On Festivals and Fasting - A letter from Seneca

Today, I came across a letter written by Seneca from a podcast I was reading about. It's sort of mindblowing that today we have access to the intimate writing of such giants at the click of a button! Anyway, I have recently become a fan of Seneca, and immediately knew I had to take notes. Here are they:

Seneca is writing this letter to his friend Lucilius "On Festivals and Fasting" in December when the entire Roman kingdom is submerged in the holiday exuberance.

• It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting; but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way, – thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. For one may keep holiday without extravagance.
• Voluntary hardships: I am so firmly determined, however, to test the constancy of your mind that, I shall give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?".
• From the podcast, "Find some things that are hard, even if it’s just skipping the elevator and taking the stairs up to the 15th floor or whatever. If the other people are not doing it, then that’s probably a sign that it’s something that you should do and just record your results; see how much better it makes you feel and then just keep pushing yourself a bit further. Voluntary hardship is a fantastic way to short-circuit hedonic adaptation, where you need more and more and more, almost like an opiate to satisfy your need for x."
• It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace, the soldier performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil.
• You need not suppose that I mean meals like Timon's, or "paupers' huts,"[5] or any other device which luxurious millionaires use to beguile the tedium of their lives. Let the pallet be a real one, and the coarse cloak; let the bread be hard and grimy. Endure all this for three or four days at a time, sometimes for more, so that it may be a test of yourself instead of a mere hobby. Then, I assure you, my dear Lucilius, you will leap for joy when filled with a pennyworth of food, and you will understand that a man's peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs. [Importance of pilgrimage in many religions].
• There is no reason, however, why you should think that you are doing anything great; for you will merely be doing what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men are doing every day. But you may credit yourself with this item, – that you will not be doing it under compulsion, and that it will be as easy for you to endure it permanently as to make the experiment from time to time.
• Let us practise our strokes on the "dummy";let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.
• Even Epicurus, the teacher of pleasure, used to observe stated intervals, during which he satisfied his hunger in niggardly fashion; he wished to see whether he thereby fell short of full and complete happiness, and, if so, by what amount he fell short, and whether this amount was worth purchasing at the price of great effort.
• He alone is in kinship with God who has scorned wealth. Of course I do not forbid you to possess it, but I would have you reach the point at which you possess it dauntlessly; this can be accomplished only by persuading yourself that you can live happily without it as well as with it, and by regarding riches always as likely to elude you.
• Ungoverned anger begets madness. It makes no difference how important the provocation may be, but into what kind of soul it penetrates. Similarly with fire; it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon. For solid timbers have repelled a very great fire; conversely, dry and easily inflammable stuff nourishes the slightest spark into a conflagration.

Summary of "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life"

Reading the "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" book by Marshall B. Rosenberg was on the top of my list for a while. Google used to conduct courses on it which were highly rated and many friends had recommended the book as well. I finally got to reading this and I am glad I did. Although I don't agree with everything in the book and am not convinced that the approach can be applied as is all the time, I still think that the core ideas are worth heeding and implementing as much as possible. Even just being aware of these ideas can bring a great difference in how we think and communicate. In fact, as I write this summary, I can already see improvement in my quality of conversations! I rate the book highly and one of those which I would like to re-read periodically.

The book explores how peaceful communication can create compassionate connections in personal and professional settings and uses stories and dialogues to provide solutions to communication problems. Guidance is provided on identifying and articulating feelings and needs, expressing anger fully, and exploring the power of empathy in order to speak honestly without creating hostility, break patterns of thinking that lead to anger and depression, and communicate compassionately.

Here is my summary of the sections I found important in the book. I would definitely recommend everyone to read this book.

1. The NVC Process

Four components of NVC:

1. Observation: what are we observing others saying or doing that is affecting us? The trick is to be able to articulate this observation without introducing any judgment or evaluation—to simply say what people are doing that we either like or don’t like.
2. Feeling: we state how we feel when we observe this action: are we hurt, scared, joyful, amused, irritated, etc.?
3. Needs: we say what needs of ours are connected to the feelings we have identified.
4. Request: what we are wanting from the other person that would enrich our lives.

E.g. a mother might express these three pieces to her teenage son by saying, “Felix, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table and another three next to the TV, I feel irritated because I am needing more order in the rooms that we share in common.” She would follow immediately with the fourth component—a very specific request: “Would you be willing to put your socks in your room or in the washing machine?” 

Thus, part of NVC is to express these four pieces of information very clearly, whether verbally or by other means. The other aspect of this communication consists of receiving the same four pieces of information from others. We connect with them by first sensing what they are observing, feeling, and needing, and then discover what would enrich their lives by receiving the fourth piece, their request.

It is possible to experience all four pieces of the process without uttering a single word. The essence of NVC is to be found in our consciousness of these four components, not in the actual words that are exchanged.

My summary of NVC:

• What happened?
• How did it make me feel?
• Why did it make me feel that way?
• What could be done to change it?

By going through this process we are able to break the stimuli-response chain.

Author's experience

I was presenting Nonviolent Communication in a mosque at Deheisha Refugee Camp in Bethlehem to about 170 Palestinian Moslem men. Attitudes toward Americans at that time were not favorable. As I was speaking, I suddenly noticed a wave of muffled commotion fluttering through the audience. “They’re whispering that you are American!” my translator alerted me, just as a gentleman in the audience leapt to his feet. Facing me squarely, he hollered at the top of his lungs, “Murderer!” Immediately a dozen other voices joined him in chorus: “Assassin!” “Child-killer!” “Murderer!” Fortunately, I was able to focus my attention on what the man was feeling and needing. In this case, I had some cues. On the way into the refugee camp, I had seen several empty tear gas canisters that had been shot into the camp the night before. Clearly marked on each canister were the words “Made in U.S.A.” I knew that the refugees harbored a lot of anger toward the U.S. for supplying tear gas and other weapons to Israel. I addressed the man who had called me a murderer:

I: Are you angry because you would like my government to use its resources differently? (I didn’t know whether my guess was correct, but what is critical is my sincere effort to connect with his feeling and need.)
He: Damn right I’m angry! You think we need tear gas? We need sewers, not your tear gas! We need housing! We need to have our own country!
I: So you’re furious and would appreciate some support in improving your living conditions and gaining political independence?
He: Do you know what it’s like to live here for twenty seven years the way I have with my family—children and all? Have you got the faintest idea what that’s been like for us?
I: Sounds like you’re feeling very desperate and you’re wondering whether I or anybody else can really understand what it’s like to be living under these conditions. Am I hearing you right?
He: You want to understand? Tell me, do you have children? Do they go to school? Do they have playgrounds? My son is sick! He plays in open sewage! His classroom has no books! Have you seen a school that has no books?
I: I hear how painful it is for you to raise your children here; you’d like me to know that what you want is what all parents want for their children—a good education, opportunity to play and grow in a healthy environment . . .
He: That’s right, the basics! Human rights—isn’t that what you Americans call it? Why don’t more of you come here and see what kind of human rights you’re bringing here!
I: You’d like more Americans to be aware of the enormity of the suffering here and to look more deeply at the consequences of our political actions? 

Our dialogue continued, with him expressing his pain for nearly twenty more minutes, and I listen for the feeling and need behind each statement. I didn’t agree or disagree. I received his words, not as attacks, but as gifts from a fellow human willing to share his soul and deep vulnerabilities with me. Once the gentleman felt understood, he was able to hear me as I explained my purpose for being at the camp. An hour later, the same man who had called me a murderer was inviting me to his home for a Ramadan dinner.

2. Communication That Blocks Compassion

Being compassionate is our natural state. Certain ways of communicating alienate us from it.

Moralistic Judgments

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” - Rumi

• Moralistic judgments that imply wrongness on the part of people who don’t act in harmony with our values. 
• Such judgments are reflected in the language such as, “The problem with you is that you’re too selfish.” “She’s lazy.” “They’re prejudiced.” “It’s inappropriate.” Blame, insults, put-downs, labels, criticism, comparisons, and diagnoses are all forms of judgment. 
• When we speak this language, we think and communicate in terms of what’s wrong with others for behaving in certain ways, or occasionally, what’s wrong with ourselves for not understanding or responding as we would like. Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and not getting. Thus if my partner wants more affection than I’m giving her, she is “needy and dependent.” But if I want more affection than she is giving me, then she is “aloof and insensitive.” 
• It is my belief that all such analyses of other human beings are tragic expressions of our own values and needs. They are tragic because, when we express our values and needs in this form, we increase defensiveness and resistance to them among the very people whose behaviors are of concern to us. Or, if they do agree to act in harmony with our values not because they concur with our analysis of their wrongness, they will likely do so out of fear, guilt, or shame.
• We all pay dearly when people respond to our values and needs, not out of a desire to give from the heart, but out of fear, guilt, or shame. Sooner or later, we will experience the consequences of diminished goodwill on the part of those who comply with our values out of a sense of either external or internal coercion. They, too, pay emotionally, for they are likely to feel resentment and decreased self-esteem when they respond to us out of fear, guilt, or shame. Furthermore, each time others associate us in their minds with any of those feelings, we decrease the likelihood of their responding compassionately to our needs and values in the future.
• It is important here not to confuse value judgments and moralistic judgments. All of us make value judgments as to the qualities we value in life; for example, we might value honesty, freedom, or peace. Value judgments reflect our beliefs of how life can best be served. We make moralistic judgments of people and behaviors that fail to support our value judgments, e.g. “Violence is bad. People who kill others are evil.” Had we been raised speaking a language that facilitated the expression of compassion, we would have learned to articulate our needs and values directly, rather than to insinuate wrongness when they have not been met. For example, instead of “Violence is bad,” we might say instead, “I am fearful of the use of violence to resolve conflicts; I value the resolution of human conflicts through other means.” 
• A researcher took random samples of pieces of literature from many countries over the world and tabulated the frequency of words that classify and judge people. His study shows a high correlation between the frequent use of such words and incidences of violence. It does not surprise me to hear that there is considerably less violence in cultures where people think in terms of human needs than in cultures where people label one another as “good” or “bad” and believe that the “bad” ones deserve to be punished.
• At the root of much, if not all, violence—whether verbal, psychological, or physical, whether among family members, tribes, or nations—is a kind of thinking that attributes the cause of conflict to wrongness in one’s adversaries, and a corresponding inability to think of oneself or others in terms of vulnerability—what one might be feeling, fearing, yearning for, missing, etc.
• Comparisons are a form of judgment.

Open questions/meta-points

• Aren't there some values that are universal? Wouldn't not valuing them be bad.
• Nikhil mentioned that labeling can be non-violent also if we are aware of the reason behind it. E.g. we might label someone as violent, but if we are aware that they are so because of the situations they went through as a child, we probably would still be kind to them.

Denial Of Responsibility

"The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men." - George Bernanos

• We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.
• The lack of responsibility in our language can lead us to cause great violence (physical, mental etc). E.g.
• “I cleaned my room because I had to.” -- results in resentment
• “I hit my child because he ran into the street.” -- blaming on the actions of others
• “I lied to the client because the boss told me to.” -- blaming on the actions of others
• “I started smoking because all my friends did.” -- blaming on the actions of others
• “I hate giving grades. I don’t think they are helpful and they create a lot of anxiety on the part of students. But I have to give grades: it’s the district policy.” vs “I choose to give grades because I want to keep my job.”. This results in much less resentment.

My summary: The core idea here is recognizing that the stimulus is often inside and not outside. E.g. I hit the child because I was angry, not because he ran into the street. Only when we take responsibility for our actions, then can we change them.

Communicating desires as demands

• A demand explicitly or implicitly threatens listeners with blame or punishment if they fail to comply.
• Demand-led actions lead to retaliation.

3. NVC Step 1: Observing Without Evaluating

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

• The first component of NVC entails the separation of observation from evaluation. We need to clearly observe what we are seeing, hearing, or touching that is affecting our sense of well-being, without mixing in any evaluation.
• When we combine observation with evaluation, however, we decrease the likelihood that others will hear our intended message.
• NVC does not mandate that we remain completely objective and refrain from evaluating. It only requires that we maintain a separation between our observations and our evaluations. NVC is a process language that discourages static generalizations; instead, evaluations are to be based on observations specific to time and context.
• For most of us, this objective separation is difficult.

Distinguishing Observations From Evaluations

Author's experience 

During a workshop I was conducting, someone raised a hand and declared, “You’re the most arrogant speaker we’ve ever had!” 

MBR: (guessing at the observations he was making) Are you reacting to my having taken 30 straight minutes to present my views before giving you a chance to talk?
Phil: No, you make it sound so simple.
MBR: (trying to obtain further clarification) Are you reacting to my not having said anything about how the process can be difficult for some people to apply?
Phil: No, not some people—you!
MBR: So you’re reacting to my not having said that the process can be difficult for me at times?
Phil: That’s right.
MBR: Are you feeling annoyed because you would have liked some sign from me that indicated that I have some problems with the process myself?
Phil: (after a moment’s pause) That’s right.
MBR: (More relaxed now that I am in touch with the person’s feeling and need, I direct my attention to what he might be requesting of me) Would you like me to admit right now that this process can be a struggle for me to apply?
Phil: Yes.
MBR: (Having gotten clear on his observation, feeling, need, and request, I check inside myself to see if I am willing to do as he requests) Yes, this process is often difficult for me. As we continue with the workshop, you’ll probably hear me describe several incidents where I’ve struggled . . . or completely lost touch . . . with this process, this consciousness, that I am presenting here to you. But what keeps me in the struggle are the close connections to other people that happen when I do stay with the process.

My summary: Without specific observations, past biases tend to obscure the reality and any downstream actions are then in ignorance.

4. NVC Step 2: Identifying and Expressing Feelings

The Heavy Cost Of Unexpressed Feelings

• Our repertoire of words for calling people names is often larger than our vocabulary of words that allow us to clearly describe our emotional states.
• The difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings is common, and in my experience, especially so among lawyers, engineers, police officers, corporate managers, and career military personnel—people whose professional codes discourage them from manifesting emotions.
• One dissatisfied woman brought her spouse to a workshop, during which she told him, “I feel like I’m married to a wall.” The husband then did an excellent imitation of a wall: he sat mute and immobile. Exasperated, she turned to me and exclaimed, “See! This is what happens all the time. He sits and says nothing. It’s just like living with a wall.” “It sounds to me like you are feeling lonely and wanting more emotional contact with your husband,” I responded. When she agreed, I tried to show how statements such as “I feel like I’m living with a wall” are unlikely to bring her feelings and desires to her husband’s attention. In fact, they are more likely to be heard as criticism than an invitation to connect with our feelings. Furthermore, such statements often lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. A husband, for example, hears himself criticized for behaving like a wall; he is hurt and discouraged and doesn’t respond, thereby confirming his wife’s image of him as a wall.
• Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable by expressing our feelings can help resolve conflicts. 
• NVC distinguishes the expression of actual feelings from words and statements that describe thoughts, assessments, and interpretations.
• A vocabulary of feelings can help in their expression (link).

My summary: Identifying feelings is important as without that it's hard to find what is causing it e.g. what need is being unmet.

5. NVC Step 3: Taking Responsibility For Our Feelings

“People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.” —Epictetus

Hearing A Negative Message: Four Options

• What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but not the cause.
• Our feelings result from how we choose to receive what others say and do, as well as our particular needs and expectations in that moment.
• Four options of receiving a negative message.
• Blaming ourselves: We accept the other person’s judgment and blame ourselves resulting in guilt, shame, and depression.
• Blaming others: Results in anger.
• Sensing our own feelings and needs: For example, in response to “You’re the most self-centered person I’ve ever met,” we might reply, “When I hear you saying that I am the most self-centered person you’ve ever met, I feel hurt, because I need some recognition of my efforts to be considerate of your preferences.” By focusing attention on our own feelings and needs, we become conscious that our current feeling of hurt derives from a need for our efforts to be recognized.
• Sensing others’ feelings and needs: We might, for example, ask, “Are you feeling hurt because you need more consideration for your preferences?”
• The basic mechanism of motivating by guilt is to attribute the responsibility for one’s own feelings to others. E.g. when parents say, “It hurts Mommy and Daddy when you get poor grades at school”.
• We can deepen our awareness of our own responsibility by using the phrase, “I feel . . . because I . . . ” 

We accept responsibility rather than blame other people for our feelings by acknowledging our own needs, desires, expectations, values, or thoughts. Note the difference between the following expressions of disappointment:

A: “You disappointed me by not coming over last evening.”
B: “I was disappointed when you didn’t come over because I wanted to talk over some things.”
Speaker A attributes responsibility for the disappointment solely to the action of the other person. In B, the feeling of disappointment is traced to the speaker’s own desire that was not being fulfilled. 

Example 2
A: “Their canceling the contract really irritated me!”
B: “When they canceled the contract, I felt really irritated because I was hoping for an opportunity to re-hire the workers we had laid off last year.”

The Needs At The Roots Of Feelings

• Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs.
• “You never understand me,” they are really telling us that their need to be understood is not being fulfilled. 
• We are accustomed to thinking about what’s wrong with other people when our needs aren’t being fulfilled. 
• When we express our needs indirectly through the use of evaluations, interpretations, and images, others are likely to hear criticism resulting in self-defense or counterattack.
• If we express our needs, we have a better chance of getting them met.
• List of basic human needs.

From Emotional Slavery To Emotional Liberation

In the course of developing emotional responsibility, most of us experience three stages:

1. “emotional slavery”—believing ourselves responsible for the feelings of others, 
2. “the obnoxious stage”—in which we refuse to admit to caring what anyone else feels or needs, and 
3. “emotional liberation”—in which we accept full responsibility for our own feelings but not the feelings of others while being aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others.

My summary: Blame the need, not the person. This would make you more compassionate towards the person. This also helps avoid the other person to become defensive or counter-attacking and thus results in better reaching a solution.

6. NVC Step 4: Requesting That Which Would Enrich Life

• Use positive language. Express what you want, not what you don't.
• Avoid vague, abstract, or ambiguous phrasing.
• Word the requests in the form of concrete actions that others can undertake.
• Expressing needs concretely can also help the request maker see if their requests are unjustified. E.g. A father wanted his son to be more responsible, but when asked to express this more concretely, it turned out he wanted sleepish obedience which he himself found incorrect.
• People are often depressed when their needs are not being met. The most common reason for their needs being unmet is not that others are failing to meet them but they themselves don't know what they want and hence, don't ask for their needs. 
• Whenever we say something to another person, we are requesting something in return.
• Group meetings often waste time on fruitless discussions. When someone brings up a topic/story, members should ask, "What response are we wanting from the group from this?".
• Requests are received as demands when others believe they will be blamed or punished if they do not comply. When people hear us make a demand, they see only two options: submission or rebellion. Either way, the person requesting is perceived as coercive, and the listener’s capacity to respond compassionately to the request is diminished. Both listener and requester carry this to future relations.
• How to tell if it’s a demand or a request: Observe what the speaker does if the request is not complied with. If the response of noncompliance is punishment, judgment or guilt-trap, it's not a request.
• The more we interpret noncompliance as rejection, the more likely our requests will be heard as demands. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, for the more people hear demands, the less they enjoy being around us.
• We can help others trust that we are requesting, not demanding, by indicating that we would only want the person to comply if he or she can do so willingly. Thus we might ask, “Would you be willing to set the table?” rather than “I would like you to set the table.” 
• The most powerful way to communicate that we are making a genuine request is to empathize with people when they don’t respond to the request. Choosing to request rather than demand does not mean we give up when someone says “no” to our request. It does mean that we don’t engage in persuasion until we have empathized with what’s preventing the other person from saying “yes.”
• The NVC process is designed for those of us who would like others to change and respond, but only if they choose to do so willingly and compassionately. This is difficult especially for parents, teachers, managers, and others whose work centers around influencing people and obtaining behavioral results.
• When we occupy positions of authority and are speaking with those who have had past experiences with coercive authority figures, they might perceive our genuine requests as demands as well.
• When making a request, it is also helpful to scan our minds for thoughts of the following sort that automatically transform requests into demands: • He should be cleaning up after himself. • She’s supposed to do what I ask. • I deserve to get a raise. • I’m justified in having them stay later. • I have a right to more time off. When we frame our needs in this way, we are bound to judge others when they don’t do as we request.
• Since the message we send is not always the message that’s received, we need to learn how to find out if our message has been accurately heard. Paraphrasing or asking them to repeat what they heard us say can help.

My summary: By requesting specifically, we can become aware and honest about what we want and it also helps the other person understands what they could do. I spent some moments wondering what's wrong with "He should be cleaning up after himself". My conclusion is that he may not value cleaning. If I value, then I should let them know of my needs.

7. Receiving Empathically

 “Don’t just do something, stand there.” - Buddhist saying.

• Empathy occurs only when we have successfully shed all preconceived ideas and judgments about someone.
• We tend to have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, on the other hand, requires focusing full attention on the other person’s message.
• Common behaviors that prevent us from connecting empathically:
• Advising: “I think you should . . . ” “How come you didn’t . . . ?”
• One-upping: “That’s nothing; wait till you hear what happened to ....”
• Consoling: “It wasn’t your fault; you did the best you could.”
• Story-telling: “That reminds me of the time . . . ”
• Shutting down: “Cheer up. Don’t feel so bad.”
• Sympathizing: “Oh, you poor thing . . . ”
• Interrogating: “When did this begin?”
• Explaining: “I would have called but . . . ”
• Correcting: “That’s not how it happened.”
• Believing we have to “fix” situations and make others feel better prevents us from being present.
• Questions such as, “When did this begin?” block the kind of presence that empathy requires. When we are thinking about people’s words, listening to how they connect to our theories, we are looking at people—we are not with them.
• In empathy, we are wholly present with the other party and what they are experiencing. This quality of presence distinguishes empathy from either mental understanding or sympathy. While we may choose at times to sympathize with others by feeling their feelings, it’s helpful to be aware that during the moment we are offering sympathy, we are not empathizing.
• You’ll find people to be less threatening if you hear what they’re needing rather than what they’re thinking about you.
• Time and again I have witnessed people transcending the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically -- the author has used empathetic listening to cure many patients with acute psychological disorders.

Paraphrasing

• Speakers expressing intensely emotional messages would appreciate our reflecting these back to them. E.g. to "I'm depressed." responding with, "Oh, so you are depressed.".
• Paraphrasing tends to save, rather than waste, time. Studies in labor-management negotiations demonstrate that the time required to reach conflict resolution is cut in half when each negotiator agrees, before responding, to accurately repeat what the previous speaker had said.
• My note: From my past experience, in arguments, repeating what other person said helps. Often, either we don't listen to what they said and here our own story or they might have said something without realizing. Paraphrasing helps clarify things and prevents unnecessary escalations.

Example:

Wife: “You never listen to me.”
Husband: “I do” he replied.
Wife: “No, you don’t,” she countered.

vs

Wife: “You never listen to me.”
Husband: “It sounds like you’re terribly frustrated because you would like to feel more connection when we speak.” 

Sustaining Empathy

• Allow others the opportunity to fully express themselves before turning our attention to solutions or requests for relief. 
• When we proceed too quickly to what people might be requesting, we may not convey our genuine interest in their feelings and needs; instead, they may get the impression that we’re in a hurry to either be free of them or to fix their problem.
• By maintaining our attention on what’s going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.
• We know the speaker has received adequate empathy when a. we sense a release of tension or b. the flow of words comes to a halt. 
• By listening to what’s going on in ourselves with the same quality of presence and attention that we offer to others, we can provide ourselves with empathy.

My summary: Empathy helps us get in touch with the feelings and needs of the other person. Empathy is being without doing.

8. Connecting Compassionately With Ourselves

"Let us become the change we seek in the world." —Mahatma Gandhi

• When we are internally violent towards ourselves, it is difficult to be genuinely compassionate towards others. Hence, the most crucial application of NVC is in the way we treat ourselves.
• We were not meant to succumb to the dictates of “should” and “have to,” whether they come from outside or inside of ourselves. And if we do yield and submit to these demands, our actions arise from an energy that is devoid of life-giving joy.
• Self-judgments, like all judgments, are tragic expressions of unmet needs. By self judgement, what we are saying is, “I myself am not behaving in harmony with my own needs.”
• NVC mourning: connecting with the feelings and unmet needs stimulated by past actions which we now regret. We see how our behavior ran counter to our own needs and values, and we open ourselves to feelings that arise out of that awareness. 
• When our consciousness is focused on what we need, we are naturally stimulated towards the creative possibilities of how to get that need met. In contrast, the moralistic judgments we use when blaming ourselves tend to obscure such possibilities and to perpetuate a state of self-punishment. 
• NVC self-forgiveness: connecting with the need we were trying to meet when we took the action which we now regret.
• An important aspect of self-compassion is to be able to empathically hold both parts of ourselves—the self that regrets a past action and the self that took the action in the first place. The process of mourning and self-forgiveness free us in the direction of learning and growing. In connecting moment by moment to our needs, we increase our creative capacity to act in harmony with them.

Translating “Have to” To “Choose to”

• Whenever you feel like, "I have to do X " convert it to “I choose to do X because I want Y.” Then,
• if you are not convinced that Y merits the frustration/cost of X, don't do it.
• Otherwise do it wholeheartedly. This way you are empowering yourself and getting to a resolution.
• E.g. "I have to spend so much time driving kids to school every day." vs 
• "I choose to drive kids to school every day because the schools nearby are not good and I really value their education." and then doing it without complaints
• or "I choose to drive kids to school every day because I want to save some money." and then deciding not doing this and hiring someone to do this.
• This helps us identify our true motivators and makes us responsible for them. Have-to puts it on someone else.
• Common motivators: money, the approval of others, fear, shame, guilt or duty.
• The most dangerous of all behaviors is the duty. Because of this, Nazi officers committed so many atrocities without a second thought.

9. Expressing Anger Fully

• Killing, hitting, blaming, hurting others—whether physically or mentally—are all superficial expressions of what is going on within us when we are angry.
• What other people do is never the cause, but a stimulus, of how we feel.
• Cause of anger is judging or blaming the other person for being wrong or deserving of punishment.
• When we are connected to our need, we may have strong feelings, but we are never angry.
• Judgments of others contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.

Steps to expressing anger

1. Stop: Breathe and refrain from making any move to blame or punish
2. Identify our judgmental thoughts. 
3. Connect with the unmet needs behind these thoughts.
4. Offer empathy if possible: Ask the other person, “Are you feeling . . . ?” to understand their story.
5. Express our feelings and unmet needs.

10. The Protective Use Of Force

• In some situations, we may need to resort to force. For instance, the other party may be unwilling to communicate, or imminent danger may not allow time for communication. 
• NVC requires us to differentiate between the protective and the punitive uses of force. The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury or injustice. The intention behind the punitive use of force is to cause individuals to suffer for their perceived misdeeds.
• When we submit to doing something solely for the purpose of avoiding punishment, our attention is distracted from the value of the action itself.
• Punishment is costly in terms of goodwill. The more we are seen as agents of punishment, the harder it is for others to respond compassionately to our needs.

Corporal punishment in Children

• Children’s fear of corporal punishment may obscure their awareness of the compassion that underlies parental demands.
• On countless occasions, children turn against what might be good for them simply because they choose to fight, rather than succumb, to coercion.
• When parents opt to use force they are we perpetuating a social norm that justifies violence as a means of resolving differences.
• In addition to the physical, other uses of force also qualify as punishment. E.g. labeling the child, withholding of some means of gratification, threatening to withdraw caring or respect.
• Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment to change people’s behavior:
1. What do I want this person to do?
2. What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing it?
• Punishment and reward interfere with people’s ability to do things motivated by the reasons we’d like them to have. 

My summary: Force (physical, emotional) can at best help in the short term and at worst can have adverse effects in the long term. Force hampers communication.

11. Expressing Appreciation In Nonviolent Communication

• Compliments are often judgments—however positive—of others. E.g. “You are really smart.”
• Modern psychology recommends using positive feedback as a means to influence others. However, the recipients of such praise do change behavior, but only initially. Once they sense the manipulation behind the appreciation, they go back to where they were or become even worse.
• The NVC approach: Express appreciation as a way to celebrate, not to manipulate.
• Saying “thank you” in NVC: “This is what you did; this is what I feel; this is the need of mine that was met.” The order doesn't matter.
• Receving appreciation is done in a similar manner. 
• Usually, appreciation is received from one of two polar positions. At one end is egotism: believing ourselves to be superior because we’ve been appreciated. At the other extreme is false humility, denying the importance of the appreciation by shrugging it off: “Oh, it was nothing.” We could receive appreciation joyfully, in the awareness that God has given everyone the power to enrich the lives of others. If we are aware that it is this power of God working through us that gives us the power to enrich life for others, then we may avoid both the ego trap and the false humility.
• Almost everyone is hungry for appreciation. Even when people are embarrassed, they still want to hear appreciation verbalized.

12. My notes: Open questions/criticism

• The language the book recommends sounds way too formal for a normal conversation. That limits its application. This might have worked for the author as he is a psychologist but I doubt it would work for the rest. E.g. it would be ridiculous to say something like this, "I’d like you to tell me if you would be willing to postpone our meeting for one week." vs "Would you be willing to postpone our meeting for one week?". 
• Also, some NVC dialogues can get too complicated to understand. E.g. “would you be willing to tell me how I could have let you know what I was wanting so that it wouldn’t sound like I was bossing you around?”
• Downsides of empathy: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-downsides-of-empathy-1 

Thanks for reading this far! If you managed till here, I would strongly recommend you read the book as apart from the theory, the book also has a lot of sample dialogues. Also, if you have any thoughts on the topics above, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to share them below. Lastly, check out the NVC website for the resources.

The Psychology of Human Misjudgment by Charlie Munger - Part 2

This is the part two and the final one of my summary of the chapter from "Poor Charlie's Almanack" where Munger describes psychology-based tendencies that, while sometimes useful to us, can often mislead. If we are aware of these, we will do better in life.

The part one could be found here.


Deprival Superreaction Tendency

• The quantity of man’s pleasure from a ten dollar gain does not exactly match the quantity of his displeasure from a ten-dollar loss. That is, the loss seems to hurt much more than the gain seems to help. Moreover; if a man almost gets something he greatly wants and has it jerked away from him at the last moment, he will react much as if he had long owned the reward and had it jerked away.
• In displaying Deprival Superreaction Tendency, man frequently incurs disadvantage by misframing his problems. He will often compare what is near instead of what really matters. For instance, a man with $10 million in his brokerage account will often be extremely irritated by the accidental loss of $100 out of the $300 in his wallet.
• A man ordinarily reacts with irrational intensity to even a small loss, or threatened loss, of property, love, friendship, dominated territory, opportunity, status, or any other valued thing. As a natural result, bureaucratic infighting over the threatened loss of dominated territory often causes immense damage to an institution or as a whole. This factor among others accounts for much of the wisdom of Jack Welch‘s long fight against bureaucratic ills at General Electric.
• Deprival Superreaction Tendency often protects ideological or religious views by triggering a hatred directed toward vocal nonbelievers.
• It is almost everywhere the case that extremes of ideology are maintained with great intensity and with great antipathy to non-believers, causing extremes of cognitive dysfunction. This happens, I believe, because two psychological tendencies are usually acting concurrently towards this same sad result: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, plus Deprival Superreaction Tendency.
• Antidotes to intense, deliberate maintenance of groupthink: 
1. An extreme culture of courtesy, kept in place despite ideological differences
2. To deliberately bring in able and articulate disbelievers of incumbent groupthink.
• Labor, once paid a certain wage, can't let it be reduced even if it means the closing of the business which is the worse outcome for them.
• The most addictive forms of gambling provide a lot of near misses and each one triggers Deprival Superreaction Tendency. Electronic machines enable the creators to produce a lot of meaningless bar-bar-lemon results that greatly increase play by fools who think they have very nearly won large rewards.
• Deprival Superreaction Tendency often does much damage to man in open-outcry auctions. The social proof that we will next consider tends to convince man that the last price from another bidder was reasonable, and then Deprival Superreaction Tendency prompts him strongly to top the last bid. The best antidote to being thus triggered into paying foolish prices at open-outcry auctions is the simple Buffett practice: Don’t go to such auctions.

Social-Proof Tendency

• It's wiser for parents to rely more on manipulating the quality of the peers of their kids than on exhortations to them to correct their behavior.
• Triggering of Social-Proof Tendency most readily occurs in the presence of puzzlement or stress, and particularly when both exist.
• Because both bad and good behaviors are made contagious by Social-Proof Tendency, it is highly important that human societies stop any bad behavior before it spreads and foster and display all good behavior.
• Inaction by others can also become social proof [ref Bystander effect].
• Summary: Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having.

Contrast-Misreaction Tendency 

• The contrast in what is seen is registered in the brain.
• Few psychological tendencies do more damage to correct thinking.
• Small-scale damages involve instances such as man’s buying an overpriced $1,000 leather dashboard merely because the price is so low compared to his concurrent purchase of a $65,000 car.
• Large-scale damages often ruin lives, as when a wonderful woman having terrible parents marries a man who would be judged satisfactory only in comparison to her parents.
• A particularly reprehensible form of sales practice occurs in the offices of some real estate brokers. A buyer from out of the city visits the office with little time available. The salesman deliberately shows the customer three awful houses at ridiculously high prices. Then he shows him a merely bad house at a price only moderately too high. And, boom, the broker often makes an easy sale.

Stress-Influence Tendency

• Sudden stress, for instance from a threat, will cause a rush of adrenaline in the human body, prompting a faster and more extreme reaction.
• Light stress can slightly improve performance – say, in examinations – whereas heavy stress causes dysfunction.
• During the great Leningrad Flood of the 1920s, Pavlov had many dogs in cages. Their habits had been transformed, by a combination of his “Pavlovian conditioning” plus standard reward responses, into distinct and different patterns. As the waters of the flood came up and receded, many dogs reached a point where they had almost no airspace between their noses and the tops of their cages. This subjected them to maximum stress. Immediately thereafter, Pavlov noticed that many of the dogs were no longer behaving as they had. For example, the dog that formerly had liked his trainer now disliked him. This result reminds one of the modern cognition-reversals in which a person’s love of his parents suddenly becomes hate, as new love has been shifted suddenly to a cult. The unanticipated, extreme changes in Pavlov’s dogs would have driven any good experimental scientist into a near-frenzy of curiosity. That was indeed Pavlov’s reaction. Pavlov spent the rest of his long life giving stress-induced nervous breakdowns to dogs, after which he would try to reverse the breakdowns, all the while keeping careful experimental records. He found: 
1. that he could classify dogs so as to predict how easily a particular dog would breakdown; 
2. that the dogs hardest to break down were also the hardest to return to their pre-breakdown state; 
3. that any dog could be broken down; 
4. and that he couldn’t reverse a breakdown except by reimposing stress.

Availability-Misweighing Tendency 

• Man’s imperfect, limited-capacity brain easily drifts into working with what’s easily available to it, and the brain can’t use what it can’t remember or what it is blocked from recognizing. 
• The main antidotes to avoid Availability-Misweighing Tendency often involve procedures, including use of checklists, which are almost always helpful.
• Extra-vivid evidence, being so memorable and thus more available in cognition, should often consciously be under weighed while less vivid evidence should be overweighed.

Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

• Humans have the natural tendency to follow leaders.
• Man is often destined to suffer greatly when the leader is wrong or when his leader’s ideas don’t get through properly.
• In the simulator training of copilots, they have to learn to ignore certain really foolish orders from boss pilots because boss pilots will sometimes err disastrously. Even after going through such a training regime, however, copilots in simulator exercises will too often allow the simulated plane to crash because of some extreme and perfectly obvious simulated error of the chief pilot.
• Summary: be careful whom you appoint to power because a dominant authority figure will often be hard to remove, aided as they will be by Authority-Misinfluence Tendency.

Reason-Respecting Tendency

• Human cognition has the natural tendency of complying when given reasoning.
• This is sometimes abused by giving bogus reasons.

The Psychology of Human Misjudgment by Charlie Munger - Part 1

This is the part one of my summary of the chapter from "Poor Charlie's Almanack" where Munger describes psychology-based tendencies that, while sometimes useful to us, can often mislead. If we are aware of these, we will do better in life.


Reward and Punishment Super Response Tendency

• Incentives are very powerful. When FedEx wanted to make it's nighttime operations faster, they tried everything but nothing seemed to work. Finally, they decided to stop paying the employees by the hour and paid by shift, so that the could go home early if they finished early and it worked.
• "If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason". 
• Prompt rewards work much better in changing the behavior than the delayed ones in changing and maintaining behavior. This has led to improvement in autistic children.
• Look out for incentive caused bias.
• Points to keep in mind when dealing with a professional advisor:
• Fear advise which is good for the advisor
• Learn and use the basic elements of your advisor's trade
• Double check, disbelieve or replace until it seems appropriate objectively
• My corollary: Prioritize advisors who admit what they did wrong and are willing to admit their mistakes to help you.
• Punishments also work similarly as rewards (in the opposite directions) but are not as great at habit changing.

Liking /Loving Tendency

• We are genetically programmed to love/like.
• This acts as a conditioning device that makes the liker/lover tend
• to ignore the faults of, and comply with the wishes of the object of its affection.
• to favor people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of his affection.
• to distort other facts to facilitate love.

Disliking/Hating Tendency

• The reverse of above.

Doubt-Avoidance Tendency

• Evolutionarily, the brain is programmed to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision.
• This is triggered by a combination of puzzlement and stress.

Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

• Evolutionarily, the brain is reluctant to change.
• Thus, habits -- good or bad -- are hard to change once formed.
• "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
• The same tendency is responsible for holding onto one's previous conclusions, human loyalties, reputational identity, etc.
• A quickly reached conclusion, triggered by Doubt-Avoidance Tendency, when combined with a tendency to resist any change in that conclusion, will naturally cause a lot of errors in cognition for modern man.
• Keynes pointed out that it was not the intrinsic difficulty of new ideas that prevented their acceptance, but because they were inconsistent with old ideas.
• People are reluctant to change opinion even if there is plenty of opposing evidence.
• One corollary of Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency is that a person making big sacrifices in the course of assuming a new identity will intensify his devotion to the new identity. This is popularly on display in military and religion.
• Ben Franklin wanted the approval of some important man, so he maneuvered that man into doing him some unimportant favor, like lending a book. Thereafter, the man would admire and trust Franklin more because a nonadmired and nontrusted Franklin would be inconsistent with the appraisal implicit in lending Franklin the book.
• This works in reverse too. When one is maneuvered into deliberately hurting some other person, one will tend to disapprove or even hate that person.

Envy/Jealousy Tendency

• The more we can relate to someone, the more we envy them. E.g. Sibling rivalry among Children is stronger than that is directed towards strangers.
• Buffet: "It is not greed that drives the world, but envy."

Reciprocation Tendency

• Humans, like many animals, have an extreme tendency to return both favors and disfavors.
• The standard antidote to one’s overactive hostility is to train oneself to defer reaction. As my smart friend Tom Murphy so frequently says, ”You can always tell the man off tomorrow, if it is such a good idea.”
• Wise employers try to oppose reciprocate-favor tendencies of employees engaged in purchasing. The simplest antidote works best: Don’t let them accept any favors from vendors. E.g. Sam Walton (Walmart founder) wouldn’t let purchasing agents accept so much as a hot dog from a vendor.
• In a famous psychology experiment, Cialdini brilliantly demonstrated the power of “compliance practitioners” to mislead people by triggering their subconscious Reciprocation Tendency. Carrying out this experiment, Cialdini caused his “compliance practitioners” to wander around his campus and ask strangers to supervise a bunch of juvenile delinquents on a trip to a zoo. Because this happened on a campus, one person in six out of a large sample actually agreed to do this. After accumulating this one-in-six statistic, Cialdini changed his procedure. His practitioners next wandered around the campus asking strangers to devote a big chunk of time every week for two years to the supervision of juvenile delinquents. This ridiculous request got him a one hundred percent rejection rate. But the practitioner had a follow-up question: “Will you at least spend one afternoon taking juvenile delinquents to a zoo?” This raised Cialdini’s former acceptance rate of 1/6 to 1/2 – a tripling.
• Guilt is caused by the conflict of reciprocation tendency and reward superresponse tendency.

Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

• In this conditioned reflex, a mere association triggers a response. For instance, consider the case of many men who have been trained by their previous experience in life to believe that when several similar items are presented for purchase, the one with the highest price will have the highest quality. It worked wonderfully with high-priced power tools for a long time. And it would work better yet with high-speed pumps at the bottom of oil wells.
• Similarly, military bands play such impressive music because the association of this impressive music with military service helps to attract soldiers and keep them in the army. 
• Some of the most important miscalculations come from what is accidentally associated with one’s past success, or one’s liking and loving, or one’s disliking and hating which includes a natural hatred for bad news. For instance, a man foolishly gambles in a casino and yet wins. This unlikely correlation causes him to try the casino again.
• The proper antidotes to being made such a patsy by past success are: 1. to carefully examine each past success, looking for accidental, non-causative factors associated with such success that will tend to mislead as one appraises odds implicit in a proposed new undertaking, and 2. to look for dangerous aspects of the new undertaking that were not present when past success occurred.
• The damage to the mind can come from liking and loving.  We often see a strong misinfluence from love as tearful mothers, with heartfelt conviction, declare before TV cameras the innocence of their obviously guilty sons.
• People disagree about how much blindness should accompany the association called love. In Poor Richard’s Almanack Franklin counseled: “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut thereafter.” Perhaps this “eyes-half-shut” solution is about right, but I favor a tougher prescription: “See it like it is and love anyway.”
• Hating and disliking also cause miscalculation triggered by mere association. In business, people often under appraise both the competency and morals of competitors they dislike. This is a dangerous practice, usually disguised because it occurs on a subconscious basis.
• Another common bad effect from the mere association of a person and a hated outcome is displayed in Persian Messenger Syndrome. Ancient Persians actually killed some messengers whose sole fault was that they brought home truthful bad news, say, of a battle lost. It was actually safer for the messenger to run away and hide, instead of doing his job, as a wiser boss would have wanted it done. Even today, it is actually dangerous in many careers to be a carrier of unwelcome news. Union negotiators and employer representatives often know this, and it leads to many tragedies in labor relations. Sometimes lawyers, knowing their clients will hate them if they recommend an unwelcome but wise settlement, will carry on to disaster.
• The proper antidote to creating Persian Messenger Syndrome and its bad effects is to develop, through an exercise of will, a habit of welcoming bad news. At Berkshire, there is a common injunction: “Always tell us the bad news promptly. It is only the good news that can wait.” It also helps to be so wise and informed that people fear not telling you bad news because you are so likely to get it elsewhere.
• Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency often has a shocking effect that helps swamp the normal tendency to return favor for favor, especially when the favor recipient’s condition is unpleasant, due to poverty, sickness, subjugation, or something else. Sometimes, when one receives a favor, the favor may trigger an envy-driven dislike for the person who was in so favorable a state that he could easily be a favor giver. Under such circumstances, the favor-receiver, prompted partly by mere association of the favor-giver with past pain, will not only dislike the man who helped him but also try to injure him. This accounts for a famous response, sometimes dubiously attributed to Henry Ford: “Why does that man hate me so, I never did anything for him.”

Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

• The reality is too painful to bear, so one distorts the facts until they become bearable. The tendency’s most extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.
• “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.” -- there is something admirable in anyone able to do this.
• One should stay far away from any conduct at all likely to drift into chemical dependency. Even a small chance of suffering so great a damage should be avoided.

Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

• We all commonly observe the excessive self-regard of man. He mostly mis-appraises himself on the high side, like the ninety percent of Swedish drivers that judge themselves to be above average. Such misappraisals also apply to a person’s major “possessions.” One spouse usually over appraises the other spouse. And a man’s children are likewise appraised higher by him than they are likely to be in a more objective view. Even man’s minor possessions tend to be over appraised. Once owned, they suddenly become worth more to him than he would pay if they were offered for sale to him and he didn’t already own them. There is a name in psychology for this phenomenon: the “endowment effect.” And all man’s decisions are suddenly regarded by him as better than would have been the case just before he made them.
• Man’s excess of self-regard typically makes him strongly prefer people like himself. Psychology professors have had much fun demonstrating this effect in “lost-wallet” experiments. Their experiments all show that the finder of a lost wallet containing identity clues will be most likely to return the wallet when the owner most closely resembles the finder. 
• Some of the worst consequences in modern life come when dysfunctional groups of cliquish persons, dominated by Excessive Self-Regard Tendency, select as new members of their organizations, persons who are very much like themselves. Thus, if the English department at an elite university becomes mentally dysfunctional or the sales department of a brokerage firm slips into routine fraud, the problem will have a natural tendency to get worse and to be quite resistant to change for the better.
• Therefore, some of the most useful members of our civilization are those who are willing to “clean house” when they find a mess under their ambit of control.
• In lotteries, the play is much lower when numbers are distributed randomly than it is when the player picks his own number even though the odds are almost exactly the same and much against the player. Because state lotteries take advantage of man’s irrational love of self-picked numbers, modern man buys more lottery tickets than he otherwise would have, with each purchase foolish.
• Excesses of self-regard often cause bad hiring decisions because employers grossly over appraise the worth of their own conclusions that rely on impressions in face-to-face contact. The correct antidote to this sort of folly is to under weigh face-to-face impressions and overweigh the applicant’s past record. "I once chose exactly this course of action while I served as chairman of an academic search committee. I convinced fellow committee members to stop all further interviews and simply appoint a person whose achievement record was much better than that of any other applicant. When it was suggested to me that I wasn’t giving “academic due process,” I replied that I was the one being true to academic values because I was using academic research showing the poor predictive value of impressions from face-to-face interviews."
• There is a famous passage somewhere in Tolstoy that illuminates the power of Excessive Self-Regard Tendency. According to Tolstoy, the worst criminals don’t appraise themselves as all that bad. They come to believe either: 1. that they didn’t commit their crimes or 2. that, considering the pressures and disadvantages of their lives, it is understandable and forgivable that they behaved as they did and became what they became.
• The second half of the “Tolstoy effect,” where the man makes excuses for his fixable poor performance, instead of providing the fix, is enormously important. Because a majority of mankind will try to get along by making way too many unreasonable excuses for fixable poor performance, it is very important to have personal and institutional antidotes limiting the ravages of such folly.
• On the personal level, a man should try to face the two simple facts: 
1. Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance
2. And in demanding places, like athletic teams and General Electric, you are almost sure to be discarded in due course if you keep giving excuses instead of behaving as you should.
• The main institutional antidotes to this part of the “Tolstoy effect” are: offer meritocratic, demanding culture, plus personal handling methods that build up morale, and severance of the worst offenders.
• When you can’t sever – as in the case of your own child – you must try to fix the child as best you can. I once heard of a child-teaching method so effective that the child remembered the learning experience over fifty years later. The child later became Dean of the USC School of Music and then related to me what his father said when he saw his child taking candy from the stock of his employer with the excuse that he intended to replace it later. The father said, “Son, it would be better for you to simply take all you want and call yourself a thief every time you do it.”
• Summary: The best antidote to folly from an excess of self-regard is to force yourself to be more objective when you are thinking about yourself, your family and friends, your property, and the value of your past and future activity. This isn’t easy to do well and won’t work perfectly, but it will work much better than simply letting psychological nature take its normal course.
• Some high self-appraisals are correct and serve better than false modesty. Moreover, self-regard in the form of a justified pride in a job well done, or a life well lived, is a large constructive force.
• Of all forms of useful pride, perhaps the most desirable is a justified pride in being trustworthy. Moreover, the trustworthy man, even after allowing for the inconveniences of his chosen course, ordinarily has a life that averages out better than he would have if he provided less reliability.

Overoptimism Tendency

• “What a man wishes, that also will he believe.” - Demosthenes
• The Greek orator was clearly right about an excess of optimism being the normal human condition, even when pain or the threat of pain is absent. Just witness happy people buying lottery tickets or believing that credit-furbishing, delivery-making grocery stores were going to displace a great many superefficient cash-and-carry supermarkets.
• One standard antidote to foolish optimism is trained, habitual use of the simple probability math of Fermat and Pascal, taught to high school sophomores. The mental rules of thumb that evolution gives you to deal with risk are not adequate.

Sayings of Epictetus

I came across the sayings of the great Greek Stoic Epictetus while reading "Poor Charlie's Almanack". Epictetus was born a slave but rose to become a respected philosopher. The central theme of his teachings is that we should use all mishaps in life for improving ourselves and not blame others or the Gods for it. His epitaph, written by himself, itself read, "Here lies Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, the ultimate in poverty, and the favored of the gods.".

I found his teachings quite profound and found a blog post providing a summary. Here are a few of my favorite ones:

• “I [Zeus] gave you a portion of our divinity, a spark from our own fire, the power to act and not to act, the will to get and the will to avoid. If you pay heed to this, you will not groan, you will blame no man, you will flatter none” 
• "Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourselves. Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.”
• “Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it. Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." 
• “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” 
• “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” 
• “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” 
• “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” 
• “Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.” 
• “He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.” 
• “Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.” 
• “To accuse others of one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.” 
• “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” 
• “First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.” 
• “Do not try to seem wise to others. ” “Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.” 
• “If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: 'I used to be angry every day; then every other day; now only every third or fourth day.' When you reach thirty days offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods.” 
• “Difficulty shows what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. Why? So that you may become an Olympic conqueror, but it is not accomplished without sweat.” 
• “Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.” 
• “These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.” 
• “Control thy passions lest they take vengeance on thee.” 
• “A guide, on finding a man who has lost his way, brings him back to the right path—he does not mock and jeer at him and then take himself off. You also must show the unlearned man the truth, and you will see that he will follow. But so long as you do not show it to him, you should not mock, but rather feel your own incapacity.” 
• “It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous -- even death is terrible only if we fear it.” 
• “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and of one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others or himself.” 
• “To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, human beings have a duty of care to all fellow humans. The person who followed these precepts would achieve happiness.” 
• “Do not afflict others with anything that you yourself would not wish to suffer. if you would not like to be a slave, make sure no one is your slave. If you have slaves, you yourself are the greatest slave, for just as freedom is incompatible with slavery, so goodness is incompatible with hypocrisy.” 
• “Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast...and one day you will build something that endures: something worthy of your potential.” 
• “On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.” 
• “No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.” 
• “What then, is it not possible to be free from faults? It is not possible; but this is possible: to direct your efforts incessantly to be faultless. For we must be content if by never remitting this attention we shall escape at least a few errors. When you have said ‘Tomorrow I will begin to attend,’ you must be told that you are saying this: ‘Today I will be shameless, disregardful of time and place, mean; it will be in the power of others to give me pain, today I will be passionate and envious.’” 
• "You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices." 
• “Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.” 
• “So you wish to conquer in the Olympic Games, my friend? And I, too... But first, mark the conditions and the consequences. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or not, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and wine at your will. Then, in the conflict itself, you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, to be severely thrashed, and after all of these things, to be defeated.” 
• “Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now.” 
• “Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness” 

Summary of ICC's Cracking the Wellness Code Health Summit

Today I attended the Health Summit, Cracking the Wellness Code organized by the India community center. The summit had an impressive line of speakers - 11 MDs and a health tech entrepreneur. This was a great event and helped answer many health related questions I had. I am presenting the summary of the talks here, so that this can benefit others and so that I can also come back to it later. You could also watch the recordings here.

It was interesting to see that there was fair amount of disagreement between the doctors at the summit itself, e.g. regarding ghee. I consider that a good sign as that shows that the organizers invited doctors from a diverse background. However, there were a lot of similarities also. If you are short on time, you could jump to the summary section in the end.

I tried my best to capture the notes, but it's highly likely I might have gotten something wrong. Please take the following with a pinch of salt.


Keynote: Food that gets us hooked and how to get unhooked - Dr Neal Barnard, MD

• Sugar triggers dopamine release.
• Cheese is bad. It's high fat, 70% saturated fat. 
• Milk related to infertility. Milk is rich in estrogen. Men who consumed more milk had lower sperm count. Women who consumed more cheese / butter had 49% more chances of breast cancer. 
• Dairies are to cruel to cows. They are forcibly impregnated every year. The calf and the cows are separated at birth. If you live near a farm, you can hear their cries at night. Dr Barnard, comes from a family of cattle farmers, so he has seen this firsthand.
• Animal protein can harm kidneys.
• How to get Calcium without milk? Only 30% calcium in milk is absorbed by our body. Green veggies (Broccoli, Kale, Brussel sprouts etc) have a much higher absorption ratio. Spinach has lots of calcium but doesn't have a high absorption ratio.
• Keto / Low carb diets - Every ~17 years low carb diets come back. You do lose weight but you end up with higher cholesterol in the end. Also it becomes much harder to come back to normal food afterwards. Mortality is also higher.
• Soy milk - Internet says soys have hormones that can cause cancer / hormonal imbalance. Soy doesn't cause infertility e.g. China, Japan consume a lot of Soy but don't really have any issues. Women who consumed Soy had less breast cancer.  Women who avoided soy have high Mortality. You don't necessarily need to have it. But consuming it doesn't hurt it either.
• Ghee - It's bad too. But there is always pain in going away from traditions.
• Is Veganism suitable for kids / in pregnancy - Always good.
• How to complete nutrition - veggies, legumes, fruits, whole grains
• Supplements : B12 supplement (used to comes from bacteria). How much? Lowest dose you can find, all have more than what we need. Sunlight for D. O/w take D supplement.
• Children with Asthama - Veganism is the way.

Talk 2: Prevent and Reverse Chronic Diseases (Diabetes, Obesity and Heart disease) by Treating the Cause - Dr Pankaj Vij, MD

• Obesity #1 cause of: Diabetes, high blood pressure (HBP), Cardio disease, Strokes, Cancer, Sleep apnea.
• Every other person will be obese in the US by 2030
• The bad news: No quick fix. Need long term, sustainable changes.
• All calories are not bad. A shot glass and banana have the same calories, but not the same effect.
• Causes of developing insulin resistance:
• Excessive refined carbs
• Fat overconsumption
• Lack of fiber and micronutrients
• Inflammation, oxidants, toxins
• Inactivty
• Stress, lack of sleep.
• We're hard wired to have an appetite, eat when food is available and hold onto fat.
• Today: Abundance of food, less movement and sleep, constant stress.
• Good news:Treating the root cause can prevent and reverse chronic diseases like : Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity and Heart disease.
• Every bite counts: 80% of health is food, food is medicine not entertainment, it is energy + intelligence.
• How to bring change:
1. Meal timing and frequency: We had a long history of eating 1-2 meals a day, periods of Meal timing and frequency: Long history of 1-2 meals a day, periods of intermittent fasting. We have higher Insulin sensitivity earlier in the day - so should eat more earlier in the day. Know your hunger - is it craving?
2. Resistance exercises / strength training: Positively affects weight loss. In Indian tradition, you had to squat even to go to the bathroom.
3. Sleep
4. Meditation, Pranayama, Nature - to activate parasympathetic nervous system.
5. Set the environment for success - change mindset of growth that you are bettering yourself and not feel miserable. Keep good food in house / office. Surround yourself with health heros.
• T1 diabetes: genetic (10% of all diabetes). Can still be improved. Rest 90% can be completely prevented.
• Soy: No risk of it raising estrogen.
• Intermittent fasting (IF) seems to one of most powerful element. East breakfast like a king, ..... Dinner early and smaller - this helps in sleeping better.
• Things to avoid - sat / trans fat, no meat, diary / cheese / chicken, processed carbs, alcohol, packaged food, namkeen, Sugar.
• Food for good sleep: light meal at night.
• Are supplements good: avoid as much as possible. If you are 100% vegan - omega 3: algae sources, if over 50 - cortisol
• Summary: How to make disease optional -- think like a bear!
• Nutrient dense plant rich colorful diet
• Whole unprocessed diet
• Fasting
• Move a lot
• Sleep
• Left heavy things
• Get outside
• Give bear hugs!

Talk 3: Finding Hidden Joy and Meaning - Dr Mark Moeller, MD

• Tools to be happy:
• Priming - think of a happy memory.
• Framing - state what you think is true in a more helpful and positive way.
• Habits - learning to prime, frame - repeatedly.

Talk 4: Panchakarma - Ancient Biohack to Reset the Gut for Optimal Energy, Immunity & Longevity - Dr Vignesh Devraj, MD, Ayurveda

• Quality of health is the quality of waste elimination. In Ayurveda, how are you is - how are your motions?
• Diseases of overnutrition are harder / more common than undernutrition.
• Ama (posion in ayurveda) - means not me. Niramaya is the state of optimal health.
• In Ayurveda, sweet is sticky. The sweeter it is, harder it is for the body to break is down, consume, eliminate. Sweet IS poison.
• Priority of cleaning: Gut, blood, then body.
• Panchakarma - gut cleaning: helps improves health.
• Alcohol is used as a medicine. Many herbs are mixed with it. That's it. It's a medicine, should be taken like that.
• Ghee: Has high level of omega 3. Anti adhesive. Improves intellect and brain. Ayurveda considers ghee good in moderation. Don't cook in oil.

Talk 5: The Paleovedic Diet: Integrating Early Human Diets and Ayurvedic Medicine - Dr Akhil Palaniswamy, MD

• Approach: 1. Food 2. Spices 3. _ 4. _
• Good diet:
• Fiber
• Variety: Target 20 different type of plant food per week.
• Micronutrients
• Choose the most nutrient foods and veggies.
• Avoid refined grains, vegetable oils, trans fats.
• "When diet is wrong, medicine is no use. When diet is right, medicine is of no need." -Ayurveda
• 3 dosah: Vata, Pitta, Kafa. Imbalance causes disease. Find your body type and eat according to it.
• Good fats: Avocado, Olive oil, ghee, sesame oils
• Spices: Most nutrient dense food, high antioxidants, reduce inflammation, support digestion
• Some veggies are better raw, some cooked. Cooked tomatoes are better.
• Cooked or raw veggies - Broccoli / carrots better raw or lightly cooked.
• Fats and obesity: Eating fat doesn't make you fat in general. For most people good fats are not bad. Moderation is the key.
• Opinion on ghee, coconut and sesame oils: All good.
• Turmeric and black pepper are good. Combine together with good fat and consume.
• Recommended spices: Ginger, cinnamon, methi, cumin, -- mainly 13 spices.
• Keto is extreme. Helps in certain medical condition. Not recommended long term.
• Veg fruit juicing: supplements the nutrition. Shouldn't be majority source. Whole nutrition is better. Use occasionally.

Talk 6: Escaping The Pleasure Trap - Dr Alan Goldhamer, MD

• The question is not how you are going to die, but how you will live?
• Actual causes of death: Tobacco, BP, alcohol, cholesterol, oversight, unsafe sex
• Chemicals that artificially increase Dopamine: Sugar. Increased 1000% since 1986.
• Ice cream - frozen tastes good, melted makes you sick. You can't sense sweetness in cold.
• Bad food: ice cream, bread, sugar, coke
• 25% of calories of teenagers comes from soda drinks.
• Dairy products commonly cause auto immune disease - thyroid, arthritis, etc

Lunch break: Talking to the two Ayurvedic doctors

• Milk / yogurt: Avoid if there is any problem - like inflammation, obesity, auto immune Diseases. Otherwise ok. Not losing out if you don't drink.
• Ghee: it is good. Don't cook it though. 1 or 2 teaspoons a day is recommended.
• In arthritis: Avoid milk, gluten, sugar. Ghee is ok. See Ayurveda doctor. Panchakarma is useful too.

Talk 7: Parenting Style and Obesity in Children -- Dr Seema Kumar, MD

• 1 in 4 child in US is overweight. Old age diseases (diabetes, BP, cholesterol) are becoming common in them.
• Asian Indians: Visceral fat - causes heart diseases.
• Unique factors in Indian household: traditional belief about health and nutrition. Overprotection and forced feeding by parents. We feed children when they are not hungry. Moms feeding 6-7 years old.
• Veg diet can be unhealthy. Fried. Indian hospitality means overfeeding. Over eating sweets.
• Increase pressure for academics. Reduced emphasis on free play and recreational sports.
• Excess weight problem come from lack of self control. Low demand and high reciprocal style parenting helps in developing self control in kids.
• Make kids eat in moderation. Green food can eat in any amount - e.g. salad. Red as less as possible. Yellow ok.
• Get kids involved in grocery shopping and cooking. Start as early as possible. Keep away from sugar.
• Parents need to learn the correct portion size.
• Be a +ve role model. Be proactive before child becomes obese. Family needs to be together in diet and exercise.
• 5210 method: 5 servings of veg and fruits,  < 2 hours of screen time, > 1 hr activity per day, 0 sugary beverage.
• The heavier you are, lower your Vitamin D are. Obesity leads to low D, which leads to high BP and sugar. Vitamin D doesn't affect cholesterol level. There is no good research available.
• Vitamin D vs D3: Vitamin D helps in calcium and phosphorous absorption. Plant derived D2, animal D3. On daily basis,it doesn't matter which. On monthly, take D3.

Talk 8: Diabetes Technology Update - Dr Archana Bindra MD

• Indians 3X most likely than the rest of the world. South India more than North India.
• At the time of diabetes diagnosis, you have already lost 50% of beta cells which manufacture insulin.
• Insulin is needed for glucose to enter cell wall. With insulin resistance, you need extra insulin to make the glucose enter the cells.
• Losing weight can help improve insulin activity.

Talk 9: Fasting Can Save Your Life - Dr  Alan Goldhamer DC

• healthpromoting.com
• Average american will spend their last 10 years in sickness.
• Types of fasting: IF: 8 hours of eating, 16 hours rest. Water only fasting.
• With fasting you need rest. O/w you need glucose for physical and mental activity. For that you will end up burning protein in muscles.
• Cured cancer - 21 day water fasting and plant based diet afterwards
• High BP : Medicines have side effects. How to fix: lose weight, diet, aggressive salt reduction.
• Is fasting safe: can be done safely in young and old people
• All things that go up with exercise, go up with fasting also. Both undo dietary excess
• Fast mechanism:

1. Weight loss
2. Lose excess sodium
3. Detoxification: removes both external and internal toxins
4. Combination of fasting and chemotherapy is more effective them chemo only
5. Restores enzyme functions
6. Cures insulin Resistance
7. Normalizes sympathetic tone
8. Spirituality
9. Enhances immune systems
10. Taste neuroadaption

Talk 10: Seven health hacks I bet you did not know! -  Munjal Shah, Founder Health IQ

1. Old breakfast, New: IF helps. Fasting 72 hrs, 100% WBC gets replaced, new immune system.
2. Old cardio, new: heavy lifting and sprints. Lift 85% of 1 rep max.
3. Old: Burn calories during workout. New: Maximixe after workout. During the last 5 min of exercise, do it as vigorously as possible.
4. Old way: Juicing is super healthy. New: No juicing. Cocunut is exception. Drink black tea.
50% Indians, are lactose intolerance.
5. Old: Diest soda, new: No soda. Artificial sweetners induce gluose intolerance.
6. Old; Switch to whole bread, brown rice. New: Don't eat bread or rice.
7: Old: Everything moderation, new: eliminate. Elimniation is easier to implement.
8: Old: Eat when you are hungry. New: Use glucose monitor.

Figs are not pure vegetarian.


Talk 11 : Diabetes, its complications, and why should you care - Dr Lida Faroqi, MD, Stanford

• Indians can be skinny and diabetic. Indian, above 30 --> get tested.
• Wear shoes that are comfortable. Reduces pressure. Prevents amputations.
• Feel your pulse on feet. First sign begins there.
• Why legs are affected: Furthest point from heart.
• Biggest complications: Kidneys, Eyes, Feet - get tested yearly.
• If you have diabetes / BP medicines once, do you have to take whole like? No, if you can maintain it for 6 months, gradually reduce and remove it.
• What kind of exercise is best: 30 mins a day / 5 days a week can reverse diabetes. Weights - building muscle.
• Stress increases sugar level.

Talk 12: Reversing heart disease and diabetes: When a doctor becomes a patient - Dr Rajiv Misquitta MD

• I couldn't attend most of it. 
• Follow Dean Ornish's diet
• Avoid avocado / nuts / Oils / ghee when you are at extreme danger of heart disease.
• Hummus is great - good for diabetics - have as much as you want
• Movies: Forks over Knife, What the health
• Someone solved 90% blockage -- aashram in Bangalore 45 days (yoga, diet) called vyasa.org
• His diet sample: 

• Breakfast: Oatmeal + berries / Tofu scramble
• Lunch: Bulgar + curry
• Dinner: whole wheat pasta
• Greens twice a day

Talk 13 : Understanding Food Allergies - Dr Sanjiv Jain, MD

• Prevalence of food allergy is going up
• Most common vegetarian food allergens: Peanuts, milk, wheat, soy
• Allergies are increasing because of the increase in hygiene. During childhood, we don't get affected by the bacteria that we used to. Healthy microbiom in gut is critical and plays important role. Highly processed food and antibiotics are responsible for their decay.

Summary:
Though there were quite a few disagreements between the doctors of Ayurvedic and Allopathic schools, here are the topics that were corroborate by both / multiple doctors throughout the day:

• Importance of fasting: Detoxifies the body. Intermittent fasting is good, once a while water fast is good too.
• Strength training: It's important to lift weights (can be body weight based exercises too).
• Milk: Worth experimenting giving up if you are having some problems - auto immune disease, allergies, obesity, bloating.
• Sleep / Be happy / Go out in sunlight / meditate (My addition: may be try Vipasssana?).
• Good fat is good (except when you are in high cardiac risk area).
• Sugar, packaged food, refined carbs are gonna kill you.
• Alcohol is bad. If you want the medicinal properties, may be have a teaspoon a day.
• Supplements: As less as possible. You likely just need to watch out for your D, B12 and omega 3 numbers.
• Eat less (quantity and frequency). We are likely overeating.
• Take care of gut and the bacteria there.

Misc: