31 posts tagged “life”

Here I’m back to my blog!

 

Hello to all my voxy neighbours…J

 

I knew, I was inactive from past few months now..…yeah, I was gone!....surely I’m gone…because, you know there was something ‘gone’ into my mind, my soul and my heart…yes, something ineffable thing which I never experienced it in my life until now….probably that might be the reason why I was gone…but subsequently, I was behind it to understand what is all about it!

 

Seriously, I don’t have any clue…how it happened. I never even thought off... I’ll be game for it @such an early! It completely sounds like serendipity! Yes indeedJ

You know time is something very mysterious thing which god has created it...you actually dunno what’s gonna happen within a min!...so, apparently how come this poor boy can handle such a time where it demanding for a beautiful yet an intrigue journey!  Finally, I was succumb to the thin slicings or tipping pointsJ…whatever you may call it..

 

I also feel like, it’s a kind of a thing, which I hardly got anything to stop that…I feel, its  like mercurial never ever shows its clear picture…now that is something very intrigue ..ha!

 

Let me experience this passage….dunno, where I’m gonna land up but experiencing such a totally unconditional and unbounded expedition is something very fascinating for me…now that’s what makes me go for it!

Moreover, to judge anything is something I don’t like to…after all, it’s in nascent stage, totally no clue what’s there along the road… but my optimistic heart says…keep going…may be i find my destiny…who knows!!!….so, better I should keep walking! Carpe diem is the mantra..which exactly what this boy is doing nowJ

 

Au revoir!

There may be days when you get up in the morning and things aren't the way you had hoped they would be. That's when you have to tell yourself that things will get better.

 

There are times when people disappoint you and let you down, but those are the times when you must remind yourself to trust your own judgments and opinions, to keep your life focused on believing in yourself and all that you are capable of.

 

There will be challenges to face and changes to make in your life, and it is up to you to accept them. Constantly keep yourself headed in the right direction for you. It may not be easy at times, but in those times of struggle you will find a stronger sense of who you are, So when the days come that are filled with frustration and unexpected responsibilities, remember to believe in yourself and all you want your life to be, because the challenges and changes will only help you to find the goals that you know are meant to come true for you.

Today while reading something in the office….in between freedom and compulsion got struck me….anyway what do you think about the freedom and compulsion?

 

Well as a commoner …oblivious reply could be… those two words are opposites. Isn’t it?

But think little deep by adding some rational quotient……take your own time….probably you might have something different answer!

 

To solve the enormous problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion.

We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one.

Let me give you a simple illustration.

 

In our routine, we know traffic lights restrain our freedom to cross a street whenever we wish.

But this restraint gives us the freedom from being run over by a truck.

 

Similarly another paradigm,

 

If you were assigned to a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your career. But it would give you freedom from the fear of unemployment.

 

Whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion we can achieve total freedom.

 

I think right now, I know I’m really stretching myself as hard as I can….after all I want my dream school... now here too it might sound like compulsion from my side….but you know this compulsion will raise my performance and eventually helping me to get freedom….yes, freedom in the form of my dream….after all what more will be one wanted when he gets what he dreamt of!

Really…words are the verbal embodiment of power…..

 

Have a look at this below quote from Great Indian Philosopher...Patanjali.

 

 

 

“When you are inspired
By some great purpose,
Some extraordinary project,
All your thoughts break their bonds:
Your mind transcends limitations,
Your consciousness expands in every direction,
And you find yourself in a new,
Great and wonderful world.
Dormant forces, facilities and talents
Become alive, and you discover yourself
To be a greater person by far
Than you ever dreamed
Yourself to be.”

 

 

" Truly there are no mistakes in life,

  but only lessons.

                     There is no such thing as a negative experience,

             but only

                          Opportunities to grow,

                                learn and advance along the road of self mastery."

    

                                          ©naresh

Finally wait is over…sigh! I can confirm for myself now that I’ll not be going to B-school this year!

Alas! as per the results list,  my name was missing! It dethroned my fate of MBA admission into the Top 6^th best B-school in India… at least for this year but I’m not regretful for that.

Definitely, it doesn’t sent me into fits of despondency!..seriously thats not the school i aimed at...but I was aspired for the Best School : IIMA or IIMC…certainly not for this…YES, I feel I’m a capable  guy to get into these two institutes.. But again for that I have to cross the big hurdle called …CAT (it’s a likely Tiger mind you!)   That's exactly am gonna do it:)

 

Right now, i'm recalling Walter D. Wintle's inspirational poem …absolutely awe-inspiring!

