourth, making the cup bigger or smaller, and there were lines on it for teaspoon and half teaspoon, etc.
Why didn’t I think of that? Because I didn’t ask, “What else could measure teaspoons besides the measuring spoon I’m so familiar with?”
“What else?” is especially practical when what you usually do doesn’t work very well. When a particular person makes certain kinds of remarks, you could get angry and defend yourself, but what else could you do?
You can do a certain task grudgingly, but how else could you do it? What other ways could you go about it? In what other ways could you think about it?
When you interact with your teenager and you both end up angry, ask yourself, “What else could I do?” What other approaches or responses can you think up besides what you normally do?
Here’s a good rule: If what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else.
Of course, you don’t want to go with something just because it’s different, because the new idea could be worse.
Creativity is the process of thinking up new ideas and then rejecting most of them. But those are two processes, and the parts of your brains involved in each are different, so they shouldn’t be done at the same time.
In other words, when you’re thinking up alternatives, don’t judge the ideas for their merits at the same time. Let your mind go. Let it come up with crazy ideas, off-the-wall angles, impossible notions. This stretches your mind beyond the limits which has previously confined your thinking. Out of that loosened-up state of mind, a truly original idea and sometimes a perfect solution can suddenly become obvious. You just couldn’t see it before because you were unknowingly confining your thinking about that subject within certain parameters.
Think up ideas, and keep thinking them up until you get a good one. And if it’s important enough, and you have the time, keep thinking up ideas and see if you can come up with an even better one.
After you’ve thought up all the ideas you want, then and only then, judge the ideas for their merit. Do not do the creative part and the judging part simultaneously because it will interfere with your ability to think up novel out-of-the-box ideas.
The best way to characterize “thinking” is as a dialog. Consider thinking as a dialog with yourself. I know that if it is with yourself it’s supposed to be called a monologue, but thinking isn’t done very well as a monologue because there is nothing to provoke the thoughts further. A monologue is an expression of an already-decided thought. Dialog can create something new.
Have a thought and then criticize it and you have a dialog. Come up with an idea and then ask, “What else?” and you have dialog, and that’s where good thinking happens.
“Well, my in-laws are coming over,” says Pete to himself, “and they always drive me nuts. Every time I open my mouth, they make me sorry I said anything. Maybe I’ll just not say anything.”
If Pete stops there, his monologue has created one idea. But this time he has a dialog with himself, and thereby becomes more creative. “Yes, I could try that,” he says to himself, “but what else might work?”
“What else might work for what?” he asks himself. “I guess I need a goal if I want to think up an idea to solve it. I need to know what I’m trying to accomplish.”
“I want to feel happy even when they are here,” he decides.
“Do I feel happy when I say nothing?”
“No. I’ve tried that before. It’s not much fun. It’s a little better than being annoyed, but I’m definitely not happy.”
“So what else could I do?”
“Since I want to be happy,” he answers himself, “I should do what makes me happy. I really enjoy playing my new video game. Maybe I can enlist one of them to play with me.”
“Good idea. But I’m not going to stop there. What else could I do?”
“I like talking about politics. I could make that my theme for the night. I could turn every conversation to the subject of politics.”
“That’s not bad. What else could I do?”
And so on. The more Pete asks, the more ideas he will get. Some of his ideas will be goofy or won’t work very well, but thinking is like good photography: You take lots of pictures and then get rid of almost all of them. You’ll have maybe two or three good ones, but they were worth it.
Creativity is like that. You generate lots of ideas and throw out most of them. But in generating so many, you have more to choose from, so your chances of getting a better one improve as the number of ideas increases. And the way to get many ideas is to keep asking, “What else?”
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
Car Engines Last Longer Burning Ethanol
The following video is an interview with David Blume, author of Alcohol Can Be a Gas. He says that it has been discovered in Brazil, where most of the cars are flex fuel vehicles, that a car lasts three times longer when it burns ethanol rather than gasoline. The video is 6:41 minutes long.
Direct Your Mind: What Memory Makes Me Feel Good?
The following is part of a series called Direct Your Mind. Good questions can be used effectively to direct your mind so you're using your mind to work for you rather than against you. Read more here about how to use the technique.
But not if you ask yourself this question occasionally: What memory makes me feel good?
