If you want to jump directly to what I want to crow about, click here.

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From my earliest memories, I wanted to be famous for discovering or inventing what no one else had

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When I was younger I thought it would be in the area of science, which I was good at. In high school, my math teacher and I both thought that I was the first to discover an algebraic formula that would generate all possible perfect right triangles. Regrettably, a week later after he did further research, he told me that he discovered that Euclid has preceded me in having created such a formula.

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I was disappointed I wasn't the first, but...

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Of course, I was disappointed. At that time, I had not yet learned about the dangers of expectations. In that week had fantasized a lot about being recognized as a famous prodigy and maybe even being interviewed on national TV. But, I could still compare myself privately to Euclid, at least in some measure. I discovered the formula entirely without reference to any prior work.

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Moving from science and technology to philosophy

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When I was nineteen and started reading the works and novels of Ayn Rand, I was inspired to become a philosopher and to create fundamental new insights in that domain. Little did I know that, at age twenty-two, I would take a necessary "detour" of twenty years as a computer software consultant before returning to philosophy full time in 1987, expressed in the profession of being a life coach, where I would focus primarily on the philosophical area of ethics.

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Have I discovered/invented fundamentally useful distinctions in philosophy that no one has before?

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I think I have! And I want to brag about them. Whether these ideas end up becoming a more dominant mindset of the world's people and I consequently get widely recognized for these breakthroughs is a different issue. 

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But I also want something else that involves you, if you're willing. 

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Be the devil's advocate, okay?

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If any of my claims seem inaccurate or overblown, give your assessment and provide me with any counter-evidence that you know about. With all the different ideas, sub-philosophies, and philosophies in the world, well-known or not so well-known, even with the power of the Internet at my fingertips, there's a lot that I have never been exposed to.

 

I like to brag. But it's important to me that I am bragging about what is true. You could help me ensure that I am not mistaken in bragging about something that I am not the first in discovering or clearly distinguishing. 

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And, if you help me discover that, I will get the added benefit of knowing about those people and their ideas who have or are contributing to the same or similar breakthroughs and distinctions that I have been developing.

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What I didn't discover-invent

 

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

-Isaac Newton

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Uncountable scores of important ideas and distinctions that I express and promote in this site and elsewhere I have learned from and through others.

 

What I did discover-invent

 

Regardless, I have discovered-invented a new high-level mapping paradigm that has never before been clearly identified as such. I have subsequently teased out and expanded on that mapping system so that it's increasingly usable and functional as a fundamental method to resolve life problems, to negotiate the choices in life, and to create a life we can love the living of. In short, I have created a profoundly new system of ethics. This system obsoletes and fundamentally replaces the old mapping system provided given to us by the Old Ethics of Sacrifice, which has been in place in all the cultures of the world at least since the dawn of written history.

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"How can you group almost all current and prior ethical systems together? They are really different."

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Yes, there are a lot of differences. And I cannot claim to know in depth most of the ethical systems of the world. What I have discovered so far, however, allowing for the possibility of learning about a black-swan ethical system, all ethical systems hold in common the belief in the necessary Now-Next wars and Oneself-Others wars, with Next and Others being the victims and the good guys and Now and Oneself being the bad guys. For example, this is true of the Confucian-dominated Chinese culture as well as the Christian- and Muslim-dominated cultures of much of the rest of the world. It is also true of the humanist- (much of Europe), Buddhist-, and Hindu-dominated cultures.

 

Others have provided important mini-maps

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Here and there, others have created mini-maps providing some small challenges to the comprehensive life map provided by the Old Ethics of Sacrifice. These have usually been put forth, not as a comprehensive replacement of the Old Ethics, but more as new sub-methodologies. One good example that I respect is Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication. These contributions, however, no matter how valuable, provided no integrated and effective challenge to and replacement of the self-contradictory assumptions built into the Old Ethics, which promulgated rules and guidelines that we have used and been used by for millennia.

