My old Internet friend, the Gentle Giant of NLP, Quentin Grady, died over a year ago, on June 7, 2010, after a long and valiant struggle with cancer.

For you who knew him, there’s nothing I can say that could inspire you to appreciate him more than you already do. You know he was an amazing man.

For those who didn’t know him… I grieve your loss as much as I do my own. You could read over 1200 of Quentin’s Usenet posts from alt.psychology.nlp if you wanted to get a feel for who and what he was.

If this is the first you’ve heard of Quentin’s death, I’m sorry to have waited so long to pass it on.

Visit Quentin’s Memorial Web site and leave a comment.

RIP Quentin Grady originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2011-07-24 (Sunday).

I’m a T2 diabetic and have been for about seven years. A month after diagnosis, the clinic nurse informed me that the doctor wanted to talk to me after surgery closed. It transpired that in 25 years of being a GP, he had not encountered any other patient who had made such a rapid improvement in their blood glucose levels. He wanted to know how I had achieved it. This amazed me since all I had done was apply my scientific training to the situation. Diagnosis encouraged me to adopt a more scientific approach than most people do to avoid what are quaintly known as the ‘complications’ of T2 diabetes. Along the way I began to use my teaching ability and scientific background to make new discoveries more accessible to the public via the internet, by posting on alt.support.diabetes. In the years that followed I discovered a recurring pattern. Other T2 diabetics were being rung up by their doctors in the weekend, expecting the worst, only to be told that they too had achieved remarkable results doctors had not seen before.

Read more at Nutrition for Blokes and order a copy for yourself.

Nutrition for Blokes originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-10-6 (Monday).

A quick Googling showed they were created by artist Jean-Luc Cornec for the Museum of Telecommunication in Frankfurt, Germany.

Pattern Interrupt! originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-08-15 (Friday).

I think the assumption that “everything will work out for the best” is delusional. Optimists ignore the things that are going poorly rather than dealing with them, so as to perpetuate their delusion.

Keep in mind that I hold the same sort of opinion of pessimism. Pessimists ignore what is going well, thus failing to build on success. I don’t fight a war on pessimism because most of Western culture already does that:

P: “Keep sailing toward that waterfall and we’ll all die!”
W: “Oh, stop being so negative!”

Each side has advantages. For example, optimists keep going in the face of adversity, and they therefore win more often; pessimists give up too soon. Pessimists tend to be right more often, and when they’re wrong they get to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

It’s fortunate for me, since I disagree with both, that they aren’t the only two available options. It’s possible to take the strengths from each while leaving their weaknesses behind. I’ve taken to calling it “paying attention,” but I’m sure there’s a more interesting label. Take this excerpt from John Morgan’s recent article, If It Could Only Be Like It Never Was:

Each time you pretend the dirty clothes aren’t there, the pile gets bigger until you have a dreaded mountain of clothes to wash. If you wash clothes every day, you’ll never have a pile bigger than your perceptions can handle. The same is true for life’s dirty clothes. They do exist and they need to be acknowledged. When we practice washing them on a regular basis, the quicker they wind up in the clean pile.

(Thanks for the tip to that article, T.)

My personal hero in this arena is my old friend Quentin Grady. Few have gone through, and responded thoroughly to, the adversity he’s faced while maintaining a determination to bring out the good in himself and in others. I aspire to be like him in that aspect, and I love the guy. In a manly, macho, we-play-on-the-same-rugby-team sort of way, of course.

So… hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Pray to God and row away from the rocks. Build on success and mitigate losses. You can choose both.

The War on Optimism originally appeared on NLPhilia Blog on 2008-05-19 (Monday).