Stoking the fires of confidence: how to become a truly confident person

Hello again, dear reader. How well we talked about confidence, and how to be confident in previous conversations for things like how to make a good first impression or how to be successful in a job interview. But after having a very interesting conversation with a very dear friend of mine, I realized that being able to project the image of confidence in certain instances doesn't necessarily mean that someone is a truly confident person. This means of course that person is truly confident in his or her abilities to work through with were overcome with succeed in any situation that life may throw at them. People that are truly confident in succeed at almost any goal they choose to set for themselves. These people become astronauts and Navy Seals, entrepreneurs, presidents etc. and so forth. So I did a little research dear reader, to see what I could find that would help explain the difference between "projecting confidence" and having "true confidence." So hopefully dear reader, by the end of today's conversation, you will have a better understanding of what it means to be truly confident. So that you may succeed at whatever endeavors, you choose to undertake in life...


In his book, Resilience, retired Navy SEAL Eric Greitens shares letters that he wrote to a fellow veteran, Walker, who was having trouble adjusting to life back home. In one of the letters, he tells his friend the story of a phone call a boxing coach he knew once received. On the other end of the line was a heavyweight champion the coach had trained. Greitens relates how the conversation unfolded:
“Hey man,” the champ said, “I need your help.”
“Okay,” the trainer said. “What do you need?”
“I need you to take care of something for me.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Well, there’s this guy,” the champ said, “he’s in the other room, and I’m gonna take the phone in and I want you to talk to him.”
“Who is it you want me to talk to?”
“He’s my gardener.”
“Your gardener?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s in the other room and he’s got this bill and he’s trying to overcharge me.”
“The trainer realized at this moment,” Greitens explains, “that the heavyweight champion of the world was afraid to confront his gardener over a bill.”
How could a tough-as-nails athlete who had gone toe-to-toe with boxing’s fiercest opponents be unable to face up to his gardener?
Greitens explains it to his friend this way: “Everyone, Walker, has uneven courage.”
What he labels courage, we could also call confidence.
This story likely seems eminently relatable and yet surprising at the same time. Relatable, because we all know that while we’re confident in some areas of life, we’re fearful in others. Surprising, because confidence is popularly thought of as an all-pervasive quality — we think you either have it or you don’t, and that if you have it, you have it for everything.
That’s not the only aspect of confidence we have mistaken notions about. Most of us aren’t sure how you gain it either. Is it something you’re born with? Something you can get only by doing things like standing up straighter and dressing better? Are there different kinds of confidence? If so, how do you develop its truest form?
For many, confidence seems like something of a mystery. But it doesn’t have to be. We’ll unlock its secrets below.

What Is Confidence?

Confidence is a term that gets thrown around in a lot of different ways to mean a lot of different things. It’s sometimes grouped together with other qualities like self-esteem and optimism, with which there’s certainly overlap.
Yet confidence is its own distinct quality, and is defined by the experts and scientists who study it professionally as the sense that you possess the skill and competence to successfully do a certain task — it’s having faith in your ability to make something happen or in the path you’re taking. It’s not just generally feeling good about yourself, or feeling that things in life will work out; it’s a belief that specific actions will lead to specific outcomes — that if you do X, you’ll be able to get Y. When you feel confident going into a race, it’s because you believe you have the ability to do well. When you feel confident about a decision, it’s because you believe you made the right choice.
Thus, what’s often missed about confidence is that it’s “domain specific.” That is, just because you’re confident in your ability to succeed in one area, doesn’t mean you’re confident in all areas. You might be confident when speaking in front of large crowds, and yet feel anxious when making small talk one-on-one. You might feel confident when working on your art, but nervous when entering a gym.
Since confidence is the belief that your ability matches a certain task, and we don’t have equal ability for every task, we all have “uneven confidence.”

Your Confidence Calculator

Confidence includes both an objective/rational component and a subjective/emotional component.
Research has shown that in predicting how well we’ll do something, or if we made a good decision, the brain conducts a statistical assessment of sorts. It looks at the data — the evidence of our competence, contextual circumstances, and so on — and then makes a forecast as to likely performance or outcome.
We make these kinds of confidence calculations every day. You don’t even have to think about reaching into a cabinet to grab your coffee mug in the morning, because your brain is completely confident it will be there. How your boss will react to your asking for a raise is a bigger unknown. But your brain will look at the data — the feedback he gave you at your last review, the quality of the work you’ve been doing lately, the trajectory of the company’s profits — and then generate a forecast as to your chances of getting a yes.
From this objective calculation we then get the feeling we think of as confidence. If the confidence calculator generates a gloomy forecast, we’ll feel unconfident and unsure, and be unlikely to move forward, make a decision, or try something new or hard. If the resulting forecast is sunny, we’ll feel confident and bold, and be likely to take a risk, make a choice, or attempt a difficult task.
In other words, thoughts lead to judgments, judgments lead to feelings, and feelings lead to action (or inaction). The more sure you are of your ability to do something, the more confident you’ll feel, and the more confident you feel, the more action you’ll take.
This fact obviously has huge repercussions for our happiness, success, and ability to reach our goals. Leveling up in any area of life invariably involves going outside our comfort zone and taking a risk. Without confidence, we’ll fail to take action, and our lives will stall out instead of progressing on.
It’s thus vital that we understand what influences the “algorithm” the brain uses to make its confidence calculations, and how we can feed it more positive data in order to generate more confident feelings, and in turn, more bold and life-changing action.
The sources that feed the confidence calculator can roughly be broken down into three influences: The first two we commonly rely on (sometimes without even knowing it), but are inconsistent, unreliable, and not entirely within our control. The third, as we will see, is the surest, steadiest, most harnessable way to fuel our confidence.

Inconsistent/Unreliable Sources of Confidence

Genetics

If you’ve ever thought that some people are just born more confident than others, you were right. Researchers think that our general confidence levels are about 50% genetic in origin. Some folks simply have a mix of resilient, optimistic, daring DNA that comes together to form a perennially high level of confidence.
These genetics may influence their brain’s confidence calculator, so that it’s miscalibrated and makes less than objective assessments of ability. These folks end up overconfident — more sure than they should be about their chances for success in tackling tasks for which they’re not fully qualified. They’re confident, despite a lack of competence.
You might think this is a recipe for disaster, but studies have shown that as long as someone doesn’t get too far out in front of his skis, overconfidence usually results in positive effects like greater social status, respect, and influence, without negative consequences.
Researchers in fact consider a little overconfidence to be an adaptive trait. It makes someone an action taker, which, as long as they don’t totally run off the rails, is a trait people are drawn to; we prefer charismatic go-getters, even if they’re wrong a lot, to those who passively play it safe.
How many ding-dongs at work who don’t know what they’re doing, but project firm confidence, get promoted over solid employees who are competent but seem less sure of themselves? How many confidence-exuding politicians win great popularity during an election and yet seem grossly unprepared for their office? Overconfidence only turns into a liability when the gap between confidence and competence grows too wide, and the emperor is revealed to be wearing no clothes. Otherwise, it’s a boon.
Confidence without having to earn competence may seem like a winning plan, but I’m sorry to say that if you didn’t score in the genetic lottery, it’s a feeling nearly impossible to generate on your own. The reason people don’t mind overconfidence in someone with a miscalibrated confidence calculator, is that it’s absolutely genuine; it may not be accurate from an objective standpoint, but the person sincerely believes in their abilities, and that’s attractive. If you’ve got a more realistic confidence calculator, trying to gin up confidence in the absence of competence will be almost impossible to do; phony bravado can be spotted a mile away.
If you’re not genetically wired for greater confidence, you can’t just think your way into it. In fact, it can be harmful to try. In a study that asked participants with low self-esteem to repeat the mantra “I am a lovable person,” people actually felt worse, rather than better, after the exercise. The gap between how they actually felt, and what they were reading, just reminded them of how far they were from that ideal.

