Best phrases of Seth Godin

Seth Godin

A phrase is a small group of words that communicates a concept but isn’t a full sentence. You use phrases in your writing and your speech every day. There are lots of different kinds of phrases, some of which play a technical role in your writing and others that play a more illustrative role. No matter which role a phrase is playing, it’s achieving one simple goal: making your sentences richer by giving your words context, detail, and clarity.

There's no such thing as muscle memory.

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I wish I had a time machine, but I don't.

I think I am a believer in beginner's mind.

Plasticity is a state of the brain and nervous system.

The question we need to ask is can behavior change the brain?

The signal that generates the plasticity is the making of errors.

As a little point of fact, actually, we don't have muscle memory.

The brain doesn't even understand frustration as an emotional state.

Put simply, incremental learning as an adult is absolutely essential.

And humans do not like this feeling of frustration and making errors.

Today, we're going to talk about how to change your nervous system for the better.

Flow is an expression of nervous system capabilities that are already embedded in us.

Representational plasticity is just your internal representation of the outside world.

It's a mistake to try and learn a lot of information in one learning about as an adult.

We already agree that the brain can change behavior, but can behavior change the brain?

That means math, chemistry, physics, literature, music, learn how to play an instrument.

The way to create plasticity is to create mismatches or errors in how we perform things.

Central pattern generators are what allow us to generate repetitive patterns of movement.

So the goal isn't to remember everything, the goal is to be selective about your brain changes.

So let's begin by just examining the big picture question which is, does the brain control behavior?

Now, you can probably make a cup of coffee in the morning without having to think about it too much.

In adults, it tends to be very slow and most individuals never actually accomplish the full map shift.

When you're older, generally, you have more control of your experience, but your brain is less plastic.

I think that if you look at super learners, they tend to be people that have a process of say extreme memory.

There are also a lot of data now showing that vitamin D3 is very important for a number of different biological functions.

And this is why frustration that leads us to just kind of quit and walk away from the endeavor is the absolute worst thing.

But if you are an adult, or if you are a young person, knowing how to tap into these plasticity mechanisms is very powerful.

In fact, people that lack certain neurons for proprioceptive feedback, they are very poor at controlling their motor behavior.

So what we're saying is what I already said before, which is that we learn very well as youngsters, but not as adults after 25.

What we're talking about today is using behavior as a gate to enter states of mind and body that allow you to access plasticity.

If you do this in older individuals, in most cases, it takes a very long time for the maps to shift, and in some cases they never shift.

As I mentioned last episode, and I'll just tell you right now again, the brain is incredibly plastic from about birth until about age 25.

To be clear, I think exercise is wonderful and healthy, can improve cardiovascular function, maintain strength, bone density, all that good stuff.

Get a broad training in a number of things and find the thing that really captures your passion and excitement, and then put a ton of additional effort there.

Here we're talking about map shifts, but this could be learning a new language, this could be any number of different things that we're attempting.

And so this is really the key element of incremental learning, is that you're trying to signal to the nervous system at least one component that needs to change.

Basically, what they found was that if people have to adjust their visual world in order to get food, the plasticity would eventually occur, but it was very slow as an adult.

Errors and making errors out of sync with what we would like to do is how our nervous system is cued through very distinct biological mechanisms that something isn't going right.

The key is to try a number of different parameters until I start to approximate the behavior that I want to get a little bit better, and then trying to get consistent about that.

Passive experience will shape the brain just because of the way that the chemicals that are sloshing around in there and the way that the neurons are arranged and all sorts of things.

For the aficionados out there, for those of you that might be headed to medical school or just want to learn more about the anatomy, they live in the ventral horn of the spinal cord.

And this is why just passively going through most things, going through the motions, as we say, or just getting our reps in quote, unquote, is not sufficient to get the nervous system to change.

Probably anywhere from 7 minutes to 30 minutes, provided that you're fully attending, you're very focused, is going to be a pretty significant stimulus to inspire plasticity in the nervous system.

The brain changes when certain neurochemicals, namely acetylcholine, epinephrin, and dopamine, are released in ways and in the specific times that allow for neural circuits to be marked for change.

Tolerance is for cowards.

People are not stereotypes.

People are not talking points.

Empathy is the basis of our moral code.

Life is hard, and it's hard for everybody.

Empathy is really different from sympathy.

We can talk to people that disagree with us.

Empathy is when you say to them: "I feel with you".

Sympathy is when you say to someone: "I feel for you".

People are better than you think, and they'll surprise you.

Work hard, move into uncomfortable territory, and understand each other.

We view people who disagree with us not as human beings, but as enemies.

History teaches us that when we hurt one group, eventually we all suffer.

There's a concept in psychology that's called "the halo and horns effect".

First, don't try to educate anybody and do not try to change anybody's mind.

Take some responsibility for the information on which you base your opinions.

We can tailor what we read and what we hear according to what we want to hear.

No matter who won, half of the country was going to be angry and upset.

When we believe it, and then we see facts that say that's not true, it backfires.

We can talk to people who fundamentally disagree with us, and we can do it without arguing.

The divisions were planted and started a very long time ago, and now we are deeply entrenched.

And 1 in 5 would be unhappy if someone from the other political party married into our family.

Are you ready to have someone say that they support mass deportation without calling them a fascist?

We can ignore evidence that refutes our beliefs, and we unfriend people, both online and in real life.

Don't walk off in a huff, don't throw your hands up and say, "This isn't worth it", "This is pointless".

In Islam, it is: "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself".

And we explain our disagreement by saying the other side is ignorant, or stupid, or elitist, or in denial.

I know you're going to hear things that you don't want to hear, but grit your teeth and ask some questions.

But if we can find empathy, if we can find understanding, the change could be toward a positive turning point.

In Hinduism, it is: "This is the sum of duty. Do not do to someone else what would cause pain if done to you".

Being tolerant asks nothing of you but to be quiet and to make no waves, holding tightly to your views and judgments.

To paraphrase Larry King: You will learn nothing from what you say today, you can only learn by listening to other people.

You can find inspiration and optimism in other people, but first, you have to see them as people, and you have to hear them out.

Basically, if we have a favorable opinion of something, we are already ready to accept and approve of everything that person says or does.

I'm not telling you to subject yourself to abuse and harrassment, of course not, but hearing an opposing opinion is not inherently abusive.

I would really like to show us the way to hope, and I'd like to show us the way forward, but to do that we have to understand how we got here.

Basically, what that means is if we believe something and someone presents evidence to us that refutes our belief, it makes us believe stronger.

Of all the statistics and studies that I've read, and I've read a lot, the one that scares me the most: empathy has declined by 40% in recent years.

I've been a journalist for nearly 20 years, and quite frankly I can tell you there's no way to downplay the serious situation that we're in as a nation.

He said, quote: "Our communities are being destroyed by racial tensions, and we're too polite to talk about it." I'm not asking you to be tolerant of each other.

I really hope that we can finally begin to have the tough conversations that we've avoided for a very long time, so that we can move forward as one nation, understanding we really are all in this together.

If you're feeling pretty good about your own choices, maybe deploring the behavior of other people, you're maybe blaming all of this on the other side, whatever side that is, you might have missed the point.

In the tradition of the Pima, a Native American people: "Do not wrong or hurt your neighbor because it is not he who you wrong, it is yourself." Scientists have found a number of ways for us to increase empathy.

If we continue to barricade ourselves behind walls, gathering our like-minded tribe around us and lobbing rocks at everybody else, the change with be toward further divisions, increased anger, and a breakdown of our social systems.

The search for self-awareness never ever stops.

What is this thing we call self-awareness anyway?

They were fixated on what happened instead of moving forward.

My research team surveyed quantitatively thousands of people.

We might not always like what we see, but there's a comfort in knowing ourselves.

Now, consumer research shows that people tend to prefer products on the right.

It's up to us to choose to learn and grow from our mistakes and our tragedies, and our successes.

And there's actually a ton of research showing that people who are self-aware are more fulfilled.

That approach you're using to examine your thoughts, your feelings, and your motives, you know, introspection.

I wanted to know what self-awareness really is, where it comes from, why we need it, and how to get more of it.

My team has found that 95% of people think they're self-aware, but the real number is closer to 10 to 15%.

It's the ability to see ourselves clearly, to understand who we are, how others see us and how we fit into the world.

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