Writing of her secret life as a prostitute, a blogger with the pseudonym Belle de Jour had a backstory worthy of a movie script. In fact it was turned into a Showtime TV series. She wanted to have a satisfying next chapter of her life story so she wrote about it. You see she’s “a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.”

Few of us lead a startling double life yet we may want to play a new part in the next chapter.

To create fresh scenes for your life, view it as a movie story. That’s what Donald Miller did when he wrote A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.  Screenwriters know that in a movie a Character is What He Does. An Inciting Incident must happen.

If you are restless with your life why not evoke such an incident to turn your next chapter into the kind of adventure story you want for your life? That’s what I’m embarking on, in a halting way. Four friends are on this path with me and it would be great to have you join us.

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it,” wrote Hannah Arendt yet we do define ourselves by the spin we put on the stories we tell.

Here are some steps.

1. Recognize the Story of Your Life So Far

How we cobble together the incidents in our lives and create a narrative thread reflects that spin, revealing our hidden personalities and our tendencies suggests psychologist Dan McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. To put it starkly, McAdams believes there are two kinds of people.

There are those who view life-altering experiences as “contaminative episodes.” An emotionally positive event suddenly goes bad and that will be the way they replay future incidents.

Others, like Taylor Mali view events as “redemptive episodes” through which they can eventually redeem bad scenes, turning them into good outcomes over time and becoming better people. I feel like I do some of both. How about you?

2. Choose to Put a Positive Spin on Your Stories and Pull Others Closer

“Emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain,” writes Mindsight author Daniel Siegel.

How we feel about our past affects how we think about describing it – creating an endless loop of repeating scenes and expectations.  Seeing the patterns in our past incidents, choosing to learn from them and rejoicing in that growth can be done most naturally by shifting the theme of the stories we tell others about ourselves.  Move from contaminative to redemptive.

In this shift you create a life-affirming triple win:

1. You begin living from your strengths more often.

2. Others around you are encouraged by this emotional contagion, thus you are helping friends of your friends’ friends to see their life story in a more resilient light.

3. Reflecting resiliency in your storytelling can pull others closer as they are attracted to positivity.

Positively “integrated personal narratives are an important marker of psychological health,” according to Siegel.

Telling your stories from a resilient mindset also helps anchor that attitude in you – and more.

3. Storytelling Creates Connective Tissue Between Us

1. As you tell you often pull out stories from listeners. Stories tend to build upon each other and draw others in. They spark deeper conversations, begin to establish a common ground and build trust through that sharing.

2. Stories, by their nature, are static, action-driven and in sharing them we can move each other to act, to change.

3. Stories help to cultivate empathy, as PJ Manney points out, encouraging others to understand the perceptions and motivations of others including the storyteller.

4. A good storyteller can reduce a complex situation to its essence while cloaking it in emotionally memorable details. In so doing, stories focus our attention.

For example, if you choose to turn the page of your life story to a fresh chapter, a new adventure, you are setting yourself out on a quest. In describing this quest as a story to others, you may pull them into launching their own quest.

Stories are vital to build shared understanding. They help us make sense out of ourselves, each other and the kind of story we want co-create together as we grow our relationship.  Stories are where we create meaning in our days to endure loss and failures to have a redemptive narrative, to savor our life –with others.

See stories as oxygen in your life.

4. Follow Yourself into the Brighter Next Chapter of Your Life Story

A fun way to recognize how to tell your own interesting story is to get interested in exactly what it is about. Take one or two of Russell Davies’ suggestions to recognize what most  interests you. I’ve modified some of them to appeal to my lazy side and perhaps yours.

1. Take at one photo everyday and post it on Flickr or other place you can see your growing collection.

2. Start a daily one-sentence journal.

3. Keep a casual scrapbook – pasting in things you collect and captioning them.

4. Read at least part of a magazine, book or newspaper that outside your usual realm of interest.

5.  Interview someone for 20 minutes and observe the direction of your questions.

6. Collect something

7. Each week sit in a café or other public place for 30 minutes or an hour and listen to other people’s conversations. Take notes.

8. Each week write 50 words about something that stuck in your mind – a movie, building, sculpture, song, etc.

9. Make something and put it where you can see it or give it to the right person.

Even when shown circles, triangles and other geometric objects randomly moving about on a screen, we tend to turn them into familiar objects.  Then we instinctively attempt to determine what they mean, a study found.

Two examples:

1. “When asked what they had been watching, the subjects used words like ”chase” and ”capture.” They did not just see the random movement of shapes on a screen; they saw pursuit, planning, escape.”

2. They “spontaneously endowed the geometric figures, on the basis of their motions, with ‘human’ properties. The larger the triangle shown, the more likely it would be seen as ‘aggressive, war-like, belligerent, mean, angry, etc.’”

Whether we love, dislike or don’t know someone, when we see that person doing something we instantly try to figure out what it means. Every apparently minor remark or action causes us to do this.

The difficulty usually happens when we project onto that person what she or he intends by that action. It is rare that we take a moment longer to step into their shoes to see what their action means to them (even if they may not be conscious of it).

The best way to see what it means is to recall what it meant when that person acted that way in the past. A pattern of action, tied to that person’s intention, is usually accurate.  That’s why it is especially valuable when seeing people for the first time, to keep an open mind – before making up our minds about them.  Of course such behavior runs counter to our instinct to survive where we rush to find meaning and decide whether to flee or stay.

From the psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel who first studied our desires to see meaning, even in abstract images, we learn:

• “It is safer to mistake a twig for a snake than vice versa.

• Stories help us make sense of what’s happening but we do have a tendency to overreact to over-interpret.

• Leaders (well everybody really) should be always thinking about their actions and what stories will people be telling themselves as a result of their actions.”

My takeaway is to recognize again the value in Going Slow to Go Fast. That is to purposely pause when in a situation to look longer, to understand what that person really means before responding. I often fail at this and act too quickly.

To succeed in life and in work and to savor our time with others our first goal seems to be to bring out the better side in each other. That matters mightily if we are to get in sync. Once that person in front of you likes the way he acts when around you he is more likely to like and support you. Speaking personally, this is not a one-time lesson. Rather it is one that must be relearned, again and again.  It is all too human, to take generosity of heart for granted over time.

What better time than now to make this top-of-mind, during this holiday season?  In every situation we have the opportunity to be a Christmas light for someone.

Coincidences. Recently Daniel Johnson wrote about those in his life. Some were meaningful. Ironically I discovered his article by coincidence because he cited a story that involved my friend and how she met her husband at a party she had not intended to attend – in my village, Sausalito.  

Even today that story warms my heart and brought to mind a holiday party this year that I thought I could not attend yet unexpectedly could. There I fell into conversation with two people who will become lifelong friends I feel.

What are the coincidences that startle you?

No one in Beatrice, Nebraska, will forget what happened just prior to church choir practice on March 1, 1950.  All fifteen members of the choir were due at practice at 7:30 p.m. The minister, his wife, and their daughter were delayed when his wife decided to re-iron the daughter’s dress.

One member took longer than he expected to finish his sales report; another couldn’t get her car started; two others lingered to hear the end of an especially involving radio program; a mother and daughter were delayed when the daughter came home late from babysitting; and so on.

Ten separate and quite unconnected reasons for fifteen responsible people meant that all would be late that one night.

Fortunately, none of them arrived on time at 7:30, because at 7:35 a furnace explosion destroyed the church building. Mathematician Warren Weaver recounted the story in his book, Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability, calculating the staggering odds against chance for this uncanny event as about one in a million.

What are the stories that reverberate in your mind, then guide you?

Two people set up a woman friend on a blind date, five years apart. They were the only blind dates she ever went on. One was on the East Coast and the second on the West Coast – both with the same man.

A singer’s career changes direction from opera to musicals after he walks into the wrong audition and successfully wins a prime role.

Just when he is feeling particularly alone in the world, a man runs into a close college friend on a remote outpost on a South Pacific island.

In each of these real-life stories, coincidences changed lives. Some coincidences are almost too purposeful and too orderly to be a product of random chance – but then how do we explain them?

Synchronicity is when the coincidence has great meaning for the individuals or people who experience it.

When you experience synchronistic events, you might see them as a signal to change your life, especially if you initially resist the message as outside the usual “story” of your life.

We Make Choices Through the Stories That Stick in Our Mind, the Stories We Keep Telling Others

When you meet friends or family at the end of a day, you are often asked first, “How was your day?” Kids ask, “Tell me a story.”  Each of our lives is a story. Synchronistic events call attention to the structure of the story we are living. What if you were a character in the story of your life, but not the only author?

