Thought Architecture

When most people learn, they set goals and limits according to what they choose and not based on ability. Ability in the mind is something very infrequently discussed as a muscle and is nothing that is fluid. It constantly adapts. When I coach clients with language learning, there is one metric and one metric only I gauge them on: working memory capacity. It is something that requires evidence, pr...

Most people think that their intelligence capacity is limited. On the contrary, by taking steps to ensure our cognitive load is within our limits, by making sure we have the existing schema for it, and by instituting a little working memory challenge, we can become automatic and so efficient at something that it almost seems supernatural. When in fact, it is a combination of training and making su...

It’s all about skills. What do you know about the skills required to make friends, deepen friendships and promote healthy relationships? There are absolutely observable variables before we need to make inferences about personality and the connection between friendships and who we are. “You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”...

Remember that depending on your context, there may be better reflection and planning prompts. Depending on your context, you may find this incredibly helpful. And finally, depending on your context, this may be irrelevant as an exercise. Planning and envisioning a year ahead may mean you are in the position to dedicate yourself to growth, but don’t let this fool you: perhaps you are in a situation...

Failure? Don’t get it twisted; when you need results and you have zero time available to you, the minimum effective dose is an apt solution. HOWEVER!! (in caps), exploring, playing, looking just because, this is great to dedicate yourself to develop parts of yourself you didn’t even know about. Learning about the way something works is messy. And fun. Dedicating yourself to levelling up your skill...

The brain seems to have an amazing ability to take multiple perspectives all at once. Often though, when we are too caught up in life, we see red and are fully present in the moment. Being challenged and triggered. However, in other cases, playing a game of football can see us fully present in the moment too. Similarly, planning and reflecting can help you increases emotional distance between you...

I’m not a fan of “wisdom gurus”. Hell, I’m not a fan of anything that says to follow blindly. If you need something appropriate for you, an assessment must first be done to make sure the advice fits your context, history and goals. Sure there are things that are universal, death and taxes for example. However, some advice can lead you to places you don’t want to be. Much better, I would argue, to...

Interesting in committing more to a stillness practice? Think about a more diverse set of practices that can flex around your needs, your lifestyle. Hardcore, focus-on-breath meditations for long durations can make anyone feel like it is too much to handle, so why start there in the first place? Here are a few keys to help you with your stillness: * Active or passive, Listening to someone else’s m...

Meditation. What a loaded word. Personally, I prefer ‘stillness’ as a term to describe the plethora of practices that can shoved in the same boat. Tools in the tool box. The question is whether you have a variety of tools or just a hammer? This episode goes into the beginning ideas that I have on meditation and going through a few of the purposes of it. If you want to go deeper, send me a message...

It all starts with anger. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured - Mark Twain And so if that is the case, we need to guard against this so-called acid. We do this with an upgraded model and then a toolkit. This is the first step. Upgrade your model, then take inventory of your ‘settings’. More on this to come… I always saw...

The idea of humans. What can be learned through observation. Something as simple as asking the idea of humans behaving selflessly or selfishly when the proverbial chips are down, becomes a major point of contention. The social brain hypothesis actually comes in handy once again to accurate explain/ predict the behaviour of humans. We observe multiple points of data and infer the model and viola! N...

In this episode, let’s discuss the issue of simplifying everything. Solutions need to match the context and so the simple solution may be good for some and terrible for others. Additionally, by identifying our preferences, we can spend time developing our lopsidedness. Do you tend to drill down to the details or do you prefer a bird’s eye view of the situation? The model I talk about is very simpl...

What the hell is “happiness” anyway? Do we need it? And let’s not even get started on emotional bypassing to only feel the good emotions. All emotions are good. They all serve their purposes. More to the point, we need to ‘exercise’ certain muscles in order to deepen our our feelings and gain a better understanding of what moves the needle for us. The benefits of positive emotions don't stop after...

Is anything ever truly bad or good? It is constant to define something as having relative value. What is delicious to one person is disgusting for another. It is all relative. So no huge umbrella rules, nor totally individual formulas without thinking about the context of things. * What are all the moving parts of this system? * What is upstream? * What is downstream? * Is there something underuse...

When looking into what makes humans tick, we can’t exactly rely on psychic powers to see what people are doing upstairs. Interestingly enough, when I was going through a difficult breakup and trying to heal, I did a deep dive into all the psychology behind it. I found so much of it pretentious, taking about ego, shadows, my relationships with my parents, etc. I get it. Loads to do with things in m...

NOW AVAILABLE ON: ITUNES GOOGLE PODCASTS STITCHER TUNEIN No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's Or of thine own were: Any man's death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to kn...

By and large, a lot of people base their experience of reality on frames of understanding and perception that they develop in times when they are more vulnerable. The result is that we get beliefs and therefore actions that tend to fly in the face of what we, as humans, are hardwired to respond to. Examining the behaviours of how we function, our interaction pattens, we can see a type of logic beh...

The concept is simple. Our physical spine actually makes reactionary decisions for us. We can infer the presence of an ‘emotional spine’ in that we are also reactionary in certain circumstances too. This means that we need to make sure that our reactions are i- appropriate, and ii- not controlling our lives. In this audio, the idea of the emotional spine is explored, adding in the philosophical ra...

Why bother with self-growth? I’m sure there are many reasons in your mind right now, but I want to direct your attention to a more holistic and systemic growth motivation. I grow to benefit the group The idea is simple but there are many layers to this onion, and being able to wrap our heads around this concept needs a little assistance from some Japanese animation, some church doctrine and an old...