Browsing Category Enthusiasms

TTE 182 – Subtractive psychology, spooky weirdness and Jurassic Park

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
The subject of free speech is one that’s incredibly important, and appears to be increasingly under threat. While Noam Chomsky is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, he’s very on-point in this statement about the importance of free speech:

“Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favour of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favour of free speech.”

TTE 181 – Bootlegging, relationships and Tenerife

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
In a recent ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on his podcast, Sam Harris was answering a question about what careers he would advise. He talked (of course) about the advance of technology, and avoiding jobs likely to be automated soon. He also said that the careers which would likely be the last to be automated were those involving human creativity, taste and insight. This is a point I made in-depth in my book RESULTS. Here’s what Harris said about the importance of relationships:

“I think lawyers and accountants and many other white-collar jobs will be automated away before seemingly more menial jobs will be. Obviously we will want to remain in relationship to other people, so careers that give primacy to relationships – being a psychotherapist, or a coach – seems to me to give much more primacy to the relationship than being an oncologist does.”

TTE 180 – Pop, Popups and Prague

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
In my 2013 book CLARITY, I made the point that “just as factory workers need to keep their machines clean and well oiled, knowledge workers, creatives, managers and leaders need to take similar care of their minds.” I pointed out that individuals and businesses are paying the price as time-scarcity, attention- poverty and information-saturation clog the “mental machinery” we rely on. I just read an article in the Financial Times saying that the Global Risks Report has just arrived at a similar conclusion. Here’s what it said:

“In many ways, the mental health issues we face are similar to the physical health and safety challenges of the 19th century as industrialisation changed the nature of work. In the 21st century, mental health and safety rules could play a similar role in our increasingly knowledge-based economy, according to the Global Risks Report.”

TTE 179 – The Roses and a Mandelbrot zoom

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
One of the things I do from time to time is transcribe recordings by people who have something interesting to say. The person whose recordings I’ve transcribed the most is Sydney Banks, and I learn a huge amount every time I do it. The one I’ve done most recently is a talk called “The Oneness of Life” from his series, “The Hawaii Lectures”. Here’s a line from it that’s resonating with me and the promise I see these principles holding for humanity:

“Right now, you’re all sitting enlightened… and you don’t know it… you know that saying, ‘I am what I seek’?… that’s the oneness of life… and the oneness of life… is the greatest thing in the world that you can realise… and I hope someday, that everybody in this world can realise that… that’d be a marvellous thing…”

TTE 178 – Whodunnit?

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
I came across a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Priestley written in 1780. While humanity has now gone far beyond what Franklin imagined when it comes to the physical sciences, it seems to me that we’re just on the threshold of what he hoped for in the domain he calls ‘moral science’:

“The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity, for the sake of easy Transport. Agriculture may diminish its Labour & double its Produce. All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.”

TTE 177 – Your true identity and 2020

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
This week saw 8 years since the death of the magnificent Christopher Hitchens. He was a passionate defender of free speech; a voice we need now more than ever. This week’s quote is from one of his influences, John Stuart Mill:

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

TTE 176 – Exponential insight and the strategy equation

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
Ray Kurzweil is one of the most accurate futurists of all time. In the 1990s he made over 140 predictions about what life would be like today. 86% of them were accurate and timely. One of the things that informs his predictions as a futurist is his understanding of the exponential nature of technology:

“Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.”

TTE 175 – Destroying the ego, freedom and kingfishers

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
I’ve been listening to an old Syd Banks recording (one I’ve heard many times) but these sentences leapt out at me today. Of course, Banks would be the first to say that you can’t actually get rid of the ego, but the thing that struck me here was this: that phrase, “Oh God, I want nothing to do with it.” I suddenly heard the ‘aversion’ to the ego; the instinctive sense that while it may always be with us, it isn’t worth paying attention to.

“You gotta destroy the ego… throw it away, oh God I want nothing to do with it… really, this is where freedom is…”

TTE 174 – Internal dialogue and medicine for the soul

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
At last week’s Resilient Young Minds conference, my friend and colleague Dr Rani Bora gave a beautiful talk called, “No-one Is Broken.” Rani’s a psychiatrist, and she explained that the word “psychiatry” means “medicine for the soul (it comes from the words “psyche” meaning soul and “iatre” meaning medicine). Then she asked this question:

“What medicine does a soul need? I’m posing that to you, because how will we ever find it? Will it come in lotions, in potions? Is it going to be tablets, capsules? And in what dose? As physicians, one of the things we have is a prescription pad. And a wise physician once said, “If someone is really struggling, give them love.” He was asked what to do if that doesn’t work, and he replied, “Increase the dose.”

TTE 173 – Zurich, schizophrenia and revolution

It’s enthusiasm time again. Let me know what you think via twitter at @JamieSmartCom, on my Facebook page, or on my blog below.

1. A quote I’m resonating with this week
Today I’m in Zurich, speaking at the Ignite business conference https://www.ignite-movement.com/conference-2018 at the University of St Gallen on the subject of purpose. Then on Friday, I’m in the southwest of England speaking at the Resilient Young Minds conference (the in-room places are sold out, but you can still get a live-stream ticket if you want to join us – book your place here https://www.tickettailor.com/events/theclayfactory/185546). I’m going to be painting a vision for the future, and I’m reminded once again that the principles Sydney Banks discovered represent a paradigm shift; a genuine revolution for the field of psychology. To get a sense of what a true paradigm shift really means, I’m reflecting on this passage from John Waller’s excellent book, The Discovery of the Germ: Twenty Years That Transformed The Way We Think About Disease.

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Sandy Loyall: They state, " a single dimension is able to measure a person’s liabili...

Jamie Smart: I agree, Helen - I'll keep my eyes peeled!...

Sandy Loyall: I agree Joselyn. In the moment of severe psychosis, medical interventi...

Sandy Loyall: I agree Joselyn. In the moment of severe psychosis, medical interventi...

Jane Mannette: Maybe I missed something but what did they say was the possible "one c...