Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Before I knew anything about it, I was attracted to the ideal of philosophy. I thought of it as a practical subject that could make a real difference, that might have wise things to say about everyday worries – like

failing in a job, not having any friends. Philosophy promised something that might sound a little naive, but was in fact rather profound: “the way to learn to be happy.”

And as I found out more, I discovered that there were a few ancient philosophers I was particularly interested in, because they had the wisest things to say about the areas of life that I thought were rather problematic.

Anger

Anger refers especially to that faculty of the mind which subsists between reason and desire and which seeks to direct the latter in accord with the former – a faculty which seeks to ordinate the self and its environment. It is part of the brain response to a perceived threat of pain – mental of physical.

Anger may be expressed actively or passively. When expressed actively, an angry person “lashes out” verbally or physically at a target. When expressed passively, it is often characterized by silent sulking, passive-aggressive behavior, hostility and tension.

Anger is usually magnified and lasts longer when a rational decision is made about the intent of the source of the disturbance. In other words, if one decides the pain infliction was intentional or deliberate, the emotion of anger that results is usually more intense. This also happens when one thinks he can do something to change an unchangeable painful situation.

Getting angry is not a hard thing to achieve. Is is sufficient for one to drive through a city, especially if it is a crowded one, to get very frustrated because of the careless drivers that seem to be everywhere.

The world we live in is a very frustrating one and most of us seem unable to respond very philosophically to it. Anger seems as much a part of our lives today as bad driving and traffic jams.

Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. - Seneca

You are tired, you have to drag yourself out of bed each morning and your life seems to be somehow spiraling downwards… your enthusiasm for work gets lower each day and so does the interest in your hobbies and social life. You’ve got some vacation time banked but you’re thinking that you don’t have enough money to travel. You are wondering if going away, even for a little while, is worth the effort…

If you are in the above situation, then you really cannot afford not to travel.

If you are not in that situation: travel anyway, it will benefit you more than you can imagine; you might even achieve success because you did!

In this modern and busy life of ours, planning a getaway is not always an easy job. Most people have budgets to keep, schedules to follow, children to take care of… But the time when travel is most necessary is the time when you think you don’t have enough time / money to do it.

Getting away, even if for a short period and to a nearby destination, can do wonders for your well-being. As the opening quote beautifully puts it, it will “impart new vigor to the mind.”

I’ll share a little secret with you now (shh, don’t tell anyone): the inspiration to start this blog, the motivation and enthusiasm to keep working on it, the strong desire to help others, the power to start thinking and to seeing life in perspective would not have been possible without travel.

However, an important note must be made: by travel I’m referring to wandering (go someplace see everything) and not to tourism (go there see that).

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sight-seeing.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Let’s see how travel will change your life

Traveling alone, or solo travel, is the quickest and easiest way for you to grow your independence and confidence. Most of the traveling that I’ve done has been solo travel, and one of the main things I’ve noticed upon returning from each getaway is the fact that I felt like I have accomplished a certain something. It’s an indescribable feeling that makes you feel like you’re on top of the world and everything is possible. That feeling is triggered by the fact that traveling alone allows you to do a lot of things about which you previously thought that you can’t do without name_someone_close_here.

Independence and confidence help you in both your professional and personal life.

Being alone and away from it all gives you time to think. It regroups your thoughts and allows you see life from a whole different perspective. It is always during long train rides that I find myself having the deepest thoughts about my life, and that is the time when the opportunity windows get clearer. After all, only from the outside can we look back in.

Also, traveling alone has certainly made me more organized – in both thinking and living.

Travel reduces stress and decreases burnout. Even if traveling can sometimes be stressful, travel stress is a good type of stress, because it is not the kind of anxiety caused by work or tension related to home life. Stress reduction, however you accomplish it, is always healthy.

Being stuck in one place for too long can make your mind stagnate and turn everything there is in your daily routine into a suffocating chore. Any kind of trip provides you with a break from the norm and that alone can fill you up with a vibrating energy.