 

What has been needed was a new way of looking at how to build a system of ethics, rather than stick with the old assumptions, as the ancient Greeks did when they believed that everything was composed of earth, water, air, and fire. There's only so far you can go with premises like that.

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Here's what I'm going to brag about below

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Integrity: a new fundamental and complete distinction 

Contrasting the New Ethics with the Old Ethics

Toxic words

HOGAB (The House of Good and Bad)

Courage: a new fundamental and complete distinction

Ethics is a science

Factbeliefs and Fatebeliefs: the distinctions

Life design by seeing life as a buffet and prioritizing lifestyle and process over results

Your #1 job: your priority, if there is unresolvable conflict, is to put yourself first: nature's design

The benefits of more fear and risk

The benefits of expectations: denial of risk and counting chickens

Enchanting: a fundamental mood changer

Your Whine List: the joys of complaining

RAFTS: a tool to create intimacy and authenticity

The integrity of lying

Best sex positions ever

Problems: inner and outer

How to start a conversation with anyone

New cognitive biases

Precrastination

Partnership Conversation and Fairyland Dialogue

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Bragging rights (put on your devil's-advocate hat)

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The new integrity (bragging rights)

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The Old Ethics of Sacrifice did its best to address two fundamental problems that we humans are faced with when making choices that non-human animals could not and did not have to address.

 

The first fundamental ethical problem

 

The first fundamental problem was how a human could "make the better choice" when he or she becomes aware of a conflict between taking care of now (do I eat some of my corn that I could save for my future) or taking care of the future (do I save more or all of my corn for the future).

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The Old Ethics declared that such conflicts should be resolved by vilifying taking care of now and lionizing taking care of the future, as in "never give up" and "persistence, persistence, persistence."  Sometimes you could justify taking care of now but only in service to the future.

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Although animals have the same problem, they are not given a choice about it. Whichever way they "choose" has been pre-programmed by nature. It's similar to how we humans generally do not have a direct choice about how much urine our kidneys are going to produce in the next 15 seconds. Our kidneys "decide" that for us.

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The second fundamental ethical problem

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The second fundamental problem was how a human could "make the better choice" when he or she becomes aware of a conflict between "taking care of himself or herself and full self-expression" or "taking care of others and looking good to others."

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The Old Ethics declared that such conflicts should be resolved by vilifying taking care of yourself and self-expression and lionizing taking care of the others, along with belonging and looking good to others. Sometimes you could justify taking care of yourself but only in service to being able to take care of others better.

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Although animals have the same problem, they are not given a choice about it. Whichever way they "choose" has already been pre-programmed by nature. It's similar to how we humans act when we are young children, at least for the first two years of our lives. 

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The New Ethics of Integrity (bragging rights)

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The New Ethics of Integrity is based upon the design of human beings, with the demonstrated premise that we're all programmed to move toward happiness and away from unhappiness. It demonstrates that the best way to do that is to end both the Now-Next wars and the Oneself-Others wars, which have been perpetuated and exacerbated by the premises and edicts of the Old Ethics. It shows that we can make the best choices, both for now and for our future, both for ourselves and for others, by creating the context and the approaches that, not only end the civil wars inside of us, but create cooperation all around so that Now and Next, Oneself and Others (and others) are all better off because of their cooperation and mutual respect. See Anatomy of Integrity for the overview of the New Ethics.

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So far, this is the most important new discovery-invention that I have brought to the world.

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Other contributions

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Most of my other new contributions are in service to this overarching paradigm. 

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Toxic words (bragging rights)

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The Old Ethics of Sacrifice has coopted much of our language so that fuzzy and internally self-contradictory distinctions such as good, bad, right, wrong, deserving, undeserving, selfish, unselfish, as well as sidekicks like persistence and lazy keep us locked into the old paradigm of internal conflict...if we remain unaware of how these words can be toxic and are thereby are not able to avoid such use. This distinction of toxic words, along with a partial list of words that are often listened to or spoken toxically helps us to live into the new possibilities of peace and cooperation within.

