The Formula for Success

I'm on my third Coursera course of this Corona Break, this one The Science of Success: What Researchers Know that You Should Know, with Dr. Paula J. Caproni of the University of Michigan Business School.

So I've completed week three, and this week we learned the formula for success, which dovetails with a lot of the materials I've been reviewing/encountering recently:

1. A Deliberate Purpose, echoing Napoleon Hill's Definite Purpose.
2. A Mental Representation of Excellence: see my post on The Secret. This the focus of Mark Joyner's meditation that he calls the Magical Minute.
3. A Step by Step Strategy, Backward Design is what we call it in education, or a Structure for Fulfillment as I know from my work at Landmark.
4. Practice with Precision: a push, coupled with a willingness to fail (or recasting failure as a part of learning), the best learning occurring at the edge, this the edge between order and chaos (Peterson's conversation on the Dao), or Jamie Wheal's enterprise to engineer flow, which comes from challenge in the right margin. n.b. a coach can make a difference here.
5. SMART Measures:
   1. Specific
   2. Measurable
   3. Attainable
   4. Relevant
   5. Time Bound

The Takeaway being that anything is possible for the person bold enough to declare his future and believe in it.

And this from Dr. Jordan Peterson

This one is huge, I transribe the relevant part for you:

50:53

You're in a schema and something comes along and knocks out one of the presuppostions so that what you are doing doesn't work, then you're going to fall into an intermediate period of chaos, and the chaos is going to be proportionate to the importance of the proposition that was disrupted, and the importance is going to be proportionate to how much you use that axiom across multiple situations. . . .

52:13

Generally you should assume that you calibrated your machine improperly. And I should also tell you something that's akin to that with regards to a self protective mode of reconstructing your schema. . . .

53:06

Maybe the reason the person won't talk to you is because you are just wrong in a million different ways. But, let's not jump to conclusions.

53:17: The Rule

So the rule there, the Mental Hygiene Rule is “Pick the simplest possible explanation. and until you disprove it, accept it.”

Mental Hygiene Rule from
2015 Personality Lecture 05: Constructivism: Jean Piaget

Redemption is something that is accomplished at the level of the individual. Every time you hear someone say that they've oriented themselves properly, it's like a bell rings in heaven.

Higher Ed & Our Cultural Inflection Point: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson/Stephen Blackwood