Category: Josh Feingold Blog

As followers of this blog know, much of my life has been involved thinking about meaning.

So when I found a book called “The Diversity of Meaning,” I have to admit I was rather curious to read a book on how other people have found meaning.

However, when I received my package, and tore open the envelope, to my surprise, the book was not about meaning in life, rather about words and their meaning.  Meaning, that what words mean to one person, might not have the same meaning to the next person.

Constitutional law, is probably the most relevant place I have seen this applied in the real world, where they ask the question of what did the forefathers mean – or does it even matter.

However, since I do enjoy words, I started reading it, and it brought out a good point, which bears repeating.

Basically, words have different meanings to different people.  So when someone says something, it might not really mean what WE think it means.  I actually, touched on this back in January when I posted about self-definitions as being arbitrary.

So the only thing that this post is here to add to that discussion, is that the reason they are arbitrary, is because, the different people assign different meanings to their words based on their own experiences in life, and what they have been taught.

I think that this is why when it comes to dating, finding someone who grew up in a familiar environment, will best ensure that your definitions of things are also similar to your own.

I just looked back, and surprisingly, I have written very little about anxiety, being that many of my core struggles in life has been with this little beast.

The first step is to recognize what need anxiety fills for us. In general, Anxiety serves as a mental red string around our finger, constantly reminding us not to mess something important up.

What we define as important, is part of our individual makeup, but it can be anything from things surround our physical security, such as when we interview for a new job, to emotional security, such as when our spouse is late arriving home, to social security, such as when you at a dinner party and don’t know anyone, but feel a need to establish your place in the room.

However, the common denominator of anxious moments is that you are in a position of vulnerability, and the anxiety sits there to protect you by creating sound loops in your mind and when a little more severe, you even have some type of physical sensation.

OK, so now we understand where anxiety come from.  What should we do about it if we want it to just go away?

Well, like all emotions, which are based on thoughts, we have to modify our thinking a little.

First we must examine what aspect of our security is threatened, and why exactly we feel threatened.  Then we simply need to convince ourselves, that in fact, there is no threat.

But you ask, there is a threat, why should I convince myself otherwise?

Because, the threat is really a figment of your imagination, where you think you can’t make it, or survive, but really you are just fooling yourself.  You can make it, you can survive.  You’ve made it this far haven’t you!

So ironically, we spend time telling ourselves the lie that we can’t make it through life, when really what we need to do is beef up on the fact that we certainly can make it though life.

In doing so, your anxiety goes down, and as you continue getting stronger in your own “can do” beliefs, hopefully it goes away entirely.

As anyone who reads my blog knows, over the past year, I have put a decent amount of time into figuring myself out.  I feel that I have met with a decent amount of success, but surprised myself this morning, as I was brushing my teeth.

I was getting reading for a lunch meeting, when I thought to myself, I wonder if they really want to meet with me.  Perhaps, they are just getting together, because I asked them to do me a favor.  Typical Josh thinking, not wanting to bother the other party.

Here is where the cool stuff happened.  Soon after this initial thought, I said to myself, who cares what they want!  I want the meeting, and it’s my world.

Now, I won’t talk to which perspective is the correct one (thinking of others vs. thinking of self), but I will take the opportunity to mention that it never dawned on me that I always had been taking the first perspective, but that there are probably plenty of people (perhaps the majority – I have no idea) who take the second.

What is really amazing to me is that similar to the idea of universal untruths, there is also a perspective of a hidden world view.  Which are those base feelings and thoughts upon which we take action – without realizing that they are key impacts in our life, and that others might be looking at life from a totally opposite perspective.

So can you figure out any of your hidden world view?

In the past, we about how to best simplify our life, but I wanted to share my method for staying organized, since perhaps it can help you!

The first thing that I would mentioned is that I have two calendars.  Once for what needs to be done, and another for appointments.  The appointment calendar is online, and anywhere that I need to be, is kept up to date on there and available to me from my cell phone or anywhere I am.

However, when it comes to what needs to get done, I have two methods.  But it relies on a physical weekly calendar.

This calendar allows me to keep a list of things that need to get done, and as I complete them, mark them off.  This list sits in front of me open, and as things come and go, they are put on and taken off the list.  At the end of the week, anything that still needs to be done, gets written on the next weeks page.

One nice things about this, is that eventually you get sick of rewriting things from week to week, so you just get in the habit of getting things done.

One other things point I should make is that I keep my inbox very clean.  Anything in my inbox, needs to get done, if not, it is archived.  So the inbox is more of a daily to do list, where I get things done, daily.

That’s about it.  This menthod, keeps me organized, and allows me to get everything done, and not drop the ball.

Perhaps this method can help you too!

It’s funny but we often assume causation when it is not there.

Meaning that we assume that A caused B because they happen around the same time.

We all know that if someone opens a door behind us and then the phone rings that A did not cause B to happen, but what about when someone opens the door at the same time we stub our big toe?  Yeah, maybe, it depends.  What if every time someone opens the door, we stub our big toe?  Sounds like causation to me.  Open the door, stub toe.   So if this was a scientific study, we are apt to conclude in this (rather silly) case I made up that A causes B.

However, what was missing in the above example is that we were not paying attention to sound.  Meaning that in reality, it was the scary sound that the door had that caused us to stub our toe – and was not the door at all.  Had someone come along with an airhorn, it would have had the same impact on our toe.  Thus proving that really the sound was the proper A causing B.

Nothing major here, other than the fact that I noticed that often times, studies that we rely on try to prove cause and effect, when in fact, the study simply focused on the wrong variable.  So that’s one important point to keep in mind, when someone claims A causes B.  Often times, there is a C out there that they failed to see.

However, another thing to keep in mind, is that we attribute causation, when it is not there, based simply on one time experiences or random events.  In fact, just today, a post was scheduled to post, but realized that if I let it, a friend would assume causation, which certainly wasn’t my intent as this post was scheduled weeks before the conversation with this friend, so I pushed it out.  Of course, I don’t usually review upcoming posts, but had I not, I am sure that he would have assumed causation, and misunderstood my position.

So be careful before you claim causation.  Even when things seem obvious, you might have just missed the real reason, or there might be no connection at all!