Every time you remember something, you strengthen the memory. When you don’t recall a memory, it tends to fade away unless it was emotionally significant, and even then a strong memory is not guaranteed.
Depressed people have just as many positive events as non-depressed people, according to the research, but depressed people reminisce more about their negative events. They strengthen those memories so they seem more real, they seem more numerous, they appear more vivid, and they are easier to recall because they’ve been recalled before.
You can use this same method in reverse and you will feel better more often. Your life will feel richer and more wonderful because your memory will be full of easily-recalled great times. You will have more confidence in yourself because you’ll remember more of your triumphs and successes. You’ll feel more in love because you’ll remember more of those special moments you’ve had with your mate.
Ask yourself the question and ponder it. You’ll be happier.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
Funding the Repression of Women
Massive oil revenues prop up repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and
Iran, who have, for all intents and purposes, enslaved their women. I
don’t think this is overstating the case. While it’s true that Saudi
Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to
drive a car and where women are treated like second class citizens, not
allowed to go anywhere alone (which is bad enough), it’s much worse than
that.
Human Rights Watch, in their 2012 report, said “The Saudi guardianship
system continues to treat women as minors. Under this discriminatory
system, girls and women of all ages are forbidden from traveling,
studying, or working without permission from their male guardians.”
Yakin Ertürk, Special Rapporteur from the United Nations, reported that
in Saudi Arabia, if a woman is fully covered or doesn’t have an ID card
officials may require her to have a guardian present, which makes it
almost impossible for women to make official complaints against the
guardians themselves.
In a BBC article, Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz, the daughter
of King Saud (the former ruler of Saudi Arabia) wrote about divorce
laws, “Today in Saudi, women are either at the mercy of their husbands
or at the mercy of judges who tend to side with the husbands.” She said
it is extremely difficult for a woman to initiate divorce. It is up to
the man to decide on a divorce.
And the custody of children over the age of six is automatically granted
to the husband. And then there is the “Al Dali” law. “‘Al Dali’ is a
sentence imposed by a judge whereby a man can stop his daughter, sister,
cousin or whoever from doing anything she wants to do in life, be it
marrying, working etc,” says the princess. “There has even been known
examples of it being used to divert a woman’s salary so that it goes
directly to her father’s bank account.”
In their educational system, girls are forbidden to participate in
physical education. And in school, kids are “taught that a woman’s
position in society is inferior.”
She also says that if a woman is abused by her husband, the only place
she can go is the state-provided refuges. But there the women are told
they have “brought shame on their families” and if their families are
powerful, they are “sent straight back to their homes.”
This is slavery. It’s more than discrimination. These women do
not have the freedoms their fellow male citizens have. The Saudi
government uses the wealth they gain through massive oil sales to keep
their regimes going, to pay for the standing army, police and weapons,
to run their government and pay off their male citizens.
They produce the oil for $1.50 and through an illegal price-fixing
scheme, sell it to the world for $100 a barrel or more. And because we
have so far failed to introduce competition into the fuel market, we are
paying for all this repression of women, handing over our money and
feeling helpless to do anything about the fact that they are setting the
price of our fuel and they are deciding where that money goes.
Because so many of their citizens are on the dole (the Saudi government
uses their excessive oil profits to pay their citizens), more than eight
million migrant workers are imported to do the jobs Saudis won’t do.
But the “sponsorship” system in Saudi Arabia gives control of the
migrant workers’ residency permits to the employer. A migrant worker
cannot change jobs or leave the country without the employer’s
permission.
Human Rights Watch says in their 2012 report, “As in years past, Asian
embassies reported thousands of complaints from domestic workers forced
to work 15 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and denied their
salaries. Domestic workers, most of whom are women, frequently endure
forced confinement, food deprivation, and severe psychological,
physical, and sexual abuse…In December 2010, authorities made no attempt
to rescue an Indonesian migrant domestic worker who had worked for 10
years without pay and whose sponsors were ‘renting’ her out to other
houses…”
Again, this is slavery. And we are contributing to it every time we fill
our tanks with gasoline. We’ve been unwittingly filling our tanks with
slavery, oppression, hatred, and murder. Our cars are fundraising
machines and we’ve been donating our money to cruel men with cruel
purposes. Each of us should look into our hearts and find a way to stop
personally contributing to Saudi Arabia, and by doing so help bring
forth a viable industry that could greatly curtail their power by
permanently stripping oil of its strategic status and weakening the
Kingdom’s ability to prop up its regime.
