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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Eric Barker
Read between
August 25 - October 25, 2020
formal mentoring made a small improvement, but the real results came from informal mentors—the kind you find on your own.
BE A WORTHY PUPIL,
If people don’t notice, you’re doing something wrong. You’re either not working hard enough or not doing enough outreach.
When you demonstrate you have explored every conceivable avenue and can go no further without the mentor’s help. Seeing that you have done everything in your power shows you’re smart, you won’t waste their time, and you’re resourceful.
Instead of thinking about what you need, remember what they’re probably thinking: I’m the best in my field and I’m busy. Who do I want to help for free in my very limited time?
STUDY THEM.
WASTING A MENTOR’S TIME IS A MORTAL SIN
Yes, it will annoy them, but more importantly it shows you lack basic skills. It screams to a mentor, “This person isn’t ready for my help.”
FOLLOW UP
Stay in the picture.
MAKE THEM PROUD
In the end, your goal and your mentor’s goals should be aligned: to make you awesome. But there’s a secondary goal here too: to make them look good.
You see, mentors are like potato chips: you can’t have just one.
With many mentors on which to base their personal growth, talented youths are less likely to follow the suicidal path toward mere replication.
Daniel Dennett says it’s because a “war metaphor” is wired into our brains when it comes to disagreement. When there’s a war, someone is conquered. It’s not a discussion of facts and logic; it’s a fight to the death. No matter who is really right, if you win, I lose. In almost every conversation, status is on the line. Nobody wants to look stupid. So, as Dennett explains, we set up a situation where learning is equivalent to losing.
When we make it win-or-lose, everyone loses.
Explaining is almost always veiled dominance.
When people are riled up about something and you show them evidence that conflicts with what they believe, what does an MRI scan show? The areas of their brain associated with logic literally shut down. The regions associated with aggression light up.
it’s war.
Empathy.
Being sincere and focusing on emotions,
they made everything black and white, they wanted to solve things immediately, and they didn’t focus on emotions.
When we just focus on the concrete bargaining and not the feelings, that’s when things fall apart.
“value creation.”
KEEP CALM AND SLOW IT DOWN
pretending you are talking to a child.
USE ACTIVE LISTENING
Every now and then paraphrase back to them what you’re hearing.
Your goal is for them to reply “Exactly.”
LABEL EMOTIONS
giving a name to feelings helps reduce their intensity.
MAKE THEM THINK
Don’t solve their problem and tell them what to do. That puts you back in a war metaphor. Help them solve their own problem by asking questions, feeding their responses back to them, and subtly helping them consider whether what they’re saying makes sense.
The war model doesn’t work best for people in the “war” business, like law enforcement, and it won’t work for you.
KNOW WHO YOU ARE
IN THE END, IT’S ALL ABOUT FRIENDSHIP
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ARE ALWAYS GETTING AND GIVING
YOUR NETWORK INFLUENCES YOU, LIKE IT OR NOT. MAKE SURE IT’S A GOOD ONE.
gratitude is the quality that makes people want to spend more time with you. Gratitude is the tactical nuke of happiness and the cornerstone of long-lasting relationships.
Sometimes the mere appearance of confidence can be the difference between winning and losing.
successful people are confident.
Narcissists, the despicable kings and queens of confidence, score better in job interviews.
“Faking it seems, to a degree, to just be part of good people management.”
The disorder actually makes her much more open and nice. Research has shown subjects with complete bilateral amygdala damage judge strangers to be much more approachable and trustworthy than normal people do.
“Although our self-confident delusions can help us achieve, they can make it difficult for us to change.”
Low self-confidence may turn you into a pessimist, but when pessimism teams-up with ambition it often produces outstanding performance. To be the very best at anything, you will need to be your harshest critic, and that is almost impossible when your starting point is high self-confidence.
The performance of narcissists is relative to how much of a chance there is for them to look cool. This produces a really negative effect: when things are at their worst and leaders are needed the most, narcissists are the least likely to be engaged.
looking through the lens of self-esteem might be the real reason the debate over confidence is so fraught with grief.
“self-compassion.”
Research shows increasing self-compassion has all the benefits of self-esteem—but without the downsides.