External Validation

Another source of confident feelings for both the genetically blessed and the average joe is getting validation and support from other people. Pep talks, golden performance reviews, applause, good grades, Instagram likes, and encouraging words and gestures of all kinds can make us feel great about ourselves.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Compliments set off the status-sensitive parts of our brain and release feel-good neurochemicals that really do make us feel ebullient and emboldened. And this boost can kick-start a virtuous cycle of greater and greater confidence: you start lifting, one of the strongest dudes at the gym gives you props on your gains, which increases your confidence, and makes you want to push yourself more, which gets you more props, and increases your confidence further.
While external validation can definitely be helpful in boosting your confidence and spurring you on, it’s an ultimately fragile source for three reasons:
First, it often increases your self-esteem more than your confidence. Remember, while these qualities are related, they’re also distinct. Confidence concerns how you feel about your specific ability to perform in a specific domain, and it leads to action. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is more “global,” and has to do with how you assess your general character and value as a person. While feeling good about yourself is essential to your well-being, it doesn’t necessarily lead to action. Being told you “look nice,” or are “a really great guy” may make you feel good, but what do you do with that information? Sure, feeling good about yourself overall may bleed over into feeling more confident about taking a new step or trying something out, but not necessarily. Plenty of folks think they’re a great person, but haven’t accomplished anything of note, and remain quite risk-averse.
Second, even when people pump you up about your ability to perform specific tasks, this confidence is vulnerable and doesn’t have a lasting impact. External validation might get you to take the first step and put yourself out there, but it often evaporates once you’re in the arena.
Let’s say you’re nervous to talk to women, but your friend gives you a pep talk about how girls aren’t scary, and you’ll be fine. In that moment, your confidence calculator gives your friend’s words heavy weight, and you walk into the bar alone to try your luck. “I can do this!” you think. But a moment later, your confidence calculator takes in the new circumstances, assesses your ability to be a success based on your current level of social skill and past, lackluster experiences, and proffers a new, much gloomier forecast. “There’s no way I can do this,” you think.
Or, while you’re dating your girlfriend, she makes you feel like you can do anything in the world, but then, when you break up, your confidence walks away with her, and you crumple into a shell of your former self.
Finally, if you base your confidence on the approval of others, you’re going to become much more risk-averse — fearful that if you fail, the applause will cease and you’ll be left with the silence of your inner emptiness. If doing what you’ve always done gets you a decent amount of hugs and back pats, you’ll just keep on doing it.
The unstable, topsy-turvy vulnerability of confidence that’s dependent on external validation ends up taking a toll on your mental and physical health. According to a study of college students, those who based their self-worth on external sources like appearance and validation from others had more stress, anger, academic problems, relationship conflicts, and higher rates of alcohol and drug consumption than those who based it on internal values.

The Truest Source of Confidence: Mastery

If you’re not genetically wired for bravado, and you want to enjoy the praise of others without basing your worth on it, where else can you turn to increase your confidence?
To competence. To skill. Ideally, eventually, to outright mastery.
If your confidence calculator relies on evidence that your ability matches the task ahead, then give it something strong, immoveable, and entirely within your control to hang its predictions on.
Mastery means the attainment of full command over some domain. Author Robert Greene breaks up the path to this kind of command into three phases: Apprenticeship, Creative-Active, and Mastery. Each phase solidifies your confidence into something rock-solid:
Apprenticeship. You first choose a field that matches your unique inner calling — your vocation — or you seek out a problem that you want to solve. You don’t choose a domain based on what you think you should do, but on the compass of your personal values and goals. Further, you choose your first job in this field not based on prestige or money, but on where you think you’ll learn the most, and your skills will get the greatest opportunities for growth.
You enter the Apprenticeship phase excited, yet intimidated and out of your depth. There’s a ton you don’t know, and you don’t even know what you don’t know. So you put aside your ego, and humbly set out to learn everything you possibly can about your field. You observe what leaders in your domain are doing, absorb all the information that comes your way, study diligently, and practice consistently.
You make mistakes with regularity while learning the ropes, but you treat these setbacks as important learning experiences. You actively seek feedback on what you could be doing better, and don’t take this criticism personally.
You experience your first encounters with what author Stephen Pressfield calls the “Resistance.” Sometimes you’re bored, sometimes you’re frustrated, sometimes you’re confused into paralysis, and sometimes you just don’t want to work, especially on the tedious tasks that every apprenticeship involves. But you learn to manage these emotions, to push through them, to work hard every day, even when you don’t feel like it. You learn to work like a professional.
You slowly begin to figure out the rules of engagement, what works and what doesn’t. You start seeing connections between things you never noticed before, come to understand the dynamics and relationships between your associates and your competitors, and get a more holistic grasp of the subject you’ve immersed yourself in.
As you master the basic skills of your work, your confidence in your ability to overcome challenges strengthens, and as a reward, you get new, and increasingly interesting, challenges to tackle.
Creative-Active. In this phase, Greene says, “you move from student to practitioner.” Your understanding of the complexity of your field has grown, and rather than just copying how others do things, you take what you’ve learned so far and begin to experiment with doing things in your own way.
Having figured out the rules, you can start bending them, and trying out your own ideas. With more experimentation comes more success, but also more failure. But you learn to “fail fast” — making small bets, seeing how they pan out, learning from the duds, making corrections, and moving on to another idea. Through this cycle of attempt and recovery, you get better at predicting what will work, and become comfortable with taking risks — seeing failure as a natural part of the creative process.
As you continue to practice the skills required to successfully navigate your field, those skills become increasingly sharp. Your tasks become more natural — you can do them faster, better, and more efficiently. You gain confidence in your competency.
You can recognize the Resistance as soon as it shows up, and have developed rituals and methods for banishing it immediately. You’ve developed a record of achievement that you can draw upon in order to do so; you’re able to tell yourself, “I did this before, and I can do it again.”
Looking back over how far you’ve come from day one until the present, the improvements you’ve made are obvious and tangible, and you feel enormous confidence in the fact that through diligence and consistent hard work, you can continue getting better and rising to a higher level.
Mastery. Finally, you arrive at the Mastery phase. Your behavior and decision-making shifts from natural, to intuitive and practically automatic. You don’t have to spend a lot of mental energy to perform the basic tasks of your job, and this comfort level with your work frees you up to focus on the big picture.
You’ve gone from being a foot soldier, who can only see the immediacy of the trenches, to a commander, who can stand over the battle map, and take in the whole sweep of the field. Because you’re no longer caught up in the details, you have a greater ability to spot opportunities, think abstractly, and innovate.
You’re familiar with the ups and downs inherent to the landscape of your domain, and know that peaks will lead to valleys, but that the valleys, no matter how deep and long they extend, don’t last forever. You have supreme confidence to improvise when things go awry. You’re not afraid of uncertainty and are willing to try things without fear, knowing you can pivot and regroup no matter what happens.
You have an even longer record of accomplishments — of challenges faced and overcome — to reflect upon. Knowing what you’ve already done, and are capable of, allows you to push into even harder and deeper realms of creativity and excellence.
You’ve surpassed your old mentors, and are carving out an original path for yourself.
You have achieved mastery and gained the great power that comes from attaining the truest kind of confidence.