The Man Who Thinks He Can

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t.

 It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world we find success begins with a fellow's will.

It's all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself before you can even win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man
But soon or late the man who wins is the man who thinks he can
-Walter D. Wintle

 

Nevertheless, my task is cutout…like The Conquistador Hernando Cortés in the past…where in order to eliminate any ideas of retreat, Cortés burned his own troop’s ships….Man…He did have balls! (no punK)….well, anyway that’s shows the hungry for a WIN over enemy that clearly depicts in his every instinct… absolutely when you know what you really worth then its you the one who got to go there and get what you deserve!

No Question about it….YOU GOT TO WIN! badly....YES, VOUS AVEZ à GAGNER!

Oops!...you know I was missing my French lesson from many days…L but again I was seriously busy in the office with presentations stuff!

 

It seems like I’ll continue French whenever I find little time and moreover I’ll make it as my relaxation stopJ

 

Au revoir!

 

Here comes the most important songs which were played a crucial role in my 26yrs of life...yeap, these four songs were my most favourite songs….without these songs i can't imagine my life..I just love it J

 

1. In the burning heart
2. The eye of the Tiger
3. No easy way out
4. Sweetest Victory

 

After listening to them I’m sure you too fell in love with those sweet songs!.

I love to here your comments on these songs J.

 

Oops! i forgot to tell you...while listening these 1st two songs ...please close your eyes...and focus on the words keenly...just concentrate..and forget the world:)

 

  

1. In the burning heart :

 

 

This song is my most favourite unarguably.... I can say even the best ….the song which always given me strength to overcome so many hurdles in my life…, The song which inspired even continuously inspiring me to go for many things considering my circumstances …so, I’m very fortunate enough to watch one of the greatest movie of Stallone’s. But irony is it took me almost a year to post on my blog…of course, it might be late but not gone astray. As we all know Good Things Come in Small Packages. J

 

Bythway here I also posted the lyrics of the song which gives you more feel and thrust while listening the song …makes you involve with more focus and probably forget the world and feel like you the only soul who exists.

 

Every word in lyrics is just awesome...i'm just loss of words..:-) to express my feelings!

 

Two worlds collide

Rival nations

It's a primitive clash

Venting years of frustrations

Bravely we hope

Against all hope

 

There is so much at stake

Seems our freedom's up

Against the ropes

Does the crowd understand?

 

Is it East versus West

Or man against man

Can any nation stand alone

 

CHORUS

 

In the burning Heart

Just about to burst

There's a quest for answers

An unquenchable thirst

In the darkest night

Rising like a spire

In the burning heart

The unmistakable fire

In the burning heart

 

In the warriors code

There's no surrender

Though his body says stop

His spirit cries - never!

Deep in our soul

A quiet ember

Know it's you against you

It's the paradox

That drives us on

It's a battle of wills

In the heat of attack

It's the passion that kills

The victory is yours alone

 

CHORUS (sing chorus 3 times)

 

In the burning heart

 

1.  The eye of the Tiger:

 

 

 

 

 

"Eye of the Tiger", REALLY, brings a (rare) smile to my (oft-sullen) face!! This occurs, when I APPLY, its' inspiring lyrics to my life...

 

"Just a man, and his WILL, to survive"

"Rising up, to the challenge, of our rivals" (my desires, impecuniousness & fear)

 

I'm STEELING my mind, to rise up, and meet the challenge that "Doubt” presents!! This encouraging song helps me out IMMENSELY!! I can't believe that I'd just about, totally forgotten this song.

But when I heard it again, I was OVERWHELMED, with JOY and INSPIRATION!! This ENTIRE album is both, Timeless AND Priceless!! Admittedly, I had no idea that Survivor made so MANY, other quality songs!! However” Eye" transcends, merely being a” song" to me...It's been my lifes' THEME.

 

Here’s the lyrics of the song:

 

 

 

Risin' up, back on the street

Did my time, took my chances

Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet

Just a man and his will to survive

 

So many times, it happens too fast

You change your passion for glory

Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past

You must fight just to keep them alive

 

Chorus:

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the fight

Risin' up to the challenge of our rival

And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night

And he's watchin' us all in the eye of the tiger

 

Face to face, out in the heat

Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry

They stack the odds 'til we take to the street

For we kill with the skill to survive

 

Chorus

 

Risin' up, straight to the top

Have the guts, got the glory

Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop

Just a man and his will to survive

 

Chorus

 

The eye of the tiger (repeats out)...

