Bounded Freedom

Freedom is great. But there's no freedom or liberty without borders.
Too much freedom will cause chaos, will damage others or even yourself.


Boundaries are essential for developing ourselves and relationships with each other, for our ability to give and receive love, for spiritual growth, and for a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

However, boundaries are often violated and we ask ourselves what we can do about it.

In their book 'When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life', psychologists Cloud and Townsend show how to set reasonable boundaries in relationships.

On their website you'll gain sound advice on boundary matters.

On their website, just fill in a search word, click and simply watch the correspondent video (example) !

Example
In 'How to Have That Difficult Conversation You've Been Avoiding' the next example has been given:

Leviticus 19:17 states: "Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt"

The word rebuke here is not necessarily an adversarial word. It can mean to "reason together" or to "correct." This verse directly ties our resentment to our failure to talk to someone about something.

In addition, if we avoid confrontation, we share guilt in the problem, we are enabling the problem. To the extent that we are not talking to someone, we are part of the problem and have very little right to be as angry as we sometimes get.

Therefore you should hold someone accountable, when he does something you do not want.

Going one step further:

To the extent you allow someone to do something you resent, you are responsible for the consequences.

Laws
Cloud and Townsend have als developed some boundary principles.

As a shortcut, their Ten Laws of Boundaries :

1. Sowing and Reaping
   Our actions have consequences. Someone will bear them.
   Don’t interrupt this law by regularly bailing others out.


2. Responsibility
   We are responsible 'to', not 'for' each other.
   We are to love one another, not be one another.


3. Power
   We do not have power over other people.
   We hardly have enough power over ourselves


4. Respect
   If we wish our boundaries to be respected we must respect those of others.
   For with the measure you use, you will be measured.


5. Motivation
   We must be free to say 'no' before we can wholeheartedly say 'yes'.
   “Acts of love” are worthless if we don’t feel to have a choice


6. Evaluation
   We need to evaluate the effects our boundaries cause others.
   Hurt and harm are not the same – pain may eventually lead to growth


7. Proactivity
   Boundaries must express what you stand for, not just what you are against.
   Solve problems on the basis of your values, wants, and needs


8. Envy
   We will never get what we want if we focus on what others have.
   Envy keeps us empty and unfulfilled


9. Activity
   We need to take the initiative to solve our problems.
   Don’t wait for your partner to take the first step


10. Exposure
    Boundaries must be communicated.
    Otherwise they are invisible to others

Applying these rules, looks simple, but is hard to do. However, they make the difference in life.

The best freedom is 'Bounded Freedom' !

The Real YOU

Perhaps it'll be disappointing and hard to acknowledge, but there's no objective 'Real YOU'. There's only the 'Perceived YOU', perceived by others or yourself and strongly dependent on the context you're operating in.

Here's the simple proof.

Read out loud, from top to bottom, the next three characters:


This was quite simple, wasn't it?
Let's go to step two.

Now read out loud, from left to right, the next three characters:



Now read out loud the character in the middle:



The middle character
The character in the middle isn't just the letter 'B' nor is it the number '13', it has the potention of being both. Only when it is 'perceived', it takes a definitive value (appearance), depending on the character context and the characteristics of the perceiver.

If the context is a story or a literal phrase, the character will be perceived as the letter "B". If the context consists of numbers, the character will be perceived as number "13".

No context?
What if there is no context (not possible) or very little and we show up just the character in the middle?

In general, apart from context, a perceiver P Rates or measures a target T on an attribute X can be defined as:

R_x(P,T,R) = Perceiver effect + Target effect + Relationship effect + Constant

In case with no context and very little Target- or Relationship Effect, the perception depends (almost) totally on the identity and experiences of the perceiver (Perceiver Effect).

If the perceiver is a writer or has a non-science background, the character will probabely be perceived as the letter "B". In case of a scientist, or mathematician, the character will mostly be seen as the number "13".

The Real YOU
Now with you, yourself, it's just the same. There is no objective or context-independent "Real YOU". There is no YOU without others. There's only the YOU that's perceived by others or yourself (self reflection).

So think twice about how you pick your context (friends, social environment, employer, town). If you don't like the way people perceive you, change or reprogram your habits and consider picking a new 'context'.

Quantum mechanics
In fact the same principles as in "quantum mechanics" apply:

• If you measure 'light' as a wave, you'll perceive it as a wave.
• If you measure 'light' as a particle, you'll perceive it as a particle.
• If you would have 'measured' it as anything els, like 'weight', 'energy' or a 'potato', it would have been perceived as 'that' as well.

So the question is not whether 'light' is a wave or a particle. 'Light' is neither, it has only 'wave' of 'particle' properties (attributes).

Back to YOU
It's the same with people that have a perception of YOU. They'll value you at their biased percepted properties. Just like yourself, they'll never get to know the ultimate 'real you', it simply isn't there.

So this means the real YOU is mainly the YOU IN OTHERS (apart from your narcissistic biased self). That's why it's so important to choose friends in life that believe in YOU.

Only real friends will accept you without conditions. They recognize and reflect your initial intentions in life ( You=Me principle) and therefore accept to live an fight with all of your good an bad (perceived) 'properties' (personality, habits, etc).

The real you is 'there'
Don't get mixed up now you found out the 'real you' doesn't 'exist'. It only means the 'real you' isn't perceivable, visible or knowable (only the attributes).

The real you is out there where no living human being has access to (let's cal it the i-dimension). It's very valuable, enjoy it in life, it's a gift.......

Cross View Quadrants

When you're balanced in life, the 'art' is to keep it that way.
The Cross View Quadrant (CVQ) helps you to stay dynamically balanced.



This is how CVQ helps:

• Just ask your best friend(s) to write down your best and improvable (worst) capabilities (character, skills, competences) on paper.
• Independently, write down yourself, what you think your best and most improvable capabilities are.
• Now draw a cross table (4 quadrants) of the two papers.

How to deal with the four quadrants to keep balanced or improve your relationship?

A. Quadrant ++
This quadrant contains your positive capabilities that you and your friend agree on.

Enjoy those capabilities and be sure to spend enough time with each other to keep sharing them with your friend.

However, if both of you only find positive points and no differences, be aware. The risk that both of you are too entangled and have developed a follies a deux is substantial. If, in the future, the environment changes, differences will show up.
Go back and try to find minor or weak qualities, if necessary discover yourself with help of the core quality test.

B. Quadrant - -
This quadrant contains your negative or most improvable capabilities you and your friend agree on.

Together with your friend try to find out, if it's realistic or desirable to improve your capabilities or not. If not, confirm, accept - and sometimes - even learn to enjoy them. If improvable, ask for your friends help and feedback to improve your capabilities.

C. Quadrant + -
This quadrant contains positive capabilities that you think you have. However your friend doesn't recognize or mention them, or even thinks they're your weakest points.

There are several ways to deal with this:

1. You're sure of this strong point, but your friend doesn't like it
   Be sure this is really a strong capability, by checking with other friends. If so, learn to accept and respect your friends flavor. Keep this point in your pocket and save it for other friends. Don't try to convince your friend (in hours of discussions) of this strong quality of yours, it could start to undermine your relationship.
   
   
2. Your friend criticizes your best quality as weak
   Try to find out if you're 'over the hill' and what originally was a fine quality has become 'too much of a good thing'.
   Anyhow, keep more of this quality respectful in your pocket.
   
   
3. You haven't been able to demonstrate your strong point yet
   Simply show it!
   
   

D. Quadrant - +
This quadrant contains positive capabilities your friend recognizes in you, but you don't think you have them, experience them as negative or are unconscious about them.

This is the most trickiest quadrant. Let's discuss the options:

1. You're unconscious of the strong points addressed
   If you were unconscious of the strong points addressed by your friend, think why? Now you are aware of this quality, enjoy it, don't go 'demonstrating' it, but keep using it spontaneously and in a relaxed way.
   
   
2. You think this positive point is not (that of) a quality of yours
   It's tricky to mention and discuss this, certainly in a business relationship.
   
   Most promotions and appointments are done by bossing bosses who think they know you well. They have a positive biased view on your capabilities. Moreover, they often select you because they notice that you have the same qualities as they have.
   
   By discussing your qualities, your boss could become disappointed because it now turns out he had the wrong view. He might also think that you and he are not 'on the same page', or he might even be offended.
   
   So if your boss thinks you're super intelligent, a top sales executive or a born leader, think twice before you disappoint him by denying or discussing it.
   
   Try to listen and find out why your boss thinks the way he does. This might give you a new sight on yourself.
   
   

Success in applying the CVQ in business and life!

Freeware: Table to Excel converter

Do you recognize this? Sometimes you spend hours copying a simple table from a WORD-document, Internet Page or PDF-file to your (Excel) spreadsheet.
What should take about two minutes work, ends in frustration. Finally you decide to fill your spreadsheet by hand.

These times are over. With the next simple javascript application, called

Table Converter

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Success!

The price of knowledge

Sometimes difficult questions have easy answers, just like some complex problems have simple solutions.

Last night the TV-set got stuck. No signal, nothing. Self fixing failed.

Within 15 minutes 'TV Repair Services' knocked at my door. An old guy came in. After a short "Where?" I showed him my antique TV-set. For a moment he glanced at the dead set and after a simple "Ah.." he took a small hammer out of his bag and precisely tapped on the top left side of the set. Within a second the TV was back on.

"That'll be $ 25.25" he said dryly.

"$ 25,25 !", I stuttered back, "Just for tapping with this hammer? Can you specify that?"

"Yeh", he replied, "that's 25 cents for tapping with the hammer and 25 dollar for knowing where to tap".


As always in life: Knowledge has its price.

Next time you have a TV breakdown, don't mix things up by hammering yourself or hiring a next door 'hammer man'.
It's not about the hammer, it's about the knowledge and experience of people that help you.

So if you take advice for a complex (financial) matter, don't bother paying a substantial fee for a sound and simple advice. And never ever hire amateurs. Remember the old saying:

If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys

On the other hand, just paying respectable fees doesn't guarantee a sound advice at all. So always hire a real trusted professional and ask for credentials.

Sometimes even free advices raise our level of knowledge.....

Picture source: Arlington

Born Good or Bad? Polya helps

Were you born 'Good' or 'Bad'? The answer to this question can be given with help of mathematics!

Let's start with a simple model. When you were born, you had only a limited number of experiences. Let's assume you came to earth quite neutral, with one 'Good' (G) and one "Bad" (B) experience.
At this point in time, your (still unconscious) attitude and therefore expectation of a 'Good' (B) outcome of your next experience, will be 50%.

In line with the expression "You'll always reap what you sow" (Gal 6:7), or associative translated "You'll become what you X" (with X ='Think', 'Eat', 'Are', etc.)", your next experience will indeed turn out to be equally G or B.

Let's assume that providence decided, the outcome is G. Now you've become a more optimistic person. Your experience-bucket is filled with two G's and one B (experience), so your subjective 'colored' outlook on G's is 66,66% (2/3=[2 G's/(2 G's + 1 B)]) . You also look back on a relatively Positive Life Score of PLS=66,66% G's.
Would you have experienced a 'B score' instead, it would be the other way around and as a potential pessimist your outlook and PLS would have been lowered to 33,33% .

But happily you're a 66,66% (!) G-Score-optimist and life goes on. According to the same principles, the probability of scoring a new G-experience is now 66,66% instead of 50%.

As you may already notice, your PLS will more and more develop according your personal historical G- an B-experience track record.

A few questions that may rise, are:

• Does your Positive Life Score (PLS) has a limit? And if so, what's that limit?
• Once you're in a pessimistic phase, what are the changes of getting out?

Here's were the help of a great mathematician, George Pólya, comes in, by modeling the above situation in what is called:

Polya's Urn model
An urn contains G₀ Green (Good) and B₀ Black (Bad) balls. One ball is drawn randomly from the urn and is then placed back in the urn together with an (extra) ball of the same color.

Our Good&Bad exercise turns out to be a simplified two color Polya Urn Model (G₀=1,B₀=1) that is part of a large family of General Urn Models.

Properties
It turns out that this model has the following (translated)properties:

• On any given moment in your life if you do not know what kind of balls have been drawing before, the expectation of drawing a Good or Bad ball (experience) is always G₀ =G0/(G₀ +B₀) =50%.
  
  
• On any given moment in your life, gaining a Good or a Bad experience depends on the track record of G&B experiences in your life. So if you've experienced G Good experiences and B Bad experiences, your changes of experiencing a next Good experience are equal to the track record of your Positive Life Score : PLS_(G+B)=G/(G+B)
  
  
• The relative influence of a G or B experience on the PLS decreases rapidly as the number of total experiences increases. Your PLS has a definitive limit in (life)time with equal changes of outcome on the interval [0,1].
• As is clear from some simulations, the first 10 to 20 experiences in our life determine whether we'll become an optimist (PLS_(∞)> 0.75) or an pessimist (PLS_(∞)<0,25).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Moreover, the first 5 to 10 experiences in your life already determine the direction of our PLS in life. This means that our parents and teachers have an important role in guiding us in our baby and youngster phase to a positive balanced number of experiences (a more than average PLS).
  
  For example if on a given moment in life you have had 4 Bad experiences and 1 Good, the probability of having a next Good experience is 20%. What's more frustrating is that the probability in this case to get in three steps to a 50% level is only about 3% (=1/5*2/6*3/7) . This illustrates the heavy responsibility of our parents and teachers.
  
  That's why it's for example so difficult to change your religion. Once the first 50 religion experiences have been brought in by your parents, it's hard to change from Budha to Allah or Christ, or the other way around.
  
  
• Once a more than average PLS is achieved, we're more likely to absorb a Bad experience without getting unbalanced. Parents and teachers can 'let go'.

Keep in mind, Polya's Urn is only a think-model to help you to become aware of the important mechanisms that play a role in becoming 'who you are' or 'what you'll be'.

Change?
Once you become experienced in life and your PLS direction has been set, you can only change this by either a Professional De or Re-programming (PDR) or a, what is called, Life Changing Experience (LCE). In PDR Bad experiences are taken away (i.e. out of the urn) and replaced by Good experiences, to regain trust and a higher confidence (PLS) level. In LCE's, your environmental or physical circumstances suddenly chance in such a way that you are forced to experience only just B (or just G) experiences. Another LCE is created by the change of context. What before were B experiences now turn out to be G experiences (or the other way around).

What if?
There are many other aspects that could be studied in relation to the Polya model. For example:

• What would be the effect if an experience is not just only Good or Bad, but a mix.
• What if a 'Good experience' doesn't trigger extra positive confidence (an extra G) but a negative experience (an extra B).

The answer in both cases is that almost always the PLS-limit=50% !, in other words: You'll become average.

But how does a little bit of extra Bad (or Good) influence the PLS limit? If you want to experiment and learn more about Good and Bad, go and visit Polya's Urn Experiment or look up the Math behind Polya's Urn

Math helps us to discover who we are or what we become...

Our Beat

From the moment we were born, 'our beat' has been set.

No matter what we do or say, 'our beat' in life go's on. No matter who we are or pretend to be, we're not able to oversing or shout down 'our beat'.

In every phase of life we play a different tune. As baby sometimes clumsy, but charming. As a child ambitious, but still fuzzy. As adult classic and convincing, as if we have become 'our tune' instead of 'our beat'.

But we're neither the notes we play, nor the space between them. Our tune plays on the background and 'our beat' keeps leading, whether we like it or not. Others may help us to find out in life what other tunes fit 'our beat', but they wont be able to change 'our beat'

Until finally 'our beat' slows down and we have to face our final moment, when 'our beat' transforms our tunes, guided by angels, in a new universal image, that'll beat(le)s you.

You won't stay beatless, and you can't beat 'your beat' in life, but you may try.

Now with this in mind listen to the next song. Can you distinguish the tune from the beat, the baby form the adult, life form death?


Try me 2 |

Your life in 5.16 minutes...
(Play it loud on professional stereo equipment)

---

Client Lifetime Value (CLV)

In a Harvard Business Review called "Why satisfied customers defect", Jones & Sasser explain that even a 80% 'satisfied clients score', is no guarantee for sustainable success.

Common management misconceptions are:

1. A client satisfaction level below complete or total satisfaction is adequate.
2. It's not profitable to invest in changing customers from 'satisfied' to 'completely satisfied'.

Their conclusion is that, in most cases, 'complete customer satisfaction' is key in order to secure customer loyalty and generate sustainable financial performance.

Loyalty & Satisfaction
Despite of what sometimes intuitively is assumed, the relationship between loyalty and satisfaction is in most cases not linear, but depends on the competition level of a specific market segment.

In a Dutch presentation, called "CRM Myths", direct marketing professor Janny Hoekstra confirms this relationship and shows that even 'satisfied clients' are in the so called 'indifference zone'.

The 'art of client management' is obviously to create 'Apostles' and to avoid creating 'Terrorists'.

So stimulate, instead of discourage, your clients to give you feedback and to complain, because this is the only way to create new apostles.

NPS
A relatively new and, according to Harvard (The One Number You Need to Grow), probably better method to measure client loyalty is the 'Net Promoter Score' (NPS). Simply score your clients on a 0-10 points scale on the question: "Would you recommend company X ?'

Now simply calculate the NPS score (%) as:
NPS = Promoters% (rating 9&10) - Detractors% (rating 6 or less)

NPS scores of 75% or more prove world class loyalty.

Loyalty effect
Another, intuitively driven, perception is that the more customers are loyal, the more they generate profit.

In general this seems true, however as Hoekstra shows: not every 'more loyal' client is also per definition 'more profitable'.

Just like Reinartz (Insead) stated in his article : 'Not all custumors are equal'.

Reinartz defines different client groups called: Butterflies, Strangers, True Friends and Barnacles.

Each group urges a different approach in a Customer Client Strategy.

Investing in 'True friends' appears essential and eventually pays out.



Customer Lifetime Value
Actuaries that combine marketing an actuarial sciences could help by defining and calculating what is called: The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The CLV of a specific client(group) could be defined as the discounted value of the yearly margin (m = profits - costs), with discounting rate (i) and the (client) retention rate (r).

CLV:Rule of thumb
In the strongly simplified case with constant margin, the CLV - as a rule of thumb - could be defined as the margin (m) multiplied with the so called margin multiple = r/(1+i-r).

Example: Discount rate = i =12%, Retention rate = r = 90%, results in a CLV of approximately 4 times the yearly margin.

As is clear from the formula and table above, the choice and impact of the discount rate is only significant in combination with a high (>90%) retention rate.

Modeling and creating Client Value is not only in the interest of the shareholder, but moreover a case of creating creating added value for clients, in particular 'best satisfied clients'.

More info at: Modeling CLV(insurance), Customer Metrics