#I just thought of a bunch of worst spots for everyone other than Noah like a few minutes before I made this post

[rainbowwing251]

I’m trying to think of a list of worst spots for the main six Xenoblade 3 protagonists, and up until now, I haven’t been able to come up with more than one or two worsts spots for anyone other than Noah. Now however? I’m pretty close to coming up with at least 2 worst spots for everyone, and I want to list them here before I forget about them.

So without further ado, here’s the list of all of the worst spots for each of the protagonists of Xenoblade 3 (according to my headcanons). I will be putting these under the cut to avoid clogging up anyone’s dashboards (and also because there is a minor detail of Taion that was revealed thanks to a specific outfit you can get in the second wave of DLC for the game, and I don’t know if it counts as a spoiler or not).

Noah: Ears, armpits, stomach, navel

Mio: Ears, Core Crystal, sides

Eunie: Head wings (especially the base of the wings), hips. I’m still trying to think of a third spot for her.

Taion: Neck, shoulder blades, Core Crystal (I didn’t even know he had one until Wave 2 of the DLC added a swimsuit for him, where you can see something akin to a Core Crystal on his chest), lower arms, wrists

Lanz: Biceps, back, knees (both the front and the back of them)

Sena: Core Crystal, Navel, thighs, calves 

And just for fun, I’ll list which of the above spots is that specific character’s death spot. Tickle any of these spots, and that character will (virtually) die instantly.

Noah: Stomach

Mio: Sides

Eunie: I haven’t determined her death spot just yet, but I’m leaning towards the base of her head wings.

Taion: Neck

Lanz: Once again, I haven’t determined his death spot yet, but I’m leaning towards the back of his knees.

Sena: Calves

[the-unconquered-queen]

Do you have anymore head cannons about Andy or any head cannons about your Mcs (I just really miss it lives😔)?

Damn, I feel you. Lemme try to remember some hcs I have 🤔

@liliplayschoices see if you can spot the ones I’ve discussed with you already

(This is a bunch of random hcs I have for my playthrough, so I’m referring to my MCs specifically, but anyone’s free to adapt them to fit their own MCs if they’d like. And since they’re hcs for my playthrough, they’re mostly Andy x MC with some Tom x ILB MC sprinkled in, very few of just Andy because I don’t trust myself not to make them too ooc. Oh, and this isn’t a creative writing hcs list, so prepare for 0 organization.) So let’s get into some:

For Andy x MC, I headcanon my MC as having started crushing on Andy during the second semester of junior year, so earlier in the year that the events of ILitW start. The reason why is because I get the impression of Andy’s crush on her having been going on longer than her crush on him, but I still don’t see her crush as being something that just started up when they reunited, so junior year seems around a good time to place it imo.

MC and Tom become really good friends. When Andy and MC solidified their relationship, Tom and MC had each planned to make an effort to get along for Andy’s sake because they knew how important the other was to Andy, but it turned out they didn’t really need to try because they genuinely got along super well, so a win in that department. They become their own little group within the larger group that is the ILitW gang + Tom, and eventually when ILB MC comes along (and she’s dating Tom in my playthrough), she joins them and they hang out all the time.

Since I’m bringing Tom x ILB MC into this, I strongly believe Tom and Andy are each best man at the other’s wedding, and the same probably goes for the ladies as maid of honor, at least the way I see it in my playthrough.

Tom and ILB MC are the godparents to Andy and MC’s kids, and vice versa.

Andy would say he’s a dog person, but spending so much time around MC’s cat is low-key making him rethink that.

I don’t see my MC as being into sports, but the moment Andy made the team you know that girl didn’t miss a single game because she is there to cheer for her man, which she does so enthusiastically it prompts Stacy to joke that she missed her calling on the cheer squad

Andy will never act like he’s too cool to be openly affectionate with MC. They probably engage in non-extreme pda and he’ll show MC off as his girlfriend whenever the opportunity arises. The gang playfully roasts them for it, but Ava will throw whatever’s nearby at them if she sees them kissing.

