3 Common #Goal Setting Mistakes

Setting and achieving goals is one of the best surefire ways to improve the quality of our lives. We commonly use goals to improve our health, relationships, financial situation, career or business success, and even happiness. Sometimes goals are set for us, as in a work situation, but most of the time we determine our own goals.

SEE ALSO: How the Act of Daily Goal Setting Makes You Successful

Successfully achieving those goals is not only key to advancing our careers, but also to help us to grow as individuals. Unfortunately, when choosing our goals, we often unknowingly sabotage our success, by committing these three very common goal setting mistakes.

Thinking Too Narrowly

One of the biggest benefits of creating goals is that they force us to focus our time, attention, and energy on a specific objective, instead of scattering our focus and our resources among the broad range of possibilities vying for our attention. When we concentrate our efforts on a specific target, we’re more likely to accomplish our goals and less time.

That said, setting a goal that is too specific, while achievable, can lead to a goal setting mistake, by missing the true intention of our goal in the first place. We fall into this common trap by thinking too narrowly, and missing the bigger picture of what we’re really hoping to achieve. Unfortunately, this often leads, to wasted effort and frustration.

Setting a goal to lose 20 pounds for example, might be very valuable to a person who is otherwise healthy, but just carries a little bit of extra weight. For others, losing 20 pounds, while appealing, is misdirected effort, when the real goal is to achieve better health. When you look at the bigger picture, losing weight might not be the most effective goal. Perhaps quitting smoking would be more valuable. Lowering cholesterol and blood pressure or reversing heart disease might be better served by changes in diet or increased activity. Though losing weight might be a byproduct, it isn’t actually the true goal.

Another example of a too specific goal might be to increase the number of sales calls or project numbers, when the real goal is to advance our career, and a more valuable goal might be to attain an advanced certification or further our education to make us more valuable to an employer. Still another to specific goal might be to find the perfect mate, when the real goal is to be happier. Even if we find the perfect mate, we won’t necessarily be happier, because we have missed the true underlying need.

Quantity VS. Quality

In our zealousness for accomplishment, we unwittingly sabotage our forward movement by setting quantity goals rather than quality goals. Quantity goals may simply mean that we have set too many goals at one time rather than focusing our attention on a single, or a select few quality goals. But perhaps more important, is the distinction between a quality goal and a quantity goal.

Quantity goals usually deal with numbers while quality goals generally deal with an improvement in our overall quality of life and work. Unfortunately, quantity goals are easier and faster to achieve so they tend to draw our interest, but often quality goals have more impact on making important changes that address our most crucial needs.

When setting goals, focus on quality rather than quantity to avoid goal setting mistakes. Also, notice if you tend to automatically gravitate to “numbers” goals. Quantity, “numbers” goals are not inherently bad, and can be very useful as long as they are also quality goals that address the bigger picture.

Unrealistic expectations

We see this common mistake time and time again. If we set a goal of finding a new job or getting a promotion but only give ourselves one month to do so, we’re just setting ourselves up for failure. Writing your first book generally takes more than six weeks, six months is a more realistic goal. Also, be sure your goals are within your control.

Being offered a new job, might not be within your control, but revising your resume, hiring a career coach, or sending out resumes and checking job postings every week is within your control. Finding an agent or publisher in a specific timeframe probably isn’t within your control, but completing a book proposal, and contacting potential agents is within your control.

keep these common pitfalls in mind When determining goals. Set goals that impact the bigger picture and address your true objectives. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking too narrowly and concentrate on quality over quantity. Make sure your goals are realistic, within your control and have a reasonable timeframe. While you’re at it, take a look at past goals that you weren’t able to achieve, see if you can revise them, and try again.

Royale Scuderi

#CNN Keeping your brain fit, by a USA #Memory Champion

By Nelson Dellis

How to build your memory palace 

CNN) How exactly does one keep their brain and memory strong and healthy? This was one of the driving questions I had when I began the quest to improve my memory and become a four-time USA Memory Champion.

I didn't want to end up with Alzheimer's disease when I got older, as my grandmother did, so I wondered, "If I keep my brain healthy and fit, could I prolong its lifespan?"

The answer is yes. Over the years of my memory studies and training, I've come up with four key pillars of brain health that I try to live by on a daily basis, and I've seen firsthand just how much of a difference even a small amount of these changes can make.

Diet: I think, therefore I am ... what I eat

As a rule of thumb, whatever is good for your body is good for your brain. There are, however, a few things to eat that may boost your memory and a few things that may hamper it.

The most convincing evidence is from the Midas Study, in which subjects 55 and older with mild memory complaints were given a daily dose of supplemental docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid that's an important structural component of the brain and is often extracted from fish oil as a nutritional supplement. When taken over six months, DHA was correlated with statistically significant improvements in cognitive function, including memory and learning.

Hack your brain to remember almost anything

Other studies have shown that berries or other foods that are high in antioxidants (goji berries, blueberries, pecans, artichokes and kidney beans, just to name a few) have strong antioxidant capacities, which can help fight the brain's high susceptibility to oxidative damage.

Although there are some proven mental health benefits to eating certain foods, when all is said and done, eating well and avoiding or limiting the bad stuff (processed foods, sugars, carbs) will do wonders for your mental clarity. There is no denying the benefits of following a healthy diet, such as improvement in focus, heightened mental acuity and, of course, a better memory.

Physical training: No pain, no gain -- to your brain

Studies on exercise and memory are far more conclusive than those on diet, and at this point, it's practically a fact that exercise benefits your brain.

Forgetful? It might actually make you smarter, study says

Aerobic exercise has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus, one of the primary brain regions for memory and cognitive function.

It's also a given that when you exercise, you generally feel better about yourself. You feel healthy, you look better, blood flow to the brain is improved (since your brain is a highly vascular organ), and your body runs better altogether. You will feel sharper and more on your game just because you were active.

Social interaction: Hanging out with the Joneses

Social interaction certainly boosts quality of life, and it can boost other things, too. For example, elderly women with larger social networks have been found to be less susceptible to dementiathan their less-connected peers.

On a more basic level, socializing involves learning things about different people and retaining that information in order to interact comfortably with them. Whether that means knowing the details of their life stories, their interests or simply how to hold a conversation without angering them, it's a way to broaden your mental frame of reference so you have more associations to help you remember.

Brain training: All aboard the brain train

The biggest memory booster of all is keeping your brain active or challenging it on a regular basis. It can be as simple as learning a new language, reading something new and difficult, learning a skill, doing puzzles or (my personal favorite, of course) memorizing.

Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter

Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.

But the hardest part about keeping your brain active on a daily basis is staying motivated to do so. We all have the potential to practice something a lot, but what we don't all have is the drive and dedication to necessarily do that practice every day. And that's fine. My point is this: Keep your brain active by doing something you are passionate about enough to do it every day.

The great thing about memory is that there are tons of daily use-cases where you can naturally practice without having to set aside time to do it. So make memory your daily brain exercise, or make it something else. It's up to you. Just make sure you challenge your brain in some way every day.

The Most #Inspiring Blog Ever: "Quotes By Highly #Successful People "

READ AND WATCH EVERY MORNING
"FOR MOTIVATION AND INSPIRATION"

It has been said, if it has been said well, why say it again.  That is what I love about quotes. Quotes are the cream at the top of glass.

The below list are quotes by highly successful people. By reading the list, I hope they will motivate and inspire you to be great today. I think we can all agree that the folks below had success and contributed to the world in some way that has had a lasting impact for society today.

Don’t be afraid to change so you can have success. 

• “Change before you have to” — Jack Welch

• “Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.” — Thomas Edison

• “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

• “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” — Winston Churchill

• “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin

Education and Personal Development will lead to success. 

• “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin

• “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.” — Dr. Seuss

• “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” — Benjamin Franklin 
  

• “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
• 
  

Winning is a must for success. 

• “Failure is just the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford

• “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” — Vince Lombardi

• “Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.” — Babe Ruth

• “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” — Lily Tomlin

Thinking big and about your future.

• “Live like no else today, so you can live like no else tomorrow.” — Dave Ramsey

• “I just want to put a ding in the universe” — Steve Jobs

• “Where you start is not as important as where you finish” — Zig Ziglar

• “Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds” — Napoleon Hill
• 
  

Former presidents words of wisdom. 

• “We cant help everyone, but everyone can help someone” — Ronald Reagan

• “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” — John F Kennedy

• “The best thing about the future is that it comes ones day at a time.” — Abraham Lincoln

• “A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.” — Harry S Truman

• “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one” — George Washington
• 
  

 Work hard. Discipline always leads to success. 

• “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” — John Maxwell

• “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”— Andrew Carnegie

• “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment” — Jim Rohn

• “There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.” — Seth Godin

• “I’ve only had two rules: Do all you can and do it the best you can. It’s the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something.” — Colonel Harland Sanders

• “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” — Ray Kroc

Faith, attitude, and living a life of success. 

• “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” — Jesus

• “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” — Richard Branson

• “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

• “Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.” — Dale Carnegie
• 
  

Let these powerful people and their powerful words inspire you today to go out and do something bigger than you were planning on doing.  If you were planning on doing something big, just do it even bigger.

READ AND WATCH EVERY MORNING

"FOR MOTIVATION AND INSPIRATION"

  YOUR LIFE WILL DRAMATICALLY CHANGE

Brian Willett

Read full profile

Montague #Semantics

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Montague semantics is a theory of natural language semantics and of its relation with syntax. It was originally developed by the logician Richard Montague (1930–1971) and subsequently modified and extended by linguists, philosophers, and logicians. The most important features of the theory are its use of model theoretic semantics which is nowadays commonly used for the semantics of logical languages and its adherence to the principle of compositionality—that is, the meaning of the whole is a function of the meanings of its parts and their mode of syntactic combination. This entry presents the origins of Montague Semantics, summarizes important aspects of the classical theory, and sketches more recent developments. We conclude with a small example, which illustrates some modern features.

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Background
  • 1.2 Basic Aspects
• 2. Components of Montague Semantics
  • 2.1 Unicorns and Meaning Postulates
  • 2.2 Noun Phrases and Generalized Quantifiers
  • 2.3 Logic and Translating
  • 2.4 Intensionality and Tautologies
  • 2.5 Scope and Derivational History
• 3. Philosophical Aspects
  • 3.1 From Frege to Intensions
  • 3.2 Compositionality
  • 3.3 Syntactic Categories and Semantic Types
  • 3.4 Pragmatics
  • 3.5 Ontology
  • 3.6 Psychology
• 4. Concluding Remarks
  • 4.1 Legacy
  • 4.2 Further Reading
  • 4.3 Example
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

---

 

 

 

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Montague semantics is the approach to the semantics of natural language introduced by Richard Montague in the 1970s. He described the aim of his enterprise as follows:

The basic aim of semantics is to characterize the notion of a true sentence (under a given interpretation) and of entailment (Montague 1970c, 223 fn).

The salient points of Montague's approach are a model theoretic semantics, a systematic relation between syntax and semantics, and a fully explicit description of a fragment of natural language. His approach constituted a revolution: after the Chomskyan revolution that brought mathematical methods into syntax, now such methods were introduced in semantics.

Montague's approach became influential, as many authors began to work in his framework and conferences were devoted to ‘Montague grammar’. Later on, certain aspects of his approach were adapted or changed, became generally accepted or were entirely abandoned. Nowadays not many authors would describe their own work as ‘Montague semantics’ given the many differences that have taken shape in semantics since Montague's own work, but his ideas have left important traces, and changed the semantic landscape forever. In our presentation of Montague semantics the focus will be on these developments.

Richard Montague was a mathematical logician who had specialized in set theory and modal logic. His views on natural language must be understood with his mathematical background in mind. Montague held the view that natural language was a formal language very much in the same sense as predicate logic was a formal language. As such, in Montague's view, the study of natural language belonged to mathematics, and not to psychology (Thomason 1974, 2). Montague formulated his views:

There is in my opinion no important theoretical difference between natural languages and the artificial languages of logicians; indeed I consider it possible to comprehend the syntax and semantics of both kinds of languages with a single natural and mathematically precise theory. (Montague 1970c, 222)

Sometimes only the first part of the quote is recalled, and that might raise the question whether he did not notice the great differences: for instance that natural languages develop without an a priori set of rules whereas artificial languages have an explicit syntax and are designed for a special purpose. But the quote as a whole expresses clearly what Montague meant by ‘no important theoretical difference’; the ‘single natural and mathematically precise theory’ which he aimed at, is presented in his paper ‘Universal Grammar’ (Montague 1970c). He became most well-known after the appearance of Montague 1973, in which the theory is applied to some phenomena which were discussed intensively in the philosophical literature of those days.
Montague's interest in the field arose while teaching introductory logic courses. Standard in such courses are exercises in which one is asked to translate natural language sentences into logic. To answer such exercises required a bilingual individual, understanding both the natural language and the logic. Montague provided, for the first time in history, a mechanical method to obtain these logical translations. About this, Montague said:

It should be emphasized that this is not a matter of vague intuition, as in elementary logic courses, but an assertion to which we have assigned exact significance. (Montague 1973, 266)

We next describe the basic ideas of Montague semantics. Section 2 presents several components of Montague semantics in more detail. Section 3 includes a discussion of philosophically interesting aspects, and Section 4 provides a detailed example and further reading.

1.2 Basic Aspects

To implement his objective, Montague applied the method which is standard for logical languages: model theoretic semantics. This means that, using constructions from set theory, a model is defined, and that natural language expressions are interpreted as elements (or sets, or functions) in this universe. Such a model should not be conceived of as a model of reality. On the one hand the model gives more than reality: natural language does not only speak about past, present and future of the real world, but also about situations that might be the case, or are imaginary, or cannot be the case at all. On the other hand, however, the model offers less: it merely specifies reality as conceived by language. An example: we speak about mass nouns such as water as if every part of water is water again, so as if it has no minimal parts, which physically is not correct. For more information on natural language metaphysics, see Bach 1986b.

Montague semantics is not interested in a particular situation (e.g. the real world) but in semantical properties of language. When formalizing such properties, reference to a class of models has to be made, and therefore the interpretation of a language will be defined with respect to a set of (suitable) models. For example, in the introduction we mentioned that the characterization of entailment was a basic goal of semantics. That notion is defined as follows. Sentence A entails sentence B if in all models in which the interpretation of A is true, also the interpretation of B is true. Likewise a tautology is true in all models, and a contradiction is true in no model.

An essential feature of Montague semantics is the systematic relation between syntax and semantics. This relation is described by the Principle of Compositionality which reads, in a formulation that is standard nowadays:

The meaning of a compound expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and of the way they are syntactically combined. (Partee 1984, 281)

An example. Suppose that the meaning of walk, or sing is (for each model in the class) defined as the set of individuals who share respectively the property of walking or the property of singing. By appealing to the principle of compositionality, if there is a rule that combines these two expressions to the verb phrase walk and sing, there must be a corresponding rule that determines the meaning of that verb phrase. In this case, the resulting meaning will be the intersection of the two sets. Consequently, in all models the meaning of walk and sing is a subset of the meaning of walk. Furthermore we have a rule that combines the noun phrase John with a verb phrase. The resulting sentence John walks and sings means that John is an element of the set denoted by the verb phrase. Note that in any model in which John is element of the intersection of walkers and singers, he is an element of the set of walkers. So John walks and sings entails John walks.

An important consequence of the principle of compositionality is that all the parts which play a role in the syntactic composition of a sentence, must also have a meaning. And furthermore, each syntactic rule must be accompanied by a semantic rule which says how the meaning of the compound is obtained. Thus the meaning of an expression is determined by the way in which the expression is formed, and as such the derivational history plays a role in determining the meaning. For further discussion, see Section 2.5.
The formulation of the aim of Montague semantics mentioned in the introduction (‘to characterize truth and entailment of sentences’) suggests that the method is restricted to declarative sentences. But this is need not be the case. In Montague 1973 (248 fn) we already find suggestions for how to deal with imperatives and questions. Hamblin (1973) and Karttunen (1977) have given a semantics for questions by considering them with a meaning that is based upon sentences (viz. sets of propositions). Groenendijk and Stokhof (1989) consider questions as expressions with meanings of their own nature (namely partitions).

Since Montague only considered sentences in isolation, certain commentators pointed out that the sentence boundary was a serious limitation for the approach. But what about discourse? An obvious requirement is that the sentences from a discourse are interpreted one by one. How then to treat co-referentiality of anaphora over sentence boundaries? The solution which was proposed first, was Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp 1981). On the one hand that was an offspring of Montague's approach because it used model theoretic semantics, on the other hand it was a deviation because (discourse) representations were an essential ingredient. Nowadays there are several reformulations of DRT that fit into Montague's framework (see van Eijck and Kamp 1997). A later solution was based upon a change of the logic; dynamic Montague semantics was developed and that gave a procedure for binding free variables in logic which has an effect on subsequent formulas (Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991). Hence the sentence boundary is not a fundamental obstacle for Montague semantics.

READ MORE