Author: Don McMinn

There are many things in life that we cannot control: other people, the weather, random events…but there are many things we can control and we should focus on those. 

Here are six things we can easily do—every day— that require little time and effort but are beneficial.

Maintain good posture.

Whether you’re sitting or standing, have good posture. You’ll look and feel better.

Here’s a good article on good posture: 

Drink a large glass of water as soon as you get up in the morning.

A survey of 3,003 Americans found that 75% had a net fluid loss, resulting in chronic dehydration. Are you among that 75%? 

Dehydration has dire effects but is easily avoided.

Drink a glass of water when you first get up in the morning. It will begin the hydration process and help keep the issue on your mind throughout the day.

Here’s an article on how much water you should drink per day.

Here’s an article on dehydration.

Strengthen and favor your core muscles.

Your core muscles are so named because of their location and importance. Our center of mass is usually located just below the navel and halfway between the abdomen and lower back, which is midway between the mass of the upper and lower body. When walking, working, bending, or leaning over, I think of my center-point and keep my body balanced over it. Most evenings I do a series of exercises that stretch and strengthen my core muscles.

Here’s an article and video on good exercises to strengthen your core muscles.

Develop a pleasant “resting face.”

Your “resting face” is the way your face looks when you are at ease, with facial muscles relaxed. 

Your “engaged face” is the way your face looks when you are consciously manipulating your face to appear more engaged, approachable, and friendly. I’ve also heard this called a “yes face.”

Most people have an unfriendly looking resting face. At best it’s hard to read, at worst we look sad, unapproachable, unengaged, and even upset.

To display an engaged face, simply raise the eyebrows and forehead, open up the eyes, and smile.

Here’s a post I wrote on this subject. 

Memorize one significant thought a week and meditate on it.

Here’s a mental discipline I enjoy, benefit from, and constantly do: I identify a significant thought, memorize it, meditate on it, apply it to my life, and when possible, discuss it with other people.

This process is a key to personal growth and change.

Here are some thoughts I’ve recently meditated on: 

• “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” —Einstein
• It’s amazing how much an organization can accomplish if no one cares who gets the credit for progress.
• “Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.” Balzac

Here’s a post I wrote on this subject.

Express gratitude daily. 

There are many advantages to expressing gratitude, not just thinking thoughts of gratitude or feeling grateful, but actually expressing it.

1. 1. It helps develop a positive attitude. 
   2. It’s an antidote for being negative and pessimistic.
   3. It reinforces our remembrance of positive experiences.  
   4. When we express gratitude to people for specific things they have done, they are encouraged and their behavior is affirmed. 

Here’s a post I wrote on this subject. 

In the past few years, I’ve developed a new catchphrase: “There are some things you cannot do; but what you can do, do.”

These are six things everyone can do.

[reminder]Please contribute to this list of simple things we can do that will be beneficial. [/reminder]

I asked a friend about his experience at a chamber music concert. His first response (and his only response until I pressed him) was, “During the final song there was a terrible, loud noise that just ruined the concert. I’m not even sure where it came from.” I asked him about the other 57 minutes (the concert lasted an hour). “Oh, the rest of the concert was terrific. Beautiful music played well.” Interestingly, he chose to remember the negative part of the evening, though it represented only a small fraction of the total event.

I asked a friend about her vacation. Her first response was, “When we checked out of the hotel, they tried to stick us with a surcharge that we had not agreed to. I had to escalate the situation to the general manager to get it resolved. It was a very distasteful encounter.” I then asked about the previous six days and 12 hours. “Oh, we had a great vacation,” she said, “very relaxing and satisfying.”

Notice that my friends chose to focus on how their experience ended and fixated on a negative aspect. We all tend to do this. 

We are inclined to remember how an event ended.

In a psychological research project, subjects each immersed a hand in iced water at a temperature that causes moderate pain. They were told they would have three trials. While the hand was in the water the other hand used a keyboard to continuously record their level of pain. The first trial lasted 60 seconds. The second trial lasted 90 seconds, but in the last 30 seconds the water was slowly warmed by 1 degree (better but still painful). For the third trial, they were allowed to choose which of the first two trials was less disagreeable, and repeat that one.

Eighty percent of the subjects who reported experiencing some decrease in their pain in the last 30 seconds of the second trial chose to repeat the 90-second experience. In other words, they chose to suffer for an additional 30 seconds because the ending of the experiment was more satisfying. 

Many similar experiments have revealed that people’s remembrance and assessment of an experience are based on the peak (best or worst moment) and how the experience ended.

We are inclined to remember negative events more than positive ones.

We are predisposed to allowing negative experiences to impact us more than positive ones—an inclination we must actively work to resist. For instance, when the stock market suddenly drops and we lose money, that impacts us more than all the months in which the stock market gradually rose. This may cause us to rashly (and unwisely) sell our stocks and make us reluctant to invest in the market again.

The antidote for both dilemmas is reflection and gratitude. After an event is over (and even when it’s happening) take time to reflect on the entire affair (concert, vacation) and balance the positive with the negative. Thoughts and expressions of gratitude help us concentrate on positive aspects, which enhances and lengthens their influence. 

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]

All of us are smarter than one of us—unless you’re dealing with an issue that “all of us” know little or nothing about and “one of us” knows a lot. Sloman and Fernbach

One of my favorite leadership mantras is: All of us are smarter than one of us. Particularly in the complex world in which we live, no one person is smart enough to lead unilaterally. That’s why a collaborative leadership style works better than a Lone Ranger mentality. Leaders should build a diverse team of informed, committed members and then engage them when making major decisions.

But sometimes, all of us are not smarter than one of us.

Here’s an extreme, hypothetical situation that illustrates the point. Imagine five professionals (lawyer, accountant, business executive, professor, and engineer) sitting around a table, discussing a particular issue, trying to discern the best thing to do. But the decision involves a medical issue. In walks a physician, and suddenly, “one of us is smarter than all of us.” Granted, there’s a lot of brain-power in the group of five, but they’re all uninformed relative to the topic at hand.

Here’s an actual example. Years ago I was part of a group at work that interviewed candidates for a position we needed to fill. Everyone in the group was intelligent, but none of us knew anything about interviewing techniques, HR practices, tests that are available to evaluate candidates’ abilities, or the intricacies of developing a balanced and diverse team. Some of us were not even particularly insightful individuals. Together, we made a unanimous but wrong decision.

Now think back to the hypothetical case in which the five professionals are tasked with making a medical decision, but this time, the five people include an oncologist, cardiologist, surgeon, anesthesiologist, and a psychiatrist. That group will probably make a better decision than a single doctor would.

Granted, sometimes a diverse group is advantageous. For instance, when you’re exploring a radical idea or an entrepreneurial pursuit, it might be helpful to have an anthropologist, mathematician, artist, salesman, and a librarian brainstorm the idea. Each member of this disparate group will see the issue differently and can contribute in unique ways.

I see several factors at work here.

1. The issue. What is the topic of discussion; what decision needs to be made? Are team members qualified to address this topic? If not, the team should hand off the decision to another group, or an expert “voice” should be invited into the conversation. 
2. The team. Are we aware of our strengths and weaknesses? Are we confident enough and have enough self-awareness to admit that we may not have the knowledge necessary to properly address an issue? Do we suffer from group-think? (Irving Janis defines groupthink as “The mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.”)

Having said all this, I reiterate my conviction that most leaders don’t take advantage of the wisdom of others. We act as soloists. But every idea or plan will be improved upon when submitted to the unfiltered wisdom of others. Just be sure you have the right people in the group. 

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]

In December 2016, a screenwriter named Edgar Welch read online that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington D.C., was harboring young children as part of a child abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton. Welch believed the false conspiracy theory and took it upon himself to visit Comet Ping Pong, unleashing an AR-15 rifle on the workers there. By some miracle, no one was hurt and the police arrested him. He was snookered by fake news.

In the U.K. a post on Facebook purported that places of worship are exempt from council tax—but only if the worshippers are Muslim. The post claims followers of Islam who use their living areas as a place to pray do not need to pay council tax. The image attached to the post shows a copy of the petition dated 2013. The fake story was finally expunged in 2018 when the House of Commons officially stated, “It is not possible for owners of domestic property to avoid council tax by claiming that their property, or part of it, is used for religious purposes.”

Fake news is completely false information, photos, or videos purposefully created and spread to confuse or misinform. Not surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter are the two main conduits for the spread of fake news. Fake news is not a new nemesis (consider supermarket tabloids that have been published for decades), but the internet has allowed it to increase exponentially.

I think most of my readers are astute enough to recognize and reject fake news, but many of us may be inordinately swayed by biased reporting in which a news source does report facts (or selected facts) but presents them in a biased way such that the reader is intentionally manipulated toward a certain persuasion. 

That’s why I never watch FOX or MSNBC news channels. Though they may not promulgate fake news, I find their biased reporting to be misleading. If you get a steady diet of either source, you’ll eventually be swayed to an extreme position. CNN and NBC are slightly left of center but are more careful about the stories they choose to report and how they present them. 

Here’s a good article on how to recognize a fake news story.

Here’s a graphic showing the ideological leaning of familiar news sources.

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]