I have many talents, but many of them seem to be back-firing on me at once. My headlights went ON when I discovered creative thinking as a teen. Since then I've been experiencing what I've read is quite common that many inventors run into head-on as they attempt to present their new ideas to others.
Proselytizers are icky - that's how many creative people interpret and respond to my enthusiasm when I bother to show it. They don't understand why I have suggestions for them. (Only Barbara Sher's Idea Party crowd really gets it.) My magic power is a high-idea talent generator that keeps the ideas coming when everyone else is spent.
Evidently, there is a cost to doing what is new. People can't imagine what motivates, so they assign the motive they can imagine. Most people are not very imaginative. Most commonly they become quite concerned with self-preservation while they freak out.
Of course, you're different. You're imaginative! You love to think!
Here are three situations where my brilliant creative thinking is causing chaos rather than solutions. Please offer your suggestions and bright ideas!
1. My ideas and experience of Alexander Technique are random acts of senseless beauty here:
In the situation of being able to come up with many ideas for their benefit, people mistakenly assume that I have some sort of investment in controlling them by telling them how and what else it is possible. This doesn't happen on the internet, because I don't know who they are, where they are or if they take my ideas for a ride or not and I've put a great deal of thought behind making it simple. This is great deal why I put so much of my energy into writing about creative thinking and writing about Alexander Technique. This takes up a great deal of my time without me getting much personal benefit back from it. But it's fulfilling on many levels because at least my intent is clear to others. So I spend 'way too much time doing it online - how can that be more productive time?
My way of teaching Alexander Technique in private lessons doesn't happen with the right timing for people. When I show someone how to get free of restrictions, (and what else is possible once you get free,) it's sometimes too effective hands-on. But teaching that way it takes too long and makes students dependent. So I make it more simple and "hands-off" so students can do it themselves from the very beginning. Then it's too simple and repetitive so they trivialize the usefulness of the information. (Obviously, there's a fine line between simply accessible and a topic being so conceptual that it becomes watered down and useless.) What would you prefer? Hands off or hands on? Or what else? Could you suggest a way to solve both these issues at once?
2. Relationships
If I know the person intimately, I'm a great observer with a long memory who can compensate for time of arrival. So I can describe for them what patterns of behavior I see them doing over this long period of time, (patterns that they have determined are in their way from before they met me.) So when I give them a way out, they tell me I have an investment in changing them and fight me because I handed them this observation and gave them keys to significant improvement. So, I let them fly on their own and they fall down, because someone who was "trying to change them" for their own selfish convenience wouldn't allow that freedom. Them identifying my care-taking as "twisted co-dependence" meant I could not express my care for them at all! Perhaps because I predicted their fall after seeing the pattern, they get rid of me because I "caused" them to fall, (the "kill the messenger" approach.) I regard this as being part of a pattern that is bound to re-occur because it's inherent in the caretaker/care taking role. This issue is surely to evolve if I hook up with a partner who will eventually need care - or I will eventually need help.
3. Social Change
Other people who don't know me very well imagine I'm really weird to broadcast my bright and wild ideas that shows them what else they can do (to be more imaginative about relationships, for instance.) If I show the benefit of my own inner understanding of myself, (my lack of jealousy, for instance,) they react by being afraid of me. The feedback I've heard about that is I am flaunting my maturity and insight... toward various negative effects only limited by their lack of imagination. In one case, my motive, (according to one person,) was supposedly to make a splash and incite controversy as if discussing the idea was going to result in me doing the idea personally. (Not my intent. But I can see how most people personally identify with their ideas. So at least I can understand where this assumption originates.)
OK - any ideas on one or all of these three? You can blog a long-winded answer, leave a comment, give a tweet on #ideaparty or call me up on the phone and talk to me... if you have my number. I'll add them to future posts...
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Any Questions?
A kid and a Jehovah Witness came to my door last week. Before they started in with their religious invitations, I engaged the youngster in learning to juggle. He was a kid of around ten years old. Because I'd given him something of value in learning juggling, the kid wanted to give me a booklet that was a digest of their bible. I took it and read some of it.
