What an afternoon

I had a Friday afternoon with a friend and it was really fun

The best way to show it is with pics:

Nuno Barros - One of the most innovative Portuguese Chefs

Chocolate Mousse Cake

Fear of failure

A friend asked me if she should talk more about her successes or her failures in her blog. That's why today I am writing this post.

It is given too much importance to the fear of failure.

In fact, fear of failure serves as an excuse too often. For example, if we work for someone, most of the times, the cost of failure is absorbed by the company and not by us.

In my opinion, people are not afraid to fail. It's blame. Criticism.

We prefer not to be bright because we are afraid of criticism. We hesitate to create innovative movies, launch new initiatives in human resources, design a menu with dishes that give the views, or make bold statements because, deep down, we hate and fear that someone might call us to account.
"This is the biggest stupidity I have ever heard!", "What a waste of money" "Who is responsible for this?"

Sometimes the criticism don't need to be so obvious. The fear of hearing something like "I find it strange that they released until they have done further research" is enough to kill an idea that might even be good.

Or even just listening to someone being criticized for fear to settle.

I admit. When I receive a bad review, it bothers me. It would be good to always hear good things. But it doesn't happen.


But this is not bad at all. Like this people notice what I did or what I said. Some people like it. Others hate it.

A bad review does not spoil my day because I realized what an honor it is to receive a critique, whatever it is. It means I've frustrated the expectations of someone. This means, in reality, I did something that was worth comment.

The lesson is simple: the attitudes, products and ideas that are spoken are the ones that are worth being discussed.

More food please

Why do people eat too much?

Today I bring you some psychological reasons people eat too much.

Food is no longer just food. We mix food with security and love and sometimes we say we eat with our eyes.

People have some trouble to find when it's the best time to stop eating and when their no longer hungry.

I have the same problem. We usually don't rely on my stomach but on all sorts of external cues, from the size of our plate or the habits of others around us (many kids that are obese come from overweight families). If the size of the plate is two times bigger from our usual plate we don't care and eat everything plus the dessert.

In behavioural economics I have been studying many psychologist' papers and many of them have papers about our necessity to eat so much. (I'm not writing the references but if you need I can share them with you) . The main conclusion of these papers: people depend on how much others give them and larger sizes causes them to eat more.

But what drives people to order bigger portions when they know it isn't healthy for them?

Many psychologists have found people are guided by social status. Bigger portions a desire to signal status.

Think of all the cultural norms that associate larger products with increased status, from the screen size of televisions to the size of our houses. And plus it's more prestigious to have one TV for each room even though we don't watch TV at all at home.

Interesting to note that in experiments where people were said they had less power they would eat more than other people with more power but when told they were in a prestigious event they would eat less than those with power.

"The larger point is that we don’t just eat to fill the void in our belly. Instead, we eat excessively to fill all sorts of empty spots, one of which is a chronic lack of status." by Jonah Lehrer

Curiosity: the number of people worldwide who are dangerously overweight has now exceeded the number who are undernourished.

One day on Earth

So many different cultures, lifestyles, countries, people, all filmed in one day gives this video:

Always...

...take your time to Try.

You shouldn't do this way:

But think this way:

“Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something."

What If...

I saw this on a magazine the other day and wanted to share it with you:

What if you dream big every day
What if you make a choice to create new rules for yourself
What if you generate power from passion
What if you inspire through attitude
What if going big means expecting more of yourself every day
What if you allow yourself to fly
What if you erase doubt, embrace pain and smile from your heart
What if your determination becomes bigger than your fears
What if trusting your body and mind means breaking barriers?

Believe in yourself!

Keep goals in mind but

Yesterday I got slapped on my face. Metaphorically.

I had a dinner with some friends. They booked the dinner to 9.30 pm and almost everytime I'm with them I come home around 4/5 am. So I said I couldn't go because I was training today morning early. Normally I need to sleep at least 6 hours to train properly or otherwise my head isn't there.

A friend of mine when heard my answer said this: "the excuses are falling down the drain and the invitations too. Your choice man! Good luck with your stuff".

That really touched me way too deep. I couldn't sleep well last night...

But I smiled. This made me think what I'm doing here and what are my goals.

I don't want to lose my friendship or my social life.
So if people don't change their habits this must be a 1-1 deal: I need to miss some hours of sleep from time to time to be with them and they need to understand that this is important to me and accept that I can't lose hours of sleep as much as they can.

I have learned.