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HOGAB (bragging rights)

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Some have pointed to the possibility of living outside the House of Good and Bad. Rumi said, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." But no one has systematically demonstrated that living inside that house, as we all have learned to do, lies at the root of our lack of integrity as well as all human suffering. Nor have they provided explicit steps and procedures of how to escape from and live and thrive outside of that house. See the tutorial Undoing shoulds.

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Courage (bragging rights)

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Although many have spoken and written about the power and importance of courage, no one has provided a non-contradictory definition of courage and detailed the four steps of choosing courage, most especially the first one demonstrated in Undoing fear. Nor have they shown us how to make friends with our fear and make choosing courage easy. With no exceptions, everyone else says that choosing courage is hard. This is because they are still operating inside the Old Ethics where we're taught that we must sacrifice now for the future. In some measure, they are still seeing fear (in the form of our Now who wants to feel safe now) as the enemy that must be confronted and overcome for the sake of our Next who wants the future to be good.

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One other contribution that I have made that I have not seen elsewhere is the demonstration that undoing our resistance to fear can eliminate to significantly reduce the severity of all the following problems:​

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• Allowing others to control you

• Anxiety

• Attachment to someone or something

• Attachment to using pejorative words, or even sometimes laudative words

• Avoiding something or avoiding to think or talk about something

• Blame and criticism of others

• Busyness

• Comparing yourself negatively to others

• Complaining

• Defensiveness

• Depression

• Difficulty sleeping

• Doubt

• Carefulness

• Embarrassment

• Envy

• Exhaustion

• Feeling pressured

• Feeling overwhelmed

• Feeling behind on things

• Feeling not good enough

• Feeling not smart enough

• Guilt, regret, remorse

• Indecisiveness

• Irritability

• Jealousy

• Lack of ability to enjoy solitude

• Lack of confidence

• Lack of connection with others

• Lack of curiosity

• Loneliness

• Nervousness

• Perfectionism

• Procrastination

• Not making requests of others; not asking for what you want

• Not saying "no" to others when you need to say "no"

• Not saying "yes" to others when you'd like to say "yes"

• Not setting and maintaining good boundaries with others in order to take care of yourself

• Seeing yourself or others as a victim

• Self-criticism

• Seriousness

• Shoulding (believing things or others should or should not be a certain way)

• Shyness

• Stress

• Tolerating something

• Trying to control or dominate others

• Trying to improve

• Trying to prove something (like "that you're good enough" or that "you're a good guy")

• Wearing a mask (not sharing more openly)

• Worry

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Ethics as a science and a technology (bragging rights)

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I have not found a single thinker, except for Ayn Rand, who has not held to the truism that science, reason, and technology can only tell us "what" and "how," but they cannot ultimately tell us why. They abandon the idea of values, especially ultimate values as lying outside the purview of science, reason, and technology. 

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The ultimate "why" of happiness, however, is built into the design of human beings. Any valid ethical system must include this as the ultimate "why" to be served. The alternative is dysfunction and human suffering. On this point, many thinkers, for example, the Dalia Lama, already agree. Nevertheless, I have not heard these same thinkers go the extra step to imply that our ethicists should take this as the starting point to develop or validate any system of ethics.

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Factbeliefs and fatebeliefs (bragging rights)

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People don't explicitly make the distinction between factbeliefs and fatebeliefs. They're both collapsed into beliefs. Both types of beliefs, when validated as true, are essential for the living of our lives. Each type serves a purpose and each type requires a different kind of validation. Having clarity about which type of belief we're either listening to or speaking of is essential in supporting the best choices and actions. One of the major conflicts of the modern era is between the "truths" promulgated by religions and the "truths" promulgated by science. These conflicts could be largely resolved if each was clear about the two different types of beliefs and how each of those beliefs requires a different kind of validation to be determined either as true or false. The philosopher Ken Wilber has a somewhat similar take on this issue, although he doesn't use the terms factbeliefs and fatebeliefs. See Factbelief or Fatebelief.

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Life design: life's a buffet, lifestyle, and process first (bragging rights)

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Yes, you've heard quotes like these: 

 

“If you don't stop to smell the roses every once in awhile, you will eventually become a thorn in your own side.” ― Christine Szymanski

 

 “Life is about accepting the challenges along the way, choosing to keep moving forward, and savoring the journey.”
― Roy Bennett

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They seem to put emphasis on enjoying the process. But even these quotes, by implication, imply that results and accomplishments are first. Try to fit "smelling those roses" when you can catch a break here and there.

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The results you get, your accomplishments, and what you do for others is the final priority of life design

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Every book, every technique, every story about how to have a great life focuses on what you're going to get done, what contribution you're going to be for others, what they're going to be able to put on your gravestone, what legacy you'll leave behind. Ultimately your life and your existence is justified by others and by yourself by what you accomplish and what you leave behind. 

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Some may give lip service to enjoying the journey. They will even tell you how it's important to stay rested and take breaks. Even then it's in service to more accomplishment and more contribution. Case in point is the Pomodoro technique.

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Whether we design our lives proactively or by default, because we live inside a culture and philosophy that's been shaped by the idea that Next is the good guy who should dominate Now whenever necessary, we will make our choices, even if in rebellion, based upon results first. Results are the priority.

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Now-Next Integrity requires we prioritize enjoying the process over getting results

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Seemingly paradoxical, when we prioritize our Now enjoying the process over any particular accomplishment, most of the time, especially long term, we accomplish more than when we design our life by results first. See What's the full idea of process first?

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I often say, without too much exaggeration, "Ninety-nine percent of the reason to set a goal is so that you can enjoy the process of going for it or accomplishing it."

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Bragging rights: you saw it here first.

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Your #1 job (bragging rights)

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I could argue persuasively that, even with prioritizing others over yourself and holding that others are more valuable than you are, if you're thinking long term, it requires you to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, then you can't take care of others very well either.

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Nevertheless, trying to make hourly, daily, and life choices with valuing others, including prioritizing belonging and looking good to others, more than taking care of yourself is going to be problematic, both for yourself and others.

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Yes, one of the most important ways that we can take care of our own needs and wants is through taking care of others, serving others, and even looking good to others.

 

Win-win is the best

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In terms of our relationships with others, for any particular transaction or set of transactions, as in a marriage, there are only four types of transactions: win-win, lose-win, win-lose, and lose-lose. Of course, each of these types have a short-term and long-term components. Obviously, to have the best possible world for everyone, win-win is the way to go, minimizing or eliminating the other three outcomes.

 

Who's the final judge?

 

Moreover, although you may have some idea of what constitutes a win for another person, ultimately they are the final judge of that. Similarly, you are the final judge of what is a win for you. Others cannot presume that for you. Consequently, everyone's #1 job is to take care of themselves. And, though you cannot guarantee that others will take care of themselves regarding their interaction with you, you'll selfishly do what you can do to support them being selfish with you. If you're both looking long term as well as short term, that is you've practicing Now-Next Integrity, this will be easy.

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Bottom line

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In particular transactions, in sets of transactions, and in your relationships with others, you focus on how their self-interests and your self-interests will complement each other, considering both long term and short term. You make requests, you say "no," and you set boundaries to support win-win interactions. You may find that initiating a Partnership conversation can help serve this in some relationships. However, in any particular relationship or transactions, if you're not finding a way to create a win or projected win for yourself and still satisfy the other person, then you take actions that prioritize taking care of yourself. You're not doing this against them. You're doing it for you. Nobody else has that job. It's yours and you can't give it away to others.

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In the big picture, long term, this prioritization creates the best possible world both for yourself and for others. The Old Ethics' glorification of sacrifice for others is ultimately a world of suffering and sometimes of horror.

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Case in point

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Although it's changing, most Chinese parents sacrifice their lives for their kids. They live their lives through their children. It's exhausting for them and also burdensome for their kids. Then when the children grow up, it's time for them to sacrifice for their parents. In all of this, I don't mean to imply that some of what the parents do for their children or the children do for their parents they are not happy to do. That's also true. Often, however, the majority of what they do is out of the obligation of sacrifice. Much of the time, it's not even lose-win or win-lose. It's lose-lose.

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The  value of more fear and risk (bragging rights)

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Economists have long identified the principle that allowing a risk on one level of the economy makes the economy more robust and responsive on the highest level. More specifically, relatively speaking, when a country's government does not subsidize or protect its citizens and businesses from competition from other individuals or businesses, whether local or even international, then the economy of those countries is more robust and responsive to the wants and needs of its citizens than are the economies of countries which are more protective. Keeping risk in place on a lower level, allowing individuals and businesses to "fail," creating less risk of having a weak and non-responsive economy on the highest level.

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We need to acknowledge, stay aware of, and even sometimes create more risk in our lives

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As individuals, however, we don't often see or apply this same principle appropriately to our own lives. When we don't stay aware of, allow for, and sometimes even create more risk in our lives, then we can easily get blind-sided and/or miss out of having a more vital and robust life.

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Expectations: our biggest denial of risk

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Our biggest and most generalized indulgence in wanting to feel safe, and thereby blinding ourselves to risk, is our habit of developing and believing in our expectations, often not even aware that we've done so, whether those expectations be positive or negative. Although indulgence in positive expectations can also have the benefit of counting our chickens before they hatch, the main benefit for creating both positive and negative expectations is to reduce or eliminate the sense of and acknowledgment of risk.

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Not only do expectations create immense upset for ourselves and others, they also cripple us in dealing effectively with reality and achieving what we're going for and also for what we would prefer to avoid. In fact, we could say that expectations are the source of all human suffering.

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Too much safety in marriage

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One specific example of creating dangerous expectations is in marriage and relationships. We try to create too much safety in our traditional promise of "until death do us part." A better promise would be, "Let's go for each of us giving and getting such value from being together so that we're both on-goingly eager to continue our partnership indefinitely, with each of us understanding that the sole purpose of having a relationship is to be the best choice for each of us in comparison to what we might have with another or others." 

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With this acknowledgment of the essentialness of win-win in relationships, it keeps us present to the risk and to an appropriate level of fear, which we can welcome and make friends with, so that, as long as the relationship lasts, then it's going to be a great relationship. And, if there is a separation, it's likely to be a great separation. The partners in the best marriages that I know are both aware that their spouse has the option to and even "should" say goodbye, if they're not happy in and see no prospect for being happy in that marriage.

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If you look further, you'll see how this issue of "too much safety" or "too little risk" often causes damage in others areas, such as a job being too secure or children being too taken care of and protected by their parents.

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Enchanting (bragging rights)

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What is the most important thing that young children do spontaneously that supports their natural expression of joy, curiosity, adventure, playfulness, and open sense of awe about their future?

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They verbally express themselves spontaneously. There's no internal censor that lies between their thoughts and feelings and what comes out of their mouth. Whatever those feelings are: joy, excitement, fear, anger, sadness, playfulness...whatever is there is expressed immediately and without self-consciousness. They don't dam anything up. They don't hold anything back. Whatever they think or feel, it arises, it expresses, and it's gone.

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But then the kids are conned

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They are tricked, and they trick themselves, into a trade, not aware of the costs. Either by instruction, "Don't be a cry baby" or "Quiet down," or by imitating those powerful adults that they want to be like, they begin to create a censor and repressor that decides to stop or dam up those expressions that either might not look good to others, or might look childish and silly, or might interfere with them getting what they want or avoiding what they don't want. They become self-censorship machines like the rest of us. 

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With most children, this begins as early as four years old and is firmly in place by seven or eight years old. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes that children, by age seven, have reached "the age of reason" and are entitled to receive communion. What they are calling "the age of reason" is a corollary for the fact that the child has developed a self-censor.

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For most, the degree of this self-censorship and self-suppression doesn't stop at age seven. Its effectiveness continues to increase into adulthood, fully establishing the hegemony of the HOGAB and the domination, or attempted domination, of Next over Now and Others over Oneself.

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What we traded in

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Not having been conscious of it at the time, what we have traded in, to varying degrees, so that we could become "respected" adults, is that natural self-expression, happiness, curiosity, playfulness, and open awe about our future that we had as young children.

 

We cannot return to being like those censor-free children or would we want to give up our self-reflective abilities as adults

 

To what extent this is a "necessary" trade at that time in our development, I'm not sure. Regardless, we can proactively "return" to expressing ourselves like a child from time to time in order to dissolve some of that internal calcification that our self-suppression has created, as well as to unearth some of that natural joy, curiosity, playfulness, and simple awe about life that has been buried as a result of having a self-censor.

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Other methods provide this benefit to varying degrees

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To a smaller extent, for some of us, singing, Buddhist chanting, journaling, or other forms of self-expression may help us return to being like a child. Certain therapies like primal screaming and rebirthing can make a difference.

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The limitation of these methods

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However, all these other methods require us, to some extent, to either "do it the right way," as with Buddhist chanting where you need to repeat specific sounds, and/or can include a significant engagement of the left brain to create words, as in signing and journaling.

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Enchanting is the closest simulation of that childlike self-expression

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With Enchanting you take whatever feeling or thought you happen to have at any moment as you continue through the process and you express it in nonsensical, extemporaneous soundings. It's silly. It sounds foolish. And it has the effect, to the extent that you're willing to continue doing it, of creating and maintaining that natural sense of happiness and self-expression that young children have before they have learned to self-censor.  Try it! You'll like it.

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Your Whine List (bragging rights)

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We hate whining. We hate complaining. We hate it in ourselves and we hate it in others. The one thing that "positive people" are not positive about is "negative people," otherwise known as whiners and complainers.

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Big mistake

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Whining and complaining are not a problem. They will actually do something for us and for others if we don't resist them, if we even encourage them. In general, as long as we resist complaining, as long as we make it wrong, in ourselves and in others, it will persist and we don't move onto whatever may be available after that.

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We need to be proactive about encouraging whining, both in ourselves and others

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Just as with fear with our deeply ingrained habit to resist it and turn it into dufear, our resistance to whining and complaining is automatic. To un-resist whining and complaining, we must do it proactively. The Whine List is all about how to do that. 

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Check it out today and get your Whine List set up. Also, tell others about it and offer to be on their Whine List. Let the whining begin!

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RAFTS (bragging rights)

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Gaining or losing intimacy with someone

 

Such an important issue. Intimacy and better understanding can be gained by mutually sharing more vulnerable issues. Intimacy can be lost by not sharing those things that show our underbelly.

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The benefits of not sharing more vulnerably

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But sharing more vulnerably can backfire because of how you share something or how the other person interprets what you say. Out of fear of making things worse, often a valid caution, we hold our tongue and give up the chance for more understanding and intimacy.

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RAFTS can help reduce the risk of misunderstanding

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RAFTS is an acronym I coined that stands for "Reluctant And Frightened To Share." Since it's not caught on yet as a word most people would know, you'll need to explain it first to anyone that you'd like to either create or maintain intimacy with.

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If you say, "I have a RAFTS," it means that you're about to share something that you feel vulnerable or nervous about sharing. And you hope the other person can know that you're choosing courage to share it with them with the intention to increase mutual understanding.

 

Then right after you say, "I have a RAFTS," you will share what you're nervous about sharing in the best way you know how.

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An example of using RAFTS

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You and your wife (or husband) planned to go out to dinner tonight and celebrate your anniversary, along with another couple. You know she's been looking forward to it for weeks. But it's 4:00 pm already, your energy level is really low, and you're almost certain that you could not be good company for your wife and for yourself, not to mention your two friends. It's not a big issue to beg off with your friends, but you're quite nervous about disappointing your wife and having her think that your anniversary together is not important to you.

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You say to her, "Honey, I have a RAFTS, okay?" She replies, "You're making me a bit nervous."

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You reply, "I understand, and I think everything can be okay. Let me explain. I was looking forward to celebrating our anniversary together with our friends tonight. I really thought I would be up for that and it would be great fun and very special.  But, for whatever reason, I'm really low energy today and I don't think I can be good company for you and our friends. This celebration with you is so important to me and I want to do it right. I'm hoping to go out and celebrate another time soon and it can be even more special because it won't fall officially on our anniversary date.  Tonight, let's just stay home and be relaxed with each other. What are your thoughts and feelings, Honey? I am open to changing my mind if I could see a way that it could work." 

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Then you continue to talk, using the Partnership Conversation, if necessary, so that you can both be happy.

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The integrity of lying (bragging rights)

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Because other ethicists, whether religiously or secularly oriented, have not previously identified a complete and fundamental distinction of integrity, they have not been able to put forward a consistent and cogent set of criteria for distinguishing "good lying" from "bad lying." The New Ethics is able to provide those criteria. See Lying for the greater good.

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The Best Sex Positions Ever (bragging rights)

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How could someone discover a new sex position, especially one that has significant advantages over all other known positions? Maybe I didn't. If you know of either of these two positions described in the literature, I would like to know about that.

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Both the side-back position and X position provide, for both the man and woman, a level of comfort, as well as additional opportunities for creating intimacy, passion, and making-love duration, that is more than most, if not all, of any other sex position.

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Problems: inner and outer

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I think others have, to some extent, made the important distinction between inner and outer problems. However, I don't know of others who have clearly made the point of how it's most often important to focus on resolving the inner problem first before turning attention to the outer problem. Once the inner problem is fully or even partially addressed, then we're going to be able to handle the outer problem more effectively, if it still exists. In most cases, our default tendency is to not notice or focus on the inner aspect of our problem but instead we try to eliminate it by rivetting our attention on the outer problem, which was the presenting stimulation of our inner problem.

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If resolving the outer problem deactivates the immediate trigger for the inner problem, then we miss the opportunity to have the inner problem solved "once and for all" so that, in our future, if similar outer problems occur, they are less likely to activate the inner problem which has been solved.

 

A few noted problem solvers such as Byron Katie, focus exclusively on resolving inner problems, almost as if outer problems were not important or did not exist. Most others focus almost exclusively on addressing outer problems, paying little if any attention to inner problems that people may have in taking the steps needed to handle the outer problems they are providing the answers for. An example is Dr. Joel Greger in his book, How Not To Die.

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Many problem solvers in the coaching or therapeutic professions, not making a fully clear distinction between inner and outer problems, often live inside the assumption that certain outer problems are either hard to deal with or will take a long time to deal with.

 

"If your spouse dies, then, of course, it'll take time to grieve and recover."

"If you're in an accident and you lose a leg, then, of course, it's going to be a while before you can accept the new reality."

"If you were sexually abused, then, of course, you've got a lot of healing to go through before you can be whole again."

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These beliefs live inside of a murky distinction between inner and outer problems. It's assumed that some outer problems will necessarily cause suffering (not just pain), not distinguishing that suffering lives inside of an interpretation of what an outer event means, not in the event itself.

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How to start a conversation with anyone (bragging rights)

 

Many books exist, some of which I have read, of how to start and have good conversations with others. The first one that influenced me and I could even say that it changed my life (at age 15) was Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Nothing I have heard or read, however, gives you a simple formula of how to get started and go deep. And to be able to do this after the first few pleasantries are complete. 

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It's not been uncommon for someone to comment to me, after an initial conversation of two hours, "You know me better than anyone else in my life." And, although, I cannot same the same back to them, they also know me pretty well. Step-by-step, through a back-and-forth dialogue, using many of the intimacy-increasing questions to lead us along, we have taken off our masks to get to know each other.

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Of course, it will not work with everybody. And much depends on your willingness and ability to create and maintain an attitude and atmosphere of non-judgmental curiosity in listening to and getting to know the other person. It also requires that you are willing to choose courage to propose and be the leader in a process that many may think is "strange" and "not natural."

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New cognitive biases (bragging rights)

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For whatever reasons, maybe because it would be too challenging to take on the roots of the Old Ethics of Sacrifice, the researchers of cognitive biases, like the two men who first coined the term, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, have not tackled several cognitive biases that are just begging to be "scientifically documented." Admittedly, a few of these are similar to already studied bias. For example, the Short-term bias definitely overlaps with the Hyperbolic Discounting bias.

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These new biases include the following which I have added to the larger cognitive bias link.

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Adult bias (contrast with the Baby bias)

Altruism bias (contrast with the Selfishness bias)

Assumption bias (contrast with the Expectation bias)

Attachment bias

Baby bias (contrast with the Adult bias)

Defense bias

Expectation bias (contrast with the Assumption bias)

External Problem bias (contrast with the Internal Problem bias)

Giving-up bias (contrast with the Persistence bias)

Good-Bad bias

Identify bias

I'll-Remember-It-bias

Internal Problem bias (contrast with the External Problem bias)

It's-About-Me bias

Knowledge bias

Life-Is-Hard bias

Looking-good bias

Long-term bias (contrast with Short-term bias)

Love bias

Memorphism

Persistence bias

Principle bias

Resistance bias

Results bias

Selfishness bias (contrast with Altruism bias)

Short-term bias (contrast with the Long-term bias)

Similarity bias

Victimhood bias

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Precrastination (bragging rights)

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Prescrastinate means more than "not procrastination," which is just not delaying or postponing. It means to do something or to start to do something much earlier than needed. It means to give yourself more or much more than enough time to get something done. To start something as soon as possible instead of as soon as needed or even later, when you are procrastinating. See Precrastination to discover all the extra benefits you can get.

 

The Partnership Conversation and The Fairyland Dialogue (bragging rights)

 

I have read many great approaches for resolving conflicts, especially those that affect more intimate relationships, and I've learned much from these. However, nothing matches the power of the Partnership Conversation and the Fairyland Dialogue to resolve conflicts and even deepen relationships in the process, often with the two techniques used together. One reason for this power is these techniques are designed inside the idea that everyone's #1 job is to take care of themselves.  To support this, these processes encourage a non-blame attitude of partnership and creativity to create win-win solutions for both sides. This is also facilitated by the freedom and flexibility unleashed by stepping outside the often damaging boundaries caused by our attitudes of "what's fair and not fair" or what "people should and shouldn't do."

 

Not finished yet: the coming attractions in this link are: 

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• Distinguishing you and your machinery

• Your Dear Life Letter

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The denouement

 

Also, I will be contrasting the methodologies of Byron Katie (not a philosophy) and Landmark Education (getting off it, payoff, Heidigger), whom I have learned much from, with my approach. In addition, I will provide a more than cursory comparison and contrast between my approach to ethics and those of Ayn Rand, pointing out her most fatal mistakes. Notes to myself: mysticism, whim worshipper, sanction of the victim, smoking, righteousness, her villains. Also, experiment with anchors from the top.

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