When external events so precisely mirror our own inner state that the impact of a coincidence cannot be ignored or its significance denied, and our lack of control over the events is indisputable, we are faced with the question: If I am not the author of my story, who is?

Synchronistic events confront us with the possibility that sometimes the stories we make up about ourselves, the stories we would like to live, are not necessarily the stories we are actually living or – to go a step further - are meant to live.

An “odd coincidence” can wake you up and point you in a new, truer direction, rather than the life path you should be on.  Synchronistic experiences can be the turning points in the plot we can use to lead our lives more meaningfully and to experience our fundamental, unavoidable, and potentially much more conscious connection with all others.

Synchronicity Can be a Way to Feel Connected to Others

Synchronicity is emerging as a phenomenon from many directions of study, as diverse as quantum physics, medicine, and astronomy. As Arthur Koestler observes in his book The Roots of Coincidence, synchronicity reflects the presumption of a “fundamental unity of all things,” which transcends mechanical causality and relates coincidence to the “universal scheme of things.”

Synchronicity is when traditional notions of causality are not capable of explaining some of the more improbable forms of coincidence and, further, when no causal connection can be demonstrated between two events but at least one person feels a meaningful relationship exists between them.

According to historian Koestler the human psyche has the capacity to “act as a cosmic resonator.” Some people believe that individuals and the universe “imprint” each other, which leads them to a belief in the ultimate ”oneness” of the universe.

Everything is “interrelated and mutually attuned,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer. 

In exploring the parallels between modern science and the mystical concept of a universal scheme or oneness, Koestler compares the evolution of science during the past 150 years to a vast river system in which each tributary is “swallowed up” by the mainstream, until all are unified in a single river-delta. The science of electricity, he points out, merged during the 19th century with the science of magnetism. Electromagnetic waves were then discovered to be responsible for light, color, radiant heat and Hertzian waves, while chemistry was embraced by atomic physics.

The control of the body by nerves and glands was linked to electrochemical processes, and atoms were broken down into the “building blocks” of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Soon, however, even these fundamental parts were reduced by scientists to mere “parcels of compressed energy-packed and patterned according to certain mathematical formulae.”

What all this reveals, then, is that there might be what Koestler refers to as “the universal hanging-together of things, their embeddedness in a universal matrix.” Many ecologists subscribe to this sense of interrelation in the world – what the ancients called the “sympathy” of life.  Some scientists are moving to this worldview.

Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigione is studies the “spontaneous formation of coherent structures”- how chemical and other kinds of structures evolve patterns out of chaos.

Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, proposed that the brain might be a type of “hologram,” a pattern and frequency analyzer that creates “hard” reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension beyond space and time. That means the physical world “out there,” is, in Pribram’s words, “isomorphic with” (the same as) the processes of the brain.

If the modern alliance evolving between quantum physicists, neuroscientists, and others is not just a short-fused phase in scientific understanding, a paradigm shift may be imminent. We might come to see a new image of the universe, that it functions not as some great machine but as a great thought – unifying matter, energy, and consciousness.

Thus, the synchronicity you see can be the confluence of forces that you, well-connected to others, are using to guide you on a fruitful path of wise choices. That could be a comforting belief for mindful “us” to carry into the year 2010.

We Aren’t Crazy to Fear Losing Control 

Synchronous events can be unnerving because they show we do not have complete control over our life patterns, and we, like all animals, fear the apparent loss of control in our lives. The fear of losing control (as when we experience coincidences that cannot be explained) makes our emotional lives threatening to our rational minds. It also challenges the assumption that we are separate from each other.

If we are open to feelings, we can feel not only our own feelings but the feelings of others as well. We then “know” that we affect each other in ways of which we cannot be completely aware.

Synchronicity brings us in direct contact with the collective unconscious, where we are in danger of losing our own standpoint while realizing the common pool of connection.

The Comfort in Feeling Connected 

Theologian Rudolf Otto described “numinosity” as that experience we have when we feel we are undeniably, irresistibly, and unforgettably in the presence of the Divine – our experience of something that transcends our human limitations. This heightened quality of feeling that accompanies synchronistic events is their most striking characteristic.

