Becoming Eden

Category: Blog

  • Eighteen Weeks of Lydia

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    divia
    in

    Lydia is eighteen weeks now! Nothing too huge this week. Many of the positive changes from last week have carried over, and I would say it’s been a pretty good week. We had the reunion for our homebirth class this past Sunday, so I got to see a bunch of non-Lydia babies too. Sleep Last…

  • How It Feels to Be the Subject of an IFS process

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    divia
    in

    Will and I recently hosted a webinar about IFS, and when I was reading the feedback forms, I noticed that two people asked very similar questions about how it felt to be the subject of an IFS process. I wanted to give my best attempt at a description, though I imagine it’s somewhat different for…

  • Baby Summaries: Weeks 13-17

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    divia
    in

    I’ve been posting weekly summaries of how things are going with Lydia over at my old blog, More Meaning than Magic for the past month or so. Starting this Wednesday, I’m going to be posting them here instead, so I wanted to link to the previous ones to provide context. Week 13 Week 14 Week 15…

  • Exploration/Exploitation Applied

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    Will
    in

    In my previous post, I discussed the exploration/exploitation tradeoff that is inherent to optimizing under significant uncertainty, and alluded to some of the ways that this influences my thinking. In this post, I want to give some examples of how using this framework has actually changed my behavior. From a Global Parameter… As far as…

  • What I Wish I Knew in College

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    Will
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    I feel like I only learned how to optimize effectively during my senior year of college. At that point I was mostly set into my college path: I was an economics major, I had already used my off-terms, I was involved in particular organizations, I had my group of friends, etc. What I could change…

  • Analytical Parts in IFS

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    divia
    in

    When I do IFS work, one of the first things I have to do before I can really get somewhere with the person I’m working with is to disengage the person’s analytical part. I usually start by doing this implicitly. I choose my questions with the intent of bypassing the analytical mind, and that tends…

  • Lessons From (and For) the Quantified Self Movement

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    Will
    in

    The very first time I heard about Quantified Self I was excited by the world of possibilities contained therein. I pride myself on my self-awareness, and it seemed like adding quantitative rigor to this process would allow me to uncover new patterns below my current awareness – and ideally, to change them. Besides, I liked…

  • The Exploration/Exploitation Framework

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    Will
    in

    We all have a variety of mental models that we use to interpret the world around us. In many cases we have very specific models, e.g. I know that turning the key in the ignition makes my car turn on, and this does not assist me very much in my understanding of the world. At…

  • How to Network Effectively

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    Will
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    Networking is a critically important skill. There is a great phrase that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time around. For humans, most of our environment is the social environment. Your ability to interact with others, and who those other people are, is most likely going to be your…

  • Ten Ways to Change Your Behavior Immediately #10: Actively Recover and Try Again

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    Will
    in

    Suppose you have tried everything above and you still can’t seem to bring yourself to work.  First, I want you to repeat step two and show yourself a little compassion.  Did you do that?  Good.  I’ll bet you’re feeling better already! So given that you can’t seem to get yourself to work, what should you…