Take the First Towards Developing Confidence Through Mastery

While the language used above to explain the process of mastery centered more on the field of work, it is a process that applies to any domain in life. You can strive to become a master lover, husband, father, athlete, financial steward, socializer, or hobbyist.
No matter the domain, the process is the same. You take the first step, approaching the subject as a humble apprentice, and then you build slowly from there — studying, practicing, and experimenting your way to master status.
That first step can be a small one. If you wish to become a master conversationalist, start out by reading some books and articles on social skills. Then practice the techniques of good listening and talking with your family and close friends, where there is little risk of failure or embarrassment. Then practice by making small talk with cashiers and waitresses. Every day. Attend parties where you know people and pick certain conversational techniques you specifically want to work on. Observe the way different approaches elicit different reactions. Read some more books and articles. Keep experimenting and practicing. Eventually, you’ll be able to carry on a warm, interesting conversation with anyone, anytime, anywhere. You’ll have the confidence to be able to walk into an event where you don’t know a single soul feeling perfectly calm and comfortable.
While confidence is domain specific, and few can become master of many domains, still there is some confidence-carry-over from one domain to the next, and to your life in general. Having already gained mastery in one domain, you know you have the determination and discipline necessary to stick with something and see it through, and that bolsters your overall self-esteem and changes how you carry yourself. And while mastery of one domain won’t give you the confidence to perform well in another, knowing you can begin anything as a neophyte and steadily improve with diligence, will give you the confidence to take the first step in trying something new.
When you develop confidence through mastery, the world opens up to you. It doesn’t depend on your genes, it doesn’t rely on other people’s opinions, and nobody can ever take it from you. There’s no truer confidence than the knowledge that no matter how you were born, or what life throws at you, you can make of yourself whatever you will.

As always, the reader, thanks for listening, there will be more to come soon.

Learning to think faster than a supercomputer: how to develop a solid working memory

Hello again, dear reader. I know in yesterdays conversationally pontificated on the proper procedures for what to do. If you should find a lost wallet or purse, which doesn't really have anything to do with today's session. And I know we discussed memory in the past, such as how to develop a system that will allow you to memorize, whatever you want, and while remembering the proper procedures that should be followed when finding a lost item on the street is important. Along with being able to remember your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Being able to remember information is not the same as having a quality "working memory." A working memory is a must-have for any mental EDC kit unlike pure memorization. A working memory allows you to think on your feet and in fact to any given situation by using all the available data and deciphering the best course of action. So hopefully dear reader, by the end of today's discussion, you will have a better understanding of the differences between being able to remember something and having a quality "working memory."...


Whether you’re answering hard questions, making impromptu remarks, analyzing a situation, or synthesizing a bunch of data points into a cohesive and convincing presentation, the ability to think and process multiple pieces of information quickly and effectively is a vital skill to have. In our fast-paced and fluid world, you’ve got to be able to pull out the right piece of knowledge at the right time.
Your working memory is what allows you to do that.
While it was once thought that the capacity of each individual’s working memory was something they were simply born with, research from the worlds of cognitive science and psychology are showing that we can actually train it to become stronger and faster.
If you’re ready to upgrade your working memory from “six guinea pig power” to eight cylinder efficacy, today’s your lucky day. Below, we provide research-backed advice on how you can boost the potentiality of your working memory in order to become a master of cognition in even high-pressured situations.

