Do you have a favorite pet?
Here's an example of a photo I was shown to be able to draw a likeness of this kitty named "Josie." You can see the drawing I made. What do you think?
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Lucky
This is a drawing I made of a very lucky tabby kitty cat named Grover. He was rescued out of the engine of a car after he got tangled up when the car started. His people were nice enough to put Grover back together. Now they have a kitty who winks at them a lot.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Drawing Kitties
Black cats are often passed by in shelters in favor of other kitties who are more brightly colored ...because they're black, I guess.
Besides being tricky to take a photo of a black cat, they're also tricky to make a drawing of too.
The nicest kitty I know is black. Her name is Jasmine. She's the second black cat I have met with that name. What makes Jasmine such a nice kitty is that she never gets mad at her person when she goes away. Instead, Jasmine gets mad at the person who "took" her person away for ten whole days. (The only person she ever bit!)
This kitty has never scratched or bit anyone. I'd tell you her name, but I don't know how it's spelled. Minjka? I hear that this kitty I have drawn a picture of here is a one-person kitty. This person gets to have this kitty sleep on their bed and happily snuggle up to them and purr. But this kitty really doesn't want anyone to know she exists, because - well, you know how faithful a dog can be. This cat is faithful like a dog.
Wish I could purr.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Give and Take Collection
One of my ideas about blogging on so many subjects has been that themes would emerge by themselves. As I saw this happening, I reasoned that I could sift out the posts related to a certain theme and use them to start a targeted blog subject. A new subject seems to have emerged!
Having written so extensively on this subject, I have decided that I should collect these posts into a separate blog that specializes in this subject alone. This post is a collection of the various posts on this subject, collected for your pleasure.
I've decided to collect these into the subject of a new blog - to be announced. I've been exploring this phenomena for some time now. I have previously written about the different aspects of the problem quite a bit, as you can see here.
The subject of giving and taking is important. It's going to get to be a big factor as the baby boomers get to the point where they need to accept care gracefully during aging. For that reason alone, this issue could become a really important one to discuss.
Would you subscribe to a blog on just this subject as a way to allow yourself to free up the acts of gracefully accepting and learning about well-placed giving?
Here's where I ask questions about the different style of how gifts are offered, http://is.gd/5JfL6 asked around the gift-giving fervor of Christmas time.
Tacit Obligation http://is.gd/bMfhY
If someone has difficulty accepting, many times if you can vary the style of how the gift is offered, it will result in making it easier for them to accept. Making light of it's value is sometimes effective, because the best situation between giver and "givee" is when the thing is of great value to the givee and is easy for the giver to offer. But sometimes an action carries much more weight than anything they might say about it. Thus, accepting a gift incites obligation that may be only tacitly guessed. Why can't people accept a gift? A mystery part of a person is not sure what is the (sub)culturally tacit agreement about this gift; talking about it probably won't help.
Random Acts http://is.gd/bMeST
Some people feel a need to remove themselves from the act, so that the receiver has no idea where the gift came from. It becomes impersonal. Thus we have all of the organizations that specialize in accepting tax charitable gifts and doing the messing actual giving to others.
Giving Back The proper way to "give back" is not always to do the exact same gesture, because needs are different. The mistake many people make in selecting what to give is they assume their value system of what is valuable is identical to the givee. This is not true. Being able to put oneself in the shoes of the givee is a thoughtful, compassionate act. So this is often a good reason to reject the offer of help - because what is being offered is misplaced and not of value from the point of view of the givee.
Gifts That Fit http://is.gd/bMeDi
In the small town of Bolinas, CA, we have a "freebox" where mainly articles of clothing are dropped off to be made available to anyone who wants them. The proper way to give back for the value of what you have gotten from it is to clean and organize the Freebox. Many people focus on the stuff itself; they mistake that the proper way to reciprocate is to bring more "stuff." Actually, having a place to bring your stuff to get rid of it is also a significant benefit. So the proper way to reciprocate is more like assuming the role temporarily of a "shop-keeper." A person who wanted to reciprocate would make the good stuff available to those who stop by looking to get something, (like pairing up shoes,) glean out the trash and every once in awhile, clear out the Freebox of all of it's donations so it's empty again to accept more stuff.
Allowing Benefits of Being The Giver http://is.gd/bMeMk
The Hawaiian spirit of Aloha is a wonderful template. It observes that you must allow someone to give, even if what is being offered is not of value to the givee. Being able to give is a human right, and by gracefully accepting, you are allowing this pleasure of giving to be exercised.
Consequences of Acceptance Generally with people who have trouble accepting being given to, it's important to ask what the accepting of gifts symbolizes. To some people, accepting what is offered is a "one-down" position in a competitive sense. To others, they are fearful that accepting the gift will make them obligated to play the role eternally. They fear they're going to lose their independence as they learn to rely on the gift being provided routinely, and will act to prevent the source going away.
Independence Declarations Causing a Split I've also seen repeatedly a situation that seemed to be a direct result of mistaking the roles and pleasures giving and receiving. The situation was where a partner was forced to accept help because of a temporary injury. Evidently after recovery, the person who had been injured wanted to reject help from their partner to re-establish their independence and self-respect. ANY help was rejected entirely, so often and completely that even the "normal" pleasures of doing things for one's sweetie symbolized infantile dependence to the person who was in the process of recovering. If this was not purposefully addressed, it caused a breakup!
Respect http://is.gd/aTqdM
Giving and receiving seems to be connected to how respect is shown. In our culture, you must choose between respect and having rapport. Here's a post where I explored it's application in how respect is signified in the context of speaking in a group interaction. It's curious how listeners are valued socially, (which is a receptive role) when in the situation where the gift is tangible - suddenly the giver becomes the authority.
Suspicious of Greed It's also curious that when someone is in a situation of getting or having gotten a personal benefit, somehow what they offer or receive is suddenly suspect, because there's now a "invested interest." This is what happens when a person is really passionate about a belief in how something works for them and wants to communicate the benefit of their experience to others - everything they say about what they are passionate about is suddenly considered in that light or frame. They're proselytizers, rather than merely sharing their experience. I'm not sure why people believe that someone who is enthusiastic about something is self-involved or selfish. I would imagine the love of something would be an even higher recommendation of it!
Bonding http://is.gd/aTspT
Some people take the giver/givee challenge to the point of refusing to establish the bond of a relationship entirely. I talk about that here: There are many rituals of establishing a bond as there are subcultures.
Entitlement http://is.gd/aTtf1
Here's another post where I talk about the anger that results when the givee decides they are "entitled" to what the givers are offering before they're getting it. This talks about greed.
Compliments http://is.gd/aTsR9
Complimenting is also an interesting way of giving back that some people feel strange about accepting. Of course, it's a benefit to find out that what you do easily is notable for others - because it signifies what could be a valuable talent. Some people automatically reject them out of hand as an expression of the deadly sin of pride or ego. Some people regard compliments of the possession of an item as a way to ask for the thing to be offered by the person who has it. Here's a story about why I believe that complimenting is an important thing to do. In my culture, handing out a compliment implies the person was (like a puppy) explicitly seeking your approval, which may or not be true. Rejecting the gift implies that you would prefer to give yourself the approval. There are many other values signified by accepting a compliment that have people have reacted negatively to it.
Having written so extensively on this subject, I have decided that I should collect these posts into a separate blog that specializes in this subject alone. This post is a collection of the various posts on this subject, collected for your pleasure.
I've decided to collect these into the subject of a new blog - to be announced. I've been exploring this phenomena for some time now. I have previously written about the different aspects of the problem quite a bit, as you can see here.
The subject of giving and taking is important. It's going to get to be a big factor as the baby boomers get to the point where they need to accept care gracefully during aging. For that reason alone, this issue could become a really important one to discuss.
Would you subscribe to a blog on just this subject as a way to allow yourself to free up the acts of gracefully accepting and learning about well-placed giving?
Here's where I ask questions about the different style of how gifts are offered, http://is.gd/5JfL6 asked around the gift-giving fervor of Christmas time.
Tacit Obligation http://is.gd/bMfhY
If someone has difficulty accepting, many times if you can vary the style of how the gift is offered, it will result in making it easier for them to accept. Making light of it's value is sometimes effective, because the best situation between giver and "givee" is when the thing is of great value to the givee and is easy for the giver to offer. But sometimes an action carries much more weight than anything they might say about it. Thus, accepting a gift incites obligation that may be only tacitly guessed. Why can't people accept a gift? A mystery part of a person is not sure what is the (sub)culturally tacit agreement about this gift; talking about it probably won't help.