The second most powerful country in the OPEC cartel has traditionally
been Iran. In 2010, the World Economic Forum, in their Gender Gap
report, said that in Iran, women do not have equal inheritance rights
and they can’t be granted “guardianship rights” for their own children,
even after the death of their husband. When women activists try to do
something about the inequalities, the government targets them with
harassment and imprisonment.
In an article in the New York Times about Iran, Nazila Fathi
writes, “Girls can legally be forced into marriage at the age of 13. Men
have the right to divorce their wives whenever they wish, and are
granted custody of any children over the age of 7. Men can ban their
wives from working outside the home, and can engage in polygamy. By law,
women may inherit from their parents only half the shares of their
brothers. Their court testimony is worth half that of a man. Although
the state has taken steps to discourage stoning, it remains in the penal
code as a punishment for women who commit adultery. A woman who refuses
to cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes.”
In Iran, a law was passed that bans women (but not men) from studying 77
specific college majors, including engineering, nuclear physics, and
computer science. The new policy began September 22, 2012. Iranian human
rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi says it’s part of Iran’s policy to weaken
the role of women in Iranian society. “The Iranian government,” she
says, “is using various, different initiatives to restrict women’s
access to education and to return them to the home to weaken the
feminist movement in the country.”
Every time you fill your tank with gas, you strengthen these nations.
You give them more power to repress women and to spread their ideology
to the rest of the world. Every dollar that leaves the free world
weakens us and strengthens them. Every tank of gas threatens women’s
rights around the world.
We all need to get this reality to penetrate. We need to have these hard
facts come to mind when we’re filling up our tanks, and to strengthen
our resolve to put a stop to it with a sense of urgency appropriate to
the situation.
- Excerpted from the book, Fill Your Tank With Freedom.
Direct Your Mind: Ask Questions To Find Out More About The Situation
Often people who didn’t survive tried to impose their own “shoulds” on the situation: People should act this way; nobody should be allowed to be so brutal; nobody should have to eat food with weevils in it. Rather than opening their minds to the way things were really working, they pointlessly occupied their minds with fruitless indignation at what should not be.
Survivors on the other hand, says Siebert, asked themselves questions like, “What is going on here?” “How do the guards see this?” “What must I do to give myself a chance to survive?” They were curious, open, and inquisitive.
This kind of questioning is good for a great many applications besides surviving in a POW camp: at work, in your marriage, with your kids. Find out how things work, what’s going on, who responds to what, what people are feeling and why, etc., etc. There is so much to know and so little time. So open your eyes and ears and start asking some good questions.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
Why I Want To Burn E85 In My Car
2. I want to encourage fuel competition, and E85 is the only fuel competing with petroleum, so I want to support the alternative, and encourage its expansion, with the idea of making E85 the thin edge of a big wedge that can open the fuel market to many competing fuels. If enough people use E85, it will be profitable for companies to invest in waste-to-fuel plants like the one in Vero Beach, Florida, eliminating a tremendous amount of landfill mass and greenhouse gases.
3. The fuel is cleaner and better for my engine. Cars in Brazil that have been burning ethanol last three times longer than cars burning gasoline, according to David Blume.
4. The exhaust from burning ethanol is less polluting and less toxic, saving lives and improving the health of everyone and every living thing.
5. I would rather give my fuel dollars to American workers who spend that money in America than Saudi princes who spend that money on the spread of Islamic extremism.
6. Real competition among fuels would lower gas prices. Right now both ethanol and methanol could be sold much cheaper than gasoline if we had enough cars using it. Gas prices would have to come down to compete.
7. Reducing gas prices would reduce the incomes of the repressive governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, among others — governments that severely limit women’s rights. So fuel competition could lead to the overthrow of those regimes and potentially free millions of women who are now living in virtual slavery.
8. I want to recruit others to the cause (creating robust fuel competition in America) and the best way to do it is set an example — to go first and find out how it works so I can share it with friends. When someone puts E85 in their car they become more committed to the cause and are more likely to support an open fuel standard, which would create nationwide fuel competition at the stroke of a pen.
Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and the author of Slotralogy and Self-Reliance, Translated. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.
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