Simply Good Life — Future Retrospection | Teach Kids To Enjoy Mistakes | Body Language Hacks

Hi all,

This was a week full of workshops, Design Thinking is spreading like crazy. Not all of the workshops worked fine this week, but that’s ok. See below :-)

Find A Topic To Teach Others

Last week I asked you a generic question “what do you spend money on?”. This time I want you to think about “what hobbies do you spend money on?”. It looks like the answer to this question uncovers areas where you’re weak, where you need to spend money on to further improve.
No, it uncovers topics you’re so passionate about that you’re willing to spend money on it. Additionally, these are topics you know more about than 99% of people out there. Teach these things to others!

Body Language Hacks

Last month I recomended Vanessa van Edwards’ “Captivate”, a fantastic book about body language. If you don’t have time to read the whole book just watch this 8 minute video: You’ll learn lots about body language hacks, the secrets of popular TED talks, how to start conversations with strangers and the huge power of eye contact (you’ll be surprised!).

Solve Hard Problems

Trying to solve a hard problem? Plan in reverse. Instead of planning steps from now to a difficult goal, plan backward from success. It makes the plan clearer and more motivating, and makes you more likely to achieve it.

For complex tasks the study showed that students preparing backward anticipated the necessary steps more clearly and followed the original plan to reach the set goal. They had higher expectations for reaching their goals and felt less pressed for time during progress toward them.

This ‘future retrospection’ increases the anticipation of pleasure from achieving the goal and helps bring about goal-directed behaviors.

I’ve used this method often this week to focus the teams on the positive outcome in the future (it was fun with you Heidi, Sandra and Christian!). Read more in the article “Trying to Get Ahead? Plan in Reverse”.

You Are Wrong About What You Know

This video is so much fun! It’s my favorite video this week, by far:

How much do you know about the world? Hans Rosling, with his famous charts of global population, health and income data (and an extra-extra-long pointer), demonstrates that you have a high statistical chance of being quite wrong about what you think you know. Play along with his audience quiz — then, from Hans’ son Ola, learn 4 ways to quickly get less ignorant. Fantastic!

Celebrate Your Failures

Do you like your own failures? Of course not, we all don’t! But there is a way to learn to respond better to failures. At dinner just ask your family to tell you their failures or mistakes this day and ask what they’ve learned from them. So instead of connecting mistakes with negative thoughts this question will connect their mistakes with something positive like growth and learning.

Have a wonderful week with some failures to learn from!

Adam

PS: What topic did you most like this week? Were you able to answer Hans Rosling’s questions correctly? Will you try to learn from your mistakes?