Random Acts http://is.gd/bMeST
Some people feel a need to remove themselves from the act, so that the receiver has no idea where the gift came from. It becomes impersonal. Thus we have all of the organizations that specialize in accepting tax charitable gifts and doing the messing actual giving to others.
Giving Back The proper way to "give back" is not always to do the exact same gesture, because needs are different. The mistake many people make in selecting what to give is they assume their value system of what is valuable is identical to the givee. This is not true. Being able to put oneself in the shoes of the givee is a thoughtful, compassionate act. So this is often a good reason to reject the offer of help - because what is being offered is misplaced and not of value from the point of view of the givee.
Gifts That Fit http://is.gd/bMeDi
In the small town of Bolinas, CA, we have a "freebox" where mainly articles of clothing are dropped off to be made available to anyone who wants them. The proper way to give back for the value of what you have gotten from it is to clean and organize the Freebox. Many people focus on the stuff itself; they mistake that the proper way to reciprocate is to bring more "stuff." Actually, having a place to bring your stuff to get rid of it is also a significant benefit. So the proper way to reciprocate is more like assuming the role temporarily of a "shop-keeper." A person who wanted to reciprocate would make the good stuff available to those who stop by looking to get something, (like pairing up shoes,) glean out the trash and every once in awhile, clear out the Freebox of all of it's donations so it's empty again to accept more stuff.
Allowing Benefits of Being The Giver http://is.gd/bMeMk
The Hawaiian spirit of Aloha is a wonderful template. It observes that you must allow someone to give, even if what is being offered is not of value to the givee. Being able to give is a human right, and by gracefully accepting, you are allowing this pleasure of giving to be exercised.
Consequences of Acceptance Generally with people who have trouble accepting being given to, it's important to ask what the accepting of gifts symbolizes. To some people, accepting what is offered is a "one-down" position in a competitive sense. To others, they are fearful that accepting the gift will make them obligated to play the role eternally. They fear they're going to lose their independence as they learn to rely on the gift being provided routinely, and will act to prevent the source going away.
Independence Declarations Causing a Split I've also seen repeatedly a situation that seemed to be a direct result of mistaking the roles and pleasures giving and receiving. The situation was where a partner was forced to accept help because of a temporary injury. Evidently after recovery, the person who had been injured wanted to reject help from their partner to re-establish their independence and self-respect. ANY help was rejected entirely, so often and completely that even the "normal" pleasures of doing things for one's sweetie symbolized infantile dependence to the person who was in the process of recovering. If this was not purposefully addressed, it caused a breakup!
Respect http://is.gd/aTqdM
Giving and receiving seems to be connected to how respect is shown. In our culture, you must choose between respect and having rapport. Here's a post where I explored it's application in how respect is signified in the context of speaking in a group interaction. It's curious how listeners are valued socially, (which is a receptive role) when in the situation where the gift is tangible - suddenly the giver becomes the authority.
Suspicious of Greed It's also curious that when someone is in a situation of getting or having gotten a personal benefit, somehow what they offer or receive is suddenly suspect, because there's now a "invested interest." This is what happens when a person is really passionate about a belief in how something works for them and wants to communicate the benefit of their experience to others - everything they say about what they are passionate about is suddenly considered in that light or frame. They're proselytizers, rather than merely sharing their experience. I'm not sure why people believe that someone who is enthusiastic about something is self-involved or selfish. I would imagine the love of something would be an even higher recommendation of it!
Bonding http://is.gd/aTspT
Some people take the giver/givee challenge to the point of refusing to establish the bond of a relationship entirely. I talk about that here: There are many rituals of establishing a bond as there are subcultures.
Entitlement http://is.gd/aTtf1
Here's another post where I talk about the anger that results when the givee decides they are "entitled" to what the givers are offering before they're getting it. This talks about greed.
Compliments http://is.gd/aTsR9
Complimenting is also an interesting way of giving back that some people feel strange about accepting. Of course, it's a benefit to find out that what you do easily is notable for others - because it signifies what could be a valuable talent. Some people automatically reject them out of hand as an expression of the deadly sin of pride or ego. Some people regard compliments of the possession of an item as a way to ask for the thing to be offered by the person who has it. Here's a story about why I believe that complimenting is an important thing to do. In my culture, handing out a compliment implies the person was (like a puppy) explicitly seeking your approval, which may or not be true. Rejecting the gift implies that you would prefer to give yourself the approval. There are many other values signified by accepting a compliment that have people have reacted negatively to it.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Surpassing Expectations
"What is it about your environment, history and values that encourages you to surpass limiting social expectations?" It's a very interesting question to ask in polite conversation of any grownup. Asking it in a non-specific way leaves the answer open.
Curious answers occur. When you ask the question of a woman, you must take the replies with a grain of salt. Women tend to "tell troubles" to bond with other women. To understand much more of how all this happens and more about what the issues are concerning women and those who do not match the current social trends in their conversational style, I recommend the very conversational but content-rich books written by linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, PhD - especially her book "Talking 9 to 5."
It took me a great deal of thought about this question to find the answers for myself. There were three pivotal experiences for me.
What made the biggest difference motivating me to think for myself first happened when I was only five years old. My idol, which was my elder brother of eight years, gave me a snake for a pet - sanctioned by my parents. It was 1959, and in that era, snakes suffered from many social misconceptions about their nature. At a crucial stage when I was going to transfer my family's authority toward the authority of school & a greater social world...Here were these serious mis-matches about snakes that I knew was completely urban legend. People I did not know or trust mistakenly thought snakes were dangerous, contradicting what I knew to be true according to my family and the San Diego Zoo. This experience encouraged me to think for myself and put out effort to learn the true nature of things before I accepted societal norms. It inoculated me against cigarettes as well as sent me to college, because I decided at five that you could be free of fear if you knew more of the facts.
Of course, the most obvious solution to change the minds of young people would be world travel. Becoming an exchange student during middle or high school is the most socially acceptable way, but spending at least six months in another culture works just as well. Once you have been a young person in a radically different environment, you return and realize how self-absorbed your peers are. Not to mention how regional fashion codes really are.
The other pivotal issue was attractiveness and the social authority that went along with it. It upset me that, according to society, women were expected to be helplessly manipulative to get things done. The social fact that an attractive female asking for a "favor" gets it from a male who has temporarily lost his reasoning - this bothered me.
For me as a young girl, there seemed no way to "opt out" of that game gracefully. I did not want the power men handed me; they wanted me to deny or accept their attention. Because of the accident of birth making me coincidentally attractive, I had to deal with this issue early on. Only later I realized that this was a social reality for almost every girl. (If you're a straight guy reading this, imagine if you had to deal daily with attention from people you did not want - from other guys, for instance. This is the environment young women find themselves.)
What eventually remedied this issue for me was learning about body language. After this education, it was indisputable that how I behaved was evident for anyone to see. What sort of a person I was, my values, showed beyond my physical features. A person's character is expressed in their walk, how they move, where their attention goes & the quality of attention used. After learning about body language, I had to accept there were, in me, obvious additional desirable qualities of character. That they were there in addition to matching social definitions of beauty - well, I could accept the attention I was getting now. The attention was my fault, instead of purely an accident of nature.
So I would recommend to teach body language as part of a relationship communication class as a solution for the common desire for membership and bonding - in high school or earlier. (For me, studying Alexander Technique in a classroom situation worked.)
There are many reasons why there is a sudden drop in confidence when girls (and boys) reach middle school age. They realize how they do not match the social norms, and there is the tendency to envy what they are not. This is when girls first must grapple with social questions about how they are going to deal with sexual attention. A desire to for membership and to belong becomes important, as well as trying on what roles might suffice to deal with this big question.
The last pivotal experience for me was when I discovered creative thinking skills. Not just the result of thinking creatively by making things artistic, or modeling creative people I admired. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of how to do problem solving in a situation of decision-making.
Creative thinking skills taught me HOW to think for myself. Wanting to think for yourself in spite of societal norms and actually doing this thinking constructively are two very different things. Edward de Bono has a series of proven simple but effective creative and strategic thinking skills designed for middle school aged students and older. Again - not What to think - but How. Young people have refreshing bull-pucky detectors. These natural talents can be fostered into effective and constructive rebellion. In fact, the more rebellious, the better this education works to help you go your own way more intentionally...against the crowd.
Probably nobody is going to take my word for it. But if creative thinking skills and relationship classes were taught in high school (instead of so much of what is ridiculous mind-reading for "correct" information that is taught now,) society would experience a big jump in social responsibility from all young people.
Stereotyping and trying to be "right" affects everyone.
Curious answers occur. When you ask the question of a woman, you must take the replies with a grain of salt. Women tend to "tell troubles" to bond with other women. To understand much more of how all this happens and more about what the issues are concerning women and those who do not match the current social trends in their conversational style, I recommend the very conversational but content-rich books written by linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, PhD - especially her book "Talking 9 to 5."
It took me a great deal of thought about this question to find the answers for myself. There were three pivotal experiences for me.
What made the biggest difference motivating me to think for myself first happened when I was only five years old. My idol, which was my elder brother of eight years, gave me a snake for a pet - sanctioned by my parents. It was 1959, and in that era, snakes suffered from many social misconceptions about their nature. At a crucial stage when I was going to transfer my family's authority toward the authority of school & a greater social world...Here were these serious mis-matches about snakes that I knew was completely urban legend. People I did not know or trust mistakenly thought snakes were dangerous, contradicting what I knew to be true according to my family and the San Diego Zoo. This experience encouraged me to think for myself and put out effort to learn the true nature of things before I accepted societal norms. It inoculated me against cigarettes as well as sent me to college, because I decided at five that you could be free of fear if you knew more of the facts.
Of course, the most obvious solution to change the minds of young people would be world travel. Becoming an exchange student during middle or high school is the most socially acceptable way, but spending at least six months in another culture works just as well. Once you have been a young person in a radically different environment, you return and realize how self-absorbed your peers are. Not to mention how regional fashion codes really are.
The other pivotal issue was attractiveness and the social authority that went along with it. It upset me that, according to society, women were expected to be helplessly manipulative to get things done. The social fact that an attractive female asking for a "favor" gets it from a male who has temporarily lost his reasoning - this bothered me.
For me as a young girl, there seemed no way to "opt out" of that game gracefully. I did not want the power men handed me; they wanted me to deny or accept their attention. Because of the accident of birth making me coincidentally attractive, I had to deal with this issue early on. Only later I realized that this was a social reality for almost every girl. (If you're a straight guy reading this, imagine if you had to deal daily with attention from people you did not want - from other guys, for instance. This is the environment young women find themselves.)
What eventually remedied this issue for me was learning about body language. After this education, it was indisputable that how I behaved was evident for anyone to see. What sort of a person I was, my values, showed beyond my physical features. A person's character is expressed in their walk, how they move, where their attention goes & the quality of attention used. After learning about body language, I had to accept there were, in me, obvious additional desirable qualities of character. That they were there in addition to matching social definitions of beauty - well, I could accept the attention I was getting now. The attention was my fault, instead of purely an accident of nature.
So I would recommend to teach body language as part of a relationship communication class as a solution for the common desire for membership and bonding - in high school or earlier. (For me, studying Alexander Technique in a classroom situation worked.)
There are many reasons why there is a sudden drop in confidence when girls (and boys) reach middle school age. They realize how they do not match the social norms, and there is the tendency to envy what they are not. This is when girls first must grapple with social questions about how they are going to deal with sexual attention. A desire to for membership and to belong becomes important, as well as trying on what roles might suffice to deal with this big question.
The last pivotal experience for me was when I discovered creative thinking skills. Not just the result of thinking creatively by making things artistic, or modeling creative people I admired. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of how to do problem solving in a situation of decision-making.
Creative thinking skills taught me HOW to think for myself. Wanting to think for yourself in spite of societal norms and actually doing this thinking constructively are two very different things. Edward de Bono has a series of proven simple but effective creative and strategic thinking skills designed for middle school aged students and older. Again - not What to think - but How. Young people have refreshing bull-pucky detectors. These natural talents can be fostered into effective and constructive rebellion. In fact, the more rebellious, the better this education works to help you go your own way more intentionally...against the crowd.
Probably nobody is going to take my word for it. But if creative thinking skills and relationship classes were taught in high school (instead of so much of what is ridiculous mind-reading for "correct" information that is taught now,) society would experience a big jump in social responsibility from all young people.
Stereotyping and trying to be "right" affects everyone.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Lifesaving
Was on a remote beach by the RCA towers in California, in a time before cell phones, on the first sunny weekend in April after a storm. Was watching someone hang-glide, while the guy was trying to land on the beach. Because I was watching and knew something about gliding trajectory, I could predict the hang glider was going to touch down crotch-deep in the surf. Not good. Because nobody else seemed to be watching, I got up and ran all the way down the (naked) beach to help out before the guy landed. Before I arrived, the guy was immediately pulled out by 6-7 ft waves. Couldn't figure out how to unwrap the guy from the lines when he would pop up, so I had to swim away, knowing that he could get caught underwater as he was pulled further out by the high surf and his glider maybe got hung up on the nearby reef.
When I was out in the high surf after freeing the hang glider's hands, I looked back at the nine people lined up on the beach watching us. If at that point I had thought about what this experience was going to mean to me, if I had personally known the hang glider, if I had reacted with outrage at those nine observers, I might have drowned. My ethics had been (up until that point) to help without thought to my own needs. At the time, I realized that I was out far enough off shore in heavy & rough, cold surf without a way to cut the guy free from his glider. Saving myself was now the new priority, so there were not two people drowning. So I swam away.
The nine others watching imagined I must have known the guy. They concluded the only reason I swam away was that I didn't have a knife. So they sent their best swimmer who knew life-saving techniques out - with a knife. Once I stumbled onto shore, my admonition that this was not the movies and just one person doesn't have to be The Hero, everyone else who could swim jumped into the water to help out too.
The hang glider guy was saved from drowning. Standing there looking at him as a wet cocoon by the fire people were building to warm him up, I realized how often I had tried to save people I loved in my own life, and how close I was to being pulled under in those situations too. It had profoundly affected me to turn around on that hang glider, knowing that I could do nothing more about saving him. It was quite a gift for me to know the real boundary between saving someone else and saving myself.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pay with regret that my "life-lesson" had resulted in a death. If I had not jumped in, the trained life-saver wouldn't have thought to ask among others on the beach for a knife.
I never did find out the hang glider's name. I just walked home down the beach, exhausted and happy that he was alive.
When I was out in the high surf after freeing the hang glider's hands, I looked back at the nine people lined up on the beach watching us. If at that point I had thought about what this experience was going to mean to me, if I had personally known the hang glider, if I had reacted with outrage at those nine observers, I might have drowned. My ethics had been (up until that point) to help without thought to my own needs. At the time, I realized that I was out far enough off shore in heavy & rough, cold surf without a way to cut the guy free from his glider. Saving myself was now the new priority, so there were not two people drowning. So I swam away.
The nine others watching imagined I must have known the guy. They concluded the only reason I swam away was that I didn't have a knife. So they sent their best swimmer who knew life-saving techniques out - with a knife. Once I stumbled onto shore, my admonition that this was not the movies and just one person doesn't have to be The Hero, everyone else who could swim jumped into the water to help out too.
The hang glider guy was saved from drowning. Standing there looking at him as a wet cocoon by the fire people were building to warm him up, I realized how often I had tried to save people I loved in my own life, and how close I was to being pulled under in those situations too. It had profoundly affected me to turn around on that hang glider, knowing that I could do nothing more about saving him. It was quite a gift for me to know the real boundary between saving someone else and saving myself.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pay with regret that my "life-lesson" had resulted in a death. If I had not jumped in, the trained life-saver wouldn't have thought to ask among others on the beach for a knife.
I never did find out the hang glider's name. I just walked home down the beach, exhausted and happy that he was alive.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Getting Confident
Sit up and pay attention now. I know quite a bit about confidence and you'll be gettin' it in one swell foop. Hope you're rising to the occasion.
On the road to confidence, each piece of the puzzle offers the reward of a new world. Gaining confidence is not merely a struggle to get to zero as many assume.
Sometimes behind a lack of confidence is usually some sort of fear or assumption about the consequence of revealing thoughts, feelings or values. Such as, "If I get noticed, then I'll get squished like a pretty bug." Suspect these conclusions of "If....then...." Once conclusions get uncovered, check them out and see if they are really true. Many times these are mistaken assumptions and logical fallacies are involved. But if they are true, your question would be - how can I change this part I'm playing, maybe I'm feeding into this? How can I invite these what I want to experience from others?
Often feelings don't make sense. Reassurance can use the proof of reason and observation. Find out how to reassure yourself without having to lie or follow it with a snide remark. Figuring out how to do this will make anyone a better observer of what happens. Observation will tell the difference between responsibility and accidentally associated sequences that are circumstantially affecting outcomes.
Delivering reassurance to one's own fears may also teach a person to deliver effective compliments that can't be brushed aside or suspect. Remember, each new skill is a lie before you learn it. Don't worry if you have to "fake it 'til you make it."
If you said to a woman you admire, "you are so confident!" I'm sure she'd disagree with you, because women are taught that confidence is arrogance. (Women modestly often just get down to the business of doing what needs doing. The proof is in the pudding.) But if you offered your specific observation that, "Your openness works like a virus that disarms people," she might laugh and tell you about someone who wasn't affected in this way.
Often these mistaken conclusions involve mere opinions that are backed up with self-selected memories. This is a common phenomena that happens to many people when they feel bad. In a bad state, people often flicker through all similar situations of their past, seeking a factual basis of their own inadequacy or short-comings - or other suspected negative emotional state such as sadness, stupidity or thoughtlessness, etc. Questioning the point of doing this to yourself is productive. Never discount physical comfort as a contributing force.
The reptilian survival brain works in images. This part of the brain doesn't listen to linguistic qualifiers such as "Don't ...." Once you know more how this works, then you can also construct moments when you intentionally select the positive outcomes and positive effects of your compassionate and capable resourcefulness as well as other admirable qualities.Practice that for the thirty plus days it takes to change yourself - and you're good to go.
Because of the unknown and unpredictable nature of reality, it's easy to imagine that the contents of thoughts magically affect outcome. For instance, it's very common for someone to feel responsible for a death of a loved one in some way, even when they actually had nothing to do with it. You may find that it's not so much content, but it is the routine means of thinking that affects outcomes. Learn creative thinking skills. Be careful what you let yourself repeat, because you'll train yourself. ~It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. ~ as an old jazz song says.
Also, believe others when they tell you the positive ways about how you affect them. Absorb compliments when they come without imaging you'll suffer from evil effects. For instance, as a young girl I used to feel my mouth didn't look attractive. At thirteen, a cute young man in his mid-twenties saw me holding my mouth funny at a public function. He followed me around repeatedly, taking photos of my "beautiful" mouth while reciting how notable of an artist and photographer he was. I'm not sure he even had film in his old-format camera, but by doing so, he got me over a self-consciousness about my appearance.
After checking assumptions out about conclusions, if you decide they are true, you can deal with them in various ways. Often the consequence of the feared result is not all that bad as you imagined. If you try it voluntarily, you may actually prefer it. You can also regard the consequences if they're a force of nature and not pointed specifically against you. "You are not the target"- Laura Huxley.
One of my big discoveries in the process of losing my shyness (Me? Shy? You'd never believe that now!) was that other people were very self-involved, especially young people. The older ones are on auto-pilot. Most people are a product of their conditioning. They have much less control over the ways they effect others than they would prefer. Just as a surfer must figure out a few facts to ride a wave successfully, there are a few things you may be lacking to successfully navigate in the social world. Learn them and become aware enough to use them appropriately, without getting upset that you should already know these things. Forgive yourself. Nobody can help where they start from, but they can decide what they're going to do about it from now on. Just as a perfect wave doesn't care if it gets surfed, these factors, (that may involve people's reactions) may not care about your feelings, or even your survival. "Know thyself, then get over yourself" - Mr. Natural
A lack of confidence can be a defensive stance of hiding to protect...something. You may think you know what this "something" is, but usually the meat of it is hiding behind the reaction of shrinking, shirking or avoidance. This takes persistence to uncover. Trace the reaction back to right before it's about to happen, and there you'll find the original feelings that put the hiding, shy or shirking solution in place. Of course, your reactive solution was viable at the time you designed it originally. It only later became obsolete. Now that you've grown and know the origin, you can choose another way. The habitually reactive solution is still there to use in a pinch.
Sometimes you can just ask people, "How do I affect you?" But beware of setting in place a tacit agreement that you'll always be agreeable. The danger of asking is then the responsibility will be on your shoulders to accommodate other people's short-comings that you supposedly "caused." It's never a good thing to allow fears or short-comings to run the course of relationships, whether they be personal or social.
Finally, observe the positive state in others you want to embody and note how they express it. Quiz them. Try stating these observations positively, not merely stating them by defining what you do not want. If can't you say what you want completely or only in a metaphor (as you've done by saying it's a colored attitude,) you can always find more practical evidence of how it actually works as you move toward it.
One of my most useful observations about happiness came from realizing that it's subtle, calm qualities were very different from the strong intensities of my imperative need to rebel against unhappiness. Happy confidence was not a dizzy, drunk intensity - it was curious, quiet, unassuming & absorbed. This has turned out to be true for other topics as well. The positive expression of what is desired probably won't have the same qualities of what you don't want.
For instance, if you realized that modesty and being humble are expressions of confidence, make observations about how are those qualities expressed in behavior. What happened when these expressions of that value were practiced by you? Did they have the intended results on others and the situation? Did things improve when you gave up specifying results? As you gain more experience in the world, how might you improve the expression of your values as they become more refined, flexible and sophisticated?
The ability to ask questions, personal questions about yourself is a sign of strength and admirable character. Vulnerability is an asset. You can reinterpret the "heat" that might come your way for doing so as respect - and sometimes people are threatened by confidence. Enjoy before integration.
On the road to confidence, each piece of the puzzle offers the reward of a new world. Gaining confidence is not merely a struggle to get to zero as many assume.
Sometimes behind a lack of confidence is usually some sort of fear or assumption about the consequence of revealing thoughts, feelings or values. Such as, "If I get noticed, then I'll get squished like a pretty bug." Suspect these conclusions of "If....then...." Once conclusions get uncovered, check them out and see if they are really true. Many times these are mistaken assumptions and logical fallacies are involved. But if they are true, your question would be - how can I change this part I'm playing, maybe I'm feeding into this? How can I invite these what I want to experience from others?
Often feelings don't make sense. Reassurance can use the proof of reason and observation. Find out how to reassure yourself without having to lie or follow it with a snide remark. Figuring out how to do this will make anyone a better observer of what happens. Observation will tell the difference between responsibility and accidentally associated sequences that are circumstantially affecting outcomes.
Delivering reassurance to one's own fears may also teach a person to deliver effective compliments that can't be brushed aside or suspect. Remember, each new skill is a lie before you learn it. Don't worry if you have to "fake it 'til you make it."
If you said to a woman you admire, "you are so confident!" I'm sure she'd disagree with you, because women are taught that confidence is arrogance. (Women modestly often just get down to the business of doing what needs doing. The proof is in the pudding.) But if you offered your specific observation that, "Your openness works like a virus that disarms people," she might laugh and tell you about someone who wasn't affected in this way.
Often these mistaken conclusions involve mere opinions that are backed up with self-selected memories. This is a common phenomena that happens to many people when they feel bad. In a bad state, people often flicker through all similar situations of their past, seeking a factual basis of their own inadequacy or short-comings - or other suspected negative emotional state such as sadness, stupidity or thoughtlessness, etc. Questioning the point of doing this to yourself is productive. Never discount physical comfort as a contributing force.
The reptilian survival brain works in images. This part of the brain doesn't listen to linguistic qualifiers such as "Don't ...." Once you know more how this works, then you can also construct moments when you intentionally select the positive outcomes and positive effects of your compassionate and capable resourcefulness as well as other admirable qualities.Practice that for the thirty plus days it takes to change yourself - and you're good to go.
Because of the unknown and unpredictable nature of reality, it's easy to imagine that the contents of thoughts magically affect outcome. For instance, it's very common for someone to feel responsible for a death of a loved one in some way, even when they actually had nothing to do with it. You may find that it's not so much content, but it is the routine means of thinking that affects outcomes. Learn creative thinking skills. Be careful what you let yourself repeat, because you'll train yourself. ~It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. ~ as an old jazz song says.
Also, believe others when they tell you the positive ways about how you affect them. Absorb compliments when they come without imaging you'll suffer from evil effects. For instance, as a young girl I used to feel my mouth didn't look attractive. At thirteen, a cute young man in his mid-twenties saw me holding my mouth funny at a public function. He followed me around repeatedly, taking photos of my "beautiful" mouth while reciting how notable of an artist and photographer he was. I'm not sure he even had film in his old-format camera, but by doing so, he got me over a self-consciousness about my appearance.
After checking assumptions out about conclusions, if you decide they are true, you can deal with them in various ways. Often the consequence of the feared result is not all that bad as you imagined. If you try it voluntarily, you may actually prefer it. You can also regard the consequences if they're a force of nature and not pointed specifically against you. "You are not the target"- Laura Huxley.