If synchronicity is, above all, a connecting principle, then the quality of feeling produced by a synchronistic event – the numinosity and psychic energy it evokes – is the medium by which such a connection is made. The symbolism of a specific incident of synchronicity shows you the place in the story of your life where you are connected with all other human beings.

What You Can Do With Synchronicity

o Have a clear vision of your path in life, and be equally open to seeing the coincidences that “tell” you to consider another direction.

o Notice how meaningful coincidences reveal your inevitable connection with everyone, even those you do not “know,” and thus you must …

o Be aware that every action you take has immediate and continuing effects on many people, even those you might never meet face-to face.

o When coincidences happen, especially those that have an emotional impact, consider what special meaning they have for you regarding your beliefs, especially about who you are and what you “should” or could be doing.

Become more conscious of:

o What you most value. 

o The best gifts you have to offer the world.

o What you can let go and stop trying to do or be.

o How many things are outside your control, no matter how hard you try. 

o How you are often supported by a common river flow of other people, if you can just recognize their commonality in the symbolism of the synchronistic events that happen in your life.

Prepare Yourself for Helpful Change

Synchronistic events are often “wake-up calls” for you to make a change in your life. How do you work with synchronicity? Be open to the meaning in what you did not want to happen. Set aside your agenda, and consider that your story should take a different turn. Consider the possible symbolism for you in the incident.

If you are in a work or personal relationship, consider the real reason you are together, what you are to learn. See how you can use the experience to tame your ego, to move to a larger perspective.

Do not rely on your own ability to control and manage events, people, and objects. The most creative and effective part of your work can emerge only when you lay aside your own agenda and permit randomness to have a place in the story of your livelihood.

If you resist the meaning of a synchronistic event, you are likely to experience similar ones again and again, until you face the meaning.

Every movement forward in life has three parts:

1. Recognition that the current situation no longer fits or works. An event can make this clear. When the event is synchronistic, we see that there might be more to our story than we thought before. Events that might be frightening or bad are, in fact, openings to a new life.

2. We enter a state of confusion and transition. We imagine how things might be different.

3. Then something happens. We get some help, our feelings become clearer. An opportunity presents itself. We take some action, and we move to a different, more satisfying way of being.

Our lives are full of meaningful events we deliberately set out to cause for ourselves in pursuing work and relationships. These are intentional actions.

Synchronistic events, however, by their very accidental nature, urge upon us another truth about our lives – a truth that we are in the habit of ignoring – that the meaning of our lives, the plot of our life stories, is not written simply by what we know about ourselves but comes from a much deeper place, from our innately human capacity to experience wholeness through living life in more aware connection with others.

When an ”accidental” twist of fate reorganizes our lives and shows us something we did not expect, we have two choices:

1. Numb out, ignore it, and move on so we’ll bump into a variation of it again and again, until we take notice.

2. Notice what it means for us and become more truly alive and connected with each other.

Which patterns of accidental meetings and conversations with others stay uppermost in your mind?  How can they guide you to open the next chapter of the adventure story you want for your life now?  

Instead of standing on a stage, one comedian at a time, humorists were leaning over their computers, waiting with bated breath for quirky Brit Tiernan Douieb to say “Go!”  In this Twitter Comedy Club experiment, drawing a crowd of 6,000 each comedian had a 10 minute act. They madly delivered their best lines in 140-characters, one after the other. Those attending the event simply had to search for tweets appearing with the event hashtag #tcgig. Some searched by smart phone and others by computer.

Out of the comedian line up came Tweets such as Mark Watson’s “My dad used to say, ‘Money: you can’t take it with you.’ Which led to some pretty boring holidays.” 

One participating comedy club, Pappy’s even created Terry Witter (@TerryWitter) a fake heckler.

Humor’s hard to create, especially under time pressure. If these comedians can generate so many ideas, crowd attention and camaraderie using this format, so can you.  This jam-packed, Twitter-based event could be adapted to other lifestyle topics (tips by and for cycling commuters, living well on less, etc.) or professional interests (customer-attracting tips by and for restaurant owners, etc.)

The bonus benefit for all participants?  The “content” that’s created by the event, generates lasting visibility for tipsters and sponsors.  Anytime you can see the ideas again as you can on the comedians’ Twitter accounts.

If you are adept at Twitter you could take on Tiernan’s role as a business. Offer to create such events for an association and/or businesses to sponsor themed events that would attract their members and customers. Such innovative uses show that, used smartly, Twitter can attract customers and potential collaborators.

Like scent, humor has extremely offensive or captivating effects on us, depending on the kind.  In the past two posts I described two kinds, unifying and divisive. The third is humorless. Are you? 

Frank Tyger suggest that, “The ultimate test of whether you posses a sense of humor is your reaction when someone tells you you don’t.” How do we get that way? “By starving emotions we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped; by repressing them we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou; encouraged, they perfume life; discouraged; they poison it, warms Joseph Collins. 

Without humor it is hard to step back to see a situation in a brighter way or come to terms with it – or to hope. “There is a sorrow in the seriousness of humorous people. They do not easily find among ideas or purposes a place of rest.  The courage in their eyes is wistful.  If they don’t even recognize sarcasm, they may lack higher cognitive skills.

A sense of humor can put you back in control. Instead of giving in to depression, a

Multiple Sclerosis patient remarked, ” One good thing about MS is I don’t have to worry about stirring my coffee anymore.”

Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl said “I would never have made it if I could not have laughed. Laughing lifted me momentarily, out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it survivable.”

Apparently humorless people usually prefer to focus on getting the task done, being good  - or other “productive behavior.” The get upset when others joke or kid instead of moving ahead.

How does that behavior compare to the other two? Well, divisive humor is often the funniest, at least at first. In making fun of someone else, we can feel superior. Plus some of the funniest lines are insulting.  Like scalpels, they cut fast and deep into even the thickest skin.

An understated way to respond to someone who is shooting divisive humor “bullets” at others is to suggest, “Never draw fire; it irritates the people around you.” Or, when you feel you must escalate, paraphrase Adlai Stevens, “Those who throw mud often get dirty.”

Unifying humor is a surefire way to break tension or conflict – especially when the specific details spark an “aha” of instant near-universal recognition.

People who use divisive humor are more likely to not keep agreements than those who exhibit no humor or who use unifying humor.

People who exhibited no humor at all were more likely than those in the other two categories to be most harsh and unforgiving in their judgments of others. They are more likely to see the world in “right/wrong” categories, thus the least able to be accepted as team players.

Most of us rationalize our use of cutting humor as harmless fun. After all, it is usually a matter of perspective, that is who is getting skewered. As Mel Brooks once wrote, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole cover and die.”

Unifying humor is healing and enables us to see the larger picture where hope is possible. Charlie Chaplin once said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long shot.”

How Do You Use Humor?

Humorist, Allen Klein began writing about humor as healing when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He offers this story: “When the naturalist William Beebe used to visit President Theodore Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill, both would take an evening stroll after dinner. Then one or the other would go through a customary ritual. He would look up at the stars saying, ‘That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is 750,000 light-years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.’

Then silence followed. Finally, one of them would say, “Now I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed.’ A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way.”

Consider the times when you’ve simply goofed, made a “silly mistake” or otherwise didn’t do the smartest thing in the situation. You have a rich reservoir of such stories from which you can draw. Have them ready in your mind to tell when you want to lighten someone else’s load and bring them closer. Those are the situations you want to share with someone when they are in an unfamiliar situation, feeling insecure, just made a mistake or feeling uncomfortable for some other reason.

Sometimes light, dry humor can brighten a dark situation. My friend Stevie Weir walked through the rain to open the door of his eagerly awaited new home to find water dripping from the entryway ceiling and said, “Every silver lining has a cloud.”

When you make a mistake you might offer this facetious advice to poke fun at yourself and your teammates, “Fool-proof implies a finite number of fools.”

“In life, as in art, it is often a matter of knowing where to draw the line.” If you overuse self-deprecating humor be mindful that you may wind up looking victim-like.

Every humorist needs an audience, and I, who can’t remember punch lines, can often play that role. My father is a natural storyteller and punster. He gets me laughing when I take myself too seriously. As my friend Adama says, “The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line” and I’m often that line.

Unexpected Humor Can Crack a Mood

Some of my favorite kinds of humor are when people can juxtapose two apparently unlikely images to make a point. In a tense meeting where I was attempting to coach the engineers in a company startup on how to describe their complex wireless portal product to potential investors in a way that was understandable, their usually patient lawyer finally broke the tension by saying, “I’m as confused as a baby in a topless bar.”

Some people may never offer a direct apology for past behavior but will sidle into atonement by using wry humor, such as, “Procrastination means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Inject Laughter Into Your Daily Life

Move to a new chapter that is the adventure story you want for your life.  Here’s one way. What role do you want to play today?  Try on the underdeveloped, perhaps unexpected facet to your “character”? Alan Funt’s classic program, “Candid Camera” and subsequent knock-offs of that show can give you ideas.

As poor students in a fellowship program, eight of us used to form a spontaneous “live theatre” group on Friday nights for free entertainment and wound up learning a lot more about ourselves and each other. We assigned “roles” to each other and then walking separately into a busy bar in San Francisco to act them out with each other.

The rules? Each person could give three attributes to another person in the group. For example, one time I was to be a very shy, kindergarten teacher who was raised in a small North Dakota town the same night another person was designated as a rich, playboy law student from a rich, old line Philadelphia family. You can imagine the scenes that unfolded.

These days you can still watch Drew Carey’s hilarious improv show, “What’s My Line Anyway” and learn some new rules to create your own spontaneous “live theatre.” I’ve found those evenings offered unforgettably fun ways to let stress roll away and see new sides of friends I thought I knew well.

Alan Weiss has a funny list of suggestions for creating live theatre in an elevator ride. One suggestion: “Have a friend with you, but act like your friend is a complete stranger. After a while, turn to your friend and say, “Wanna trade?” and switch wallets or purses.

As Norman Cousins said, “He who laughs lasts.”  How do you use unifying humor?  

… and, in some cases, save lives.  Report Websites that appear to be blocked from access at Herdict. That’s the new tool launched by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard.

In true crowdsourcing spirit Herdict is a combination of “herd” and “verdict.” Anyone with access to the Internet can help put global pressure on governments that attempt to censure news and information. The brain behind this

site is one of my heroes, law professor, Jonathan Zittrain. 

He says,  “It’s a civic technology, an attempt to get people to see themselves as global ‘netizens,’ engaged in a collective effort in producing humanity’s information medium.” 

It is not just the usual suspects like China that appear to censor online communication.  The Netherlands has “126 reports of inaccessible sites” at the time I posted this.

Avoid the Confirming-Evidence Trap

We tend to see what we want to see, and are blind to the rest of the picture.  This trap leads us to seek out information to support our existing point of view while avoiding information that contradicts it.

This bias not only affects where we go to collect evidence to reinforce a current stance or perspective, but also how we interpret the evidence we receive, leading us to give too much weight to supporting information and opinions and too little to those that are conflicting.

In one study of this phenomenon, two groups — one opposed to and one supporting capital punishment — each read two reports of carefully conducted research on the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. One report concluded that it was effective, the other that it was not. Despite being exposed to solid scientific information supporting counter-arguments, the members of both groups became even more convinced of the validity of their own positions after reading both reports.

Two fundamental and extraordinarily powerful psychological forces are at work here. Please read the next two sentences twice, as they describe two of the more subtle, pervasive ways we let our rush of first emotions bias our better, more balanced judgment. The first is our tendency to subconsciously decide what we want to do before we figure out why we want to do it. The second is our inclination to be more engaged by things we like than by things we dislike — a tendency well documented, even in babies.

What can you do about these traps? Always check to see whether you are examining all the evidence with equal rigor. Avoid the tendency to accept confirming evidence without question.

Get someone you respect to play devil’s advocate, or to build the counter-arguments yourself. What’s the strongest reason to make a different choice? The second strongest? The third?

Be honest with yourself about your motives. Are you really gathering information to help you make a smart choice, or are you just looking for evidence confirming what you think you want to do? In seeking advice from others, don’t ask leading questions that make your decision-making inclination evident.

Make sure the people from whom you want perspective are not biased by your views and can offer you truly independent information and opinions.

Recognize the Trap of Framing a Situation a Certain Way

How you make a decision is often determined by how you view your choices or how you frame the questions around it. For example, to reduce insurance costs, the neighboring states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania made similar changes in their laws. Each state gave drivers a new option: By accepting a limited right to sue, drivers could lower their premiums.

But the two states framed the choices very differently, and how the state officials framed the vehicle owners’ choices for insurance costs made a $200 million difference in how the drivers in one state chose to pay versus those in the other state.

In New Jersey, you automatically got the limited right to sue unless you specified otherwise. In Pennsylvania, you got the full right to sue unless you specified otherwise. As a result, about 80% of drivers in New Jersey chose the limited right to sue, but only 25% in Pennsylvania. A frame can establish the “status quo” or introduce an “anchor.” It can lead you to “justify past actions” or highlight confirming evidence. Two kinds of frames can distort decision-making with startling frequency.

Frame the Choice as a Gain or a Loss

People are risk averse and will look for reasons to turn down or avoid a decision where a loss, however small, is possible — even if a larger chance exists for an upside gain. People also tend to adopt the framing of the situation as it is presented to them, rather than restating the problem in their own way.

Don’t automatically accept the initial frame, whether you or someone else created it. Try to reframe the problem or opportunity in several ways to see it from different sides and envision different potential outcomes.

Also try posing decision-making situations in a neutral way that combines gains and losses or embraces different reference points. Throughout the decision-making process, ask yourself how your thinking might change if the framing changed.

Estimate Rather Than Forecast

We are all fairly good at estimating time, volume, distance, and weight, because we make such decisions frequently and get quick feedback about our accuracy. We are less experienced (and get less verification) when deciding on less certain forecasts. Weather forecasters and bookmakers have opportunities and incentives to maintain a record of their judgments to see when they have been accurate and to plan to replicate the accurate reasoning in their next decision.

We make mistakes in estimating and forecasting in one of the following three ways:

1. Overconfidence as a Way to Become Upbeat Can Lead to Mistakes

We believe we are better at making forecasts or estimates than we actually are. In one series of tests, people were asked to forecast the next week’s closing value for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. To account for uncertainty, they were then asked to estimate a range within which the closing value would likely fall. In picking the top number of the range, they were asked to choose a high estimate they thought had only a 1% chance of being exceeded by the closing value.

Similarly, for the bottom end, they were told to pick a low estimate for which they thought there would be only a 1% chance that the closing value would fall lower. If they were good at judging their forecasting accuracy, you’d expect the participants to be wrong only about 2% of the time, but hundreds of tests have shown that the actual Dow Jones average fell outside the forecast ranges 20% to 30% of the time. Overly confident about their ability to predict, most people set too narrow a range of possibilities.

2. Establish the Middle-Risk Choice

People are often overly cautious or prudent in forecasting. When faced with high-stakes decisions, we tend to adjust our estimates or forecasts “just to be on the safe side.” An extreme example is the “worst-case scenario analysis” once popular in the design of weapons systems and still used in certain engineering and regulatory settings. Using this approach, engineers designed weapons to operate under the worst possible combination of circumstances, even though the odds of those circumstances actually coming to pass were infinitesimal.

3. Don’t Let Bad Memories Warp Your Thinking

Even if we are neither too confident nor unduly prudent, we can fall into a trap when making estimates or forecasts. Because we frequently base our predictions about the future on our memories of the past, we can be overly influenced by dramatic events — those that leave a strong impression on us. Most of us, for example, exaggerate the probability of rare but catastrophic occurrences such as plane crashes because they get disproportionate attention in the media – especially with two recent, plane crashes. A dramatic or traumatic event in your own life will distort your thinking forever. You will assign a higher probability that similar things might happen to you and to others in the future.

To minimize the distortion caused by variations in recallability, carefully examine all of your assumptions. Many of these traps work, not in isolation, but in concert with each other, thus amplifying their power to distort. When we make a fast decision, thinking we are relying on gut instincts, we are often falling into a trap.

Before you spend too much time actually making a decision, take time to review how you are making it. Don’t get emotionally attached to one outcome before you’re sure your decision-making process serves you well.

One way I’ve made these traps familiar to me so I’ll recognize them in my own thinking has been to see them in situations around me. I teach a monthly lesson to four graders at our nearby school here in Sausalito. The students have already become adept and gleeful at showing examples of these traps to their parents.

As I have been writing this post over the past tweeks, I’ve noticed how pervasive these decision-making traps are in my life. I’ve seen them influencing us in advertisements. I’ve started to discount valid information from someone I distrust. I’ve seen a client refuse to change course in the face of his subordinates’ compelling case to do so. I’ve even read vivid examples of all the traps I just described in Elizabeth George’s captivating mystery book, Deception on His Mind. Staying mindful of these traps in our instinctive thinking seems require lifelong practice.

Be an opportunity maker – for and with others. Become invaluable in this time-starved, information-glutted and transient world by speaking to the sweet spot of mutual opportunity.  If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, consider attending a morning seminar I am leading for the San Francisco chapter of IABC, thanks to the remarkable transplanted Brit, Alison Harrison. (It was such fun at the Minneapolis chapter.) More than smarts, money, contacts or even charisma, your ability to spark smarter collaboration enables you to be the go-to leader. Beyond your greatest talent your most vital strength is the ability to bring out the best side in extremely diverse people to work well together. Every attendee gets a free copy of SmartPartnering. If your work involves communication you may want to join IABC and attend their idea-packed international conference here and meet experts from around the world in June. I’d love to meet more of you face-to-face. 

Here’s to living a greater life and accomplishing greater things together than we can on our own:

“It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else’s private world with our own. “  ~ Joyce Carol Oates

 “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung

“We judge others by their acts, but ourselves by our intentions.” ~ American proverb

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction then both are changed.” ~ Carl Jung

“Mutual understanding and the human touch are in inverse relationship to frequency of encounter and kinship.” ~ Yi Tuan

“A true leader is not one you look up to because they are the best. A true leader is one that draws the best out in you.” ~ Anne Warfield

“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” ~ Henrik Warfield

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”  ~ anonymous

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” ~ Samuel Johnson

“You can’t stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.” ~ Jay Leno

“In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“In the religion of love to pray is to pass, by a single word, into the inner chamber of the other.” ~ Galway Kinnell

“A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.” ~ Victor Hugo 

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.” ~ James Arthur Baldwin

“Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.” ~ Dwight Macdonald

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne “All value resides in individuals. Value is distributed in individual space. Relalationship economic is the framework for wealth creation.  Deep support is the new metaproduct. ~ Shshanna Zuboff 

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” ~ Victor Hugo

“We didn’t come over on the same ship, but were all in the same boat.” ~ Bernard M. Baruch

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.” ~ Sydney J. Harris

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies…” ~ Tom Paine

“Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” ~ Chief Seattle

“Many candles can be kindled from one candle without diminishing it.” ~ The Midrash

Attract a crowd to your event or brand by giving them bragging rights. Vicki Smith creates a post-event storyboarding experience where enthusiasts see almost moment-by-moment coverage of motorcycle events featuring the elegant Ducatis -  in a captioned sequence of photos. In short, what she dubs a “photo web story” is designed to tell the story of the event or weekend. More importantly it lets people that didn’t attend feel like they were there and potentially plan to attend the next one.” 

Last month her Ducati photo stories’ site had close to a half million page views

 of previous events. Got your attention? With Vicki’s permission, here’s her lightly-edited description of this crowd-attracting Me2We method.

The Rewards

• It’s photo journalism but without the cost restraints of traditional media so you can be much more in depth.

• These stories are quite popular, getting many web visits month after month. A yearly event I did last year in March was still getting hits in November (close to 18,000).

• Because I have been doing this for specific types of events (motorcycle events and travel related photography), and posting them all to a central area, this website now enjoys a steady traffic of people interested in motorcycles or travel. (She created popular portals for participatory photo stories around two hot interests.)

That makes Vicki a valuable spokesperson for Ducati.  What product, service, annual conference or other event, cause or issue do you want to tout  - and perhaps also be rewarded for doing so?  

Dog shows. Before and after stories like home or office renovations. What ’s your passionate interest? How can you cover events related to it, invite others to add their color commentary, then seek online and in-person sponsorships – for you would-be spokesperson and for online community?

The Methods

• People are able to comment on the galleries. Some commenters, like the Italian trip ones are largely from people that participated.

• But some event galleries were a surprise to the participants. Many people did not get to attend but heard about it from people who were there and wanted to participate. They did so by adding their comments. It helped them feel like they were there.

• It’s cost effective if you happen to be handy with a camera (I am) but even with the price of a photographer included it’s hard not to see the benefit of the ongoing promotion.

See other ways to harness technology (even if you are not a geek) to make an event more involving - and attract a larger crowd next time.