In this condensed Bible there was an admonition where followers were urged to burn the books of "evil" false prophets such as Tarot card readers, psychics, astrologers, etc. It got me thinking how threatening it is to religions to have competition to their cornering the market on interpreting answers to spiritual questions. Probably nowadays, anyone who dispenses advice and wisdom based on their personal experience is going to be threatening to a church. Made me wonder what definition of "evil" this threat would actually include. Pretty much whenever you decide certain people are "evil," it's only a matter of time before many more people end up in that same category.
I thought of all the people in social networking who are urged to "brand themselves" and be the number one special version of the dispenser of value gained by their followers. In a flash of inspiration, I saw every social networker on Twitter as having their own religion...and respective followers... How would threatened religions and churches burn e-books...?
In the time of Christ there must have been quite a few people out preaching "Truth." Probably there were lots of swindlers who were looking for followers who would pay them money to support their efforts, just as there seem to be now. In that era to perform the miracle of raising the dead, all you had to do is have the skill of recognizing someone in a coma who is might wake up eventually.
That Bible held up as the "word of God" was written by "psychics" who probably did not have much means to advertise - but they could write. Just getting materials to write something down must have been challenging. Probably being someone who knew how to read and write was something you had to keep secret, because people in that era were threatened by it. Creativity was probably low on the list of those cultures deliberately designed to control huge classes of people. Urban myths about anyone, translated numerous times and painstakingly hand-written and copied by those who could READ - it must have been such a privileged, rare gift to be literate in that era. Maybe all those stories in the Bible were about many people, and they all got lumped together into being about one person. (Bait and switch was a common historical tactic of religions.)
Now anyone can have their blog printed on demand. Anyone can dispense "wisdom" and write their own Bible. No wonder religions are being threatened.
Some people believe words have a firm, factual reality in themselves. They think words "mean what they mean." But this is not true. Words shift and flicker depending on context and expression, just as symbols do. This is what makes poetry and the symbols of religion and belief interesting.
Many people have an ability to think, but their ability to express their thinking may not reach the listener or reader for many mutual reasons. The topic or context may be incomplete or indistinct. Or the communicator's natural style of thinking may be so different from our own that it is difficult to figure out the communicator's intent. What is their associative pathway from point to point and how can I follow? It may be tricky to follow thinking paths - especially if thinking is original thinking.
In this way creative thinking is similar to religion - in that really original ideas must be carefully interpreted for the listener.
So often religious bureaucracy seems to want to control how people think because they invest in being the interpreter for the public of their respective "holy scripture." Religious leaders want to be the ONLY interpreter for the believers, claiming "all others are wrong or evil."
Each time they read or listen, each person is reconstructing meaning from reading what someone else has written or said. Someone who has written is pointing at...something about what they intend to say. Their skill and familiarity with their language use is a factor, in addition to their ability to think - but also their ability to articulate and guess at the assumptions of their listener. They try to answer the virtual question: "What would the listener want to know?"
It is up the person listening or reading to fill in the blanks, follow the traces or indicators while the listener reconstructs the thinking pathways of the communicator. In this way, listening is almost a spiritual practice. It is a spiritual question when a person seeks a way to express that which cannot be directly expressed. Spiritual, intuitive, or virtual questions often beg for symbols and indirect ways to express their messages and intent.
Of course, the way you frame a question structures and points to the answer. Have any questions now? Hope so.
In this condensed Bible there was an admonition where followers were urged to burn the books of "evil" false prophets such as Tarot card readers, psychics, astrologers, etc. It got me thinking how threatening it is to religions to have competition to their cornering the market on interpreting answers to spiritual questions. Probably nowadays, anyone who dispenses advice and wisdom based on their personal experience is going to be threatening to a church. Made me wonder what definition of "evil" this threat would actually include. Pretty much whenever you decide certain people are "evil," it's only a matter of time before many more people end up in that same category.
I thought of all the people in social networking who are urged to "brand themselves" and be the number one special version of the dispenser of value gained by their followers. In a flash of inspiration, I saw every social networker on Twitter as having their own religion...and respective followers... How would threatened religions and churches burn e-books...?
