The Power of Being Embarrassed

According to John Berkavitch in his Ubud TEDx talk, there are six steps you need to take to become good at something.

1. Want to be good at that thing
2. Learn your craft. Understand it, and practice
3. Start practicing more than you're actually practicing.
4. Realizing that if you stop practicing you're not going to get better, and in fact will backslide.
5. When you're actually quite good at something, stay humble, and realize there's always going to be someone who's better than you, if not now, than eventually.
6. Listen to other people. Listen to their advice, criticism and opinions. You can't be precious about your ideas or what you're doing. Realize the everyone's opinion has value, absolutely everyone. Understand that an idea is something that can grow. The best way to make it grow is to expose it to another idea.

What does it mean to practice?
Is there a difference between practicing and doing?

討論逐字稿 Self-Nurturing as the Ultimate Leadership

How would you define self-centered? Selfish?
I thought they're similar.
Well if they're similar, what do they both mean?
Because if I know someone, only take care of themself, and only want other people to follow their opinions, then I will think he is self-centered. But if use another stronger words, maybe we will say, he is very selfish! So it's similar. No, no, no, it's different.
What's different?
No, selfish is he only cares about he or herself, but self-centered want others to...
Take care of--
...follow his or her opinions, but he only cares about him or herself.
I agree with your first one. And I think, a selfish person, he or she always thinks his opinion is right. Or they are the most smart, others are stupid.
I think self-centered is just care about themselves, and selfish, I think it might harm other people. And self-centered, you don't think about harming other people.
I guess selfish has benefit involved. Selfish people care about what benefit they will get.

討論逐字稿 The Courage to Live

We discussed "The Courage to Live".

Saturday Transcript
Concluding Statements
Recently I’ve come here several times, this is the third time. You know, and every time I have to encounter a bunch of questions that challenge me a lot, but this means that I'm kind of in a stage of lots of chaos. Lots of thoughts in my head that I can't put them together to produce something meaningful. But by looking at these questions, not just including this time, and the several questions that were posed last Saturday or Wednesday, so I’ve found out that I might have the gift of giving strategies or solutions. Like two days ago I ate in MacDonald's, and I saw a couple of middle aged women sitting next door, and they were trying to solve a particular problem, and I just couldn’t help but to try to figure out something for them. I knew that it wasn't my business, but I just couldn't help to offer them a solution.
Were they surprised?
It was okay. Kind of, but they were friendly. So, returning to today's article, and especially the last part of the article, which gives us step-by-step solutions to find what we want to do, to realize the kind of personal goal, and I start thinking that I may do it in this way. It does offer me a practical solution to my personal problem. And here comes another fear, that where I am earning my money for, it's the fear that I do not want to continues, so and then there comes another fear that I may have to offer this for free and don't have a real job for awhile, so yeah, it's complicated. And, another thing I want to say is that, um, the reason why I want to study abroad and pick up something, that is because I want to gain some financial details or knowledge ...
But sometimes, I even challenge to my own thought in this question, by this I mean that, when I really have to obtain some knowledge, I still can gain it on my own. Yes, so, sometimes I don't know what to do in the next step, anything could happen. So embrace anything. Embrace that possibility, I think.

Ever since my mom told me she couldn't afford to let me go to cram school, I have suddenly realized there is something I can't control. Before that, I may even believe I can achieve anything. And this kind of crushed me down. And then, I start to conceal myself. By this I mean, I will evaluate whether the problem I'm encountering can gain help from others, otherwise I will keep it to myself. The reason why I stopped learning in both junior and senior high, may be due to the fact that I can't deal with the obstacle I have to face. So I kind of abandon myself, and the high school teacher, although the high school teacher came to ask me what's the problem, I still didn't tell them. Despite that I feel 'what's the point of studying hard and working hard', I haven’t been able to find the real thing I really want to do. So, maybe that's also why I always come back to study hard.
Because it's what you know how to do.
Yeah. Compared with work for some idiot, study is a kind of paradise for me.
Yes, I think this is the reasoning of a lot of people in graduate school.
But recently, I’ve come to know you, Angela, and you kind of reinvigorate, you make me feel this world is still interesting. So that I can still find something I can devote myself to. And all the way, I try to study abroad, or try to improve my English proficiency. In the beginning, it's almost impossible for me, but now I'm glad I insisted on this goal. And maybe the best thing about this whole process is that I have the chance to meet some good people. And I also start to realize sometimes I have to reveal myself to others. And so I'm kind of happy I start to get in touch with my friends too.

Don't Regret Regret

Let's define regret.
What is the feeling of regret?
When you regret something, what do you do?
Which do you regret more, things you did do, or things you didn't?
Do you try to live a life without regrets?
Would you be happier if you didn't regret things?
Is not regretting things the same as living a life without making mistakes?

