Is it true?

Here's a great list of Universal Beliefs - they seem true... but are they really? There's enough stuff here for me to do "the work" on for the next 10 years - what about you? How many of these ideas do you use to beat yourself up with? I see several of my own favorite whips and chains...   So, how about it guys - let's pick something and get to work right now today!

• I need to know what to do.
• I don’t know what to do.
• I know what is best for others.
• I know what is best for myself.
• Something terrible is going to happen.
• It’s possible to make a mistake.
• People should not lie.
• People should respect me.
• I can control how others feel about me.
• I feel your energy.
• I need more money.
• Life isn’t fair.
• Parents should love their children.
• Children should love their parents.
• I need to make a decision.
• I can’t do anything right.
• I can disappoint people.
• I don’t want to look foolish.
• There’s too much to do.
• There’s not enough time.
• I know what you need.
• I am worthless.
• It’s my job to make you happy.
• I need a partner to be happy.
• It’s my fault.
• I should be different.
• I missed my chance.
• I need to be careful in life.
• People should listen to me.
• I’m not good enough.
• I am a failure.
•  _______ doesn’t care about me.
• I need to understand.
• I need to do it right.
• I did it wrong.
• There’s something wrong with me.
• S/he rejected me.
• S/he doesn’t trust me.
• There shouldn’t be war in this world.
• Women shouldn't be so emotional.
• People shouldn’t use animals (medical research, food, etc.).
• The world isn’t a safe place.
• People are destroying the environment.
• People are judging me.
• I know what they’re thinking.
• They should agree with me.
• I have to work hard.
• People should keep their promises.
• Other people can hurt me.
• Money will make me happy.
• I’m too fat (thin).
• I need to be in control.
• My body should be healthy.
• People are not trustworthy.
• _______ betrayed me.
• There is a purpose to my life.
• I need to know my life’s purpose.
• Life is difficult.
• People should be grateful.
• My boss should appreciate me.
• I don’t belong.
• People shouldn’t be angry.
• _______ did it wrong.
• I am right.

Source: The Work.com

The Truth

Self-Made Millionaires are not smarter or better than you. They have just discovered these secrets and used them to become wealthy. You can do it too.

Here is secret #18:

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. Know who you are and what you want. Express this with integrity at all times.

Here's my truth:

I'm not sure that I really know who I am, and I'm pretty sure I am ambivalent about what I want... that being said, I totally agree that honesty is best. It does require a fair amount of courage though! And I'm wondering now if knowing who you are and what you want IS a form of honesty. And is it way easier to be firmly honest and always tell the truth and walk a path of real integrity when you DO know who you are and what you want?

Ideas and thoughts anyone?

What do you think?

"Imagine making a promise when in fact, you know you would benefit from not keeping it. Would you keep it anyway?"

This question was posed in yesterday's post and I've been thinking about it ever since. How would you answer that question?

And what if you thought you would benefit from a commitment you made, and then found that more benefits would be had if you didn't follow through? What would you do then?

Which brings me to the question of instant gratification vs delayed gratification. Is this what happens when I make a commitment to myself of "no more junk food" and then when confronted with chips and dip, I'm right away having some? Is it that the immediate benefit outweighs the not so immediate benefit?

And does this make me an opportunist? Or merely human? And what about you? How do you handle delayed gratification, hasty commitments, and unrealistic promises? Do you think it would be helpful to create for yourself a habit of renegotiating, renewing, or rethinking what you say "yes" to?

And while we're on the subject of "yes," I'd like to point out that every "yes" has it's inherent "no." For example, "yes" to yet another slice of pizza may actually be "no" to a night without heartburn. At the same time, "no" to taking time for yourself to relax, or create, may actually be a "yes" to stress or unhappiness.

So, there you have it. Plenty of things to think about, questions to ponder, and answers to post!

Can a Brain Scan Predict a Broken Promise?

A new study suggests that brain activity may give away dishonest intent!

I found a really interesting article at the Scientific American about broken promises and brain activity. I find it interesting that they call breaking a promise "being dishonest" and I suppose it's true. Anyway, here are the highlights of the article. I'm curious to hear what you guys think of it!


Last time you told someone “I’ll call you,” did you mean it? We all make promises in our daily interactions with others. On the one hand, promises such as “I’ll return your book next week” or “I won’t tell anyone” are not heavily binding, except maybe in a moral sense.

On the other hand, some of the promises we make bind us legally and financially. By saying “I do”, newlyweds promise to love and cherish each other no matter what happens for the rest of their lives; hardly anybody makes this promise intending to break it.

But imagine making a promise when in fact, you know you would benefit from not keeping it. Would you keep it anyway? Could we somehow tell in advance whether you’re going to keep it or break it? And finally, could we predict your decision by looking at what happens in your brain?

All these questions are addressed in an exciting new study performed in Switzerland and led by Thomas Baumgartner and Urs Fischbacher. While their findings, published in "Neuron," are brand new and thus need to be confirmed by further research, they suggest that it may indeed be possible to detect whether a person is about to break a promise based on brain activity, well before the promise is actually broken.

The researchers ran a brain-scanning experiment in which pairs of participants played a well-established economic game involving trust. The main objective of this study was to illuminate how brain activity differs when promises are kept and when they are broken.

Interestingly, nearly all participants fell into one of two groups – about half were honest and consistently kept their promises, and the other half consistently broke them. The researchers compared the brain activity of the honest and dishonest players. They found that while breaking their promise, the dishonest players showed greater activity in regions of the brain known to be involved in generating and regulating emotional and cognitive conflict (the anterior cingulate cortex, parts of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala).

Fascinatingly, another network of regions in dishonest players’ brains (the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex and inferior frontal gyrus) showed increased activity while the players were making promises that they would later break. In other words, the dishonest players showed increased brain activity in several areas not only while breaking promises, but also at an earlier stage when their behavior was indistinguishable from that of honest players.

The researchers also examined whether any brain regions showed increased activation in the honest (compared to dishonest) participants, but found no such areas. They interpret this to mean that honesty may be a human ‘baseline’ – our brains might find it more effortful to be dishonest than honest.

This interpretation is rather optimistic about human nature, as it implies that we are hardwired to be honest, and that even those who consistently act dishonestly do not find it easy to do so. However, we must remember that failing to find a difference is not the same as proving that there is no difference. Honesty-related brain activity may be too subtle for such techniques to pick up.

In this study, each of the participants tended to be either honest or dishonest. Surprisingly, although we often think of honesty as a general personality trait, the researchers found no differences, on personality measures, between participants who broke promises and those who kept them.

Does this mean honesty is simply not part of one’s personality? Or perhaps we will never be able to capture honesty with a test? After all, being honest or dishonest involves a set of cognitive and social factors which may prove too complex to pin down.

In the Baumgartner study, the researchers observed people doing what came naturally to them in a social interaction – and for about half, the experiment was enough to elicit deceptive behavior.

The study opens up a host of questions for future research. For example, is dishonesty in economic decision-making the same as dishonesty in other situations, such as social, romantic or political interactions? Are dishonest people equally dishonest in different situations? And do similar brain mechanisms underlie all types of dishonest behavior?

So next time you say "I will call you" take a moment and ask yourself if you really mean it. You may be surprised to realize that you already know whether you do... or do not. This intention, we now know, is evident in your brain activity, so if you intend to break a promise, you might want to avoid making it in an MRI scanner.

Renegotiating Your Commitments

For today's post, I wanted to look at the idea of renegotiating our commitments. Maybe we could start off with a list - a list of all the commitments we can think of that we've made to ourselves over time. Then, one by one, we could go down that list asking ourselves the following questions:

1. Am I still committed to this?
2. If the answer is yes, how much time (energy, effort, etc) am I willing to commit, and when? What are my parameters? And what are my "deal breakers" in this situation?
3. If the answer is no, am I willing to release myself gently, no hard feelings, no guilt, no anxiety, and just let that one go? And how shall I celebrate this new freedom?

This one is worth some time I think, even if it takes several days to compile the list and go through each thing.

Return With The Elixir

Today we're exploring the twelfth and final stage of being a hero (from Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces):


12: Return With The Elixir

The hero comes back to his ordinary world, but his adventure would be meaningless unless he brought back the elixir, treasure, or some lesson from the special world. Sometimes it's just knowledge or experience, but unless he comes back with the elixir or some boon to mankind, he's doomed to repeat the adventure until he does. Many comedies use this ending, as a foolish character refuses to learn his lesson and embarks on the same folly that got him in trouble in the first place.

Sometimes the boon is treasure won on the quest, or love, or just the knowledge that the special world exists and can be survived. Sometimes it's just coming home with a good story to tell.

Here's what I want to know:

What is the special treasure, elixir, lesson or story you have to share? Are you sharing it? If so, how? If not, why not?

If your life was an epic fantasy movie...

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

-Douglas Everett

The first time I saw Lord of the Rings, I was filled with a deep sense of loss. I remember saying to the person I saw the movie with that I probably should never watch really good fantasy movies because I always came out of the theater feeling deeply and terribly disappointed with my real life.

The second time I saw the the movies was several years later, and as I was watching it, something Gandalf said to Frodo really leapt out at me. Here's the quote:

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

And I started thinking... so what have I been doing with the time that is given to me? And can I actually change what I have been doing with my time?

That line of thought came along with that older familiar thought that I really wished my life was more like an epic fantasy movie and less the dull unremarkable story it actually is. And I realized that if it really was up to me to do what I willed with the time I had - that maybe, just maybe, I could make the decision to live my life AS IF it was an epic fantasy movie. Which is, of course, easier said than done by a long shot!

And that was when this whole Lord of the Rings, "who was I and who would I want to be," was born. I put myself into the movie, and realized that for the last couple of years, I had been playing the part of Denethor. (If you haven't seen the movie, or it's been a while, he's the crazy depressed steward of Gondor who was always freaking out about how there was no hope, no one would help, his son was dead, and he might as well set himself on fire - all the while ignoring the fact that there really was at least some small hope, a number of people who were willing to help, and a younger son who was alive.) Not a very attractive person, and not someone I would wish to be in the world.

So, ever since then, I have set about to try and change my reality and create something bigger, better, more interesting, more fun, more exciting -- a larger than ordinary life. I don't know if I am succeeding, but this year I have progressed as far as Fanghorn forest, having spent a fair amount of 2009 as an Ent. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means I've spent way too much time talking endlessly about maybe doing something and not much time at all actually doing it. It means a lot of bla bla bla, and a fair amount of angst over what was lost so long ago that I don't even remember what it looks like anymore. It means minding my own business and trying not to get involved in anything that doesn't directly concern me.

"Don't be hasty." That's been my motto this year, and it would be a good motto except that it isn't Treebeard who I want to be in this world. In my heart, I'm not an Ent!

So here's the question for today. If your life was an epic fantasy movie - and it doesn't matter which epic fantasy you choose, which character could you honestly say you've been playing for the past year? And is that character someone you WANT to be in that world? Tomorrow we'll be talking about who we DO want to be, but for today, let's just think about who we have been up until now.
I'd love it if you guys would post your preferred movies, because I'll rent the ones you love if I can and then we can compare notes. If your epic fantasy adventure is a romance, or historical, or even a murder mystery, it doesn't matter. Pick a movie (or a book) you would dearly love to be "in" and tell us about it.