Forgiving for the sake of Willpower and Energy

There are many ways to create and maintain willpower and energy. Forgiving yourself is one powerful approach. In how many ways can you forgive yourself?

Kind Forgiving

You try this when you run into a setback. If you beat yourself up every time you make mistakes, you will stay down longer than necessary. A better idea is to forgive yourself, learn your lesson and move on. That will shorten your recovery time tremendously.

Casual Forgiving

Once I taught a civil engineer how to write feasibility reports. He was a bit embarrassed that his reports were corrected a bit too much. And he sounded defensive and a bit too eager to enter into arguments with his colleagues and superiors.

I told him that I am very comfortable with my English. But I will also have similar problems if I am to write such reports. Because each domain/field of study has its own unique / idiosyncratic / peculiar / WEIRD stylistic conventions and usages!

But then, I told him, I won't argue. I 'd just accept corrections, stop making similar mistakes and move on, have peace and prosper.

BECAUSE I have a CAVALIER attitude to English (or for that matter, any language ). I don't take them seriously and so I can forgive easily, recover easily and move on.

Ambitious Forgiving

Kim Jordan, CEO of New Belgium Brewing says this in Fortune.

Stay on the forefront. When we invest in new technology, we expect some of that to fail. If you expect things to always succeed, you’re probably not far enough out on the learning edge.

So, when you are not making mistakes anymore, be worried, very very.
And, when you are making mistakes lots and lots, remember and congratulate yourself that you are probably "far ... out on the learning edge".

Forgive yourself,  forgive others, forgive all and move on. Better worlds, better futures await you!

Effectiveness | Dell | Obvious Open Secrets

Effectiveness is an open secret. Everyone knows what it is and how to achieve it. But the will and the courage distinguish the real deals from the posers. For instance, Michael Dell didn't even consider their formula for corporate success a secret worth keeping. He openly shared it with everyone including rivals. I hope we can learn from him how to achieve our personal or corporate effectiveness.

I'm referring to How Dell Does It

1. Play where you can win : where there is profit and growth, where your business model has an edge, where you have vendors providing standard-based components.


2. Execute.


3. Use metrics everywhere.


4. Adapt your organizational structures, your people(e.g. segment/modularize their responsibilities), the info flow in response to the markets and the technologies.

In other words,
1. play where you can win and
2. do play there.
3. monitor how you play and
4. adjust.

If this is very obvious, that's Dell's genius.
If it's not that obvious in the book , but obvious only in my summary, maybe that's my genius.

Loss of Will, Powerlessness, and Unworthiness

You ('you' here means yourself, your family, your team, company, organization, institution, or even your nation) suddenly lose its will to carry on, ( even to live on, in some cases). If this isn't serious, I don't know what is.

You still have the will, but you feel you have too little power to effect any change in your situation.

You still have the will and the power, but you feel that you don't deserve the good things of life, that you're somehow unworthy, that you somehow lack legitimacy to enjoy the success.

Any one of this set of problems can cause you a lot of damage. Then how do we prevent such erosion of will, power and worthiness/legitimacy?

Inspiration and sources

1. The Fifth Discipline
2. Many or any psywar/guerrilla literature
3. Poor Charlie's Almanack , where Mr Munger talks about how the nascent Coca-cola could have prevented "envy" from rivals and the general public.

Maintenance of Will

Peter Senge rightly points out that "will power" won't work. Instead, he recommends what he calls "commitment to truth" or Buddhist-like "pure observation".

Here is my example. Hitler is one of the strongest-willed persons on earth. But, then, near his end, he lost his famed will. Yes, there were reasons, but I won't go into details. Mother Teresa also died without achieving many of her wishes, but I can't suspect her losing her will to do good because she knew she couldn't win it all.

No need to be saintly, but that is the target to aim for, the guiding star to compass by.

Maintenance of Power

Again, I would recommend Peter Senge's "commitment to truth" or Buddhist-like "pure observation".

I have also found that Buddhism, and CBT(cognitive behavioural therapy) help.

Maintenance of Worthiness or Legitimacy

Again, I would recommend Peter Senge's "commitment to truth" or Buddhist-like "pure observation".

Say, you have a national soccer/football team. You are so rich you can base all your players in Brazil. You hire the best coaches, use the best equipments, train with the best techniques, tactics and so on.

1. You promote all this. As Mr Munger predicts rightly, your rivals and general public won't grudge your team any success. They will accept their defeat more easily, comforting themselves saying that "They spend most, so they deserve most successes."
2. Other teams may buy your PR / psywar/ propaganda. But your own team members won't. They come to Brazil, yes. But they train like Romario ( i.e. for every night, parties at night clubs till wee hours) and become shapely like old Ronaldo. Old Ronaldo is still lethal, but your team play like deer in the headlight, or chicken without head, or any cliche you have in mind.

They know in their hearts of hearts that they haven't trained at all, that they are not professionals, that they don't belong to such tournaments, that the other team are more worthy of success, and so on. Does this bring to your mind images of Mike Tyson in his match with James ( Buster ) Douglas or England team in recent world cup or Tiger Woods before his scandals became public knowledge?

The truth

That truth you know for yourself. That's the way out.

That's the way to regaining your will, your power, your worthiness.

You pretend you were born genius. Other people buy that. Then what happens?

That's why I love honest people like Feynman, who readily admits that he's using a 'different box of tools'. And as Feynman says, we ourselves are the easiest people for us to fool, to deceive.