Psychology & Philosophy – Steffan Antonas

Selfish vs. Self Absorbed

selfish I had some fascinating and energetic conversations both online and off this week that started as shared reactions to my post The Cookie Jar Principle. The concept of giving more than you receive in your relationships (both on an individual level as well as in the context of community) seems to really resonate with people and in some cases strikes a sore nerve. Interestingly, many of the email exchanges, phone conversations and blog discussions I participated in this week had a common thread – People were reflecting on personal experience and expressing strong feelings about cookie jar offenders who were either selfish or self absorbed. In a number of cases, one term was used as a substitute for the other so I thought I’d share my thoughts on why they are different, and why the difference is so important when dealing with someone who takes more from you than they give… Read More

The Cookie Jar Principle

cookie300 Give more than you take. It’s as simple as that. If we embrace this one powerful principal in our lives, individually we will enjoy meaningful, vibrant relationships and collectively create a culture of abundance. If we can’t, we end up with an empty jar.

We can all point to a friend or colleague who breaks the rule repeatedly. They call only when they need something and they only show up or participate when it benefits them. They forget that the act of taking from the jar implies that they will one day put back more than what they took. In many ways selfishness is failing to recognize that when you chose to benefit from the effort or contributions of another, you become part of a self-sustaining cycle of give and take, and that your actions alter the system’s balance. In the fog of self-absorption we can loose sight of the truth and reality of the circumstances of both others and ourselves. When we take more than we give, everyone that depends on the contents of the jar loses.

Remember that every one of your relationships has its own jar. We fill them with our time, energy and love. Sharing, participating, and giving before we take signal our good faith – they are small promises that when it is our turn to take, we have not forgotten our responsibility to keep filling the jar. What we do take, we should always strive to return with interest. This simple principal is as true for individual relationships as it is for groups, families and communities of any size. When we agree to be a part of the group, whether the group is 2 or 2 million, we accept an equal and shared responsibility for the jar.

The Real Difference Between Liberals And Conservatives

According to Jonathan Haidt, there’s one key personality trait (more than any other) that predicts who becomes liberal and and who becomes conservative. In this lecture, Haidt draws on the latest from developmental and moral psychology and makes a very persuasive argument why “openness to experience” – that craving for novelty, diversity, variety, travel and new ideas – tells us a lot about our political affiliations. Whether you’re currently on the fence about where to cast your vote this year, or you’ve been certain from day one, I urge you to take the 20 minutes to watch this lecture, because it’s got some pretty sweet mind-grenade moments, and it may just change the way that you think about your own morality, and change the way you engage others with differing opinions. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“You can’t just go charging in saying “I’m wrong and you’re right”…because everybody thinks that they’re right. A lot of the problems that we have to solve are problems that require us to change other people. And if you want to change other people, a much better way to do it is to first understand who we are, understand our moral psychology, understand that we all think that we’re right, and then step out…even if it’s just for a moment…and try to see it as a struggle that’s playing out in which everybody does think that they’re right and everybody has some reasons (even if you disagree with them) for doing what they’re doing…and if you can do that, that’s the essential move to cultivate moral humility, and get yourself out of this self-righteousness which is the normal human condition”

On Persistence

The most influential communicators are the ones that can boil an idea down to its core and translate it into simple, straightforward language. Here’s a perfect example from Seth Godin:

“Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over.”

Simple. Profound. Right on the money.

Book Review: Stumbling On Happiness

If you chose to only read one book this year, I strongly urge you to consider this one. It ranks at the very top of a small collection of books that have fundamentally changed the way I think. Daniel Gilbert is not only brilliant, his writing style is irrepressibly humorous, charming and entirely accessible. Stumbling on Happiness, which won the 2007 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books, is a joy to read and will change the way you look at just about, well, everything.

Stumbling on Happiness is based on a very simple but powerful concept – that what makes human beings unique is our ability to think about the future. Gilbert draws on the latest scientific studies from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy and behavioral economics to provide answers to some of the most profound mysteries of how the human mind really works. In these pages, you’ll learn, among other things, the science of how our experiences of the here and now color our memories of the past and imagination of the future, why our innate drive to predict and control how we will feel a day or a month or a year from now today often leaves us ill-prepared when the future finally comes, and, most of all, how happiness itself is elusive. I’d be lying if I told you that the lessons in this book didn’t haunt me on a daily basis in both times of joy and stress. Gilbert argues his points expertly. Trust me, you owe it to your yourself to read this book. Gilbert himself admits this point – “No one can say how you will feel when you get to the end of this book…but if your future self is not satisfied when it arrives at the last page, it will at least understand why you mistakenly thought it would be.”

Buy The Book (Hardcover) on Amazon

Buy The Audio Book (Unabridged) on Amazon

On the Counterproductive Nature and Irrelevance of Blame

I wish more people in the business world would get how they create negative, counterproductive atmospheres when mistakes are made and blame is casually thrown around as a bi-product of scorched-egos. The following short, taken from my recent reading of What Happy People Know – How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life For the Better (pg 174), illustrates clearly why Blame is pointless, especially in a team atmosphere. On the whole, the fact that Blame is rarely, if ever, productive is an important lesson we’d all benefit from…

“Imagine that you’re in a canoe with a friend and there’s a fork in the river. Your friend convinces you to take the channel on the right. Next thing you know, you hear the roar of a waterfall. What do you do?

Do you start yelling at your friend? Of course not! It’s counterproductive. You paddle like hell for shore.

Let’s say you make it. Now do you start screaming? That’s what a lot of people would do. But why?

You’ve paid your tuition — a brush with disaster — so learn the lesson: Blame solves nothing. It’s counterproductive. Irrelevant.”

- Dan Baker, Ph. D, Director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch.

Be Skeptical. There’s Always At Least Two Sides To Every Story.

As an African proverb says, “Until lions have their historians, all tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.”

Aristotle’s Challenge

Last night I had a hankering to revisit a book that I read in Grad School called Emotional Intelligence – Why It can Matter more than IQ. For the emotionally aware, it’s a great read, albeit a little tough going given all the neuro-psychology lingo, but it’s pretty damn intriguing. After pulling it out of the pile I’ve made in the hallway to my bedroom, and blowing the dust off the cover that’s accumulated since I’ve moved to San Diego, I opened to the first page and the first line of the book is Aristotle’s Challenge in bold italics…..

ARISTOTLE’S CHALLENGE:
Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not so easy. – Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.

It hit me just as hard reading it for the 50th time as it did the first. Ponder that for a second. I think you’ll agree that it captures one of life’s greatest challenges elegantly. What makes it so profound is that it’s been a good 2000 years since these words were written and it’s still just as true today as it was the day he wrote it.

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