In the time of Christ there must have been quite a few people out preaching "Truth." Probably there were lots of swindlers who were looking for followers who would pay them money to support their efforts, just as there seem to be now. In that era to perform the miracle of raising the dead, all you had to do is have the skill of recognizing someone in a coma who is might wake up eventually.That Bible held up as the "word of God" was written by "psychics" who probably did not have much means to advertise - but they could write. Just getting materials to write something down must have been challenging. Probably being someone who knew how to read and write was something you had to keep secret, because people in that era were threatened by it. Creativity was probably low on the list of those cultures deliberately designed to control huge classes of people. Urban myths about anyone, translated numerous times and painstakingly hand-written and copied by those who could READ - it must have been such a privileged, rare gift to be literate in that era. Maybe all those stories in the Bible were about many people, and they all got lumped together into being about one person. (Bait and switch was a common historical tactic of religions.)
Now anyone can have their blog printed on demand. Anyone can dispense "wisdom" and write their own Bible. No wonder religions are being threatened.
Some people believe words have a firm, factual reality in themselves. They think words "mean what they mean." But this is not true. Words shift and flicker depending on context and expression, just as symbols do. This is what makes poetry and the symbols of religion and belief interesting.
Many people have an ability to think, but their ability to express their thinking may not reach the listener or reader for many mutual reasons. The topic or context may be incomplete or indistinct. Or the communicator's natural style of thinking may be so different from our own that it is difficult to figure out the communicator's intent. What is their associative pathway from point to point and how can I follow? It may be tricky to follow thinking paths - especially if thinking is original thinking.
In this way creative thinking is similar to religion - in that really original ideas must be carefully interpreted for the listener.
So often religious bureaucracy seems to want to control how people think because they invest in being the interpreter for the public of their respective "holy scripture." Religious leaders want to be the ONLY interpreter for the believers, claiming "all others are wrong or evil."
Each time they read or listen, each person is reconstructing meaning from reading what someone else has written or said. Someone who has written is pointing at...something about what they intend to say. Their skill and familiarity with their language use is a factor, in addition to their ability to think - but also their ability to articulate and guess at the assumptions of their listener. They try to answer the virtual question: "What would the listener want to know?"
It is up the person listening or reading to fill in the blanks, follow the traces or indicators while the listener reconstructs the thinking pathways of the communicator. In this way, listening is almost a spiritual practice. It is a spiritual question when a person seeks a way to express that which cannot be directly expressed. Spiritual, intuitive, or virtual questions often beg for symbols and indirect ways to express their messages and intent.
Of course, the way you frame a question structures and points to the answer. Have any questions now? Hope so.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Outside Language
People seem to have a really hard time thinking for themselves. They're not practiced at thinking on demand at all, especially when asked to think about what is missing. You really can't demand that others "think stuff outside of the box" and then not come up with at least one example right on the spot of what that is all about.
The most interesting idea is to use language to point out how it's possible to think beyond language.
The easiest example is to get out the video camera and film people walking. Then ask them to describe what they actually did as they walked. Or ask people to demonstrate a skill and teach it to someone else in a way other than how they learned it. Some more examples... point out why art exists - because people can't describe the making of art in words. Or ask music fans to describe, in words, what musicians do that allows them to improvise with each other. Ask movie fans how come a series of movie scenes makes people get startled or what really happened in the movie scenes before the whole movie theater just sucked in their breath simultaneously, or offered some other group reaction. ...They can't do it! Only those who work in those fields are conscious of these "nuts and bolts." Even these professionals who do these things don't know HOW they do them well enough to articulate how it works in words.
Many people are able to demonstrate something successfully, but they can't describe what they are doing without sounding trite, inane and fumbling. As a collective culture, we're just not used to observing for ourselves and using our own words to describe what we are experiencing.
Why isn't self-observation taught as a foundation skill?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - that language structures thought ability - is not merely limited to mere specific word definition. It's also related to how words are put together. It points out the perceptual assumptions within the sentence structure of language also traps us.
For instance, important to English sentence structure is the direct object. This has the whole culture being quite concerned with who is doing what to whom. We are constantly thinking about how much someone is lying, (not whether they are lying or not!) Everyone is constantly having to ask themselves, "What percentage of what so and so says should be believed?" Since the direct object is so important in our language, Westerners so often focus on what we can do to something outside of ourselves. It's all about who does what to whom, who gets whose way and who has to wait and for how long they wait - and does the one who waits EVER get what they might want or need?
This why people are so concerned with status in our Indo-European culture. It's impossible to open your mouth or write without adding to the cultural trance of defining the nature of reality. People are constantly in the position of attempting to determine how much another person is lying, teasing or joking and what their motives are.
