Advice from Books
Our new newsletter
Book Freak is the third newsletter from Cool Tools Lab (our other two are the Cool Tools Newsletter and Recomendo). In each weekly issue, we offer three short pieces of advice from books. Here’s the advice from our first issue.
How to Unlearn Emotional Behavior
“Any responses that involve bodily movement are more easily unlearned than responses that involve the voice and the facial movement. As I explained earlier, we have great control over the muscles that control our body (the skeletal muscles). Driving teachers learn not to press their foot to the floor when they are sitting in the passenger seat. An involuntary action that had become automatic, part of the instructions added into the fear affect program, can, over time, be modified with practice and effort. Some of the factors that I described in the last chapter that determine how easy it will be to weaken a hot emotional trigger apply also to how readily we can unlearn a pattern of emotional behavior. Behavior patterns that were acquired early in life, that were learned during a highly intense and dense emotional episode or series of episodes, will be harder to modify or unlearn.” – Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life, by Paul Ekman
The Curse of Tobacco
“…there is one thing that nothing living except a vile worm ever naturally loved, and that is tobacco; yet how many persons there are who deliberately train an unnatural appetite, and overcome this implanted aversion for tobacco, to such a degree that they get to love it.” – Art of Money Getting Or, Golden Rules for Making Money, by P. T. Barnum
Focus on the Outcome
“Always focus on the outcome you want to achieve in a meeting, interview, or negotiation rather than how you think you’re doing and what you think people will think of you.” – Steal the Show, by Michael Port