Speaking of Ava, I see her and Andy having a really fun friendship that involves a lot of teasing each other (not seriously, of course, all in good fun).

Andy’s a really thoughtful friend, and not just with Tom. After everything with Jane went down, he made sure to talk to Dan to see how he was doing, something Andy had intended to do ever since Stacy told everyone how Dan had been struggling.

Out of all the members of the gang, I’d say he’s the one who’s the most pissed off over Noah’s betrayal (I have a whole ranking of anger levels for the whole crew but that’s beside the point). The reason I think this is because he really came off the worst out of all of the rest of them. A fucked up leg, surgeries that could not have been easy on him or his parents, and having to graduate a whole year later are just some effects the whole situation had on him, so he’s definitely not gonna be understanding about it, and who could blame him?

Related to the previous point, he does NOT take it well when he finds out that MC’s been visiting Noah. Andy’s not dumb, he probably figured out Noah was stuck like Jane was, but he didn’t expect his girlfriend to try to help him. When MC finally tells him about it, it leads to a huge fight that puts their relationship in peril. Ultimately, Andy loves her too much to break up with her and he understands he can’t force her to stop going into the woods, but he does throw in comments trying to dissuade her and not really making his disapproval a secret.

When he’s first hospitalized for his leg injury, on top of being in a shitty mood, he worries about what it would mean for his budding relationship with MC and if she would still want to be with him when he was pretty much confined to a hospital bed (and later on, his own), but MC stays by his side, always doing her best to cheer him up. She tries to be there for him as soon as he‘s allowed visitors after his surgeries, and if they happen while she‘s in class, she either skips to be with him or at least ducks out into the school hallway to call and make sure everything went okay. And if he wants her there for some of his physical therapy sessions, she makes sure she’ll be able to make it.

Andy and MC disagree over what their first date was. Andy says he asked MC out to the diner after his basketball victory and bought her dessert, but she insists that didn’t count as a proper date because he never actually told her it was a date, plus the entire team was there too, so their first proper date was actually on homecoming night according to her.

Once MC graduates high school and goes off to college, she and Andy do their best to adjust to their new relationship dynamic at a distance. It’s not easy, but they stay strong. They try to meet up as often as they can, and MC absolutely makes sure to get all her college affairs in order early at the end of the year to be able to go back to see Andy because he asked her if she’d be his prom date and no way is she gonna let him down. Andy’s dancing hasn’t improved a whole lot since the previous homecoming, but at least now he can use his bad leg as an excuse.

Anyway, it’s so tragic that Andy content is so scarce we’re resorting to my random ramblings, but no one said being an It Lives stan in the year 2020 is easy, so PB please I’m begging you, give us something

[ithacamoma]

20 QUESTIONS FOR: TAMMY SALZL

image courtesy of the artist and DC3 Art Projects

1.Name:

Tammy Salzl

2.Occupation(s):

Artist, Sessional Teacher in Senior Level Painting at the University of Alberta.

3.Where are you from and what is your education?

I was born in Edmonton, AB, into a gigantic dysfunctional family with 18 aunts and uncles, 42 first cousins and barely one parent. I spent my summers being tortured as an English speaking city slicker in French speaking prairie farm communities. Retreating into art and stories and animals was the salvation I didn’t find in the fundamentalist religion I was periodically thrown into. For my undergrad I did 2 years at ACAD (Now called AUArts), and finished my BFA at the University of Alberta.  I received my Masters in Studio Arts (Painting) at Concordia University in Montreal 2014 and have been expanding my practice to include video and multimedia installation since graduation.

4.Where do you live/work (neighbourhood/city/country)?

For the past 3 yrs I’ve been splitting my year between the Southside of Edmonton, AB. and Parc Ex in Montreal QC. I have family in both places, which makes this both possible and necessary.

5.Does your location affect your practice?  

Definitely! Emotionally, psychologically and logistically. I’m lucky to be able to spend time in both eastern and western Canada. Sometimes they seem like entirely different worlds and it’s a privilege to be able to step into both. It broadens my field of vision.

6.What is your favourite tool in the studio?

I have two favourite things. My glue gun, because I love glueing stuff, it makes me feel like a little kid again! I also love it when I have a fresh, unused brush in hand.

7.Where do you look for your source material?

Everywhere! Movies, books, (I love sci-fi books, and I just finished 2 books by Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - so gooood!) mythology, ecology, weird/wondrous animals (like the barrel eye fish or the Aye-aye), bus stops, Edmonton’s River valley, back alleys in Montreal, weird stop motion animations, the fresh sights, sounds and smells that come with travel, looking at art and, occasionally, the bottom of my wine glass.

8.What is you daily art world read?

I email subscribe to a bunch of art blogs (like Hyperallergic and artdaily.org etc), and I also try to read Border Crossings and Canadian Art magazines, but honestly a lot of my art world reads come from instagram. Cuz you know… pictures.

9.What is your daily non-art-world read?

I love science and nature blogs. I really enjoy nature.com, naturecanada.ca,  futurism.com/, and for quick global news stuff I like Quartz Daily Brief. It’s hard…you don’t want to be ill informed yet it’s so bleak out there…I think overexposure to media can be harmful. I try to find a balance.

10.What role does writing play in your practice?

Sadly, not much. It’s an inescapable task for every artist, and one I dearly wish I could escape. That said, aside from the necessary evil of artist statement/proposal/grant type of writing, I sometimes play at creative writing. I make little one page tales that turn into paintings, or I write a short narratives based on something I’ve made. I’ll often have automatic writing embedded in my underpaintings, and if you look hard enough you can sometimes find traces of a word here and there.

11.What role does research play in your practice?

Because I peddle in tales, I research the history, culture, psychology, pop culture, philosophy of whatever traditional tale or mythology I’m referencing, and how others have interpreted those tales over time - even if I’m referencing something like Dr. Seuss. I often tie that into the research I do out of my interest in ecology and nature. For me, working representationally means there is intension in everything. I try to have layers of meaning and make work that engenders multiple interpretations. I research the symbolism and history of objects, places, animals, colours , etc. With my installations there is a lot of material research involved as well.

12.What role does collaboration play in your practice?

Since expanding my painting practice into intermedia work, I’ve done quite a bit of collaborating in the form of “I don’t know how to do this technical thing so I need to find someone who does”. It’s taught me a lot in terms of learning to communicate and work with others. As a solitary person, it’s a challenge for me, but I also find it incredibly rewarding and enriching. Also, a couple of years ago 4 female artist friends and I began an art collective called IFPP (incubator for phantom pregnancies) We’ve staged a couple exhibitions and have some upcoming shows, and it’s been really great. You learn a lot about yourself in a collaborative process, and it’s exhilarating ending up with this thing you helped create, but in a mind hive kind of way.

13.How does success affect your practice?

Ideas of success are pretty subjective, no? Speaking in terms of non-commercial success, I would say it helps drives my practice forward. It gives you the incentive and confidence to keep going, to make more, to take risks and think bigger. Sometimes commercial/monetary success can do the opposite because you’re expected to make more of the same, sellable stuff - to keep the formula and not colour outside those lines.

14.How does failure affect your practice?

Failure is an opportunity to learn, and can lead to amazing things. I suck at it. I can be super stubborn and fight with a painting that’s not working for days and days. I’m often my own worst enemy. I’m learning to walk away, to turn the bloody thing facing the wall and only come back to it when I can be more objective - when I’m in a better place to paint over the 100 hours invested and start over.

15.What do you identify as the biggest challenge in your artistic process?

My own stubbornness! My own rules and obsessiveness and need for control. I can get restrained by fear of making something ‘bad,' and I struggle to let myself play more, to let myself ‘fail’. I can get too caught up in my own head. I struggle with a lot of self doubt. A dear friend of mine recently sent me a beautiful quote by Robert Hughes in an attempt to assuage my doubt:

 “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” 

I’m not so sure this is the case, but it’s nice to hear!

Also, like so many of us, I struggle socially and will hide in my studio rather than go to an art opening when I know I should be trying to make “connections”. Wine helps tremendously in all my struggles.

16.Who are some historical artists you are thinking about?

This fluctuates a great deal. I often find myself interested in artists I thought I didn’t like years ago, and will lose interest in artists I thought I loved. Art crushes come and go. I just bought a Frida Kahlo book and am rediscovering my fascination with her.

17.Who are some contemporary artists you are thinking about?

Everyone and no one in particular. I was in LA last January and saw an amazing Outsider Art show at LACMA. There was a piece by Greer Lankton titled, “Candy Darling” depicting a transgender actress who was featured in several of Andy Warhol’s films and was one of Lankton’s icons she looked up to as a trans woman. It’s exquisite with an edgy sexuality - totally blew my mind. I also saw some Mark Bradford works at The Broad that really surprised me. You have to be in front of them to understand how profound, beautiful, raw and sophisticated they are.

18.How do you describe what you are making now?

Right now I’m bouncing all over the place with various mediums. I’m working on a new series of oils, sort of taking the piss out of patriarchal old fables and the misogynistic way they portrayed women by retelling them through a contemporary lens. I’m also making a series of small, intricate “naughty fairies” made out of Sculpey (imagine tinker bell-like creatures going down on each other), some larger installation pieces that incorporate a variety of materials - video, sound, found and crafted objects, and I just completed my first short narrative video with footage shot on an artist residency I did in Norway last year. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m spreading myself too thin and there’s an invisible pressure to focus on one thing, but I’m a storyteller and I use whatever mediums best suites the tale. I think everything I do remains distinctly me, it all has connective threads. Generally I paint in the morning and move onto video and sculpture in the afternoon/evening. Painting is mentally challenging in a very singular way; it’s super humbling and I need a fresh, rested brain to do it.

19.Who is an artist that you think deserves more attention?

Oh man. Too many to count. Seems to me art world trends often translate into amazing artists not getting their due. I think Canadian artists in general deserve more of the international spot light. There’s so much talent here.

20.How can we find out more about you (relevant links etc)?

I keep my website pretty up to date, including upcoming shows and press links etc.

www.tammysalzl.com

[newstfionline]

People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well

By Adam Grant, The Atlantic, Mar. 1, 2018

When Donald Trump tweeted that he was a “very stable genius,” he was accused of lacking self-awareness by journalists and comedians. But the truth is that no one has perfect self-awareness--you probably believe more than a few things about yourself that are false.

Whether it’s in trying to land a job or impress a date, people spend a staggering amount of time making claims about themselves. It makes sense: You’re the only person on earth who has direct knowledge of every thought, feeling, and experience you’ve ever had. Who could possibly know you better than you? But your backstage access to your own mind sometimes makes you the last person on Earth others should trust about it. Think of it like owning a car: Just because you’ve driven it for years doesn’t mean you can pinpoint when and why the engine broke down.

Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re up to 12 times more accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t--and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.

Humans’ blind spots are predictable: There are certain types of traits where people can’t see themselves clearly, but others where they can. The psychologist Simine Vazire asked people to rate themselves and four friends on a bunch of traits, ranging from emotional stability and intelligence to creativity and assertiveness. Then, to see if they had predicted their own personalities better than their friends had, they took a bunch of tests that measured these traits.

The good news: You have some unique insight into your emotional stability. In the study, people outperformed their friends at predicting how anxious they’d look and sound when giving a speech about how they felt about their bodies. But they did no better than their friends (or than strangers who had met them just eight minutes earlier) at forecasting how assertive they’d be in a group discussion. And when they tried to predict their performance on an IQ test and a creativity test, they were less accurate than their friends.

People know themselves best on the traits that are tough to observe and easy to admit. Emotional stability is an internal state, so your friends don’t see it as vividly as you do. And although people might not want to call themselves unstable, the socially acceptable range is fairly wide, so we don’t tend to feel terribly anxious about being outed as having some anxiety. With more observable traits, we don’t have unique knowledge. If you’re a raging extrovert or a radical introvert, we don’t need to ask you--we can pick it up pretty quickly from your impromptu karaoke performances or your complaints that your husband types too loudly. And with the most evaluative traits, you just can’t be trusted. You probably want to convince everyone--and yourself--that you’re smart and creative.

This is why people consistently overestimate their intelligence, a pattern that seems to be more pronounced among men than women. It’s also why people overestimate their generosity: It’s a desirable trait. And it’s why people fall victim to my new favorite bias: the I’m-not-biased bias, where people tend to believe they have fewer biases than the average American. But you can’t judge whether you’re biased, because when it comes to yourself, you’re the most biased judge of all. And the more objective people think they are, the more they discriminate, because they don’t realize how vulnerable they are to bias.

Any time a trait is easy to observe or hard to admit, you need other people to hold up a mirror for you. Romantic partners and close friends might be more informed, because they’ve observed you more--but they can also have blurrier vision, because they chose you and often share that pesky desire to see you positively. You need people who are motivated to see you accurately. And I’ve come to believe that more often than not, those people are your colleagues. The people you work with closely have a vested interest in making you better (or at least less difficult). The challenge is they’re often reluctant to tell you the stuff you don’t want to hear, but need to hear.

Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about how to overcome those barriers. While recording a podcast, I invited myself into some unconventional workplaces. I was surprised that in each workplace, they made it a big priority to help people gain self-awareness--sometimes it was even part of their performance evaluations. And I walked away with new insights on how people can see themselves more clearly.

One: If you want people to really know you, weekly meetings don’t cut it. You need deep dives with them in high-intensity situations. When I talked with a crew of astronauts who went to the International Space Station together, I found out that NASA prepared them by sending them into the wilderness for 11 days together. Their guides promptly let them get lost, and they said they came out of that experience knowing each other better than colleagues they’d worked with for years. At Morning Star, a leading tomato-paste plant that has operated successfully for decades without a single boss, I was stunned to discover that the founder often interviews job applicants at their own homes for three to five hours.

Two: Looking under your own hood at what makes you tick and writing it down can provide a useful reference. I’ve seen a growing number of managers write their own user manuals to help people understand what brings out the best and worst in them. But it’s even better to have the people who know you well write your user manual for you. On a visit to the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, I got to see people rate each other daily on up to 77 different dimensions. It sounds intense, but it forces people to be honest with themselves. And at Morning Star, employees get to write their own job descriptions based on how they plan to contribute to the company’s mission that year. But they have to get their closest colleagues to buy in on it, and then their coworkers rate their performance and determine their salary.

Three: Put yourself in situations where you can’t ignore feedback from multiple sources. In studies, one friend is only a little better at gauging a person’s intelligence and creativity than they themselves are; four friends are significantly better. When I infiltrated the writers’ room at The Daily Show, the host, Trevor Noah, told me he makes up 90 percent of his stand-up comedy on stage. He just starts riffing on topics and gets instant input on what’s funny from a whole crowd. And at Bridgewater, the ratings are weighted by how believable your colleagues have proven themselves to be in each domain. When five of your close colleagues have a track record of being highly organized and they all say you’re not, it’s tough to argue that you’re right and they’re wrong.

Imagine if the White House were organized this way. Presidents are rated all the time in public-opinion polls, but they’d learn a lot more if their own teams evaluated them. Since stability is an internal state, as long as he’s not clinically unstable, President Trump might be able to weigh in on it accurately. But he--like everyone--probably can’t see himself clearly when it comes to traits that are clearly desirable or undesirable, like intelligence.

The first rule of intelligence: Don’t talk about your intelligence. It’s something you prove, not something you claim. As comedian Patton Oswalt quipped about humor, the only person who goes around saying “I’m funny” is a not-funny person. If you were really funny, you’d just make people laugh.

So if I wanted to know how smart political candidates were, I wouldn’t bother with an IQ test. I’d just ask one question: How intelligent do you think you are?

The real geniuses will know it’s not their place to judge.

[easiestwaytoloseweight]

Book Reviews Part 2 Non-Fiction Audible books – Podcast 115

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Today I’m sharing 11 non-fiction books that are a very interesting mix. The list includes books that can be considered among the BEST ever written, interesting stories, sad ones and funny books! Something for everyone! And I’m trying this new thing – Review in 2! I’m going to review all the books in 2 minutes or less – each, not total! I have a lot!

Follow @RunEatRepeat for more and check out RunEatRepeat.com for the show notes and links to all the books mentioned. 

Let’s start with a warm-up:

Updates… 

I have the Samsung Galaxy Note phone… I love it because it’s big and I’ve always used an android. But… I wanted the apple ear buds… air pods… ear pods? 

I was thinking about changing phones for that reason alone! But – I spotted the Samsung Galaxy Buds and my life has been better ever since (2 weeks ago). 

I recommend them! 

I recently updated RunEatRepeat to be easier to navigate – it seemed like it was hard to search on mobile. So I changed the homepage to break down the blog posts, recipes, podcast posts, training plans and discounts page.

Please let me know if it’s the worst. I’m open to constructive feedback and suggestions! 

I’m supposed to ask you for a favor… can you give me a ride to the airport at 5am next Tuesday? 

No? Oh, okay. 

Well instead – Can you please leave a 5K review for the podcast in your podcast app. I use Stitcher so I only know how to walk you through that… but whatever you’re on right now – I’d appreciate it. 

And be sure to subscribe to the show by adding it to your favorites or whatever so the episodes show up auto-magically and you never miss a beat! Thank you!! 

Top Non-Fiction Books Review Podcast…

The review of a book shouldn’t be longer than the actual book, right? Right. So I’m going to try and keep it short by reviewing all of these books in 2 minutes. I call it a Review in 2!! As in 2 minutes. Because it rhymes. If ‘Review’ rhymed with 9 it would be a nine minute review…so thank Mr. Webster or whoever made up the word ‘review’ for that one. 

You can see my previous podcast episode 114 with Fiction Book Reviews here.

Let’s go… 

Book Review Scale… 1 to 5

1 = Didn’t like it. Didn’t want to finish it. Wouldn’t recommend. 

2 = Assigned reading. Tedious.

3 = Okay. Either – good story w/ okay writing OR meh story w/ good writing. 

4 = Good! Liked it. Would recommend.

5 = Great! Loved it. Will recommend/force on everyone I talk to for a week after reading it. 

Non Fiction Books on Audible

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African childhood

by Trevor Noah

Rating: 4.5

Great. Loved this book. Loved that Noah read it – he was fun and animated. Love learning about his experience growing up in South Africa. Thought it was very interesting how he was treated differently because he was light skinned. 

Becoming

By Michelle Obama

Rating: 5

Loved. Love that she read the book. Love the insights into behind the scenes of the White House. I can’t imagine! I want more of that. All the little things that completely changed – like taking her daughters to school and going out to dinner – so interesting! 

Educated 

by Tara Westover

Rating: 5

GREAT. Also – heartbreaking and horrible. Ugh. I got so mad. If I think about it I’ll be mad again. I’m really upset with her parents. I cannot believe her brother. 

I’m going to give a spoiler: He adult brother KILLS his dog Diego. Stabs him to death. I hate it. It’s bullshit and he’s a violent person with an anger issue that’s a ticking time bomb. 

The Glass Castle

by Jeannette Walls

Rating: 5

Heartbreaking and frustrating. The reader’s voice sounded like my mom’s friend so it was a little distracting though. There’s an interaction with her mom towards the end that’s super frustrating. 

Small Fry 

by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Rating: 3.9 while reading it… but later 4.

Go-kay. While I was listening to it I didn’t really love it. I text my bookie friend and she said she liked it. So I decided to make a bigger effort to give benefit of the doubt. As the book went on I started to like her more. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone 

by Lori Gottlieb 

Rating: 4.5

Great. So interesting to hear about a therapist going to therapy. BUT didn’t think it was super believable that she struggled over basic things like… does her therapist like her?… 

I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff

by Abbi Jacobson

Rating: 4.3

Great. I loved it, but it was too short. If you’re a fan of Abbi Jacobson you’ll like this. It feels like you’re on a road trip with her just chatting. I wish there was more.

Man’s Search for Meaning

By Viktor E Frankl

Rating: 5

Amazing. Perspective yo. 

Road to Jonestown 

by Jeff Guinn

Rating: 3.4

Okay. Read this because I wanted to start a book club with my 1 friend and he was already reading it. I didn’t know anything about Jonestown before reading it – and I think that was a drawback. A lot of the book told the story about Jim Jones and how he built his church and following in the US. It wasn’t interesting. It was like a boring history lesson at times? And if I would have known this guy is going to lead a cult and kill a bunch of people… maybe in that context he’d be more interesting. 

You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again 

by Heather McDonald

Rating: 4.3

Life is a Marathon 

by Matt Fitzgerald

Rating: 4.8

Unexpected life story from a running coach sharing his life, relationships and running.  

You can click here to check out all the books on this list and more on Amazon:  Books – Reading or Listening on the Run. 

Currently Listening to…

Big Little Lies – by Liane Moriarty

and Getting the Love You Want – by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt

Want more reading or listening suggestions? 

Podcast 114 – Fiction Book (Audible) Reviews

Podcast 111 – Reviewed Ladies Who Punch and Duped (both non-fiction)

   What books should I read next?

If you have any book recommendations please share them!! 

Comment on my IG post about this episode or DM me!! I like interesting non-fiction, light mysteries but nothing super violent, funny books, books that will change my life and make me a better person.  

Awards: 

Last place: Me.  

If you have a question for me… 

email [email protected] or 

call the podcast voicemail 562 888 1644 

Remember to tag @RunEatRepeat on instagram and let me know what you’re doing right now or what was the BEST part of your month so far. 

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.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe { width: 100% !important; } from EasiestWaytoLoseWeight http://easiestwaytoloseweight.com/book-reviews-part-2-non-fiction-audible-books-podcast-115/

[nancygduarteus]

People Don't Actually Know Themselves Very Well

When Donald Trump tweeted that he was a “very stable genius,” he was accused of lacking self-awareness by journalists and comedians. But the truth is that no one has perfect self-awareness—you probably believe more than a few things about yourself that are false.

Whether it’s in trying to land a job or impress a date, people spend a staggering amount of time making claims about themselves. It makes sense: You’re the only person on earth who has direct knowledge of every thought, feeling, and experience you’ve ever had. Who could possibly know you better than you? But your backstage access to your own mind sometimes makes you the last person on Earth others should trust about it. Think of it like owning a car: Just because you’ve driven it for years doesn’t mean you can pinpoint when and why the engine broke down.

Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re up to 12 times more accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t—and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.

Humans’ blind spots are predictable: There are certain types of traits where people can’t see themselves clearly, but others where they can. The psychologist Simine Vazire asked people to rate themselves and four friends on a bunch of traits, ranging from emotional stability and intelligence to creativity and assertiveness. Then, to see if they had predicted their own personalities better than their friends had, they took a bunch of tests that measured these traits.

The good news: You have some unique insight into your emotional stability. In the study, people outperformed their friends at predicting how anxious they’d look and sound when giving a speech about how they felt about their bodies. But they did no better than their friends (or than strangers who had met them just eight minutes earlier) at forecasting how assertive they’d be in a group discussion. And when they tried to predict their performance on an IQ test and a creativity test, they were less accurate than their friends.

People know themselves best on the traits that are tough to observe and easy to admit. Emotional stability is an internal state, so your friends don’t see it as vividly as you do. And although people might not want to call themselves unstable, the socially acceptable range is fairly wide, so we don’t tend to feel terribly anxious about being outed as having some anxiety. With more observable traits, we don’t have unique knowledge. If you’re a raging extrovert or a radical introvert, we don’t need to ask you—we can pick it up pretty quickly from your impromptu karaoke performances or your complaints that your husband types too loudly. And with the most evaluative traits, you just can’t be trusted. You probably want to convince everyone—and yourself—that you’re smart and creative.

This is why people consistently overestimate their intelligence, a pattern that seems to be more pronounced among men than women. It’s also why people overestimate their generosity: It’s a desirable trait. And it’s why people fall victim to my new favorite bias: the I’m-not-biased bias, where people tend to believe they have fewer biases than the average American. But you can’t judge whether you’re biased, because when it comes to yourself, you’re the most biased judge of all. And the more objective people think they are, the more they discriminate, because they don’t realize how vulnerable they are to bias.

Any time a trait is easy to observe or hard to admit, you need other people to hold up a mirror for you. Romantic partners and close friends might be more informed, because they’ve observed you more—but they can also have blurrier vision, because they chose you and often share that pesky desire to see you positively. You need people who are motivated to see you accurately. And I’ve come to believe that more often than not, those people are your colleagues. The people you work with closely have a vested interest in making you better (or at least less difficult). The challenge is they’re often reluctant to tell you the stuff you don’t want to hear, but need to hear.

Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about how to overcome those barriers. While recording a podcast, I invited myself into some unconventional workplaces. I was surprised that in each workplace, they made a it big priority to help people gain self-awareness—sometimes it was even part of their performance evaluations. And I walked away with new insights on how people can see themselves more clearly.

One: If you want people to really know you, weekly meetings don’t cut it. You need deep dives with them in high-intensity situations. When I talked with a crew of astronauts who went to the International Space Station together, I found out that NASA prepared them by sending them into the wilderness for 11 days together. Their guides promptly let them get lost, and they said they came out of that experience knowing each other better than colleagues they’d worked with for years. At Morning Star, a leading tomato-paste plant that has operated successfully for decades without a single boss, I was stunned to discover that the founder often interviews job applicants at their own homes for three to five hours.

Two: Looking under your own hood at what makes you tick and writing it down can provide a useful reference. I’ve seen a growing number of managers write their own user manuals to help people understand what brings out the best and worst in them. But it’s even better to have the people who know you well write your user manual for you. On a visit to the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, I got to see people rate each other daily on up to 77 different dimensions. It sounds intense, but it forces people to be honest with themselves. And at Morning Star, employees get to write their own job descriptions based on how they plan to contribute to the company’s mission that year. But they have to get their closest colleagues to buy in on it, and then their coworkers rate their performance and determine their salary.

Three: Put yourself in situations where you can’t ignore feedback from multiple sources. In studies, one friend is only a little better at gauging a person’s intelligence and creativity than they themselves are; four friends are significantly better. When I infiltrated the writers’ room at The Daily Show, the host, Trevor Noah, told me he makes up 90 percent of his stand-up comedy on stage. He just starts riffing on topics and gets instant input on what’s funny from a whole crowd. And at Bridgewater, the ratings are weighted by how believable your colleagues have proven themselves to be in each domain. When five of your close colleagues have a track record of being highly organized and they all say you’re not, it’s tough to argue that you’re right and they’re wrong.

Imagine if the White House were organized this way. Presidents are rated all the time in public-opinion polls, but they’d learn a lot more if their own teams evaluated them. Since stability is an internal state, as long as he’s not clinically unstable, President Trump might be able to weigh in on it accurately. But he—like everyone—probably can’t see himself clearly when it comes to traits that are clearly desirable or undesirable, like intelligence.

The first rule of intelligence: Don’t talk about your intelligence. It’s something you prove, not something you claim. As comedian Patton Oswalt quipped about humor, the only person who goes around saying “I’m funny” is a not-funny person. If you were really funny, you’d just make people laugh.

So if I wanted to know how smart political candidates were, I wouldn’t bother with an IQ test. I’d just ask one question: How intelligent do you think you are?

The real geniuses will know it’s not their place to judge.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/03/you-dont-know-yourself-as-well-as-you-think-you-do/554612/?utm_source=feed