Rethinking Positive Thinking

by Stephen Mills November 24, 2011

I now believe that much of the current propaganda about positive thinking is at minimum misguided and likely counter-productive for many people. It amounts to self-help snake oil. This represents a change in my own beliefs brought about by my own experience, my observations of others, and a lot of reading and thinking about it.

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How to Deal With Stupid, Needy, Irritating, Toxic, and Generally Crappy People

by Stephen Mills November 13, 2011

These kinds of people are not worth your time or stress. Every second of your life that you spend with someone who is a negative is not only a second you lose from something you value more, it takes something out of you. It’s not not neutral it is a draining negative. The effect of dealing with them will linger with you and continue to take away from your precious life. It’s like a left hook to the head followed by a right. And for particularly crappy people you might as well take an uppercut to the chin as well. You may suffer the effects for days to come.

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Ovarian Cancer Research

by Stephen Mills October 29, 2011

If you would like to help with ovarian cancer research you can do so at the MD Anderson Ovarian Cancer Quilt Project. My wife contributed the following quilts to the auction: #116 Windows to My Garden #88 Promises, Promises #76 Francie’s Block #73 Sweetheart #24 Crisscross Gardens #20 Flowers for Granny #53 Joyce’s Garden #16 [...]

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What Is Truly Necessary?

by Stephen Mills October 22, 2011

People will argue about how much of what they do really is necessary. I know because I’ve been there. But I don’t believe it anymore. It’s a delusion. You feel important by being busy but in reality you are missing what is truly important. I honestly believe the vast majority of people, and that includes you, could stop almost all of what they think is necessary and would find that most people wouldn’t notice and the world would continue to spin. Arguing about it is a pissing match that I don’t care to engage in. Either you get it or you don’t.

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How To Make Decisions When You Can’t Decide

by Stephen Mills October 18, 2011

This article describes several methods of making quick decisions when you have a difficult time deciding or when you are dealing with a complex decision. Our working memory can handle only a few bits of information at a time and many choices or many factors for each choice overwhelm it. The four methods described here are:

Flip a Coin With a Twist
Compare Down a List
Conduct a Tournament
Let Your Unconscious Decide

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Situations Matter – Review

by Stephen Mills October 11, 2011

In Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, Sam Sommers argues persuasively that everyday situations matter much more for how we behave than we generally like to believe. According to the author, we tend to believe character (inborn or acquired) is much more important than it really is.

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The Triumph of the Trivial

by Stephen Mills October 8, 2011

The other day I went to a blog I regularly read and I was dumbfounded by the subject of the new article on display. It was something like “How To Read More”. I thought he has to be kidding right? But no, in all seriousness the article was about how to read more with 10 strategies to accomplishing this amazing feat. I’m not naming the blog because this celebration of the trivial is not unique to that blog. This celebration of the trivial is widespread and I’ve been guilty of similar things myself. I’m sure the author thinks he is writing something valuable. But what struck me was wondering how many of the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to that blog thought it valuable? Is anyone besides me thinking this is useless trivia? I doubt it, at least not many. Other than to actually pick up more reading material and turn more pages, I’m not sure exactly what it is I need to know.

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Don’t Worry

by Stephen Mills October 1, 2011

I thought this from Angus Finlayson was very clever. Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board. If you liked this article and think it might be useful to others please share by clicking the [...]

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Viewing Life as Packaged Deals

by Stephen Mills September 17, 2011

Life is made up of a whole set of package deals. It’s the nature of a package deal that you have to accept or reject the whole package, you don’t get to cherry pick the parts you want and reject the others. The good usually comes packaged with some bad. It’s part of the nature of the world we live in.

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Critical Thinking Skills–A Skeptical Attitude

by Stephen Mills August 1, 2011

The ability to easily share information has led to rapidly advancing knowledge in many fields. At the same time the average person now has available what seems like an infinite amount of information at their fingertips. The ability to discover and take advantage of all this information may be the key to thriving in 21st century.

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