VNTHOMAS

December 13, 2020

Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David

People who don’t think more than one move ahead is driven by ego, emotion, and fear.

The Path to Achieving Your Goals in Business

1. Master Knowing Yourself

2. Master the Ability to Reason

3. Master Building the Right Team

4. Master Strategy to Scale

5. Master Power Plays

MASTER KNOWING YOURSELF

For instance, if you spend $100,000, you can get something done in six months, but if you spend $200,000, you can finish it in three months. Then you can ask yourself: Is it worth spending twice the money to get the project done in half the time?

MASTER KNOWING YOURSELF

The busier you are, the more organized you’ll need to be.

A phrase I use all the time is future truth. It means to live in the present as if your future truth has already become a reality. I’m inspired by this quote from IBM founder Thomas J. Watson:

“I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one”.

The best leaders have the ability not only to believe in future truths but also to inspire others to believe and execute their vision.

Who do you want to be?

That’s the question we started with, and it’s the one we’ll end with. The only way to answer it is by becoming clear about the life you want to live. In doing so, you will immediately embody that person and act as if you are already there.

Study the Most Important Product: You

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” —Aristotle

“At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want” —Lao Tzu

In his insightful book Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio said, I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.

What it all boils down to is that alignment is the key to fulfillment. Keep these things in mind:

Your vision must align with who you want to be.
Your choices must align with your vision.
Your effort must align with the size of your vision.
Your behavior must align with your values and principles.

You can start by breaking down the drive into four categories: advancement,
madness,
individuality, and
purpose.

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver” —Ayn Rand

One way intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs differ is that the former is typically deferential to authority while the latter is defiant.

Intrapreneurs have the respect to say, Look, I think like you, I work like you, I’m the same as you, but you put up the money. You ignited the vision, and you took all the risk. Intrapreneurs work within the system but find ways to improve themselves while also improving the company.

Google figured out how valuable insurance referrals were, so it made insurance the most expensive keyword to buy ($54.91)—far more expensive than the next three: mortgage ($47.12), attorney ($47.07), and loan ($44.28).

MASTER THE ABILITY TO REASON

“You have control over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength” —Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

1. Processing is the ability to make effective decisions based on access to information at hand with the highest odds in your favor.

2. Processing is about subjecting every difficult choice, problem, or opportunity you face to a rigorous mental analysis.

3. Processing is playing out strategies, seeing the hidden consequences, and sequencing a series of moves to permanently solve problems.

Great processors use the word I and see their role in whatever problem has occurred. They ask questions such as How did I contribute to this?

Processing Steps to Take When Someone Ticks You Off

1. Take responsibility for your role in what happened.

2. State specifically what you did to create the problem.

3. Channel your frustration into getting better and preventing future problems.

What extends or decreases the lifespan of a crisis:

1. Your strategies

2. Your level of poise

3. Your overexaggeration of a crisis: Turning a 3 into a 9

4. Your downplaying of a crisis: Turning a 9 into a 3

5. Your ability to see five moves ahead.

There’s no reason to blame yourself for an accident or a pandemic. You didn’t create the crisis. It’s your reaction to the crisis that will determine the life or death of your business.

Every master, both in chess and in business, learns more from studying the moves that led to defeat than the ones that led to victory.

The Eight Traits of a Great Processor

The people I know who are expert processors have very different personalities and business strategies, but they share the following eight traits:

1. They ask lots of questions. Having more data leads to making better assumptions. What caused this? How can we solve it? How can we prevent it from happening again?

2. They don’t care about being right or wrong. They’re interested only in the truth. Great processors want to handle the situation and move on. If someone else has a better idea, great. The ego doesn’t become an obstacle to making the right decision.

3. They don’t make excuses. Wasting time and effort on why things went wrong isn’t their style.

4. They like to be challenged. Their priority is handling a situation quickly and effectively, and if other people have a solution—even if it differs from their own—they want to hear it. They relish people who cause them to consider alternatives or defend their position.

5. They’re curious. You can’t solve problems without knowledge. Processors are always learning more about their business and how it works. They love critical details as much as big ideas.

6. They prevent more problems than they solve. People who are really good at processing issues are also really good at spotting yellow flags before they turn red.

7. They make great negotiators. Curious problem solvers use logic to find a win for all parties involved.

8. They’re more interested in permanently solving a problem than putting a Band-Aid on it.

let the team have a collaborative debate on the topic. The stronger the debate, the closer we get to the best decision. Listen instead of arguing. Remain curious.

This is the key to entrepreneurial success. Make processing best practices part of your company culture, and this ability will seep into the heads of your people, who will get better and better at using it.

Over a lifetime, success in business (whether as an entrepreneur, as an intrapreneur, or in any career choice) requires a particular mindset, an aggressive and unyielding approach to solving problems. The best strategy is to hone your ability to process issues.

Five Questions to Ask to Identify the Real Issue

1. Do I know what the real issue is, or am I looking at a symptom?

2. Does the team have the data regarding the real issue?

3. Is the issue real, or is it an assumption or someone else’s opinion?

4. Is there a tangible issue, or is it simply a hurt ego?

5. Am I thinking emotionally or logically?

Only two kinds of events will require you to make decisions:

1. Offense. The opportunity to make money or advance your business or career. The choices here often revolve around growth, expansion, marketing, and sales.

2. Defense. The opportunity to solve a problem, to stop losing money, or to stop moving backward in some way. The choices here frequently involve legal matters such as compliance and protection against competitors or market corrections.

MASTER BUILDING THE RIGHT TEAM

Think about these three questions:

1. What benefits are you currently offering to others?

2. In what way do people improve by associating with you?

3. How many lives have you changed positively in the past year?

Once you have a track record of people you have enriched, you can start attracting people to your team

A Trusted Adviser

1. Is skilled at processing issues, able to think many moves ahead

2. Has values similar to yours but a different temperament (is strong where you are weak)

3. Is calm under pressure

4. Is not afraid to challenge you and point out your blind spots

5. Is loyal, with no personal agenda

What You Must Recognize in Order to Retain Talent

People want to be compensated properly for their efforts.
Outstanding performers want to participate in the success of the company.
People want to know that they’re part of an organization that’s making an impact.
People want to be recognized in front of their peers for the work that they do.
People want to know that there’s an opportunity for them to grow within the company.

People want to be judged based on a clear set of expectations given to them without the goalposts constantly changing.

What We Stand For as a Family
Lead—because it will be necessary in every situation you face
Respect—because everyone has something to teach you
Improve—because that’s how you know everything will work out
Love—because everyone is dealing with a challenge in life

Our Core Values

Courage. Not being afraid to challenge others
Wisdom. Making the right choices
Tolerance. Knowing that we’re dealing with human beings, who change all the time
Understanding. Appreciating and respecting that everyone has different ideas and values

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman. It’s phenomenal. The five love languages are the ways in which we give and receive love. They are:

Quality Time,
Words of Affirmation,
Gifts,
Acts of Service, and
Physical Touch.

In the above example, the man spoke the language of gifts when, all along, his wife had been telling him that she preferred quality time.

MASTER STRATEGY TO SCALE

To Improve Your Employees’ Performance, Apply Pressure to the Point of Desensitization

Seven Ways to Hold People Accountable

1. Don’t be afraid to hold people accountable and call them out when they don’t keep their word.

2. Ask why, and stay silent long enough to listen to their answers

3. Make specific quantitative statements, not blanket qualitative ones.

4. Provide clear metrics and specify clear incentives.

5. Coach your people through the workflow

6. Know the role each person plays on the team

7. Finish with heart and empathy.

Four Ways to Accelerate

Functioning speed
Processing speed
Expansion speed
Timing speed

A Seven-Step System to Compress Time Frames

Choose a process
List the steps of the process
Minimize the steps
Beta test the new process
Adapt the process
Refine

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

—Sherlock Holmes

MASTER POWER PLAYS

A Dozen Ways to Beat Goliath
Know your weakness
Know Goliath's weakness
Master three things you do better
Don't try to be Goliath
Focus on specializing
When you are small, make yourself appear bigger
Keep a low profile initially
Move quickly
Partner with competitors that share on the enemy
Study history
Let other competitive wear your opponents down
Don't disclose every aspect of your strategy

Seven Essential Steps to Prepare for a Meeting

1. Consider the other party’s needs, desires, and frustrations. Remember that what motivates most people is fear, greed, and saving face.

2. Anticipate what the other party will say.

3. Develop a script/outline for what you want to say.

4. Role-play the meeting several times in order to be prepared for different reactions.

5. Ask trusted advisers to point out your blind spots.

6. Put yourself into the best possible frame of mind before the meeting.

7. Build a reputation for overdelivering on your product.

The key to getting in the 1 percent is continually investing in learning and growth.

The Formula for Gaining Power

Outwork. It’s critical to put in the time. But hard work alone won’t be enough.

Outimprove. This constantly gives you new ways to take your business to the next level. It gives you confidence. If there was an area I was always obsessed with competing in, it was improving faster than my peers.

Outstrategize. This means thinking five moves ahead. It means figuring out how to scale and having the patience to plan many moves ahead before they bear fruit.

Outlast. You really learn about people both when you achieve great success and when you suffer tragic failure. It’s hard to know who will keep going. To outlast, you need endurance, which comes from making choices that keep you alert and focused on the game.

December 12, 2020

Breath - the new science of lost art - by James Nestor

Breath - the new science of lost art - by James Nestor

In transporting the breath, the inhalation must be full. When it is full, it has a big capacity. When it has a big capacity, it can be extended. When it is extended, it can penetrate downward. When it penetrates downward, it will become calmly settled. When it is calmly settled, it will be strong and firm. When it is strong and firm, it will germinate. When it germinates, it will grow. When it grows, it will retreat upward. When it retreats upward, it will reach the top of the head. The secret power of Providence moves above. The secret power of the Earth moves below. He who follows this will live. He who acts against this will die.

—500 BCE ZHOU DYNASTY STONE INSCRIPTION

Breathing, for all these people, for all these cultures, was powerful medicine. Therefore, the scholar who nourishes his life refines the form and nourishes his breath says an ancient Tao text.

In colder climates, our noses would grow narrower and longer to more efficiently heat up air before it entered our lungs; our skin would grow lighter to take in more sunshine for the production of vitamin D. In sunny and warm environments, we adapted wider and flatter noses, which were more efficient at inhaling hot and humid air; our skin would grow darker to protect us from the sun. Along the way, the larynx would descend in the throat to accommodate another adaptation: vocal communication.

Finding the best heart rate for exercise is easy: subtract your age from 180. The result is the maximum your body can withstand to stay in the aerobic state. Long bouts of training and exercise can happen below this rate but never above it, otherwise, the body will risk going too deep into the anaerobic zone for too long. Instead of feeling invigorated and strong after a workout, you’d feel tired, shaky, and nauseated.

Chew
It was the constant stress of chewing that was lacking from our diets—not vitamin A, B, C, or D. Ninety-five percent of the modern, processed diet was soft. Even what’s considered healthy food today—smoothies, nut butter, oatmeal, avocados, whole wheat bread, vegetable soups. It’s all soft.

Few of us ever consider how the nostrils of every living person pulse to their own rhythm, opening and closing like a flower in response to our moods, mental states, and perhaps even the sun and the moon.

Oral posture - holding the lips together, teeth lightly touching, with your tongue on the roof of the mouth. Hold the head up perpendicular to the body and don’t kink the neck. When sitting or standing, the spine should form a J-shape—perfectly straight until it reaches the small of the back, where it naturally curves outward. While maintaining this posture, we should always breathe slowly through the nose into the abdomen.

The interior of the nose, it turned out, is blanketed with erectile tissue, the same flesh that covers the penis, clitoris, and nipples. Noses get erections. Within seconds, they too can engorge with blood and become large and stiff. This happens because the nose is more intimately connected to the genitals than any other organ; when one gets aroused, the other responds. The mere thought of sex for some people causes such severe bouts of nasal erections that they’ll have trouble breathing and will start to sneeze uncontrollably, an inconvenient condition called honeymoon rhinitis. As sexual stimulation weakens and erectile tissue becomes flaccid, the nose will, too.

What researchers eventually managed to confirm was that nasal erectile tissue mirrored states of health. It would become inflamed during sickness or other states of imbalance. If the nose became infected, the nasal cycle became more pronounced and switched back and forth quickly.

The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you’re inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all increase. This happens because breathing through the right side of the nose activates the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight mechanism that puts the body in a more elevated state of alertness and readiness. Breathing through the right nostril will also feed more blood to the opposite hemisphere of the brain, specifically to the prefrontal cortex, which has been associated with logical decisions, language, and computing.

Inhaling through the left nostril has the opposite effect: it works as a kind of brake system to the right nostril’s accelerator. The left nostril is more deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-relax side that lowers temperature and blood pressure cools the body, and reduces anxiety. Left-nostril breathing shifts blood flow to the opposite side of the prefrontal cortex, the right area that plays a role in creative thought, emotions, the formation of mental abstractions, and negative emotions.

Immune function, weight, circulation, mood, and sexual function can all be heavily influenced by the amount of nitric oxide in the body. Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth.

Starting around 30, we should expect to lose a little more memory, mobility, and muscle with every passing year. We would also lose the ability to breathe properly. Bones in the chest would become thinner and change shape, causing rib cages to collapse inward. Muscle fibers surrounding the lungs would weaken and prevent air from entering and exiting. All these things reduce lung capacity.

The lungs themselves will lose about 12 percent of capacity from the age of 30 to 50 and will continue declining even faster as we get older, with women faring worse than men. If we make it to 80, we’ll be able to take in 30 percent less air than we did in our 20s. We’re forced to breathe faster and harder. This breathing habit leads to chronic problems like high blood pressure, immune disorders, and anxiety.

Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15 percent.

Extending those breaths to 50 to 70 percent of the diaphragm’s capacity will ease cardiovascular stress and allow the body to work more efficiently. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart, because it not only beats to its own rhythm but also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat.

BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE

EXHALE - One of the first steps in healthy breathing is to extend these breaths, to move the diaphragm up and down a bit more, and to get the air out of us before taking a new one in.

CHEW - The bones in the human face don’t stop growing in our 20s, unlike other bones in the body. They can expand and remodel into our 70s, and likely beyond. This means we can influence the size and shape of our mouths and improve our ability to breathe at virtually any age. The kinds of foods that required an hour or two a day of hard chewing. And in the meantime, lips together, teeth slightly touching, and tongue on the roof of the mouth

BREATHE MORE, ON OCCASION - Willing yourself to breathe heavily for a short, intense time, however, can be profoundly therapeutic.

HOLD YOUR BREATH -

HOW WE BREATHE MATTERS - The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.

ALTERNATE NOSTRIL BREATHING (NADI SHODHANA)

Close the right nostril with the thumb and inhale through the left nostril very slowly. At the top of the breath, pause briefly, holding both nostrils closed, then lift just the thumb to exhale through the right nostril. At the natural conclusion of the exhale, hold both nostrils closed for a moment, then inhale through the right nostril.

Continue alternating breaths through the nostrils for five to ten cycles.

BREATHING COORDINATION

This technique helps to engage more movement from the diaphragm and increase respiratory efficiency. It should never be forced; each breath should feel soft and enriching.

Sit up so that the spine is straight and the chin is perpendicular to the body.
Take a gentle breath in through the nose. At the top of the breath begin counting softly aloud from one to 10 over and over (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
As you reach the natural conclusion of the exhale, keep counting but do so in a whisper, letting the voice softly trail out. Then keep going until only the lips are moving and the lungs feel completely empty.
Take in another large and soft breath and repeat.
Continue for anywhere from 10 to 30 or more cycles.
Once you feel comfortable practicing this technique while sitting, try it while walking or jogging, or during other light exercises.

For classes and individual coaching, visit http://www.breathingcoordination.ch/training.

RESONANT (COHERENT) BREATHING

A calming practice that places the heart, lungs, and circulation into a state of coherence, where the systems of the body are working at peak efficiency. There is no more essential technique, and none more basic.

Sit up straight, relax the shoulders and belly, and exhale.
Inhale softly for 5.5 seconds, expanding the belly as air fills the bottom of the lungs.
Without pausing, exhale softly for 5.5 seconds, bringing the belly in as the lungs empty. Each breath should feel like a circle.
Repeat at least ten times, more if possible.

Several apps offer timers and visual guides. My favorites are Paced Breathing and My Cardiac Coherence, both of which are free.

Mini Breathholds

A key component to Buteyko breathing is to practice breathing less all the time, which is what this technique trains the body to do. Thousands of Buteyko practitioners, and several medical researchers, swear by it to stave off asthma and anxiety attacks.

Exhale gently and hold the breath for half the time of the Control Pause. (For instance, if the Control Pause is 40 seconds, the Mini Breathhold would be 20.)
Repeat from 100 to 500 times a day.

Setting up timers throughout the day, every 15 minutes or so, can be helpful reminders.

Nose Songs

Nitric oxide is a powerhouse molecule that widens capillaries, increases oxygenation, and relaxes the smooth muscles. Humming increases the release of nitric oxide in the nasal passages 15-fold. There is the most effective, and simple method for increasing this essential gas.

Breathe normally through the nose and hum, any song or sound.

Practice for at least five minutes a day, more if possible.

It may sound ridiculous, and feel ridiculous, and annoy those nearby, but the effects can be potent.

Patrick McKeown’s book The Oxygen Advantage offers detailed instructions and training programs in breathing less. Personalized instruction in Buteyko’s method is available through www.consciousbreathing.com, www.breathingcenter.com, www.buteykoclinic.com, and with other certified Buteyko instructors.

Gum

Any gum chewing can strengthen the jaw and stimulate stem cell growth, but harder textured varieties offer a more vigorous workout.

Falim, a Turkish brand, is as tough as shoe leather and each piece lasts for about an hour. I’ve found the Sugarless Mint to be the most palatable. (Other flavors, such as Carbonate, Mint Grass, and sugar-filled varieties, tend to be softer and grosser.)
Mastic gum, which comes from the resin of the evergreen shrub Pistacia lentiscus, has been cultivated in the Greek islands for thousands of years. Several brands are available through online retailers. The stuff can taste nasty but offers a rigorous jaw workout.

Weil offers a step-by-step instructional on YouTube, which has been viewed more than four million times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz4G31LGyog.

VNTHOMAS

December 13, 2020

Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David

December 12, 2020

Breath - the new science of lost art - by James Nestor

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