 

3. No easy way out:

 

 

 

 

Well the music is good; it may not rise to the heights of inspiration of the first two songs. But amazing inspiration it does give and gets me going all the time... J

 Here's the lyrics of song:

We're not indestructible,

Baby better get that straight.

I think it's unbelievable,

How you give into the hands of fate.

Some things are worth fighting for,

Some feelings never die.

I'm not asking for another chance,

I just wanna know why.

 

(Chorus)

There's no easy way out,

There's no shortcut home.

There's no easy way out,

Giving in can't be wrong.

 

I don't wanna pacify you,

I don't wanna drag you down.

But I'm Feeling like a prisoner,

Like A Strange in a no-name town.

I see all the angry faces,

Afraid that could be you and me.

Talking about what might have been,

Thinking about what it used to be.

 

(Chorus)

There's no easy way out,

There's no shortcut home.

There's no easy way out,

Giving in can't be wrong.

 

Baby Baby we can shed this skin,

We can know how we feel inside.

Instead of going down an endless road,

Not knowing if we're dead or alive.

Some things are worth fighting for,

Some feelings never die.

I'm not asking for another chance,

I just wanna know why.

 

(Chorus)

There's no easy way out,

There's no shortcut home.

There's no easy way out,

givin in, givin in, can't be wrong.

 

4. Sweetest Victory:  

 

 

Here’s comes a song which gives a relief for the person who wins at last his battle against all the odds …J right now  I’m really waiting for my victory in life …..In short run. I just wanna win this CAT battle…J I’m sure I come out with bang! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s lyrics of the song:

Deepest cut that can be healed

By the gun...or by the sword:

It's hope that you can turn yourself

Outside at the end of the war

The cold sweat sticks...to your heart.

Your mouth gets drier and drier.

The battle inside rages on.

Your pulse races higher and higher.

 

CHORUS

Sweetest Victory; I love you more than life itself.

Sweetest Victory; you give me strength to know myself.

Oh, Sweet Victory; my soul is yours and the glory is mine.

Sweetest Victory; the far-off stars will always shine.

 

The tooth like nails rip me up.

I can make it disappear.

Time to forget has passed me by.

There's no place to hide my fear.

Hate and pain filled me up.

Every minute takes longer and longer.

I bead of sweat 'cause drops of blood

Makes me stronger and stronger.

 

Chorus repeats.....

The Billionaire Broker: The Early Years of Charles Schwab

 

Charles Schwab always had difficulty in school, but he never knew why. Today, he has become one of the most famous – and successful – dyslexics in the world. From using comic books to help him pass English literature classes to heading up the largest discount brokerage in the U.S., Schwab’s current fortune of $5.5 billion ranks him as the 57th richest person in the country.

 

Charles Robert Schwab, Jr. was born on July 29, 1937 in Sacramento, California. His childhood was a difficult one, with his small-town lawyer father constantly turning family dinner conversations into talks about “how limited resources were.” As a result, Schwab was put to work early on. “I did as much as I could: raising chickens, pushing an ice-cream cart, bagging walnuts, driving a tractor on a beet farm, working on the railroad,” he says. “I think this eclectic career helped me a lot in life.”

 

Schwab went to school in Woodland, where he quickly discovered he had a problem. He could not read or understand English as well as the rest of the students. Knowing little about dyslexia at the time, Schwab’s teachers simply thought he was a slow student. He did not tell anyone about his problem for years to come, but he knew he would have to work hard to overcome it. He turned to the Classic Comic Book versions of the likes of “Ivanhoe” and “A Tale of Two Cities” to help him through his reading assignments.

 

“I bluffed my way through much of it, I’m sure,” says Schwab. “Fortunately, I have a pretty ‘up’ personality, and that helped me all the way through. I tried hard and I had pretty good communication skills, so I could persuade my teachers that I was a pretty good kid.”

 

After graduating from high school in 1959, Schwab was accepted into Stanford University, thanks in large part to his high grades in economics and his strong golf game. There, he earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA. All the while, however, he continued to suffer from dyslexia. As a freshman, Schwab admits to having been “completely buried,” and he failed both French and English. “To sit down with a blank piece of paper and write was the most traumatic thing that had ever faced me in life,” he says. “I had ideas in my head, but I could not get the stuff down. It was a crushing time.”

 

As a result, Schwab finally turned to economics; numbers were the one thing he could understand. “I never perceived of myself as stupid; I can’t explain why,” he says. “I just thought that if I worked harder, maybe something would happen.”

 

After receiving his MBA, Schwab became a mutual fund manager and excelled. But a few years in, he was craving for more. In 1963, Schwab launched Investment Indicator with two other partners. It was an investment advisory newsletter that quickly grew to have over 3,000 subscribers. At a cost of $84 per annual subscription, Schwab was making a handsome income on the side. But still, he wanted more.

 

Finding Success in Stocks: Schwab Launches His Company

 

 Schwab was ten years into his career when he decided to venture off onto his own and start his own company. He had a vision for a business that would shatter the investing world. Schwab wanted to break down the barriers to Wall Street and make it easier for the average American to invest. How could he do that? Schwab had figured out how to lower the fees for buying and selling stock.

 

Schwab approached his uncle Bill, a fellow entrepreneur, who agreed to finance his nephew’s dreams. With a $100,000 loan, Schwab founded First Commander Corporation, whose philosophy was that the stock market should be open and accessible to everyone. After its first two successful years in business, Schwab bought out his partners, assumed all of the company’s debt, and changed its name to Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

 

The young company quickly began to make a name for itself, especially in 1974, when the SEC initiated a 13-month trial period for the deregulation of certain brokerage transactions. While other brokers were using the time to raise commissions, Schwab decided to go the opposite route. He would create a discount brokerage firm. When the trial period was over, the SEC officially approved negotiated commissions, and the discount brokerage industry was born.

 

With that, Schwab branched out of San Francisco and opened an office in Sacramento. Advertisements began running across the country, portraying Schwab as a working class broker. By 1979, the company boasted over 33,000 customers. From there, Schwab began to introduce new features, including a 24-hour weekday quote service, and a state of the art computer system.

 

In 1981, Schwab made two prominent acquisitions and opened its first office in Manhattan. Two years later, the company was bought by the Bank of America for $57 million and celebrated its 500,000th customer account. Schwab continued to improve its services with the introduction of new online products like The Equalizer, and the touch-tone quote system SchwabQuotes. But in 1987, Schwab managed to buy back his company for $280 million and promptly went public. Its IPO of eight million shares sold for $16.50 each.

 

By 1994, Schwab had reached over $1 billion in revenues and $100 billion in customer assets. Its further growth was the result of an early focus on online technologies. Schwab launched Internet trading in 1996, and in just two years, it had gained over 1.8 million online accounts.

 

The collapse of the market would hit Schwab hard. Between 2000 and 2002, profits fell from $718 million to $109 million. In response, the company, which was under different management then, cut some 6,500 jobs. Then, after it did not bounce back as expected, the company called back its founder.

 

In 2004, Schwab returned as CEO to the company he had founded. Schwab hired outside consultants to assess the situation. After agreeing with their findings, he decided to cut $600 million in expenses and another 2,000 jobs. He also reduced fees and commissions, and closed down divisions that diverted attention away from the company’s original goal of serving individual investors. International offices were also closed.

 

Schwab wanted his company to shift away from being solely dependent on commissions to being a full-service broker. “We brought prices down, down, down so they are now essentially commodities,” says Schwab. “So if we want to succeed in this business, we have to move in a direction of adding other value to the relationship with our clients. And so where I might have said 15 years ago, 'We want to be the best discount brokerage,' today I want to be the best 'relationship company' in financial services.”

 

The company bounced back. Client assets rose from $942 billion in 2004 to $1.2 trillion just two years later. And now, Schwab wants to do it all again.

Can You Evaluate Your Own Abilities?...omg! its undoubtedly one of the toughest question to answer and also one of the hardest thing to implement in real life...isn't it?

A Cornell psychologist explains why it’s almost impossible to judge your own competence -- and how to overcome the blind spots

• Employee Engagement
• Performance Management

A GMJ Q&A with David Dunning, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Cornell University

 

Here it goes....

 

How good of a driver are you? Pretty good? Pretty great? Maybe the next Jeff Gordon, if you only had some training and a jumped-up Chevy? Well, perhaps -- but probably not, and you'll probably never know.

It's difficult, almost impossible, for us to accurately evaluate our competencies. So says David Dunning, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Cornell University and author of several books and papers on accuracy and illusion in human judgment.

Dr. Dunning focuses on the difference between people's perceptions of their abilities and reality -- a gap that can make all the difference in business. Why? Because our own incompetencies blind us to our incompetence. Employees are often asked to tackle something new at work; some will excel while others will fail. Is there a way to predict that failure in advance and avoid it? Furthermore, decision makers must have confidence in their fundamental ability to do their job, but when that confidence is misplaced, even once, the whole organization can suffer. Most business missteps and mistakes are essentially errors in judgment of judgment.

There are ways, however, to objectively evaluate your competence before you fall on your face. In this interview, Dr. Dunning discusses how to work around blind spots, how to make critiques more effective, and what to do when a coworker fails to accurately assess his or her competence.

GMJ: Why do people tend to overestimate their abilities?

Dr. Dunning: There are many, many reasons. The first is the spin we tend to give the feedback we receive about ourselves from the outside world. That is, we claim credit for our successes and lay blame for our failures elsewhere. Second, what people tell you to your face is never exactly what they're saying behind your back. That will give you an inaccurate idea of your abilities. And finally, people just don't have all the information they need to be able to see themselves accurately, and what they miss tends to leave them overconfident.

When we're incompetent, we're not often in a position to recognize that incompetence. Often we make errors of omission because we're not aware of how we could have done a task in a better or a different way. But because we are unaware of these alternatives, we think instead that we've done just fine.

So there are just a whole host of reasons why people generally, but not always, are left with a sense of confidence that may not be justified.

GMJ: There's a lot of research into gender differences in self-appraisal of competence. For example, some research shows that men tend to overrate and women under-rate their ability to pick stocks. Both views are inaccurate, though. Is that same gender dichotomy true in other aspects?

Dunning: No. At least in American culture, you find that both genders tend to be overconfident, but the tendency will differ depending on what area of life you're talking about. So it may be true that men are overconfident about their ability to pick stocks, but if you move to, say, knowledge about literature or aesthetics, the gender difference may go away or reverse.

If you take a look at teenage kids, boys will be more positive and overconfident in their ability to deal with science than girls are. But if you move to English, that gender bias goes away. In the North American culture, if there's going to be a bias that people on average tend to have, it's to be overconfident, though that obviously doesn't happen all the time. And that's not necessarily true in other cultures.

GMJ: What's the danger of being overconfident? What's wrong with being wrong?

Dunning: There are some areas where it could be right to be wrong, but I think we all can easily imagine areas where overconfidence can certainly get you into trouble. I wouldn't want to be an overconfident gambler. I wouldn't want to be an overconfident airplane pilot. I wouldn't want to be a doctor who doesn't know when he or she has to call in a specialist for a consult.

There are a number of areas where overplaying your expertise can have bad effects for you and the people around you. Now there might be some areas, and I think this is under explored in psychology, where being overconfident and being unrealistic may actually be helpful. Those areas tend to be where people are facing the extremes of life -- like you're putting your life together after your country has gone through a civil war, or you're facing a cancer diagnosis.

GMJ: Shelley Taylor [a professor of social psychology at UCLA] recently won the Clifton Strengths Prize for, among other things, researching just that -- she studied breast cancer patients and found that positive illusions are enormously therapeutic.

Dunning: That's right. I think the way to think about psychology is that everything is true -- but only in its specific context. So my take is that there are areas where overconfidence may be helpful. Something that energizes you, even if it's unrealistic, would be good for you in a difficult situation.

On the flipside, though, there are other contexts or situations where the exact same tendency is not something you want to display. I would not want to be a person with foremost confidence in my poker ability going up against a professional like Gus Hansen, for example. That's a situation where you're much more likely to be dead money than a winner. The consequences of overconfidence do depend on the exact situation or the exact task you're facing.

GMJ: People need to accurately judge their abilities, sometimes more than others, as you said. How can you figure out what you can't figure out?

Dunning: One of the pet phrases I have is "The road to self-insight runs through other people." Other people can often give us invaluable feedback that can really correct an illusion that we're suffering from.

One of my favorite, but most chilling, findings is from a study that surveyed surgical residents. They were asked about their surgical skills, and then they were given the standardized board exam. The residents' views of their skills didn't predict at all how well they did on the exam. But the impressions of their peers and their supervisors strongly predicted how well they did. Thus, there are times when what other people think of you can be an invaluable source of what you need to work on and what you're already good at.

And it can happen in different ways -- you don't always necessarily need formal feedback. If you just observe other people and see how they handle situations that you come across as well, you can more accurately judge your own skill in that situation. It's called benchmarking. I mean, it's no secret. Often you find different or better ways to deal with situations that you just hadn't thought of.

As I mentioned, people can't be expected to be aware of their errors of omission. But if you see how other people handle the same situation, it may clue you in to things that you didn't know you didn't know. And that can make you more accurate about yourself and more competent.

GMJ: Are there other ways to become better at self-evaluation?

Dunning: You can self-test, though it's easier to do it in some areas than others. When you're doing a task, evaluate yourself, and then try to get an evaluation from some outside source just to see if your evaluation agrees with more objective evaluations from the outside world.

One interesting thing for organizations to consider is, when employees are being trained, such as in technical skills, give them tests to evaluate their progress, but also have them estimate how well they did on the test. That may go a long way to alerting people to deficits that they didn't know that they had -- both in their skills and their ability to judge those skills.

You really do need some outside agent to point out that you have a deficit that you weren't aware of. You can't depend on your own devices; you really do have to seek help to get a better, accurate image of where your shortcomings lay.

GMJ: When you critique others, particularly people who work for you or maybe even peers, what do you do? Do you give an accurate critique or a tactful one?

Dunning: Giving feedback is a tricky business, and nearly 40% of feedback programs actually demotivate people. There is a skill to be learned here, and there are two things we can do to give feedback that's motivating, accurate, and tactful. The first thing is to give feedback that is concrete, as opposed to feedback that's about the person's character. You want to talk at the behavioral level. Feedback should not feel like a character attack, but rather a helpful suggestion. The other thing is to not only point out the bad, but point out the good, at a behavioral level.

So when you give people feedback, give them feedback that's both positive and negative. If all the feedback is just negative, negative, negative, they might develop some psychic calluses against that feedback.

The last thing I would mention, though, is that feedback becomes more risky and the consequences are higher if you receive it only rarely. Instead, to the extent that feedback is a small event that happens frequently, every piece of feedback carries less of a threat. You don't want managers and employees to be giving everybody feedback every five minutes, but giving feedback often and in small doses removes or reduces the threat level associated with it. You might want to spend more time with employees, giving them explicit goals for the week, the month, and the year.

GMJ: Because everybody hates annual reviews, right?

Dunning: Oh, everybody hates reviews -- giving as well as receiving them. And that creates a problem that managers have to avoid, which is waiting until you're angry to give the feedback you really want to give.

Think of what it's like to hear feedback from an angry person. Why on earth would a person listen to you when you're yelling at him? You're a crazy person; you are not giving objective feedback. One of the reasons to give feedback in frequent small doses is so you're not waiting until you blow.

GMJ: How do you measure improvement in subjective areas? How can you tell whether you're getting better at things like social situations or thinking creatively?

Dunning: That's a very good point, because social situations are subject to a lot of nuance. Those are inherently difficult areas to judge yourself, but even a little feedback can be tremendously helpful. And so even in these difficult situations -- and they are difficult, and people should just recognize that they're difficult -- getting outside feedback can still be very, very helpful.

Ninety-five times out of one hundred, seeking outside sources of feedback probably is going to be more helpful than confusing. Now, mind you, it's not going to work in all instances, but over the long term with a lot of people, it will be helpful. Even though it's stressful to go through, it can be some of the most useful information that we ever receive.

Nothing is ever going to be a panacea that works perfectly in all subjective circumstances. But we have things that can, even in the face of all that, make us better and make our situation better.

GMJ: How should you deal with someone who has gravely overestimated his or her own abilities and made a horrible mistake?

Dunning: Avoid something that can be read as a character attack. We're all prone to see a character attack -- that's a human tendency -- even if none is meant. You want to talk about the specific behavior, the specific consequences it created, and then point out, unless you're firing them, what they can do differently in the future. Suggest a way of improvement or a way of repair.

Some mistakes are so big that the person has to be fired; there's just no way around it. But if you're going to keep the person on, don't wander into character attack, especially if there's an angry undertone to your voice. I think the thing that you want to do is be concrete and behavioral as opposed to, "My God, you really screwed up big, didn't you?" That just won't do.

-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison