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May 2009 |
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Celebrating dads and grads |
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A talk with Robert Mack, author of Happiness from the Inside Out |
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"What Is Thinking?" by Gerald Sindell, author of The Genius Machine |
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There are hundreds of reasons that books make great gifts for any time of the year. But don't take our word for it — here's what your favorite authors and celebrities are saying.
"Books make great gifts because they are an amazing way to kill time while your website is buffering." — JON STEWART
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"Books make great gifts because they make great friends. Your cherished book can hold your secrets, and you can tell it every secret you have. And, it can't blab."
— MAYA ANGELOU
"Books make great gifts because they're everybody's favorite things."
— JULIE ANDREWS
— Your friends New World Library
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Meet Robert Mack |
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| How is authentic happiness different from synthetic happiness? |
Ten years of scientific findings from some of the world's most prestigious institutions have shown that lasting fulfillment and sustainable happiness cannot be synthesized from the material or the physical world. That is, success in any respect — whether it is financial, professional, romantic, social, physical, or otherwise — does not lead to a happy life. Successful life circumstances, by and large, will not guarantee that you live happily ever after. In other words, there are no purely "happy circumstances" in this life — no circumstances that serve as a one-stop-shop for creating a happy life. Winning the lottery, becoming rich and famous, being popular, dressing well, driving nice cars, winning lots of awards, being accomplished, getting married and having kids, and creating a model-perfect body will not make you happy. Even being in optimal good health will not net you a fulfilling life. Philosophers and others have suspected this for a long time, but now we have good data to prove it.
What this means is that real, authentic, lasting happiness can come from only one source: you. It comes from the thoughts you think and the actions you take. Happiness is less a set of circumstances that surround you than a set of conditions that exist within you. And those conditions, to a large extent, are self-generated and self-facilitated.
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| What do you mean by suggesting that we make happiness "the ultimate currency"? |
| Today, people measure their worthiness and success as individuals by all kinds of symbols and forms of currency: dollars, awards, diplomas, accomplishments, records sold, races won, number of kids, level of education, opinions of others, number of pounds we weigh, number of pounds we can lift, and so on. But when you measure your life this way, you miss the point of your existence. See, as Aristotle once said, "Happiness is the whole aim and end of life, the whole meaning and purpose of human existence." So if you want to live a happy life — and we all do — then you have to prioritize your happiness above everything else. You have to make feeling good your dominant intent, your primary focus, and the ultimate currency of your life. You have to measure the success of any activity, relationship, experience, event, entity, or endeavor by the joy that you feel in your heart, not the awards on your mantel, cars in your driveway, rooms in your house, stocks and bonds in your portfolio, numbers in your cell phone, clothes in your closet, or kids in your life. You have to make bliss your barometer and make pleasure and meaning your measuring stick. You have to make happiness more important than anything else in your life. Interestingly enough, when you do that, success washes up on your shores every single time, because 1) a happy life is a successful life, and 2) a happy life brings successful life outcomes. |
| What would you recommend to people who want to be both happy and successful? What's the magic formula? |
If you want to be happy and successful, just worry about being happy. Take the rat racing and pleasure chasing out of the equation as much as possible. Educate yourself in the art and science of happiness. The first step in becoming happier is learning. You must dedicate as much time to becoming happier as you do to other pursuits. You must commit to disciplining your mind in the same way that you commit to disciplining your body, building a savings account, or creating a new closetful of clothes.
Further, you must learn to become more sensitive to the way things make you feel. Most of all, keep in mind that at the end of the day, happiness is pleasure and meaning.
Once you become happy, success always follows. Today's science supports this claim: happy people are successful across multiple life arenas — social, physical, mental, financial, professional, romantic, and so on.
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"What Is Thinking?"
by Gerald Sindell, author of The Genius Machine: The 11 Steps That Turn Raw Ideas Into Brilliance
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My work is to help people think. My clients write books, create innovative solutions, develop brilliant breakthroughs, and endeavor to make the world a better place.
During the last twenty years of working with business leaders to build their personal reputations, and to enhance the profile of their organizations, I created a system for developing intellectual property — ideas. With my clients' comments and further refinement, that system is what I present in my book. I call it the Endleofon (END-leo-fahn), an old English word for "eleven." Many of my clients call it The Genius Machine.
Using this process, I have helped dozens of authors create books that have sold many millions of copies. I have helped leaders in many fields learn to articulate their core knowledge so they could better share it with others. What's so good about the Endleofon system? It's fast, it's complete, it helps people quickly get to the bottom of what they need to think through, and it anticipates the outreach part of innovation at the very beginning. It is not unusual for an individual or group working with the process to suddenly realize that they can speed through a development cycle in days, not months or years. And with the Endleofon, innovations are always developed with the understanding that it's tough to get new ideas accepted.
Let's start thinking!
What is thinking? Some thinking is actually contemplation — thinking about something you'd like to eat or a place you might like to visit someday. Some thinking is problem solving — two trains, each carrying twelve penguins, leave Philadelphia at the same time traveling in opposite directions. How will the penguins get back in touch?
The Genius Machine is about a different kind of thinking, one that is directed toward improving an existing idea, thinking through a complete issue, or creating something new. We use this kind of thinking when we're designing a house, creating a better way for people in our company to work together, or coming up with a better method for kids to learn something. This kind of thinking is about creating something with a particular goal in mind. If we're successful, we'll have a better toaster, a better company, a better school system, a better way to choose political leaders.
Imagine how the world would be if everyone could be really smart when they needed to be. The best ideas would always be the ones we'd chosen to use, we'd find great solutions for all our problems, organizations would reflect the best values of their employees more often than not, and the world would be one wonderful place to live.
Creative thinking has had some pretty good results so far. It has yielded the wheel, democracy, and the Internet. One might assume that, since this kind of thinking is so valuable, there's probably a pretty well-established way to go about it already out there. And yet, surprisingly, there is no generally accepted system for creative thinking. Put a bunch of people in a room and ask them to solve a complex problem, and the first thing they're going to do is create a process for solving the problem, because there isn't one on the shelf, ready to use.
In order to develop ourselves, for our companies to flourish, and for our world to improve, we need to be able to think creatively, not just solve problems. We require the ability to create brilliant new solutions, to invent what has never existed before. In the real world, the most valued skills are the ones for which we have little training and no rule book. Even when we have a pretty good new idea, we don't have a ready system to guide us in developing, testing, and refining it and then stepping back and seeing whether, underneath it all, we've come up with something that's just a little new, or something really, really important.
I hope the Endleofon will change that. It's a system that can help you get from the beginning of a problem — whether it be a complex one that needs solving or a brilliant vision that needs filling out — to the point where your work is fully developed and ready to take its rightful place in the world.
Based on the book The Genius Machine. Copyright © 2009 by Gerald Sindell. Printed with permission.
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