Another thing which traveling does is it teaches you one really big thing that was never learned in school: expect the unknown. Dealing with unknown people in unknown places makes traveling an unforgettable and fascinating experience. And as new connections are created inside the brain, all your mental abilities are improved – so you’ll return home both relaxed and smarter.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited. – Albert Einstein

In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for safely running programs that is often used to execute untested code or programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers and untrusted users.

In a similar fashion, the psychological sandbox is the space within your mind which allows you to safely exercise ideas, concepts, issues and solutions, without any direct external consequences. You may not be aware that you have this psychological sandbox, but if you ever thought about something that “it can’t work”, you have used it.

The advantages of becoming aware of and consciously using the psychological sandbox are numerous. Here are some of them:

• You can solve difficult or painful situations that may appear in life more easily;
• You can test-run outlandish concepts more thoroughly;
• You can use it in brainstorming sessions to improve your changes of finding new practical ideas;
• You can thoroughly test-run any idea before applying it in your life;
• It is a very powerful imagination exercise;

As you see, the psychological sandbox is a very powerful tool that can assist you in improving yourself.

Setting up the sandbox

The psychological sandbox is basically a skill that everyone is born with. Because of its “skill” state, it can be subject to improvement. And in this case, improvement means learning to set it up correctly and then developing it through exercise.

The installation process is very simple:

Imagine an actual sandbox that has a border around it, to keep the sand in. No matter what one builds or tears down in this sandbox, it all stays inside. Anything that is in the sandbox is provisionally accepted as being real and is subject to the physical laws of the universe – and the moral laws of society, depending on the case.

Using the sandbox

Let’s consider that you face a very difficult situation in your life.

First, bring up in your mind the sandbox that you installed earlier. Now imagine that the sand in it represents the problems you are facing. As you know, you can build up anything or tear down what is already there without actually doing it. Thus, with emotional distance, intelligently use all the options you have and notice their consequences. In order for the results to be accurate, for the duration of the exercise you must accept the environment build inside the sandbox as being real, but untrustworthy – until proven otherwise.

When one idea has a valid beneficial outcome, step outside the psychological sandbox and replicate the process in the real life.

Let’s have another example.

During brainstorming sessions, the habit of thinking “it can’t work” is an abhorrant action that interferes with the process that creates new ideas. Most of us are hardwired to act this way. But an idea shouldn’t be subject to brutal attack in the instant it first comes to our mind. New ideas are delicate, their survival ability is not properly tested by beating them with wooden clubs, but by placing them in our psychological sandbox.

Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis – which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism – especially rejection of new ideas before they have been adequately tested – and you’re not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. – Carl Sagan

The solution is to place the new idea in the psychological sandbox – a place which is carefully kept separate from where you keep your certain knowledge. In this sandbox all the untested ideas are constantly seen as untrustworthy yet they’re all provisionally accepted as being real. So build the environment for properly testing the idea and then play with it while paying attention to the effects. Does it work, is it valid? If it does, congratulations! your brainstorming has created a new idea.

In a nutshell, the point of the psychological sandbox is to encourage thinking and imagination, while discouraging laziness of thought – saying “I can’t do that” or “that’s not possible” without proper testing.

But I was already doing this!

Congratulations then!

This is a very basic and simple concept, but the fact of the matter is that many of us only imagine that we imagine. Imagining that you imagine and believing what you imagine to imagine is a bad habit to keep.

Bringing the sandbox process of imagination in the awareness spectrum of your mind can only have great positive results. Start using it right away.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. - H.L. Mencken

The Socratic method is a very valuable tool in building self-confidence, as it makes people think.

Born 2500 years ago, Socrates is seen by many as the greatest of ancient philosophers. Noted for his ugliness, he never wore sandals or washed his cloak. An individual by today’s standards, but an annoying and frustrating man according to most who encountered him in his lifetime. Socrates taught his students in a manner that was beyond some of the conventions of the time. The Socratic method derives from the Socratic Dialogues of Plato, in which Socrates made people jump through intellectual hoops trying to defend a “truth.” He would ask a progression of seemingly innocent questions that ultimately led the respondent to a logical conclusion that was incompatible with that person’s originally stated belief.

Even though Socrates used his method more to shred people than to educate them, we can apply this technique in a kinder, gentler way, in order to build self-confidence.

These are the 5 steps of the Socratic method of inquiry:

1. Wonder. Pose a question.
2. Hypothesis. Suggest a plausible answer (a definition or definiens) from which some conceptually testable hypothetical propositions can be deduced.
3. Elenchus; “testing,” “refutation,” or “cross-examination.” Perform a thought experiment by imagining a case which conforms to the definiens but clearly fails to exemplify the definiendum, or vice versa. Such cases, if successful, are called counterexamples. If a counterexample is generated, return to step 2, otherwise go to step 4.
4. Accept the hypothesis as provisionally true. Return to step 3 if you can conceive any other case which may show the answer to be defective.
5. Act accordingly.

Before taking in any concept, belief or idea, filter them using the Socratic method.

What is self-confidence?

Self-confidence is an attitude which allows individuals to have positive yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. Self-confident people trust their own abilities, have a general sense of control in their lives, and believe that, within reason, they will be able to do what they wish, plan, and expect.

Having self-confidence does not mean that individuals will be able to do everything. Self-confident people have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People who are not self-confident depend excessively on the approval of others in order to feel good about themselves. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They generally do not expect to be successful. They often put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments paid to them. By contrast, self-confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally trust their own abilities. They tend to accept themselves; they don’t feel they have to conform in order to be accepted.

“Start doing the thing to have energy to do the thing” – Bob Proctor

All of us have goals and dreams. And most of us even have full intentions of achieving them.

Why did I say “most of us” and not “all of us?” Because on the path that leads towards our dreams, we all reach a certain place where it becomes incredibly easy to do “the tradeoff” – trading what we want for what we already have. That is where only the ones with full intentions manage to keep their dreams.

For the ones with partial intentions, after doing the tradeoff, the dreams fade into the background, life moves on, and all of a sudden they find themselves saying “I wish I would have…”

And that is really sad when you think about it. A person loaded with potential, a story people want to hear, information people will pay for and benefit from, skills that could have made a difference… all that gone to waste.

How to safely pass the tradeoff spot without doing the tradeoff: the 40-second rule

When people are close to the “tradeoff spot” they see things out of perspective. All of a sudden the dreams they were after don’t seem to worth the effort and their current situation is seen as very comfortable.

Of course that these sudden shifts in perspective are nothing but dangerous, temporary illusions that should be dealt with carefully. The best way out of them: act on one of the things that doesn’t seem to be worth it, for 40 seconds. The short time limit will make the apparent sacrifice appear to be doable and acceptable, and chances are that by the time those 40 seconds are up you’ll be enjoying what you started and get it done!

I, for example, love reading. But there are days when my mind wanders off in some other places and the thought of reading a book isn’t so attractive anymore… In situations like that I simply pick up a book and read through it for 40 seconds (sometimes I even time that period on the clock). In more than 90% of the cases that I do so, I continue reading after the time limit expires. What’s more, in most cases the reason why I was avoiding it in the first place appears to have been very irrational afterwards.

Trading 40 seconds in exchange for a better future is probably the best deal you’ll ever make! And the best part: you can do it right now. Just get out there and for 40 seconds do something that can take you closer to your dream. Don’t worry if after the first try you stop… it doesn’t mean that you failed. Follow the 40-seconds rule again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and so on… because:

“It’s the little things you do that can make a big difference. What are you attempting to accomplish? What little thing can you do today that will make you more effective? You are probably only one step away from greatness.” – Bob Proctor