What Is Working Memory and Why Is It Important?

Whenever we perform tasks that require reasoning, comprehension, and learning, we use our working memory. Our working memory allows us to hold relevant information in our brain while we do something else at the same time. It’s a short-term storage tank for thoughts and ideas that you can retrieve at the ready and process, manipulate, organize, and integrate in order to solve a problem, make a decision, find an explanation, reach a conclusion, or figure out possible moves. Think of it as your flexible mental scratch pad.
If you’re answering a question off the cuff, your working memory is what allows you to load what you want to say next into a cognitive queue while speaking at the same time.
Or let’s say you’re writing up a memo. You did your research and found some great information you’d like to include in a section that drives home the main point. However, you’re not quite ready to tackle that part yet, so you hold that section in your mind while you continue writing. That’s an example of your working memory in action.
When you read a book or an article, your working memory comes into play in a big way too. Reading comprehension requires you to remember bits of information that you read earlier and connect it to what you read later.
Working memory also plays a vital role in focus and attention. Not only does it allow us to store relevant information in our brain while we do something else, working memory also allows us to ignore irrelevant information, including distracting thoughts. As I discussed with Cal Newport in a podcast, the skill that’s becoming increasingly more rare in our knowledge-based economy, and consequently more valuable, is the ability to focus and immerse oneself in a task or project for long periods of time. Strengthening your working memory is a vital part of increasing your ability to perform this kind of “deep work.”
Not only does the ability to stay focused make us more productive, but research suggests that it also contributes to our overall happiness. A focused mind is a happy mind.
What’s more, some research suggests that working memory plays a role in overall fluid intelligence — the ability to solve problems by analyzing data and finding patterns and relationships between different elements. It should be noted, however, that the evidence for this connection is debatable, as there are other studies which show that working memory doesn’t impact fluid intelligence. Yet even if improving our working memory doesn’t directly make us “smarter,” as discussed above, it still plays a vital role in the effectiveness of our everyday mental functioning.
Working memory is particularly important for those with ADHD (which may be related to a deficiency in this capacity) and for the elderly (as it declines with age), but it’s a vital faculty for everyone who wants to perform at the peak of their cognitive powers.
But here’s the problem: in our rapidly changing, high-pressured, distracting world, our working memory gets taxed. We all suffer from information overload, with social media and newsfeed notifications soliciting our attention at all hours of the day and night. The brain has to labor mightily to figure out which of these information nuggets to hold onto and which to let go. Its capacity is constantly overburdened, and thus diminished in function. Anxiety and stress, caused by these relentless interruptions and otherwise, also reduce the amount of working memory we have available.
What then can be done to keep our working memory running on all cylinders?
We’ve all got two options. First, reduce anxiety, stress, interruptions, and information overload. Sound advice for improving one’s life on a variety of fronts; and I’ve got a whole guide here on how to effortlessly block distractions from your computer and phone.
But while we should all take strides to simplify, sometimes that’s not possible or even entirely desirable. We don’t get to decide when our boss needs a last minute report or when our kid needs to make a trip to the emergency room. And truth be told, most of us rather like the information smorgasbord spread before us online; sure, some of it is vapid and irrelevant, and should be passed over, but there’s plenty of incredibly interesting information out there to learn.
So that leaves us with the second option: boost and strengthen our working memory, so that we can handle whatever life throws at us with deft, sharp cognition.
Let’s take a look at how we can increase the expansiveness of our mental scratch pad so that there’s always plenty of room to store the scribblings so crucial for working effectively, and thinking well on our feet.