The five components of regret are denial, a sense of bewilderment, a desire to punish ourselves, perseveration, and a kind of existential wake-up-call.
Why do you suppose we wish to punish ourselves?
Where does that come from? What does that existential wake-up-call do to our sense of self, and our sense of our place in the world?

Where does Control-Z culture come from? Undo!
How do we get taught to think like this?
"We want to do everything ourselves and we want to do it right." Is this true for you?
If so, do you agree with this attitude?

What is being human, and what is being humane? What do these two ideas mean to you?
What does this have to do with regret?

Self-Nurturing as the Ultimate Leadership

In this video, Koelle Simpson, a "horse whisperer and life coach" talks about a very different way of being a leader.

How would you define self-centered? Selfish?
Why is self-centeredness/selfishness bad?

What would be an example self-nurturing?
What might the difference be between self-nurturing and selfish?

What does a leader look like? Who is an example of a leader you admire?
How can you tell when someone is 'in power'? Who's an example of being 'in power'?
Is there a difference between being 'in power' and being a leader?

Should a leader prove themselves in some way? If so, how?
Does winning an election prove that a leader is the best for the job?

The Courage to Live

討論逐字稿這裡

The Courage to Live Consciously is a stupendously long article (this author is officially a long-talker) but the subject fit our recent trend of discussions, so let's have at it!

What is the hardest thing in the world for you to do?
What's something you wish you were good at?
What's something that you fail at a lot, but want to do well?
What's something you want to start now, but are kind of afraid of doing?
When have you been courageous or brave in your life? Stories?

Have you ever had any of these fears?
Fear of failure.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of going broke.
Fear of being alone.
Fear of humiliation.
Fear of public speaking.
Fear of being ostracized by family and friends.
Fear of physical discomfort.
Fear of regret.
Fear of success.

Why would sb. be afraid of success? Of being ostracized? Of being alone?

Can you admit that you're great?

Shake. Fold.

討論逐字稿 Embracing Failure

Today we're talking about Embracing Failure. We start by talking about learning to ride a bike, learning to speak a foreign language.

Let's first talk about riding a bike. How did you learn to ride a bike, what was the process?
Just do it!
I started with the training wheels.
Me too.
When did you lose the training wheels and just start biking?
I can't remember the actual.
Do you remember how you felt ready enough to take them off?
I didn't start with the training wheels, just rode it.
But there's a point at which you learn to balance, how did that happen?
No idea, it just happened.
For me too.
My mom, or my father stand behind me, to try to help me balance.
Did they walk along holding the bike?
And sometimes they just let go, and rode, and it just worked.
My grandfather would hold the bike at first and then he would let go but hold his arm out like he was holding it, and then he would tell you that he let go, and you would realise that you'd been doing it yourself. Then you would freak out and fall over, but it was about building confidence.
Yeah, same thing.

Embracing Failure

(討論逐字稿在這裡）

Today's topic is from a blog called Living the Dream. They made a collection of links to different articles talking about failure. If you want to look into the subject more I encourage you to click through on some of the articles.

Let's first talk about riding a bike. How did you learn to ride a bike, what was the process?
Can someone 'teach' you how to ride a bike?

What are we talking about when we say 'failure'? Let's try to get a definition together first.
What are we afraid of, when we're afraid of failure? What's involved in being afraid of failure?
Is there a difference between 'failure' and 'fucking up'?
Can failing tests be helpful to overall learning?
Do you often repeat mistakes? Do you repeat them even when you understood what went wrong the first time?

How is creativity related to failure?
What is meant by creativity?
Can creativity be taught? Can it be facilitated?

討論逐字稿 Boundaries

We discussed a couple of articles on Boundaries. One was a blog post by Jim C. Hines, and the other was an article on CNN. CNN also collected the reactions to their article here.

Do we teach people that they have the right to take care of themselves?
I don't understand, of course people have to take care of themselves.
Actually, no, we don't teach people to take care of themselves. We teach people to take care of others first, then ourselves.
I mean, it's natural for me that people know that they should take care of themselves, they don't need to be taught by others, that's why I don’t get this question.
She just assumes that people know they should take care of themselves.
That's because you're very self-sufficient.
Yes, I agree.
Lots of people don't know how to take care of themselves.
Yes, that's true.
They don't know how to, that's the other question. The question here, they don't know they have the right.
They don’t know?
They don't know they have the right?
That's my humble opinion.
Mine is humble too, don't get me wrong!
In my memory it's that, my mother told me that, you have to take the responsibility for yourself. When you are maybe above 18 years old. But I don't think it's quite equal to take care of myself it's different things, but my parents didn’t tell me HOW to take care of myself. Be alone with myself.
That's an important skill!
I think we are taught to sacrifice ourself, a lot, a lot more than taking care of ourselves.