I’ll say it again and again – I like this quote

“[…] ceea ce contează în viață nu-i niciodată inteligența, ci bunătatea […]. E lucrul cel mai bun pe care îl poate avea cineva în viață.” (Mircea Cărtărescu – via video-ul de aici)

And another one:

“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” (Hanlon’s razor)

(adapted from:)

This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions,^[3] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. (Occam’s razor – Wikipedia)

Innocence is so cool! Sure, it lacks intelligence, sure, it’s not smart, but a happy heart can be forgiven for the lack of intelligence.

As long as you have a good heart, even though “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, I think that’s the way to go.

Do good, as good as you can do it, and you’ll be forgiven for the lack of intelligence in making things right.

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Mistake 1: Thinking people give feedback the way they want to receive it

[…]

One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is that humans aren’t pure functions: an input that works one day and gets one result, then again another day and get an entirely different result.

The same is true of how people give and receive feedback: someone may give you feedback in a particular way, but they prefer to receive much differently when it comes to themselves.

(Mistakes I’ve Made as an Engineering Manager | CSS-Tricks)

This happens to me quite a lot. I sometimes give a lot of feedback, some of it is perceived as aggressive, but when others give feedback to me, when others tell me some things, I tend to overreact.

I’ve gotten better with both parts, I think, as time passed by – I was able to receive feedback without getting upset, and I was able to give feedback which is as little emotional as possible.

Still, at the end of the day, there’s a gap between how I give and how I receive feedback.

Two battles:

• When I give feedback: “Why don’t you like this? It helps you grow!”.
• When I receive it: “I know it helps me grow, but it’s not easy to take in”.

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“I’ve got the power!”, you might think.

But what is personal power?

• On one hand, it might look that power comes from aggressiveness. Being tough, fighting, never giving up, persisting.
• On another hand, what I think real power is – is humility. Sure, persisting in something is good, but you need humility for that, to admit that you might be wrong. You can help others, you can be available, you can be open and vulnerable.

A lot of times, I see power mistaken as force. “Push things!”, they say. But being able to control your inner demons, succeeding despite …, insisting, having the humbleness to start from scratch – these, all help a lot in real power.

You can manipulate people, force them, make them fear you. Or you can bend the tree by having him wanting to bend, by making the tree feel more like a flower than a solid object. You can make people feel good and want to be on your side.

To me, the real power is controlling yourself.

There’s a poor joke / acronym: “BITCH = Babe In Total Control of Herself“. But it’s actually half-true: if you want to be powerful, you need to be able to control your urges and emotions.

Don’t be aggressive, but control your emotions. That’s not how people commonly see the acronym.

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“Stupid is as stupid does” – Forrest Gump (1994 movie)

About the above quote: I don’t think that Forrest Gump is either 100% smart or 100% stupid.

The quote makes you think – is someone who acts stupid really stupid?

There are two ways to look at this aspect:

• You can have intellectual issues, thus be considered stupid;
• Do wrong things, thus be considered stupid.

I think that putting a label on Forrest doesn’t help anyone. He tries his best to make the world better and works a lot for this aim.

From time to time he does something rather silly, but in the big picture of life, this doesn’t matter.

Then there’s the act of looking at stupidity – while you are confronted with two options – A and B – it is rather difficult to choose between the two. After some things occur, it’s easy to look back at the life and claim “Oh, I would have done better in the same context”. I’m not so sure about this logic.

Also, there’s really no 100% intelligence. The smartest people do silly mistakes.

You might think that you are not stupid, from a true perspective. An imaginary reply, at some point:

[PILATE]
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths – are mine the same as yours?
Jesus Christ Superstar – A Rock Opera: Trial Before Pilate / 39 Lashes – Andrew Lloyd Webber

There’s no 100% objective on success, in this case, you can do something which is considered both silly and very smart – at the same time. Se Forrest Gump’s life.

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How can you tell if someone’s vegan at a party? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.

(joke via How Can You Tell If Someone’s Vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you (because they’re desperate to save the planet.) – the normal vegan)

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“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” ― Zig Ziglar

Note – on the article below, most of the things are from the perspective of a novice, who wishes to clarify things for himself. These should not be treated as expert knowledge.

The thing with repetition is that it’s required on more levels.

Sure, in an enumeration you tend to remember the first item and, to a lesser degree, the last one.

If you wish to memorize something, repeating might help. You need to recall the information in different ways, though – you can summarize information, make an essay, create your own question-and-answers tests, teach someone something about the information you want to memorize.

On another hand, even “brute” repetition works. Just going through the same information over and over will help you remember things.

But how about other aspects of your life? Other than memorizing things, if you want to enforce a habit, going through the same habit a few times will help reinforce it. Do the same thing for 30 days, and you’re more likely to turn that into a habit.

If you want to change your mind, it might help going deep, really turning an issue upside-down.

But it might also help if you go through the process again and again. Instead of doing, how I did it, in one session, for a day or two, just writing for hours at a time, you could go through the process a few minutes each day.

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