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Mental Models

Availability Heuristic: Our Preference for the Familiar

May 27, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Availability Heuristic: Our Preference for the Familiar and Readily Available Information The availability heuristic is a cognitive bias that can lead people to rely on readily available information or emotionally charged and inherently interesting examples when making decisions or judgments. Essentially, individuals tend to overestimate the probability of events that are easy to recall or that they’ve personally experienced, while underestimating the likelihood of less memorable or less frequent events.

In other words, the ease of retrieval of a misleading cue may make people rely on evidence not because it is dependable but because it is memorable or striking and thus psychologically available to them. They may do so even if the evidence is not logically acceptable or does not logically support their decision.

Doctors often depend on recalling their past dramatic cases and mistakenly apply them to the current situation. People may overestimate the crime rate in their community based on news coverage, even though crime rates may be relatively low. People may dismiss the reality of climate change if they’ve recently experienced a cold winter or heard of a cold snap in a particular region, even though global warming is a long-term trend. Individuals are more likely to purchase insurance after experiencing a natural disaster than before it occurs. In each of these scenarios, the vivid and emotional evidence feels more persuasive rather than it being the most accurate or reliable information.

The availability heuristic can also shape people’s perceptions of air travel safety and lead them to believe that flying is more dangerous than it really is. Airplane accidents are often sensationalized and highly publicized by the media, making them more memorable and more prominent in people’s minds. This can cause individuals to perceive the risk of flying much higher than it actually is, leading them to avoid air travel even though it is statistically one of the safest forms of transportation. In reality, many less vivid and less memorable (i.e., psychologically unavailable) things are much more dangerous than air travel, such as falling down stairs, drowning, choking, and accidental poisoning.

Avoid falling prey to the availability heuristic and making serious misjudgments about the risks associated with different situations. Acknowledge that personal experiences and recent events may not accurately reflect the overall reality of the situation.

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Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Aviation, Biases, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Problem Solving, Psychology, Risk, Thinking Tools

The Longest Holdout: The Shoichi Yokoi Fallacy

May 22, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In 1972, while hunting near the Talofofo River in Guam, two cousins from the village of Talofofo were startled by rustling sounds emanating from the tall reeds. Initially, they assumed it was an animal or a hidden child, but to their surprise, they came face to face with an elderly and disheveled man clutching a shrimp trap. This unexpected encounter took aback the hunters, and after some initial confusion, they captured the man and escorted him back to their makeshift jungle home, about an hour’s walk away. The old man pleaded with the cousins to end his life.

Shoichi Yokoi, the WWII Japanese soldier who held out in Guam That fugitive turned out to be Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese soldier. During the latter stages of World War II, Yokoi served in the supply corps of the Japanese army stationed on the island of Guam. In 1944, when General Douglas MacArthur’s troops invaded and reclaimed control of the island, Yokoi retreated into the dense jungle. There, he sought refuge in an underground cave and remained hidden for 28 years, living as a determined survivor under harsh conditions.

Yokoi sustained himself by inhabiting a tunnel-like cave he had carved amidst the thick foliage, relying on a diet of nuts, fruits, shrimp, frogs, and rats. He fashioned his clothing by skillfully weaving tree bark strips and using the moon’s phases to track time. In 1952, he chanced upon a leaflet announcing the war’s end, but he and his fellow soldiers dismissed it as enemy propaganda, choosing not to surrender. Over time, all of Yokoi’s comrades perished due to starvation or illness, or were captured.

Loyalty Without a Glance Can Shroud the Mind in Ignorance

Yokoi remained firmly convinced that his fellow soldiers would eventually come to rescue him, and he clung tenaciously to this belief. Surrender was out of the question, as he later explained, “We Japanese soldiers were taught to choose death over the shame of being taken alive.” (Additionally, stragglers like him believed that returning to Japan was impossible, fearing they would be branded as deserters and face the death penalty.)

In 1972, Yokoi finally returned to Japan, where he was hailed as a national hero. Upon his arrival in Tokyo, he famously declared, “It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive,” echoing the indoctrination he had received before the war. For the older generation, he symbolized greatness, embodying the prewar values of diligence. However, for the younger generation, he represented an awkward reminder of outdated ideals. Being captured and surviving was deemed cowardly, as the ideal soldier made the ultimate sacrifice for the divine emperor, even at the cost of his own life.

Yokoi’s remarkable story of surviving in the jungle captured the imagination of the Japanese people. The country was undergoing an industrial boom, and many were fascinated by his ability to endure on a meager diet and his resourcefulness in creating clothing from tree bark. Yokoi even returned his army-issued rifle to “the honorable emperor,” expressing his embarrassment at having returned alive rather than dying in service to the emperor. He regretted not having served his majesty to the fullest.

However, Yokoi never quite felt at home in modern society. Before his conscription in 1941, he had been an apprentice tailor, and now, he found himself overwhelmed by the changes that had occurred during his absence. He subsequently led a quiet life as a hermit, becoming a popular television personality and advocating for a simple way of life. He traveled across the country, delivering public lectures criticizing Japan’s “wasteful modern lifestyle” and championing values of thrift and self-reliance. He was deeply admired for his unwavering determination, his spirit of ganbaru (“enduring adversity without giving in,”) and his unwavering commitment to traditional values.

The Longest Holdout: The Shoichi Yokoi Fallacy

Embrace the Gifts That Doubt Can Bring. Let Enlightenment Take Flight.

Overall, Yokoi spent 27 years in isolation in the jungles of Guam, stubbornly holding onto his identity as a Japanese soldier long after the war had ended. In doing so, he squandered his life by adhering to ideals that held no significance for anyone else, sacrificing his relationships, career, and personal happiness to pursue the Japanese principle of ganbaru, or unwavering perseverance.

There reaches a point where virtue, taken to the extreme, can transform into a vice. Shoichi Yokoi personified this fallacy. We often admire the act of unwavering commitment, but we tend to lose sight of the underlying reasons behind it due to the blinding effects of rigid adherence.

Beware of blind devotion to any ideology that promotes rigid and restrictive beliefs. Do not overestimate the value of your morals beyond their practical utility, and be receptive to changing your perspective when circumstances demand it. This requires reevaluating your priorities and recognizing that what you once cherished may no longer align with your desires or aspirations. When faced with new information or situations, consider the possibility of altering your stance. There is a difference between sticking to your principles and being imprudent.

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  5. The Loss Aversion Mental Model: A Case Study on Why People Think Spirit is a Horrible Airline

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Attitudes, Biases, Mental Models, Persistence, Persuasion, Philosophy, Psychology, Thought Process, Wisdom

How to … Change Your Life When Nothing Seems to be Going Your Way

May 4, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Stay Positive When Nothing Is Going Your Way

Recollect what it means to be human: we go through ups, downs, shortcomings, triumphs, losses, confidence, and apprehensions are all just a part of life. While unpleasant, failure is also a common and essential element of life. Bearing failure with equanimity is more likely to help you find success and get what you want.

Next, think about something that’s challenged you in the past and consider how you’re better off for having been through that experience. When you acknowledge you’ve overcome setbacks before, you can recognize that you can—and will—weather this one, too.

Ponder about whatever challenges you presently and see if you can reframe it. Try to perceive it as an opportunity for growth and consider what gifts could come from this experience. Visualizing successful outcomes is the best way to reset or repurpose your goals.

Idea for Impact: Developing resiliency isn’t easy, but excessive rumination and dwelling on past failures for longer than necessary will keep you stuck. When things aren’t going your way, challenge yourself to find any upsides, no matter how small. Find the good in the less-than-ideal. You’re more likely to get unstuck by trying a low-risk baby step forward.

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Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Adversity, Attitudes, Discipline, Emotions, Mental Models, Motivation, Resilience, Success, Wisdom

Knowing When to Give Up: Establish ‘Kill Criteria’

March 27, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Quit When to Walk Away' by Annie Duke (ISBN 0593422996) Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022) by the professional poker player and “decision scientist” Annie Duke meditates on how you could become so wedded to some predetermined goals that you don’t reassess your ever-evolving values and priorities based on new information that you may unearth along the way.

Quitting isn’t bad, especially if you’re blindly heading toward a “fixed object goal” that’s perhaps no longer serving your values—even hurting you in some way you didn’t anticipate.

A Mental Model to Help You Cut Your Losses

Duke suggests instituting “kill criteria” in advance. Before a pursuit, ask yourself: what signals you could see in the future would tell you it’s time to quit or change course?

How to Quit Well Using Kill Criteria

Before entering a marathon, for example, you could decide if the medical tent counsels that you’re hitting your physical limitations, you’d quit trying to push yourself and walk out.

In other words, every goal needs a resolute “unless” for every task, investment, and relationship. E.g., if you’re miserable at your job, you could give it three more months and pre-select some indicators that would tell you if things haven’t improved even after you’ve increased your efforts.

Idea for Impact: Know when to give up. Grit is great—but only for carrying on for hard things that are worthwhile. Beware of tunnel vision; don’t get so narrowly focused on a specific goal and overlook other opportunities or priorities.

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Filed Under: Mental Models, Project Management Tagged With: Biases, Conflict, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Discipline, Mental Models, Persuasion, Thought Process

What You Most Fear Doing is What You Most Need to Do

March 24, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

What You Most Fear Doing is What You Most Need to Do Sometimes when you’re anxious about things, you tend to push them out of your grasp. Instead of evading from frustrating encounters thus, ask yourself, “What can I do that’ll make me more competent to tackle this problem?”

Don’t postpone the problem. Start with a baby step. A single, small accomplishment may promote new feelings of accomplishment and spark a sense of self-confidence. You’ll be pleased with yourself for taking charge.

When you like yourself better, you’ll begin to get more productive and improve your life in small ways, which can lead to bigger achievements.

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Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Anxiety, Discipline, Fear, Mental Models, Personal Growth, Procrastination

Three Rules That Will Decide If You Should Automate a Task

March 6, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Three Rules That Will Decide If You Should Automate a Task To check if a process or a workstream is a good candidate for being automated, see if it meets all three of these criteria:

  1. The process must be a well-oiled machine. The requirements and outcomes are well established. Is the process stable enough to be automated?
  2. The process doesn’t need someone to engage with it each time. It doesn’t need manual intervention, oversight, excessive customization, or finesse. It runs in the backdrop; it’s boring and doesn’t require ‘higher-order’ thinking. Are there decision points within the process that require human intervention?
  3. The process is time-consuming. By automating it, will you save at least 4x what you’ll invest in automating it?

If the manual process is broken or doesn’t exist, then automating it before it’s a “well-oiled machine” may lead to mistakes and unnecessary rework. Establish success with the manual workflow before attempting to automate it.

Idea for Impact: Picking which processes to automate isn’t easy; yet, the closer you observe the workflow deeply, the sooner you can understand both the happy path to automation and the exceptions.

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Filed Under: Mental Models, Project Management, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Artists, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Mental Models, Problem Solving, Productivity, Thinking Tools, Time Management

The Creativity of the Unfinished

December 8, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Bull's Head, 1942 by Pablo Picasso Don’t dot every I and cross every T. Leave a stone unturned.

Ignore a rule. Don’t tie up every loose end.

Leave some questions unanswered. Let something be out of place.

Violate the expectation and usher a realm of potentiality. As the American artist Julia Cameron noted in her seminal self-help book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (1992,) “Art needs time to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen and finally emerge as itself. The ego hates this fact. The ego wants instant gratification and the addictive hit of an acknowledged win.”

A piece of art, a movie, a melodic line, or a production all tend to be more captivating when they leave you wondering—when they urge you to explore the possibilities your mind has to offer.

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Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Artists, Clutter, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Innovation, Mental Models, Thought Process

Dear Customer, Speak Early and Have it Your Way!

September 12, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Development of the Boeing 777 Program: 'Working Together' Initiative

At the heart of every successful product is the ability to address a real need or circumstance of struggle—a “job to be done”—in consumers’ lives. Identification of this “job” happens early in the innovation process, as it forms the core insight around innovation development and execution.

Feedback-Influenced Design is a Key Point of Differentiation

Long before its current mess, Boeing was once the pioneer in aspects of product development. No example illustrates Boeing’s inventive stills than the groundbreaking Boeing 777 program, particularly in its use of iterative, paperless computer-aided design, assembly process-planning, and agile product development. Not only that, the Boeing 777 program offers the most high-profile examples of companies tapping consumers as never before to help them create new products.

Knowing very well that the secret to long-term success starts very early in the innovation process, director of engineering Alan Mulally led a “working together” initiative to organize product development around customer input. (Mulally left Boeing after not being named CEO in 2006 and engineered a dramatic turnaround at Ford Motor Co.)

Alan Mulally: Boeing 777 Program's Director of Engineering and Later Vice-president and General Manager

Concept Testing at Every Stage of Development

In the late 1980s, just as the 777 program was being launched, Mulally made a consequential decision to involve its major potential customers in the development of the aircraft specifications. Mulally made up a “gang of eight” comprising All Nippon Airways, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and United Airlines. At the group’s first meeting in January 1990, Mulally’s team distributed a 23-page questionnaire asking what each customer wanted in the design. Within two months, Boeing and the airlines decided on a basic design configuration.

The “working together” initiative was a radical departure from the bureaucratic project organization. Internally, Boeing had become bureaucratic and department-focused. Specialists in various departments would design their parts. Then, it was up to the manufacturing team (the system integrators) to figure out how to make it all come together. It was a “throw-it-over-the-wall” environment where the disconnect was a persistent problem.

Having customer input implied that development was centered on customer needs. This would also tear down the walls between departments—designers, suppliers, and assemblers usually separated by organizations or development phases would now be engaged collaboratively and talking and collaborating in real-time.

Boeing and the In an industry where manufacturers classically designed aircraft with only token customer input. Rather than presenting the market with what Boeing perceived as their idea of what was required, customers had direct input. Over the decades, the Boeing 777 became one of the world’s most successful commercial aircraft and continues to be the workhorse of many a customer fleet.

Idea for Impact: Create Something People Want

Whether selling products or services, fast food, or experiential travel, the most innovative companies organize their offerings around customers’ needs. From the very beginning, they tap consumers as never before to help them create new products, and they’re embedding customer knowledge into the business. Early and frequent feedback is one way to cope with the pressure for shorter product cycles and to be prudent about not investing time and resources in unpromising ideas. It also augurs well for the experiences-over-possessions shift in consumer values.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Loss Aversion Mental Model: A Case Study on Why People Think Spirit is a Horrible Airline
  2. Your Product May Be Excellent, But Is There A Market For It?
  3. Books in Brief: ‘Flying Blind’ and the Crisis at Boeing
  4. Turning a Minus Into a Plus … Constraints are Catalysts for Innovation
  5. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leading Teams, Mental Models, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Aviation, Creativity, Innovation, Leadership Lessons, Marketing, Mental Models

The Loss Aversion Mental Model: A Case Study on Why People Think Spirit is a Horrible Airline

August 11, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Why People Think Spirit is a Horrible Airline---Loss Aversion Mental Model

When Spirit Airlines pivoted to competing on price in the late 2000s, it quickly gained a reputation not only for operational inefficiencies but also for its in-your-face, take-it-or-leave attitude towards customer service.

Where other airlines charged by-the-package fares for the flight experience, Spirit pared back service and introduced an a la carte pricing model. Charging for the “ancillaries”—i.e., everything optional, including water—allowed Spirit to keep ticket prices down and appeal to price-sensitive travelers willing to sacrifice the usual amenities for a lower ticket price.

In the ensuing years, the unconventionality of this business model did not go down well with customers. Much of the flying public’s frustration with Spirit had to do with Loss Aversion. That’s the notion that the emotional disappointment of a loss is more extreme than the joy of a comparable gain. If finding a cheaper fare on Spirit felt delightful, giving up some—or all—of the savings to purchase ancillaries and surrender the savings felt utterly miserable.

Passengers felt ripped off by these seemingly hidden fees, especially when the true cost of flying Spirit ended up greater than what the initial ticket price led them to believe.

Spirit 101---Spirit Airlines Perception Problem Spirit became quickly convinced that there was a perception problem—its customers didn’t fully understand how its fares work. Particularly, first-time customers blindly presumed that Spirit Airlines works the same way as other airlines. In reality, there were no hidden or excessive fees, and passengers could only pay for what they need or want. In 2014, the airline introduced its “Spirit 101” campaign to educate customers and alter their perceptions. With time and the increased adaptation of the “Basic Fare” model and curtailed customer service by every other airline, passengers’ expectations have since been right-sized. Spirit Airlines has come a long way, and its customer service has improved vastly.

Further studies on loss aversion have shown that a cascade of successive fees is worse than the cumulative: i.e., three ancillary fees that add up to, say, $70, feel a lot worse than a single $70 fee. Appropriately, Spirit offers a “Bundle it Combo” package.

Wondering what to read next?

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  4. How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235
  5. A Sense of Urgency

Filed Under: Business Stories, Mental Models Tagged With: Aviation, Biases, Customer Service, Decision-Making, Emotions, Entrepreneurs, Innovation, Marketing, Mental Models, Parables, Persuasion, Psychology, Strategy

Beware of Too Much Information

May 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Better Decisions Beware of Too Much Information Nearly all decision-making models emphasize the need for much information about the situation and options before making a decision.

Information is worthwhile, no doubt, but information can sometimes be less factual or less precise than it may seem. Besides, too much information may distract you from important issues. Scouting for additional data may cloud the picture rather than arm you with crucial information.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the usefulness and truth-value of the information you have amassed. The solution to being overwhelmed by too much irrelevant information is selecting relevant information—not merely less information.

Bear in mind that there’s always room for new ideas and new perspectives. Review and challenge your current comprehension of the problem you’re confronting. Don’t be afraid to refine your understanding and explore other possibilities.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  4. This is Yoga for the Brain: Multidisciplinary Learning
  5. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Thinking Tools

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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