How to Train Your Working Memory

Play the right kind of brain-training games. In the past few years, brain-training games have proliferated, promising to make you smarter with just fifteen minutes of daily play.
But the research doesn’t back up the claims of the brain training companies. Instead of increasing your overall intelligence, playing these games just makes you better at those games. There’s no transfer to the real world.
However, one type of game has been shown over and over to improve working memory. It’s called the “dual n-back game” and it’s like putting your brain through the mental equivalent of a Chipper CrossFit WOD. In short, it’s brutal.
Actually playing the dual n-back game will give you the best idea of how it works, but here’s how science writer Dan Hurley describes it in his book Smarter:
“Imagine that you are listening to a string of letters spoken aloud. You are asked to press a button every time you hear the same letter repeated twice in a row. That’s 1-back. That’s easy. So if you hear the list n-a-m-m-a-m, you press the button when you hear the second m, right? But now let’s try 2-back: this time, you have to press the button when you hear the last letter in the series, because this last m was preceded two letters earlier (hence “2-back”) by another m. If you were being tested on 3-back, however, you would press the button when you heard the second a, because it was preceded three letters earlier by the first a. And so it goes, to 4-back, 5-back, and on.
What makes this task so difficult is that the list just keeps coming at you — not a short list of six letters, like the one I have presented as an example, but a list that continues, with another letter and another letter, for a minute and a half. So you are constantly updating and keeping track of the current sequence of two, three, four, or more letters, which is constantly changing as the next one is added. It requires total concentration. Let your mind drift for a moment and you’re lost.”
To make that already cognitively taxing task even harder, you make it dual n-back by adding another input you have to keep track of:
“as you hear this random sequence of letters, you also see a dot on your computer screen moving randomly among eight possible spots on the outer squares of a tic-tac-toe board. Now your mission is to keep track of both the letters and the dots as they just keep coming. So, for example, at the 3-back level, you would press one button on the keyboard if you recall that a spoken letter is the same one as was spoken three times ago, while simultaneously having to press another key if the dot on the screen is in the same place as it was three times ago.”
If you want to try this and see how hard it is, you can play it here online. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Pretty tough, huh?
The dual n-back game is designed to severely tax your working memory. You have to keep track of multiple pieces of information while applying it at the same time, and it gets harder and harder as you get better at it. It’s Starting Strength for your working memory.
The effort pays off though: research suggests that the dual n-back game definitely increases working memory capacity. But here’s the catch: the improvements are transient and short lasting. While research participants were able to improve their working memory after 12-week programs of dual n-back training, once they stopped, the gains quickly went away. So working memory is just like your physical muscles in this way too: if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Thus if you want to increase your working memory capacity with dual n-back training, you have to commit to it for the long run. Most researchers recommend 25 minutes every day or every other day. Just as you set aside time to exercise your body, set aside some time to exercise your brain.
You can use the dual n-back site that I linked above for your training, or you can download one of the many dual n-back smartphone apps out there on the market. Just do a search for them.
Meditate. Meditation not only helps lower blood pressure and alleviate depression, it can also improve your working memory. One study found that after just eight days of mindfulness meditation training, students’ working memory improved significantly compared to students who didn’t take part in the training. Similar studies have found the same results. And the meditation sessions don’t have to be long to get the benefits. Eight minutes of daily meditation will do the trick.
Researchers hypothesize that mindfulness meditation improves working memory by strengthening the ability to stay focused on a single thought while ignoring other distracting thoughts. It also reduces the anxiety and stress that have been shown to deteriorate this cognitive capacity.
Getting started with meditation is easy. Read our primer on the subject and then start using a meditation app on a daily basis to keep yourself accountable. My favorites are Calm and Headspace.
Lift weights. Not only is strengthening your working memory similar to strengthening your physical muscles, but strengthening your physical muscles can actually strengthen your brain!
Teresa Liu-Ambrose has spent her career researching the connection between physical strength and mental strength, particularly in older individuals. Her research suggests that resistance-training programs can improve cognitive functions more than aerobic exercise. In one study, she found that elderly individuals who took part in regular resistance training improved more in attention and working memory than individuals who took part in regular aerobic training.
While it isn’t yet clear why resistance training benefits working memory, other studies have found the same connection. So start hoisting some barbells and dumbbells, and you’ll be improving both your brain and your brawn.
For those of you who are aerobically inclined, there are cognitive benefits that come with activities like running and swimming too; the research just suggests they’re not as potent as those which come from strength training. So along with your 5-mile runs, be sure you’re including some deadlifts and squats. High intensity exercise has been shown to boost working memory too, so throw some sprints in there as well.
Get plenty of sleep. Of the many benefits of getting a good night’s sleep, improvement in working memory is a big one. Researchers have found that individuals who get a full eight hours of sleep perform up to 58% better on working memory tasks than individuals who get less.
So to ensure that your working memory is performing at its maximal potential, start taking steps towards getting a better night’s sleep.
Your working memory is a key component of how well you think on your feet and how deftly your brain functions on a day-to-day basis. Maximize its potential by following these guidelines and you’ll be able to grapple with whatever scenarios come your way.

As always, dear reader, thanks for listening, and there will be more to come soon.

Finding lost treasure on the street: the proper protocols and procedures for returning a lost wallet or purse.

Hello again, dear reader. I know in our recent discussions we have been pontificating on the North American Man hug, and how to deliver the proper handshake that conveys strength and confidence. However, for today's conversation, I thought we would pontificate on what to do to reader if you should ever find someone's wallet or purse on the street or in your local coffee shop, etc. many people believe that returning a lost wallet or purse is as simple as turning it into the person behind the counter of the nearest local business (most likely the one you just came out of). The theory being that the person who lost his valuable item will be retracing their steps and come back to the business to find their lost items. This however is not always the case, and it is usually not a good idea to return lost or stolen items to anyone without the legal authority to take possession of them, such as a security officer or police officer (just because someone is wearing the uniform and working behind the counter at a business does not make them trustworthy.) So hopefully by the end of today's session, you will know the correct process and procedures to achieve the best results. When finding someone's wallet or purse on the street...

The other day I was running some errands, and stopped by a coffee shop to grab a cup of joe on my way home. As I walked out the door, I noticed a big fat wallet lying on the ground just off the curb. I picked it up, gave a quick look around to see if there was anyone nearby who might have dropped it (there wasn’t), and then pondered what to do next.

Should I bring it to a nearby business? There were quite a few around, so it could have been dropped by a patron of any of them, and could I really trust another random person to handle the wallet? Should I rifle through it to try and find some contact information on the owner? Should I return it a police station?

My questions were many, so I ended up talking with some other folks about what they’ve done in this situation, and also called my local police station to get their advice on the matter.

While I eventually found the wallet’s owner (details of that later), I figured that if I wondered what to do in this scenario, other people do too. So below I share some quick tips on what I learned you should do when you find someone else’s wallet (or other valuables) and want to be a good citizen and return them.

DON’T Return the Item to a Local Business

This was something the Arvada city PIO (Public Information Officer) was adamant about when I spoke to her. Many folks, when they find something of value — especially outside a business area (or even in a business) — return it to the nearest establishment. The intent is good — the finder assumes that the person will come back through and ask around for lost items. The problem is that you’re ultimately just returning the valuables to another stranger. Just because someone is donning a work uniform behind a counter doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy.

If anything, go to an employee and leave your name and number with a note saying that you have the item and can be contacted for its safe return.

Try to Find Their Contact Information

This was my first course of action when I found the aforementioned wallet on the ground. I searched around through various scraps of paper and business cards, and eventually found a card with a name that matched the driver’s license. I felt a little strange rifling through someone’s personal items, but I guessed that the owner wouldn’t mind when he got his wallet back (I guessed right, I learned when I found him).

So I called the phone number on the business card, told the man I had found his wallet, and he nearly cried with relief. We arranged a pick-up location a few minutes down the road from me, and got the matter taken care of. The gentleman was so happy that he offered to fill up my gas tank, and insisted on my address to send me a card.

Another option here, especially if you find a business card, is to drop it off at the person’s place of work. That’s certainly a more trusted option than leaving it with a random local business.

Personally tracking someone down via their contact information is a little more involved and intimate than the other methods I’ll mention; you have to decide what you have time for, and what you’re comfortable with. Ultimately, I met a strange man at a gas station. I was comfortable with it, but some people may not be, and that’s okay.

There’s also a risk with this method that the person could accuse you of having taken something, especially if something was stolen before you found it. You certainly shouldn’t feel guilty for pursuing the other options listed here.

Should I Mail It?

Present in most people’s wallets is a driver’s license with a clearly printed address. With this info, you could just drop it in the mail and get it back to the person without ever having to meet. If you don’t want that cost, you can also drop wallets (but not other valuables) off at the post office, and they’ll take care of it at no charge.

While a reasonable option, I wouldn’t recommend it for the simple fact that it delays the return of the wallet by as many as a few days. If I had lost a billfold, I’d be canceling cards and working on replacing items that night if I hadn’t heard anything about its whereabouts. While I’d certainly be happy about its return a couple days later, I would have already put wheels in motion to replace the things in it.

The mail just also isn’t as safe of a delivery method as the others. It could be sitting in a mailbox overnight, or even for a few days if someone is away by chance.

That’s my two cents; it’s certainly a fine option if none of the others are viable.

Search for Them Online

A quick Google search, or perhaps even better, a Facebook search, may yield results in finding someone who’s lost their valuables. If you find the person and are able to successfully communicate through Facebook or email, you can arrange a pick-up location or make some other arrangement.

If the person has a common name, or your search doesn’t return any good information, you can utilize local Facebook groups as well. The city of Arvada has a few Craigslist-type groups for locals; while they are primarily about selling and trading various items, every once in a while you see someone post that they’ve found a valuable and are searching for its owner, and more often than not, it seems like a friend of a friend chimes in with a comment and the item(s) gets returned.

As with the above, this is a more personal approach, and you may not be comfortable with it.

