(…) people are dying to be given the chance to fantasize about you. Do not spoil this golden opportunity by overexposing yourself, or becoming so familiar and banal that the target sees you exactly as you are. You do not have to be an angel, or a paragon of virtue—that would be quite boring. You can be dangerous, naughty, even somewhat vulgar, depending on the tastes of your victim. But never be ordinary or limited. In poetry (as opposed to reality), anything is possible. Soon after we fall under a person's spell, we form an image in our minds of who they are and what pleasures they might offer. Thinking of them when we are alone, we tend to make this image more and more idealized. (…) Remember: if you are easily had, you cannot be worth that much. It is hard to wax poetic about a person who comes so cheaply. If, after the initial interest, you make it clear that you cannot be taken for granted, if you stir a bit of doubt, the target will imagine there is something special, lofty, and unattainable about you. Your image will crystallize in the other person's mind. (…) All that is required is to hint that there is something different about you, to make them associate you with something grand or poetic.
Sayfa 282 - 12-Poeticize Your PresenceKitabı okudu
What did you notice when you were up there? What actions did you take? Why did you choose to do that? What were your mistakes? What could you have done differently? When necessary, the trainers could pull out the films of the encounters and the data recorded from the radar units and point out exactly what had happened in a dogfight. And both during and after the grilling the instructors would offer suggestions to the students on what they could do differently, what to look for, and what to be thinking about in different situations. Then the next day the trainers and students would take to the skies and do it all over again.
Importance of FeedbackKitabı okudu
Generally speaking, no matter what you’re trying to do, you need feedback to identify exactly where and how you are falling short. Without feedback—either from yourself or from outside observers—you cannot figure out what you need to improve on or how close you are to achieving your goals.
For decades scientists believed that we were born with our brains’ circuits pretty much fixed and that this circuitry determined our abilities. Either your brain was wired for perfect pitch, or it wasn’t, and there wasn’t much you coul do to change it. You might need a certain amount of practice to bring that innate talent into full bloom, and if you didn’t get this practice, your perfect pitch might never develop fully, but the general belief was that no amount of practice would
help if you didn’t have the right genes to start with. But since the 1990s brain researchers have come to realize that the brain—even
the adult brain—is far more adaptable than anyone ever imagined, and this gives us a tremendous amount of control over what our brains are able to do. In
particular, the brain responds to the right sorts of triggers by rewiring itself in various ways. New connections are made between neurons, while existing connections can be strengthened or weakened, and in some parts of the brain it is even possible for new neurons to grow. This adaptability explains how the development of perfect pitch was possible in Sakakibara’s
subjects as well as in Mozart himself: their brains responded to the musical training by developing certain circuits that enabled perfect pitch. We can’t yet identify exactly which circuits those are or say what they look like or exactly what they do, but we know they must be there—and we know that they are the product of the training, not of some inborn genetic programming.
This follows inescapably from the other characteristics of deliberate practice, which could be described as a recipe for not having fun. Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we’re good at, we insistently seek out what we’re not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over. After each repetition, we force ourselves to see—or get others to tell us—exactly what still isn’t right so we can repeat the most painful and difficult parts of what we’ve just done. We continue that process until we’re mentally exhausted. Ericsson and his colleagues stated it clearly in their article: Deliberate practice “is not inherently enjoyable.”
"I feel as if somebody had handed me the moon and I didn't know exactly what to do with it."
Sayfa 206
