The Science of Self

• Seneca famously said, “luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” There is plenty we can do to prepare ourselves so that we are ready to notice and seize new opportunities that emerge, and make ourselves more “lucky.” • There are three main traits associated with being a lucky person. The first is extroversion, which leads us to engage with others socially, speak out, make connections and win others over. This will naturally create more opportunities for help, random connections, or new information that can spell a lucky break.• The second trait is open-mindedness, which is a receptive, spontaneous state of mind that approaches life with curiosity rather than fear, bias or expectation. With openness to new experiences, we say yes to new opportunities and encounter more life experiences that have the chance to evolve favorably. • The third trait is low neuroticism. When we are relaxed and not acting from fear, we see solutions, think outside the box and encounter unexpected positive outcomes – and we don’t jeopardize any good luck we do encounter!• There are three thought patterns associated with being lucky. Believing in karma means you take your actions seriously and are more likely to have a proactive internal locus of control, and treat others well – naturally leading to more luck opportunities. • Belief in your own competence and ability to withstand adversity creates resilience, meaning you take beneficial action for longer, which means you increase your chances of a positive outcome. • Finally, lucky people learn what works and deliberately try to recreate those conditions that they know have led to luck for them in the past. Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-home#AdversityCreatesResilience #BeingLucky #GoodLuck #InternalLocus #Lucky #Seneca #UnexpectedPositiveOutcomes #LuckIsWhereOpportunityMeetsPreparation #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheScienceofBeingLucky

• The Stoics, like the Buddhists, understood that pain is just a part of life, and taught that we need to retain quiet, dignified serenity in the face of adversity, focusing on what we can control, while accepting what we can’t. One way to practice the Stoic philosophy is to carefully consider your zone of control or, as Byron Katie suggests, identify what is your business, the other person’s business, and God’s business. • Another technique is to use negative visualization to develop gratitude for everything you already have. By imagining that things could be a lot worse, you re-calibrate your expectations and focus more with appreciation on the present. We also desensitize ourselves to discomfort and learn that we can, in fact, endure it. • One way to empower ourselves in the face of life’s pain is to take action. Action grounds us. We can always seek to elevate the situation we find ourselves in, draw on our strengths, and work with what we have. We can choose to build, create and solve problems. We can do this if we stop wasting energy on those things we have no hope of changing. • Finally, we can become cognizant of the fact that resistance and struggle come with a cost, and inevitably cause us to suffer, all while doing nothing to improve our lives. Though our brains may be primed for a certain kind of negativity, we can always choose to create meaning, do a good deed or take productive action to improve things. Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition.Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#AncientRomanPhilosophy #Asceticism #Aurelius #ByronKatie #CultivateAcceptance #ElizabethCarter #Enchiridion #Epictetus #MarcusAurelius #Mesut #MesutOzil #Ozil #PaulDubois #Seneca #SerenityPrayer #SocialInjustice #Stoic #Stoicism #Stoicism’SApproachToBeatSuffering #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #SufferWell

• Change the way you think about failure. Challenge and adversity are the best teachers you will ever have in life. Instead of getting upset when things don’t go your way, become curious about what happened and why, then try again, but this time do it better!• Forget about things like genius or innate talent. They’re nice to have, but the people who get ahead are simply those who are willing to work hard and do it consistently.• Adopt a growth mindset and constantly turn your attention, not to what is going wrong, but to the infinite world of the possible. There is a way out of your current predicament – how are you going to get from here to there?Get the audiobook on Audible at https://adbl.co/3NBG3vWShow notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition. Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#Adversity #Obstacle #Carlyle #Dweck #Edison #ElectricArcLamp #Failure #FrankDyer #HumphreyDavy #JosephSwan #ThomasEdison #Trafodata #ThomasEdison #TheLightbulb #AndThePowerOfTrying1000Times #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #Old-SchoolGrit