One of my big discoveries in the process of losing my shyness (Me? Shy? You'd never believe that now!) was that other people were very self-involved, especially young people. The older ones are on auto-pilot. Most people are a product of their conditioning. They have much less control over the ways they effect others than they would prefer. Just as a surfer must figure out a few facts to ride a wave successfully, there are a few things you may be lacking to successfully navigate in the social world. Learn them and become aware enough to use them appropriately, without getting upset that you should already know these things. Forgive yourself. Nobody can help where they start from, but they can decide what they're going to do about it from now on. Just as a perfect wave doesn't care if it gets surfed, these factors, (that may involve people's reactions) may not care about your feelings, or even your survival. "Know thyself, then get over yourself" - Mr. Natural
A lack of confidence can be a defensive stance of hiding to protect...something. You may think you know what this "something" is, but usually the meat of it is hiding behind the reaction of shrinking, shirking or avoidance. This takes persistence to uncover. Trace the reaction back to right before it's about to happen, and there you'll find the original feelings that put the hiding, shy or shirking solution in place. Of course, your reactive solution was viable at the time you designed it originally. It only later became obsolete. Now that you've grown and know the origin, you can choose another way. The habitually reactive solution is still there to use in a pinch.
Sometimes you can just ask people, "How do I affect you?" But beware of setting in place a tacit agreement that you'll always be agreeable. The danger of asking is then the responsibility will be on your shoulders to accommodate other people's short-comings that you supposedly "caused." It's never a good thing to allow fears or short-comings to run the course of relationships, whether they be personal or social.
Finally, observe the positive state in others you want to embody and note how they express it. Quiz them. Try stating these observations positively, not merely stating them by defining what you do not want. If can't you say what you want completely or only in a metaphor (as you've done by saying it's a colored attitude,) you can always find more practical evidence of how it actually works as you move toward it.
One of my most useful observations about happiness came from realizing that it's subtle, calm qualities were very different from the strong intensities of my imperative need to rebel against unhappiness. Happy confidence was not a dizzy, drunk intensity - it was curious, quiet, unassuming & absorbed. This has turned out to be true for other topics as well. The positive expression of what is desired probably won't have the same qualities of what you don't want.
For instance, if you realized that modesty and being humble are expressions of confidence, make observations about how are those qualities expressed in behavior. What happened when these expressions of that value were practiced by you? Did they have the intended results on others and the situation? Did things improve when you gave up specifying results? As you gain more experience in the world, how might you improve the expression of your values as they become more refined, flexible and sophisticated?
The ability to ask questions, personal questions about yourself is a sign of strength and admirable character. Vulnerability is an asset. You can reinterpret the "heat" that might come your way for doing so as respect - and sometimes people are threatened by confidence. Enjoy before integration.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Heartbreak Resistance
It's very personal. What is most person can become the more universal when expressed. I'll leave some of that really personal stuff out, but I'll try to tell enough of this story to make you understand how much of a cross-roads it was for me. Well, maybe I shouldn't parade a story this heartbreaking here, since everyone knows who I am here in real life. Ah - I guess it doesn't matter what the content of the problem was. You can guess. It was a baaaad thing. Instead I'm going to talk about the solution.
You know all the stuff people tell about how to get past your self-sabotage? Well, it doesn't work when things are really baaaad. This is a story of what did work for me.
The problem was a huge gaping wound. It had already been resolved, and now I had to deal with how I felt about having resolved it the way I did. Talking about it didn't help. Crying about it didn't help. Freaking out about it didn't help. Couldn't stop thinking about it either. It was eating out a heartbreak.
I'm trained as an artist, but for some mystery reason I was resisting making art. I think what happened is that this thing heartbreak was preoccupied with bothered me badly. Suddenly, making the art became less stressful than everything else I was experiencing.
That's the thing about resistance that I've just learned about from a podcast by Barbara Sher. Learn it yourself here.
Behind resistance is an avoidance of something important, something that totally makes sense. You've got to find out what that is, because it's often hiding from you. Using positive affirmations just signals the resistant part of you that it's time to protect you even more - positive stuff doesn't really work. Positive thinking never helped me stop procrastination; it actually made it worse. In fact, using affirmations can make the resistance so strong, it can cause me to hurt myself to put a stop to all progress. As my friend Chris once said, "Got in a fight with myself and I lost."
If you can find the source of your resistance, then the stress and pressure of not being able to do the thing vanishes. You can go forward with no problem into whatever you've been avoiding. The tricky part is finding something inside of yourself that part of you is dead set about protecting you from noticing while you're busy running in the other direction.
So that's what happened with me. My concern that was eating at me finally outweighed the resistance I'd been experiencing about being an artist. I began to make art. I had to make art - I had no choice. I painted and painted and painted. I hung a huge roll of paper on the wall in my garage and slung paint at it. I pulled out another length of paper, got more of the paints and did it over and over and over. I painted like a fiend for a solid week.
I felt better.
A week later than that, I stood back and looked at the art. It was completely and totally abstract. I had done it without any thought of what I was making. Yet, somehow, accidentally on purpose, images, symbols and scenes had emerged in every single painting.
I sat there and looked at what I had painted. I hung them all over my walls and looked at them. they went floor to ceiling - they were huge. Somehow, these paintings had turned out to look like exactly about what I was upset about. I don't know why I was surprised about that. All of the images in every one of these paintings was directly related to why and how I felt about being upset.
What I had painted in each picture was just like one of those "magic" drawings for kids in "Highlights" magazine, (does that magazine still exist?) where there were images hidden in other images, and it was a game to find what they were and where they were. I had done it by slinging paint around - completely by accident, yet, obviously not by accident at all.
The whole process of what happened totally blew my mind. How could I have been painting completely abstract and had these images emerge in the work? What was really going on that something like this could happen? I rolled up these paintings, stuck them in my storage unit. Later I burned most of them. Think that I have one left somewhere. I have never again painted like that since. It scared me, but at the same time, being able to paint like that satisfied something big inside of me.
I've done little glimmers of being able to paint like that before. I'd been told that I could be a great painter by someone who knew enough for me to believe they knew what they were talking about. They said, "Not just good, not just famous - but great." Tried it for a little while, being a painter. But I didn't like the art scene and had no clue how to get into a gallery. So I became a sign painter. It allowed me to work big, which was something I liked to do. It paid the rent, which was also nice. I didn't like painting in a studio, I liked painting where there were people around, so painting on the street was fun for me.
The really weird part was that, after making these hugs paintings, I wasn't upset anymore about this thing that I'd been preoccupied with for months and had tried to accept but couldn't. Whatever I had done when I painted had resolved what I had been so upset about. It scared me that in order to paint like that, I had to feel that intensity of emotion. But painting worked as the solution to express the pain. I guess it worked because the pain got expressed in a non-verbal way - accidentally on purpose. I did something to externalize how I was feeling that went beyond words. So now - art is what I resort to when I can't use words.
So now, even though it's can be difficult to remember what works when I feel that nothing is helping me. When I get really stuck, sometimes it dawns on me that I can paint.
What do you do when nothing works to express how you're feeling?
You know all the stuff people tell about how to get past your self-sabotage? Well, it doesn't work when things are really baaaad. This is a story of what did work for me.
The problem was a huge gaping wound. It had already been resolved, and now I had to deal with how I felt about having resolved it the way I did. Talking about it didn't help. Crying about it didn't help. Freaking out about it didn't help. Couldn't stop thinking about it either. It was eating out a heartbreak.
I'm trained as an artist, but for some mystery reason I was resisting making art. I think what happened is that this thing heartbreak was preoccupied with bothered me badly. Suddenly, making the art became less stressful than everything else I was experiencing.
That's the thing about resistance that I've just learned about from a podcast by Barbara Sher. Learn it yourself here.
Behind resistance is an avoidance of something important, something that totally makes sense. You've got to find out what that is, because it's often hiding from you. Using positive affirmations just signals the resistant part of you that it's time to protect you even more - positive stuff doesn't really work. Positive thinking never helped me stop procrastination; it actually made it worse. In fact, using affirmations can make the resistance so strong, it can cause me to hurt myself to put a stop to all progress. As my friend Chris once said, "Got in a fight with myself and I lost."
If you can find the source of your resistance, then the stress and pressure of not being able to do the thing vanishes. You can go forward with no problem into whatever you've been avoiding. The tricky part is finding something inside of yourself that part of you is dead set about protecting you from noticing while you're busy running in the other direction.
So that's what happened with me. My concern that was eating at me finally outweighed the resistance I'd been experiencing about being an artist. I began to make art. I had to make art - I had no choice. I painted and painted and painted. I hung a huge roll of paper on the wall in my garage and slung paint at it. I pulled out another length of paper, got more of the paints and did it over and over and over. I painted like a fiend for a solid week.I felt better.
A week later than that, I stood back and looked at the art. It was completely and totally abstract. I had done it without any thought of what I was making. Yet, somehow, accidentally on purpose, images, symbols and scenes had emerged in every single painting.
I sat there and looked at what I had painted. I hung them all over my walls and looked at them. they went floor to ceiling - they were huge. Somehow, these paintings had turned out to look like exactly about what I was upset about. I don't know why I was surprised about that. All of the images in every one of these paintings was directly related to why and how I felt about being upset.
What I had painted in each picture was just like one of those "magic" drawings for kids in "Highlights" magazine, (does that magazine still exist?) where there were images hidden in other images, and it was a game to find what they were and where they were. I had done it by slinging paint around - completely by accident, yet, obviously not by accident at all.
The whole process of what happened totally blew my mind. How could I have been painting completely abstract and had these images emerge in the work? What was really going on that something like this could happen? I rolled up these paintings, stuck them in my storage unit. Later I burned most of them. Think that I have one left somewhere. I have never again painted like that since. It scared me, but at the same time, being able to paint like that satisfied something big inside of me.
I've done little glimmers of being able to paint like that before. I'd been told that I could be a great painter by someone who knew enough for me to believe they knew what they were talking about. They said, "Not just good, not just famous - but great." Tried it for a little while, being a painter. But I didn't like the art scene and had no clue how to get into a gallery. So I became a sign painter. It allowed me to work big, which was something I liked to do. It paid the rent, which was also nice. I didn't like painting in a studio, I liked painting where there were people around, so painting on the street was fun for me.
The really weird part was that, after making these hugs paintings, I wasn't upset anymore about this thing that I'd been preoccupied with for months and had tried to accept but couldn't. Whatever I had done when I painted had resolved what I had been so upset about. It scared me that in order to paint like that, I had to feel that intensity of emotion. But painting worked as the solution to express the pain. I guess it worked because the pain got expressed in a non-verbal way - accidentally on purpose. I did something to externalize how I was feeling that went beyond words. So now - art is what I resort to when I can't use words.
So now, even though it's can be difficult to remember what works when I feel that nothing is helping me. When I get really stuck, sometimes it dawns on me that I can paint.
What do you do when nothing works to express how you're feeling?
Friday, January 22, 2010
Worried Today, Time to Make Art
Thinking of what to do to improve the level of my own happiness today. I'm worried today because money to pay rent hasn't appeared on the horizon. Realized that making art has worked for me before when I've felt like a deer in the headlights, so decided to draw a picture of a kitty who was nice enough to tame herself so I could be her friend.
Shared her with Janet after I began a mobile lifestyle, so I even have corroboration about how unusual this kitty truly was. This pussycat became my icon for the proof that a specific character could surpass the character traits of her species. In her case, she was thoughtful and compassionate about others, when felines are known for being completely and shamelessly self-involved. I wrote about her story previously here.
Her name was "Squeeker," affectionately known as, "Ms. Vanilla."
All my cats have had "theme songs," usually parodies.
Squeeker's theme song is sung to the tune of
"Look At That Stupid Girl" by the Rolling Stones.
~I'm not talkin' about the cutest squeak she has....
~ Look at that fluffy kitty
~ I'm not talkin' about the ever-wafting baths...
~ Look at that fluffy kitty
~ The way she packs a punch
~ Poor mice fast become her lunch
~ To me the sweetest cat in the world
~ Greet that fluffy kitty!
~ I'm not talking about the kind of dust she wears
~ Check out that fluffy kitty...
~ I'm not talkin' about the twisted fang she bears
~ Look out for that fluffy kitty...
~ The way she bathes her friends
~ Her peace-makin' never ends
~ Her lack of vanity plus times ten
~ Gotta pet that fluffy kitty!
Thursday, January 07, 2010
No Other Night
In my late twenties, I had joined a Brazilian dance troupe. A fellow dancer, a Brazilian, had asked me out on a date to a Brazilian nightclub. After he picked me up at my girlfriend's house, he grilled me about my relationship to her. When I asked why, he indicated that us two girls had been so much more affectionate to each other saying goodbye than other women in America. He wanted to know what made us different from the other, more commonly not-so-affectionate women. I explained that some people grew up in families that were much more physically affectionate than the prevailing culture. They find and bond to each other as friends privately once they reach an understanding of what their displays of affection mean.
He turned to me and said, "Be with me tonight as if there were no other night."
What he meant was, "Feel free to be as affectionate as you would like with me. I will not imagine you are giving me permission that you are available sexually before I know you." I'm sure he had no idea how romantic a phrase he had just uttered to me, being new to the culture.
So we walked into the Brazilian club with me having a much more interesting understanding of Brazilian culture concerning the display of sexuality. I took to heart his suggestion, and it attracted quite a bit of attention in the whole club - attention from women as well as men.
The owner of the club invited me behind the bar in the noisy club. He gave me a copy of the album of the band. When I asked him why he was giving this to me, he told me, "Because tonight you act like a Brazilian woman - you must go to Brazil."
With almost every guy's eye on me, I turned to my very respectful date and said - "You see, this is why I do not display my natural sensuality. I am not sure I like all these eyes staring at me, watching my every move. How do I put an end to this unrelenting attention of all these men in this club?"
After asking my permission to solve my question, he gave me a big, sloppy kiss. Every other man looked away. Evidently in Brazil, once a woman indicates she has chosen a man, she is then unavailable to all the rest. Have to admit, that it did effectively solve the problem at hand.
He turned to me and said, "Be with me tonight as if there were no other night."
What he meant was, "Feel free to be as affectionate as you would like with me. I will not imagine you are giving me permission that you are available sexually before I know you." I'm sure he had no idea how romantic a phrase he had just uttered to me, being new to the culture.
So we walked into the Brazilian club with me having a much more interesting understanding of Brazilian culture concerning the display of sexuality. I took to heart his suggestion, and it attracted quite a bit of attention in the whole club - attention from women as well as men.
The owner of the club invited me behind the bar in the noisy club. He gave me a copy of the album of the band. When I asked him why he was giving this to me, he told me, "Because tonight you act like a Brazilian woman - you must go to Brazil."
With almost every guy's eye on me, I turned to my very respectful date and said - "You see, this is why I do not display my natural sensuality. I am not sure I like all these eyes staring at me, watching my every move. How do I put an end to this unrelenting attention of all these men in this club?"
After asking my permission to solve my question, he gave me a big, sloppy kiss. Every other man looked away. Evidently in Brazil, once a woman indicates she has chosen a man, she is then unavailable to all the rest. Have to admit, that it did effectively solve the problem at hand.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Being Authentic
Certainly being "honest, real, and ethical" as defined by yourself is a good thing to do. However, if you care about others, you still must deal with how others feel about how you're acting. How do you want to affect others and the situation while communicating effectively?
It's wise to choose your battles deliberately. Sometimes it's better to tell a white lie and go through some meaningless social niceties than it is to announce your contrariness just out of the starting gate. Asking for permission is more complicated than asking for forgiveness.
I know I'm an unusual person with unusual values; it's not important to me any more to broadcast that quality to the world. Now I let others figure that out about me on their own. I've learned a little friendly reserve helps others not be intimidated by my lack of social constraints. I decided that I do not enjoy people being afraid of me because of my social "daring." Whereas, I used to broadcast these qualities about myself as my own sense of self.
I have always been surprised how others seem to assign the lowest motive to actions they don't understand. To respond to this, it's best to explain motives and go from there. But this strategy always made me feel the paradox of advertising what's not really there. If it was there, would I need to advertise it?
Opting out without revealing why is a better strategy. My rule of thumb for making these decisions has been, "keep you eyes on the prize." The virtual question is: "What do I want to create here, and are my means congruent with my goals?"
Someone who is "ethical" and treats people well is actually is in the act of protecting the other person, while leaving themselves vulnerable. In a perfect world, the other person is being ethical to watch your back, but that's not always the case. So that's why wonderful people lose out, and find themselves paying prices they didn't expect to have volunteered for making the sacrifice. That's one of the costs of "being real." In an intimate relationship, you protect the other person with your ethics, while leaving yourself open. If it works out well, their actions and attitudes protect you.
It's wise to choose your battles deliberately. Sometimes it's better to tell a white lie and go through some meaningless social niceties than it is to announce your contrariness just out of the starting gate. Asking for permission is more complicated than asking for forgiveness.
I know I'm an unusual person with unusual values; it's not important to me any more to broadcast that quality to the world. Now I let others figure that out about me on their own. I've learned a little friendly reserve helps others not be intimidated by my lack of social constraints. I decided that I do not enjoy people being afraid of me because of my social "daring." Whereas, I used to broadcast these qualities about myself as my own sense of self.
Tricky to imagine this person in the picture is the one I'm describing, isn't it?
I have always been surprised how others seem to assign the lowest motive to actions they don't understand. To respond to this, it's best to explain motives and go from there. But this strategy always made me feel the paradox of advertising what's not really there. If it was there, would I need to advertise it?
Opting out without revealing why is a better strategy. My rule of thumb for making these decisions has been, "keep you eyes on the prize." The virtual question is: "What do I want to create here, and are my means congruent with my goals?"
Someone who is "ethical" and treats people well is actually is in the act of protecting the other person, while leaving themselves vulnerable. In a perfect world, the other person is being ethical to watch your back, but that's not always the case. So that's why wonderful people lose out, and find themselves paying prices they didn't expect to have volunteered for making the sacrifice. That's one of the costs of "being real." In an intimate relationship, you protect the other person with your ethics, while leaving yourself open. If it works out well, their actions and attitudes protect you.
If not, at some point, later in your life you'll get embittered for having put out too much without getting enough back. It's happening to people I know who were real "Givers." They just get jaded and burnt out and withdrawn. It happened to me.
Just wanted to warn you, in case you're a "Giver."
Friday, January 01, 2010
Success Wreck
Yes, I've had emotional train wrecks just after major successes as many other people experience. Feels like a tsunami rolling over me at best. Had to take some time to re-group and think carefully about how to provide for my own needs and desires, hopes and fears. This was often days of time.
In order to get some freedom, I seemed to be capable of pretending that I was smart; or at least it seemed to me that I wasn't as smart as others considered me to be. When growing up, every once in awhile I'd get a teacher who was smart enough to use what I had to offer. They must have been wise enough to understood some of why I was acting the way I did.
For instance, my Spanish teacher in middle school was brilliant. It didn't matter to her that having eaten breakfast made me fall sleep during her class every day. She was smart enough to observe that I would soak up everything that was going on around me in this half-asleep state. It was fine with her that she had to call my name to wake me; then she'd repeat her request that she was passing around the room for everyone to answer. The test was that I had the answer that would satisfy her criteria. She was so kind to not penalize me in any way for sleeping with my head on my desk.
Every once in awhile she would give me something interesting to do that would keep me awake enough; the job of making flash cards for the class - or tutoring my classmates who were slower to learn. By the time I had spent three years in her class - I was completely fluent and could think and even tell jokes in Spanish. I joke now that I've forgotten many Spanish words... but the truth of the matter is it comes back to me when I go to Mexico. Pretty much I can tell what someone is talking about in Spanish, but not what they're saying about until I hit the books a bit again.
I knew where this wound came from in my past, but that didn't help much figuring out how to get past it. When I was a kid in the 1950s, I studied tap dancing at a gym - it was also a place where kids got rewarded (with the equivalent of twenty bucks now) the first time they could walk across the length of the gym on their hands. Had a funny flash-back that seemed to be lodged into my body when I attended a stretching class thirty years later as I bent backwards into what is called a "bridge" to "spider-walk" - walk on one's hands and feet belly-up, back arched with one's head hanging upside-down and backwards. As a five year old, I was such a fast learner of routines in the gym and dance classes that the teachers put me at the head of the troupe and had the other kids to just follow my excellent memory.
The problem happened at a huge group recital. Some other kids not in my group sat in the wrong line. When the line of my group was called me and a couple others in my troupe who were supposed to be at the head of the group did not get to go out on stage. I was completely crushed that I'd been pumped up about how important my role was as leader and then no grownup noticed I was not at the head of my group to perform. How important could I be if I was not even missed?
The event producers offered to let me go out on stage with the other two kids in my troupe, but I could not stop crying. My mom even stuck me into the car and drove me around the block to try to calm me down. She tried to give me a pep talk that I was doing what actresses do - throw a fit when I had been short-changed. I had been successful and now it was time for the show to go on. But it didn't work because I had not had any practice in calming myself down after being really upset. I had never gotten so freaked out and disappointed in my sweet, short life before.
I recognized myself in a scene of the movie "Wave Rider." A young girl works hard and skillfully to prove to her grandfather she is qualified to be the spiritual leader of her community. But he refuses to allow her recognition because of her gender. She successfully fulfills many trials, in spite of being spurned, and she is even actively prevented from learning by being excluded from her grandfather's classes - for boys only. In one scene, she has learned complex Maori chants and performs them with tears streaming down her face, in spite of the fact that her grandfather has refused to attend her performance.
For some reason, the producers of that even long ago would not allow me as a forgotten performer to express myself by crying while dancing. Why not? Where is this rule that performers must be happy?
The movie does not go into why the Wave Rider protagonist cannot give up the role she is meant to play for her people. But this is what I need to know - for myself. How can persist and continue to fulfill the role I know I am supposed to play without allowing setbacks to prevent me from eventual success?
Anyone who does not fit into the mold that language usage or culture has established to be "normal" is left to flounder - this is just as true for people who are good looking, talented and smart as well as those who are on the other end of the social spectrum.
Part of being an adult to know what it is you need and go out and provide it for yourself. My own secret has been to figure out how to ask for or get what I needed in other ways, other avenues that did not excite societal reactions, to sneak under the radar...to go in the back door rather than the front door.
I'm not sure that this "back door approach" will work for me in the future. Self-doubt has reared its ugly head for me.
In order to get some freedom, I seemed to be capable of pretending that I was smart; or at least it seemed to me that I wasn't as smart as others considered me to be. When growing up, every once in awhile I'd get a teacher who was smart enough to use what I had to offer. They must have been wise enough to understood some of why I was acting the way I did.
For instance, my Spanish teacher in middle school was brilliant. It didn't matter to her that having eaten breakfast made me fall sleep during her class every day. She was smart enough to observe that I would soak up everything that was going on around me in this half-asleep state. It was fine with her that she had to call my name to wake me; then she'd repeat her request that she was passing around the room for everyone to answer. The test was that I had the answer that would satisfy her criteria. She was so kind to not penalize me in any way for sleeping with my head on my desk.
Every once in awhile she would give me something interesting to do that would keep me awake enough; the job of making flash cards for the class - or tutoring my classmates who were slower to learn. By the time I had spent three years in her class - I was completely fluent and could think and even tell jokes in Spanish. I joke now that I've forgotten many Spanish words... but the truth of the matter is it comes back to me when I go to Mexico. Pretty much I can tell what someone is talking about in Spanish, but not what they're saying about until I hit the books a bit again.
I knew where this wound came from in my past, but that didn't help much figuring out how to get past it. When I was a kid in the 1950s, I studied tap dancing at a gym - it was also a place where kids got rewarded (with the equivalent of twenty bucks now) the first time they could walk across the length of the gym on their hands. Had a funny flash-back that seemed to be lodged into my body when I attended a stretching class thirty years later as I bent backwards into what is called a "bridge" to "spider-walk" - walk on one's hands and feet belly-up, back arched with one's head hanging upside-down and backwards. As a five year old, I was such a fast learner of routines in the gym and dance classes that the teachers put me at the head of the troupe and had the other kids to just follow my excellent memory.
The problem happened at a huge group recital. Some other kids not in my group sat in the wrong line. When the line of my group was called me and a couple others in my troupe who were supposed to be at the head of the group did not get to go out on stage. I was completely crushed that I'd been pumped up about how important my role was as leader and then no grownup noticed I was not at the head of my group to perform. How important could I be if I was not even missed?
The event producers offered to let me go out on stage with the other two kids in my troupe, but I could not stop crying. My mom even stuck me into the car and drove me around the block to try to calm me down. She tried to give me a pep talk that I was doing what actresses do - throw a fit when I had been short-changed. I had been successful and now it was time for the show to go on. But it didn't work because I had not had any practice in calming myself down after being really upset. I had never gotten so freaked out and disappointed in my sweet, short life before.
I recognized myself in a scene of the movie "Wave Rider." A young girl works hard and skillfully to prove to her grandfather she is qualified to be the spiritual leader of her community. But he refuses to allow her recognition because of her gender. She successfully fulfills many trials, in spite of being spurned, and she is even actively prevented from learning by being excluded from her grandfather's classes - for boys only. In one scene, she has learned complex Maori chants and performs them with tears streaming down her face, in spite of the fact that her grandfather has refused to attend her performance.
For some reason, the producers of that even long ago would not allow me as a forgotten performer to express myself by crying while dancing. Why not? Where is this rule that performers must be happy?
The movie does not go into why the Wave Rider protagonist cannot give up the role she is meant to play for her people. But this is what I need to know - for myself. How can persist and continue to fulfill the role I know I am supposed to play without allowing setbacks to prevent me from eventual success?
Anyone who does not fit into the mold that language usage or culture has established to be "normal" is left to flounder - this is just as true for people who are good looking, talented and smart as well as those who are on the other end of the social spectrum.
Part of being an adult to know what it is you need and go out and provide it for yourself. My own secret has been to figure out how to ask for or get what I needed in other ways, other avenues that did not excite societal reactions, to sneak under the radar...to go in the back door rather than the front door.
I'm not sure that this "back door approach" will work for me in the future. Self-doubt has reared its ugly head for me.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Incarnation Objectives
A friend of mine who had been trained as a Shaman told me he had a special talent. This was to take someone back to have a little talk with the "Advisors" who had been around when the person incarnated. The useful part was these Advisors knew what your particular intent was for being alive. Of course I was interested in learning what "purpose to life" I had intended to play out. Although he cautioned me that once I got the attention of these busy and rather serious ethereal "advisors," I had better be getting with the program if I was off-course - I still wanted to know. Who would want to waste an opportunity like this if it was useful?
The experience was not particularly notable; at the start it seemed to be a garden-variety hypnosis session that was fun to tell about mostly because of the sense of humor of my particular advisors. But the session had an unexpected result. The two of them were a little like an edited conversation between Homer Simpson and Groucho Marx.
The experience was not particularly notable; at the start it seemed to be a garden-variety hypnosis session that was fun to tell about mostly because of the sense of humor of my particular advisors. But the session had an unexpected result. The two of them were a little like an edited conversation between Homer Simpson and Groucho Marx.
The message for me was, "if you want to help people, don't let them obligate you." This message was delivered as these Advisor characters pulled off me a strange webbed, sticky stuff. The session was an interesting experience in synesthesia, because I could hear it coming off as well as feel this stuff sticking to me as it was pulled off the backs of my legs and in places where I'd had injuries. That had never happened before in a hypnosis session.
It was obvious that helping others was my purpose, and I'd been already doing just that much of my life. It was how I was doing it that evidently needed to be reconsidered. Most of the rest of the session gave me hints about specific ways I could take more effective care of myself. Some of these choices of how to best provide for my own needs were in question for me.
What surprised me was the immediate effect afterwards. In fact, it was rather shocking. Soon after, I got a call from one of the beneficiaries of my help. There was a significant surprise in the experience of the call for me. It's as if my dopamine receptors had been scrubbed clean again. Somehow, my friendly Shaman had taken me back to a brightness level of emotional and perceptual sensitivity of decades ago! Somehow, I'd accidentally-on-purpose shut myself off from my own emotional reactions to the people I'd been helping without realizing what that would mean for me. Part of the reason I had questions about how to provide for myself better was because I'd lost this sense.
Of course, recovering my "brightness" knob of emotions had mixed results. It made me realize the cost I'd been paying for hanging out with people that most would shun. This was something that I'd actively ignored because of my convictions that these people needed help from someone - and I had nominated myself to be that "someone".
The experience my Shaman friend gave me has me re-evaluating what I actually do for people and how it realistically affects them. Since I seem to have this bent, perhaps I should be more professional in how I express it rather than personal?
Naaah.
The experience my Shaman friend gave me has me re-evaluating what I actually do for people and how it realistically affects them. Since I seem to have this bent, perhaps I should be more professional in how I express it rather than personal?
Naaah.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Givers and Givees
I know most people think that Christmas is about giving, but what about those who are on the receiving end? Christmas is the one time of the year where it's appropriate to be a graceful and thankful and even overwhelmed recipient. What would giving be without a receiver? Without a Givee, there wouldn't be a chance to be the Giver.
There are so many types of giving.
There's the sort of giving that happens when someone takes you under the wing and includes you in how they take care of themselves, which is a brand of sharing or mentoring. There's the kind of giving where someone imagines what you might be missing and fills in something the givee never knew they could use or might want to have. There's the sort of gift that works like a tool that begs to be taken for the ride it deserves. There's the gift that has the potential to transform the life of the givee. Or the kind of gift that is an experience rather than a thing that the givee doesn't know about or would imagine was too expensive to provide for themselves.
My favorite is the sort of gift that is no trouble for the giver to be giving, but it has a fantastic benefit for the person who is receiving it. There can even be an advantage for the giver in a win-win situation.
Then there's the sort of gift that "costs" the giver quite a bit, but that person believes the gift is could be so valuable to the givee that the giver really wants to benefit them...and will accept no refusal.
Whatever the sort of gift you have received recently, it's great to think about what it costs the giver so you can be a graceful and grateful givee - and "pay it forward" to someone else if you feel so inclined.
I Could Do Anything, If Only...
If only I...
- ...was funnier, could make people laugh.
- ...could balance my desire to take care of others with the ability to walk my talk - for myself.
- ...If only I knew how to inspire others.
- ...if only I would exercise. I hate exercise. I need a goal, somewhere to go, something to do that makes me get out and move. Instead, I think of how much it's going to cost me in money that I don't have to get in the car and go swimming.
- ...If only I hadn't started from being so twisted up physically. Sometimes I am so discouraged that I'll never totally undo the limiting patterns I learned since before I learned to walk.
- ...if only I could afford to fix my teeth, maybe people would listen to what I have to offer. I hate that I have to accept social norms and can't control the petty things other people think about me.
- ...if only my own standards did not expand just ahead of my abilities, so that I'm always chasing behind what I feel I should already know how to do.
- If only I could be a better example that people would recognize as the beauty, grace and effortlessness of where I'm pointed. If only people could see how far I've come, how much I've learned. Instead, people want instant results.
- ...If only I didn't have to educate people before they could even recognize that they desperately need what I have to offer. Why do I always pick these skills that marry the physical with the mental, beyond what anyone else could imagine is possible? If only I wasn't attempting to educate on subject that are "before my time."
- ...if only I could quit training for livelihoods that require me to keep appointments. It's always been such a struggle for me to be on time.
- ..if only I .would get over having "just enough money" to survive. I seem to be so quixotic, always putting the surrender of my beliefs ahead of my own comfort. If I don't have a deadline or someone to show off my work to, I'll drop the threads that could bring me into a position to offer so much more to so many more people.
- ...if only those twenty projects wouldn't be clamoring for my attention, like gremlins. ME! ME! Work on ME!
- ...if only it wasn't so tempting to fritter away my time. At least I don't watch TV anymore, but there is still not enough time.
- ..if only I could stop creating interdependence by choosing others to take care of who are "bad risks" who need my help so desperately. They're energy drains, but I've learned to dance out of the way of their negativity, but this leaves me a dancing fool. So I have these non-functional adults who love me that I have to hold up if I want friends. Other people who are functional don't want these useless people around who are my friends, so they isolate me.
- ...if only establishing boundaries did not have a "cost". I don't like being a respected authority, and yet I crave to offer the benefit of my own observations and resourceful ideas. I'd rather have rapport with people, but my emotional maturity scares people away.
- ...if only I could just be OK as a hermit. I have so much to do to "polish my stone" that I could pretty much stop relating to people and just work. But I crave belonging.
- ...If only I knew how to communicate what has been so valuable to me. Even though it takes people into a backlash beyond fear itself, I know it is one way through because it has been so for me.
- ...if only I could live long enough to be respected.
- ...If only I could accept that in my culture, a woman can only have either respect or rapport.
- ...If only I could find a way to marry rapport and respect, because at heart I know am a teacher who is brilliant at rapport and at simplifying what others have stumbled over for decades.
- ...if only I was better at managing groups and could accept that I will never be "normal."
- ...If only I could believe that I don't need to be an authority that part of me loathes, because I feel as if I'll be squished like a bug if I show my own brilliance. I can merely have something to communicate.
- ...If only I could find a way to present what I know is valuable so that others could recognize its value.
- ...if only I knew more musicians. Live music inspires me.
- ...if only I wasn't so long-winded. No wonder I'm not a raging success with all these "if onlys."
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