Your #1 (Psychological) Priority

To determine your #1 priority, ask, “What am I trying to avoid?”

What you are trying to avoid: Stress

#1 priority: comfort

How others may feel: irritated or annoyed

The price you pay: reduced productivity

What you are trying to avoid: Rejection

#1 priority: pleasing

How others may feel: accepting

The price you pay: stunted growth

What you are trying to avoid: Unexpected Humiliation

#1 priority: control

How others may feel: challenged

The price you pay: social distance, reduced spontaneity

What you are trying to avoid: Meaninglessness

#1 priority: superiority

How others may feel: inadequate

The price you pay: overburdened or over-responsible

What you are trying to avoid: Pride

#1 priority: humility

How others may feel: blessed

The price you pay: die to self

How We See Ourselves

You pay attention to the successes and failures of friends more than you do to those of strangers. You compare yourself to those who are close to you in order to judge your own worth. In other words, You know Barack Obama and Johnny Depp are successful, but you don’t use them to as a standard for your own life to the degree you do coworkers, fellow students, friends you’ve know since high school. 

(Researchers) had students list the number of people they considered friends and then asked if the subjects believed they had more friends than did their peers and more friends than the average student. Thirty-five percent of the students said they had more friends than the typical student, and 23 percent said they had fewer. This better-than-average feeling was enhanced when considering their peers- 41 percent said they had more friends ship than did the peers they considered to be their friends. Only 16 percent said they had fewer. On average, everyone things they are more popular than you, and you think you are more popular than them.

Sure, some of your faults are just too obvious, even to you but you compensate for those by inflating what you like most about you. When you compare your skills, accomplishments, and friendships with those of others, you tend to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. You are a liar by default, and you lie most to yourself. If you fail, you forget it. IF you win, you tell everyone. When it comes to being honest with yourself and those you love, you are not so smart. 

David McRaney, You are Not so Smart

Mental shortcuts work — until problems get complex

Franck Schuurmans, a guest lecturer at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, has captivated audiences with explanations of why people make irrational business decisions. A simple exercise he uses in his lectures is to provide a list of 10 questions such as, “In what year was Mozart born?” The task is to select a range of possible answers so that you have 90 percent confidence that the correct answer falls in your chosen range. Mozart was born in 1756, so for example, you could narrowly select 1730 to 1770, or you could more broadly select 1600 to 1900. The range is your choice. Surprisingly, the vast majority choose correctly for no more than five of the 10 questions. Why score so poorly? Most choose too narrow bounds. The lesson is that people have an innate desire to be correct despite having no penalty for being wrong.

Gary Cokins

Time to Recharge

A century ago, economists believed that you could predict how poor someone was by how much he or she worked. The whole point of earning wealth, they argued, was that it afforded you less toil and more downtime. But somewhere in the annals of America’s workaholic culture, putting in inhuman hours at your job became a status symbol, especially for the elite. 

You could argue these executives are doing what they love, and that meaningful work provides a real sense of fulfillment. But all that industriousness probably isn’t making them more creative or productive. Some of history’s most accomplished figures across science, math, and literature—people like Charles Darwin, Henri Poincaré, and Charles Dickens—insisted on working just four or five hours a day. The rest of their mornings and afternoons were filled with long walks and other leisurely pursuits that recharged their mental batteries and gave rise to creative ideas. 

Studies of exceptional performers and athletes reveal similar work/rest patterns, with just a few hours a day of serious, focused effort.  

Carolyn O’Hara writing in The Week Magazine

a Call for Help

Asking for help is smart. It's also the answer to fatigue and the "I'm indispensable" image. But something keeps us from this wise course of action, and that something is pride. Plain, stubborn unwillingness to admit need. The result, painful though it is to admit, is a lifestyle of impatience. We become easily irritated- often angry. We work long hours. Take less time off. Forget how to laugh. Cancel vacations. And all the while the specter of discouragement looms across our horizon like a dark storm front,- threatening to choke out any remaining sunshine.

Say, my friend, it's time to declare it. You are not the Messiah of the twentieth century! There is no way you can keep pushing your life at that pace and expect to stay effective. Analyze yourself any way you please, you are H-U-M-A-M... nothing more. So? So slow down. So give yourself a break. So stop trying to cover all the bases and sell popcorn in the stands at the same time. So relax for a change!

Charles Swindoll, Encourage Me