• There are two popular ideas worth exploring when it comes to the concept of luck: the law of attraction, and the idea of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Research into the effectiveness of the law of attraction (or wishful thinking) yields no support, and indicates that fantasy can actually undermine success by making us less likely to take useful action. • A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. It proves how powerful belief can be.• If you believe you are a lucky person, you are more likely to create that reality yourself — not out of thin air, or by magic, but because you are proactively taking steps to make that outcome a reality. • Robert Wiseman and Alan Kirman have independently discovered that being lucky may come down to believing that you are lucky. • Lucky people do visualize, yet they tend to imagine not the outcome but the performance of the practical steps needed to reach that outcome. They tend to be positive and optimistic, easily forget past mistakes, trust their gut feelings, and put a positive interpretation on events by imagining how things could have been so much worse. This, in effect, means that people who believe they’re lucky, are! Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-home#BadLuck #BeingLucky #AlanKirman #GabrieleOettingen #Gollwitzer #GoodFortune #GoodLuck #InternalLocus #Kirman #LadyLuck #LienPham #Luck #RichardWiseman #ShelleyTaylor #WhatToBelieve #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheScienceofBeingLucky

• Once we can properly identify suffering for what it is and become aware of it in ourselves, we can begin to manage it better. • Suffering takes all different forms for each of us, but according to the four noble truths, there is a way to ease and reduce our suffering, by letting go of attachment.• One way to do this is to practice distinguishing between pain and suffering, first and second darts, and facts or opinions. When you feel upset, slow down and tease apart the situation until you see it as clearly and objectively as possible.• Try to avoid extremes and black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking. Watch out for clues to cognitive distortions and bias like absolute terms, catastrophizing and generalization, and instead look for a balanced path down the middle of extremes. We can achieve this merely by changing our language and how we frame things.• Counterintuitively, we reduce feelings of suffering by being willing to “sit with” and acknowledge all our feelings, without trying to escape them. We can learn to stay in the present and be aware of how we feel right now, instead of letting our minds get carried away with thoughts of the past or future. One way to keep in the present is to ground in the senses.• Finally, take care with what you consume, information-wise, since suffering is often a question of overwhelm, or being looped into people’s stories and interpretations. Pay close attention to the media you take in, its effect on you, and how these distractions may be helping you avoid your feelings in the present. Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition.Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#EmotionalRegulation #Hanh #NobleTruths #Suffer #Suffering #SufferWell #ThichNhatHanh #HowDoWeOvercome? #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #SufferWell

• Live large. Take your mission seriously and choose to be a hero in your own epic saga of triumph and overcoming.• Endless resilience is possible when you tap into your deepest convictions and beliefs. Find that thing you are most passionate and resolute about and allow it to animate all your efforts. That way, any obstacle is perceived as a minor inconvenience, just a trifle on the bigger, more important path you’re on.• Read. Educate yourself and absorb knowledge wherever you can. Carlyle built a complex and sophisticated worldview because he was able to read widely, and this view would forever act as a buffer against adversity and a source of strength during dark times.Get the audiobook on Audible at https://adbl.co/3NBG3vWShow notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition. Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#Carlyle #FrenchRevolution #FrenchMonarchy #GeneralLafayette #GiltBuckram #JohnStuartMill #NapoleonBonaparte #Robespierre #Rossbach #ThomasCarlyle #Versailles #ThomasCarlyleAndWritingTheFrenchRevolution #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #Old-SchoolGrit

• Humans have an innate need to live in a world that makes sense to them, and which they feel they can control and influence. We want to predict, model and manage the world, but this combined with our tendency to find patterns where there are none, can make our perceptions of probability very different from the reality. • The way we experience and explain random events, and the cause to which we attribute these events, is highly personal. We may have an internal or external locus of control, which is whether we believe we are the cause of life’s events (the former) or whether our lives are at the mercy of external events beyond our control (the latter).• Research has discovered that there are further distinctions, and that an external locus of control can see luck as either a stable quality a person possesses, or a fleeting phenomenon that could disappear as quickly as it comes. The finding is that viewing luck as stable makes people more proactive – and more successful. • Attribution theory deals with how we attach meaning to our own behavior and the behavior of other people. How we assign blame and praise depends on how we understand accountability and our influence on events – and it has a powerful influence on how likely we are to act and actually achieve success.Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-home#Apophenia #AttributionTheory #BadLuck #BradWatson #CognitiveBias #ColumbiaUniversity #DefenseMechanism #ExternalAttribution #FritzHeider #GamblersFallacy #GoodFortune #GoodLuck #GoodLuckCharms #Superstitions #Heider #InternalAttribution #InternalLocus #JohnNash #JulianRotter #KlausConrad #Luck #LuckyCharms #LuckOfTheDraw #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheScienceofBeingLucky

• In the Buddhist tradition, the four noble truths explain what suffering is, its cause, and how to deal with it. The first truth is that suffering exists and is unavoidable, and the second is that the cause of suffering is our desire, craving or attachment. The third is that suffering can be released if we renounce this attachment, and the fourth truth is that we practice this way of being by following the eight-fold path. • When we are attached to one outcome or another, the Buddhists claim we cause suffering. It is our perspective, preference, narrative, and expectation about what should be that causes our unhappiness. In life, everything is transient, though, and always changing. • In the parable of the two monks, we see that resistance is also a form of grasping, and allows us to “carry” suffering with us long after the initial moment has passed. • In this philosophy, we cannot achieve happiness by trying to remove suffering from life, but rather by changing our attitude to it. • We can use the four noble truths as a starting point for reducing suffering in our own lives, or rather, learn to suffer better. To do so, we have to understand our own tendency to identify with, cling, resist or tell stories about reality and learn to simply appreciate reality for what it is: neutral and impermanent. Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition.Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#Buddha #Buddhist #Dukkha #Marga #Nirodha #NobleTruths #Samudaya #Suffering #AttachmentIsOurMortalEnemy #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #PeterHollins #TheScienceofSelf #ImproveYourPeopleSkills

• Dig deep and connect to your overarching life’s purpose. What matters most to you? What do you care about achieving here on earth more than anything else? Allow this conviction to give you strength to weather any obstacles on the way.• Be true to yourself. Beethoven really did things his way. This wasn’t always easy, but his commitment to his own authentic artistic vision gave him the courage to try things that others might not have wanted to risk. In difficult times, lean on your strengths – those unique insights and perspectives that nobody else could offer the world but you.• Finally, be adaptable. When one path closes to you, look around for the paths that are still open. Refuse to dwell on what is missing, what is not working, or what is difficult. Instead, constantly turn your attention to what is possible, what resources you still have, and what opportunities are still there to be tapped.Get the audiobook on Audible at https://adbl.co/3NBG3vWShow notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-homePeter Hollins is a bestselling author, human psychology researcher, and a dedicated student of the human condition. Visit https://bit.ly/peterhollins to pick up your FREE human nature cheat sheet: 7 surprising psychology studies that will change the way you think.#AimeeMullins #Beethoven #ComposerLouisSpohr #FrauleinCarolineUnger #GottlobNeefe #Lichnowsky #PastoralSymphony #Beethoven:NotEvenDeafnessWasAnExcuse #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #Old-SchoolGrit

• Luck may play a bigger role in our success than we think. By examining what we consider lucky breaks, serendipity and fortuitous events, we can better handle the invisible forces that favor some and not others. • Research has made surprising findings, i.e., that it may be better to be mediocre in skills but lucky than to be highly talented yet unlucky. Mathematical models have tended to show the irrelevance of skill and talent, and emphasize the fact that randomness plays a big part in what we consider success.• In the case of the discovery of LSD (and many other scientific advances), we can see that luck plays a surprising role.• Luck may play a role in an absolute sense in determining the hand we’re dealt in what Warren Buffett calls the “Ovarian Lottery” – where we’re born, our genes, and so on. But hard work does matter, and may factor in a more relative sense, i.e., it helps us distinguish ourselves from others who have been similarly lucky. • Luck and hard work play a part. We cannot control luck, but we can understand how it works and position ourselves accordingly, so that we’re ready to strike when and if opportunity does come our way. Get the audiobook on Audible Show notes and/or episode transcripts are available at https://bit.ly/self-growth-home#AlbertHoffman #AlessandroPluchino #AndreaRaspirarda #AlessioBiondo #ArthurStolls #BeingLucky #BentleyCoffey #PatrickMcLaughlin #Biondo #BrankoMilanovic #FranoSelaks #GoodLuck #LeeatYariv #LiranEinav #NassimTaleb #OvarianLottery #Pareto #Pluchino #RobertFrank #Taleb #TuYouyou #ZigzagPath #TheScienceOfBeingLucky #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheScienceofBeingLucky