We dedicated a year to self-improvement: here's what it taught us

Express your gratitude for this. An N needs to remember that what is said to an S will be taken at face value. In other words, taken literally. Do a reality check when you talk. Don't assume that what you said was what the S heard. An S will not distinguish between the facts (what you said) and what you actually meant. S's tend to use complete sentences when they speak, and they end these sentences with a period. It's definite. Short, 1997). On the surface, Terrance Green's murder seems like another statistic in a larger and disturbing pattern: In the United States, violence is more prevalent in inner-city, Black neighborhoods than other American neighborhoods. For example, although African Americans are approximately 13% of the U. Young Black males are also more likely than White males to be victims of violence. You may have heard such statistics before, but let's probe further to understand what might lie beneath these cycles of violence. When you think about gang violence, you probably think about killings between rival gangs over drugs or money. It's true that Terrance was a gang member and that he was killed by a rival gang. But although these facts about Terrance's death conform to the general beliefs people have about gang violence, many others do not. For example, children reared in fatherless homes tend to be more violent and aggressive than children in two-parent families (Lykken, 2000; Staub, 1996; The better these lessons are learned, the better the results will be. The businessman or businesswoman will have learned how to manage money better, how to manage risks, how to spot good deals, and how to set and hit goals.

All of this is what makes him or her better with money and able to succeed. Without these lessons, this individual couldn't have his/her current success anyway. The perfect example of a life shortcut failing is the lottery. Almost everyone believes they would be financially set for life if they were to be handed $1 million or more. This is exactly what happens to lottery winners, but around 70% of them end up broke. It happens because they've never learned to manage their cash properly. They haven't learned how to make money work for them, how to stay disciplined, and how to live within their means. It's just like somebody who goes for liposuction to lose weight, then slowly piles it back on - a shortcut doesn't teach the important lessons needed for actual, lasting change. N's tend to spin out sentences that omit information they assume the other person knows. They end the sentence with a dash. They are tentative. When these two types talk to one another, they listen to the other according to their specific trait and they assume the other person is talking in the same way they talk. An S husband asks his N wife if she'd like to go away to the mountains for the weekend. She says, No . I don't think so-- He assumes that since she said no, she meant it with a period. It was a dash. So when Friday comes, she asks her husband, What time are we leaving for the mountains this weekend? He looks surprised and says, What are you talking about? Vaden-Kiernan et al. But although Terrance grew up in Chicago's toughest neighborhood, he came from a loving, two-parent household.

He was the youngest of five kids; With such a stable and supportive home life, how did Terrance end up in a gang? Many social psychological processes lie beneath the cycle of violence (Anderson, 2000). In a place like Englewood, students often don't join gangs by choice. Instead, the gang you end up in depends on the block you live on. By the time Terrance and his friends hit puberty, they were bullied by older kids for merely walking down a street in another gang's territory. By default, Terrance was assumed to be part of the gang in his neighborhood, even though he'd never been recruited or agreed to be a member. He was an athlete and a natural leader, so he found himself having to defend his friends as well as himself. With discipline, you have to keep this in mind when you approach it. You have to stay strong willed and focused, even when the inevitable bad times happen. It isn't something that can just be handed to you, because there are lessons to be learned along the way as well. It's normal to fail occasionally and slip off, but the important thing is that you drive onwards in the long term. Aim to improve a little every day, and the goal is inevitable. While there isn't a shortcut to high discipline, there are a few tips that can help keep you moving in the right direction - or at least block some of the off-ramps into the lands of poor discipline and failure. Tips and Tricks Here's a quick hotlist of tips to help you build a disciplined mind and self. Some of these have been mentioned earlier but are still collected here so you can refer to the list with ease. Build habits. You said you didn't want to go! She replies, I know I said that, but you should have known that's not what I meant.

I needed to check on some things first, and I got them cleared up! Dr David Stoop and Jan Stoop describe the intuitive mind as being in two parts. The intuitive person is aware of both parts but can't activate one of the parts. It's like an iceberg--10 percent is above the water where it can be seen; The part the intuitive can't articulate won't pop to the surface for a couple of days or until someone helps him articulate it. The Stoops write: It's important to know that you will never find out what the dash of the intuitive person means by asking a question. If that is what you do, you will simply get a rehash of the information that has already been given. Without knowing what else to do, Terrance and his teenage friends banded together to protect themselves, calling themselves Yung Lyfe (Young Unique Noble Gentlemen Live Youthful and Fulfilled Everyday)--not exactly a name designed to strike fear in the minds of others. Terrance's father never realized that his son had been backed into being a gang member. And after Terrance was killed, he was shocked to learn that a 23-block section of his neighborhood was named TG City after his son, not just to memorialize Terrance but to establish a new and bigger gang territory for those kids who rallied together to avenge Terrance's death. In the three years after Terrance Green was murdered, at least 10 shootings and seven additional murders were part of a string of retaliatory attacks. If you want to learn more about Terrance's story and those of other teenagers in his community, check out a two-part story called Harper High School that was broadcast on This American Life in February 2013 (Glass, 2013). Stories like Terrance's reveal the bind that teens can find themselves in when they live within a gang culture in which many people have guns and aren't afraid to use them to terrorize others and settle even the smallest of arguments. What would you do in this situation? Maybe you are thinking, why not go to your parents, your teachers, or the police? Unfortunately, you'd be unlikely to tell them anything they don't already know. It's no secret that gang violence is a problem in these neighborhoods. Habits are one of the easiest ways to stay disciplined. For example, let's say you want to start exercising in the mornings but find it hard to get up and actually pull it off.

If you can approach it intensely and force the same wake up time every day for 30 days, then it will feel much more natural to wake up at that same time even on days off. The key is that you have to enforce it every day until the habit is built! In the future, if you really need/want a lie in, you can do that - keep it rare and it won't affect your habit. Other habits and routines can be built in the same way - a night routine to help you sleep well, a morning one to start the day fresh and relaxed, eating habits which keep you healthy. All of these can be built with an intense approach for the first month. It's like condensing all the hard parts of discipline into that month so that these habits happen automatically and without difficulty from then on. Habits and routines don't drain any willpower either. Create as many as you can so your willpower is free for other decisions. Instead, the sensing person must paraphrase to the intuitive person what he or she heard the intuitive person say, and then allow the intuitive person to add to what has been said already. And this paraphrasing needs to be repeated until the intuitive person says, Yes, that's what I've been trying to say to you. When intuitive people write out a first draft of a note or memo and then look at what they wrote, they will often add more information between the lines or up the side of the paper with an arrow to show where the thought goes. They do this because when they write they can see the part of the iceberg that is still underwater. Unfortunately, both S's and N's often assume their partners can read their minds. Major conflict is on the horizon unless these assumptions are dropped in favor of clarification. It may help after a discussion to ask, Now, did you say that with a period or a dash? When an S talks, he or she usually identifies the topic and moves through it factually and sequentially, although a bit unimaginatively from an N's viewpoint. But an N may start talking without identifying the subject, then give three or four sentences of background material and go around the barn twice, because an N tends to be tangential in his thinking. Finally, the N arrives at the subject. What we are missing are effective solutions. A recent large-scale study of over 100 U.