Call/Contact Their Bank or Credit Card Company

Another option, particularly if you find a wallet, is to contact one of their banking companies based on any cards that you find. If you return the wallet to a bank branch of one of their cards, they’ll contact the person, who can then come pick it up. This is definitely a safe option on all fronts: their valuables are surely safe at a bank, and you’re safe because you’re not meeting a stranger somewhere.

Return It to the Nearest Police Station

Possibly your best course of action, without even having to rifle through the person’s wallet, is to just return it to a nearby police station. There, it will be kept safe in an evidence room, and the police will make every effort to find the person, pulling up any records they have and even using social media. If they can’t find the owner by any means after a certain amount of time — 90 days in the case of my local department — it then gets destroyed.

This option is especially beneficial if you find valuables that don’t have any identifying information. The PIO I spoke with said they get found valuables returned to them all the time — from jewelry, to phones, and even photo albums. No matter what type of valuable you find, the local PD can take care of it and your own effort is minimal.

Which Course of Action Should You Pursue?

The options listed above are all good courses of action if you find a wallet or valuables. Is there a best option, though? One that should be pursued above the rest?

As noted, definitely don’t return it to a local business. Also, don’t let your first act be dropping it in the mail for the reasons listed above.

Beyond that, it comes down to what you’re comfortable with, and frankly, what you have time for. If you’re flexible and don’t mind meeting strangers, looking for the person’s contact info and trying to return it in person is rather satisfying. It’s typically the fastest method of getting the wallet back in their hands as well, which the owner will surely appreciate. You may also get some sort of reward, and while not the point, of course, this is still nice!

If you can’t find contact information, if you’re short on time, or if you just aren’t comfortable with a face-to-face meeting, returning the wallet to a bank or police station is perfectly safe and honorable, and there’s as good a chance as any that the correct person will be found.

Whatever method you choose, at least do something! When you find something valuable on the ground — be it a wallet or a piece of jewelry — don’t just leave it there for someone else to deal with. Do the right thing: pick it up, and make a reasonable effort to get it returned. You know that you’d hope for someone to do the same if you lost something.

And now, you know exactly what to do when and if the day comes you spy a nice fat wallet staring up at you from the ground.

 

The hug, not just for bears anymore: the proper procedures and protocols of The North American Man Hug.

Hello again, dear reader. In yesterday's discussion, we pontificated on the importance of knowing how to deliver a quality handshake to establish a connection and make a solid first impression for today's discussion. However, I thought we could pontificate on the next step above the handshake, which is of course the "hug" this is of course to be used after you've established a rapport and the connection with a fellow individual such as being on a sports team or surviving an ordeal such as being lost in the desert. Not to be fair, before we go much further. It should be noted that today's discussion is intended more for men specifically, than any other gender as men seem to have trouble with more than anyone else. So today's discussion dear reader is going to be about the proper protocols and procedures to deliver a most excellent "man hug." And hopefully by the end of the discussion, you will have a better understanding of the importance of the man hug...

A firm, hearty handshake is always an appropriate way for men to greet each other. But when men achieve a greater familiarity, a man hug becomes appropriate. Some men fear male on male hugging of any kind. But done in an appropriate way, men can still hug while remaining secure in their manhood. Here’s how:

 It is very important to, always, always, always make sure your hug will be reciprocated; all too often. There are men who were a little overzealous with the man hug. This leaves the person being hugged, slightly embarrassed, and unsure what to do next. So take a second to make sure that a "man hug." Is the appropriate response or reaction to your given situation dear reader.
As a final note, some men, especially here in America, are not quite comfortable with the fully embracing style of hugging even when done correctly. Thankfully there is a bridge between the handshake and the bear hug: the American man hug. With the American man hug comes certain protocol and procedure that men haven’t articulated, but nonetheless follow. These unspoken rules allow men to hug each other without feeling like they’re being wussy.

The How of the American Man Hug

1. Begin with a traditional firm handshake
2. Keeping your hand clasped with your buddy, wrap the left arm around the shoulder of your friend.
3. Slap your friend’s back two times. The back slap is key. Somehow hitting your fellow man makes the hug more manly.
4. Release embrace.

When to American Man Hug

Man hugging is not appropriate with every man you come in contact with. It carries with it a certain intimacy that should be reserved for close friends and family. If you were to try to man hug a new acquaintance, you would probably be greeted with stiff awkwardness. However, if you’ve developed a bond after your initial introduction, a goodbye hug may be appropriate upon parting.
Special occasions warrant the full man hug. The American man hug is appropriate for greetings and partings.

As always, dear reader, thanks for listening, and there will be more to come soon.