Really, how does someone understand what another person MEANS to say? People are confronted by descriptions about what the world "is" constantly - every advertisement, every newscast, every piece of gossip, every narration of the nature of the world, every description, every lesson, every comment - any utterance that involves the possibility of word choice.
All of these constructs of words involve a unique point of view. As a listener, we must reconstruct a workable meaning out of what we hear. Nothing IS what it IS. Everything is "open to interpretation! We all must do this in spite of having little or no knowledge, appreciation, sympathy, empathy or compassion for that other person's point of view and/or experiences. We must guess at all of these or communicate directly.
For instance, although there are many lip-serviced references to an inter-woven body-mind connection, we still combine two words to discuss the feature - and the word is a noun, rather than a verb. In English at least, we are still cramming the concept of psycho-physical into our old mold of the two being separate - even though it it common that our culture now acknowledges that bodies and minds are inseparable in one person.
OK, I'll stop ranting now. Tell me what you think.
The most interesting idea is to use language to point out how it's possible to think beyond language.
The easiest example is to get out the video camera and film people walking. Then ask them to describe what they actually did as they walked. Or ask people to demonstrate a skill and teach it to someone else in a way other than how they learned it. Some more examples... point out why art exists - because people can't describe the making of art in words. Or ask music fans to describe, in words, what musicians do that allows them to improvise with each other. Ask movie fans how come a series of movie scenes makes people get startled or what really happened in the movie scenes before the whole movie theater just sucked in their breath simultaneously, or offered some other group reaction. ...They can't do it! Only those who work in those fields are conscious of these "nuts and bolts." Even these professionals who do these things don't know HOW they do them well enough to articulate how it works in words.
Many people are able to demonstrate something successfully, but they can't describe what they are doing without sounding trite, inane and fumbling. As a collective culture, we're just not used to observing for ourselves and using our own words to describe what we are experiencing.
Why isn't self-observation taught as a foundation skill?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - that language structures thought ability - is not merely limited to mere specific word definition. It's also related to how words are put together. It points out the perceptual assumptions within the sentence structure of language also traps us.
For instance, important to English sentence structure is the direct object. This has the whole culture being quite concerned with who is doing what to whom. We are constantly thinking about how much someone is lying, (not whether they are lying or not!) Everyone is constantly having to ask themselves, "What percentage of what so and so says should be believed?" Since the direct object is so important in our language, Westerners so often focus on what we can do to something outside of ourselves. It's all about who does what to whom, who gets whose way and who has to wait and for how long they wait - and does the one who waits EVER get what they might want or need?
This why people are so concerned with status in our Indo-European culture. It's impossible to open your mouth or write without adding to the cultural trance of defining the nature of reality. People are constantly in the position of attempting to determine how much another person is lying, teasing or joking and what their motives are.
Really, how does someone understand what another person MEANS to say? People are confronted by descriptions about what the world "is" constantly - every advertisement, every newscast, every piece of gossip, every narration of the nature of the world, every description, every lesson, every comment - any utterance that involves the possibility of word choice.
All of these constructs of words involve a unique point of view. As a listener, we must reconstruct a workable meaning out of what we hear. Nothing IS what it IS. Everything is "open to interpretation! We all must do this in spite of having little or no knowledge, appreciation, sympathy, empathy or compassion for that other person's point of view and/or experiences. We must guess at all of these or communicate directly.
For instance, although there are many lip-serviced references to an inter-woven body-mind connection, we still combine two words to discuss the feature - and the word is a noun, rather than a verb. In English at least, we are still cramming the concept of psycho-physical into our old mold of the two being separate - even though it it common that our culture now acknowledges that bodies and minds are inseparable in one person.
OK, I'll stop ranting now. Tell me what you think.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thinking While Angry
I have taught myself to creatively problem solve while angry. It was a very strange skill to learn, not a skill which I'd recommend to others. Better to not to get to this level in your ability to have to manage anger in the first place!
Twenty years ago, I had a relationship going with a person who was quite skilled in being manipulative. When I entered into the relationship, I observed that he also possessed ethics on when and where to apply his considerable skills in argumentation and debate. Ten years into the relationship, he eventually used his superior memory recall and debate skills to fight with me - something which I did not anticipate would ever happen. I had to firmly establish my boundaries and keep them in place as he decided that all things we had established and agreed upon previously were renegotiable. It was a trying time, but I managed it.
He came to expect me to do so. Had I not groomed the ability to creatively problem solve possible options of what to do next in spite of being angry, our relationship would have ended immediately. As it became clear later that staying in the relationship had become a toss-up whether it was good or bad for me personally, I was relieved when the relationship fell apart for practical reasons. I'm sure that the demands for training the skill to be able to problem solve while angry mitigated unpleasant reactions and effects; but perhaps it also prolonged the inevitable conflicts that later ended the relationship.
A more common situation where this skill would be useful to model would be during the parenting of teens - who again, would come to believe that everything should be renegotiated.
There were some prerequisite skills to make this ability possible. These were the ability to stop, pause or interrupt one's own habitual reaction. This can be best practiced when one is not in the throes of an intense emotion. It requires quite a bit of practice concerning the ability to surrender one's goal. There is a short window of time, (a quarter-second,) available to veto an action. You are already preparing to act as soon as you think of doing so, long before you realize you "want" to do something. It's quite telling when people around you believe you have first gotten angry - usually this is quite a bit further back before you realize it yourself.
Because of this lack of awareness, it's very difficult to veto a reaction that has already begun. This skill implies sophisticated exploration of expectations. Also useful during the learning process are pointedly specific observations of how a specific person's anger routinely works.
I learned this skill through the study of Alexander Technique. I'm not sure there is any other forum to learn such a thing, but I imagine anger management class would have these elements. Most commonly, this skill is usually described negatively as "poor impulse control." As far as I know, there is not any place suggested where "good impulse control" is taught - other than very early in life by parental guidance.
There is recently a field of study that seems to teach this skill specifically, but it's tailored toward adults. It's in the negotiation field, ( "Appreciative Inquiry,") the field of mediation or arbitration. Also, at www.newconversations.net there are free e-books on communication tools that seem quite useful. Some interesting books on this are classics in negotiation by Ury and Fisher. It's a series that started with "Getting to Yes." "Getting Past No, dealing with difficult people" More recently Fisher wrote a book with a guy named Shapiro dealing with how to manage emotions during negotiation called "Beyond Reason, using emotions as you negotiate."
Most of these contain stories and philosophy, but some of them provide practice suggestions. It's those offerings of practice that are most effective.
In an ongoing relationship, it is a good thing to make the general agreement that only one person in an argument is allowed to be "out of control." Obviously, it's best for the longevity of the relationship if safe expression of anger can happen as this role is rotated. It has been documented that women in particular suffer quite a bit in their health more than men if they do not speak up and make their "not very nice" concerns known.
I did hear about a study where four year olds were told that if they waited to eat something yummy, they could have twice as much of it when the grownups returned. Or they could eat the smaller portion that was in front of them now. The study afterwards followed the kids as they grew up who managed to wait compared to those who did not. It was found the ability to wait possibly resulted in a significant difference in general achievement.
My own mother was also a great model for how to deal with anger. She and my sister used to fight when I was a kid. By the time I became a teen, she had learned a few things about anger. She told me that people do not bother to get angry if they are not concerned about the relationship. She also modeled "cleaner" ways to fight. She never brought up "the kitchen sink" i.e: unrelated issues. She never tried to wound intentionally, retaliate or say things she might regret later. She would never accused me of being stupid and managed to resist telling me to do what she did not want me to do. But she would yell when she was upset, "I thought you're smart enough to think ahead about how your actions affect others." Her words were quite carefully selected. This instead of the classic name-calling angry routine of: "You thoughtless, selfish, cruel complainer. Why should what you want come first?"
She also made it quite clear to me that people who are out of control while angry say things they don't mean. She said this is mostly because people get scared - fear is a big component of anger. She gave me ways to calm myself down when I got angry and left me the time and place to do so. Then she modeled the ability to talk out the concerns that made us want to get angry with each other, once we were calmed down enough to figure out what we really thought and wanted.
So it was this fortunate, firm foundation, along with learning Alexander Technique, that led me to be able to manage to learn later to creatively problem solve and actually think while angry. I believe it's a rare thing. It should be more common.
Twenty years ago, I had a relationship going with a person who was quite skilled in being manipulative. When I entered into the relationship, I observed that he also possessed ethics on when and where to apply his considerable skills in argumentation and debate. Ten years into the relationship, he eventually used his superior memory recall and debate skills to fight with me - something which I did not anticipate would ever happen. I had to firmly establish my boundaries and keep them in place as he decided that all things we had established and agreed upon previously were renegotiable. It was a trying time, but I managed it.
He came to expect me to do so. Had I not groomed the ability to creatively problem solve possible options of what to do next in spite of being angry, our relationship would have ended immediately. As it became clear later that staying in the relationship had become a toss-up whether it was good or bad for me personally, I was relieved when the relationship fell apart for practical reasons. I'm sure that the demands for training the skill to be able to problem solve while angry mitigated unpleasant reactions and effects; but perhaps it also prolonged the inevitable conflicts that later ended the relationship.
A more common situation where this skill would be useful to model would be during the parenting of teens - who again, would come to believe that everything should be renegotiated.
There were some prerequisite skills to make this ability possible. These were the ability to stop, pause or interrupt one's own habitual reaction. This can be best practiced when one is not in the throes of an intense emotion. It requires quite a bit of practice concerning the ability to surrender one's goal. There is a short window of time, (a quarter-second,) available to veto an action. You are already preparing to act as soon as you think of doing so, long before you realize you "want" to do something. It's quite telling when people around you believe you have first gotten angry - usually this is quite a bit further back before you realize it yourself.
Because of this lack of awareness, it's very difficult to veto a reaction that has already begun. This skill implies sophisticated exploration of expectations. Also useful during the learning process are pointedly specific observations of how a specific person's anger routinely works.
I learned this skill through the study of Alexander Technique. I'm not sure there is any other forum to learn such a thing, but I imagine anger management class would have these elements. Most commonly, this skill is usually described negatively as "poor impulse control." As far as I know, there is not any place suggested where "good impulse control" is taught - other than very early in life by parental guidance.
There is recently a field of study that seems to teach this skill specifically, but it's tailored toward adults. It's in the negotiation field, ( "Appreciative Inquiry,") the field of mediation or arbitration. Also, at www.newconversations.net there are free e-books on communication tools that seem quite useful. Some interesting books on this are classics in negotiation by Ury and Fisher. It's a series that started with "Getting to Yes." "Getting Past No, dealing with difficult people" More recently Fisher wrote a book with a guy named Shapiro dealing with how to manage emotions during negotiation called "Beyond Reason, using emotions as you negotiate."
Most of these contain stories and philosophy, but some of them provide practice suggestions. It's those offerings of practice that are most effective.
In an ongoing relationship, it is a good thing to make the general agreement that only one person in an argument is allowed to be "out of control." Obviously, it's best for the longevity of the relationship if safe expression of anger can happen as this role is rotated. It has been documented that women in particular suffer quite a bit in their health more than men if they do not speak up and make their "not very nice" concerns known.
I did hear about a study where four year olds were told that if they waited to eat something yummy, they could have twice as much of it when the grownups returned. Or they could eat the smaller portion that was in front of them now. The study afterwards followed the kids as they grew up who managed to wait compared to those who did not. It was found the ability to wait possibly resulted in a significant difference in general achievement.
My own mother was also a great model for how to deal with anger. She and my sister used to fight when I was a kid. By the time I became a teen, she had learned a few things about anger. She told me that people do not bother to get angry if they are not concerned about the relationship. She also modeled "cleaner" ways to fight. She never brought up "the kitchen sink" i.e: unrelated issues. She never tried to wound intentionally, retaliate or say things she might regret later. She would never accused me of being stupid and managed to resist telling me to do what she did not want me to do. But she would yell when she was upset, "I thought you're smart enough to think ahead about how your actions affect others." Her words were quite carefully selected. This instead of the classic name-calling angry routine of: "You thoughtless, selfish, cruel complainer. Why should what you want come first?"
She also made it quite clear to me that people who are out of control while angry say things they don't mean. She said this is mostly because people get scared - fear is a big component of anger. She gave me ways to calm myself down when I got angry and left me the time and place to do so. Then she modeled the ability to talk out the concerns that made us want to get angry with each other, once we were calmed down enough to figure out what we really thought and wanted.
So it was this fortunate, firm foundation, along with learning Alexander Technique, that led me to be able to manage to learn later to creatively problem solve and actually think while angry. I believe it's a rare thing. It should be more common.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Favorite Pet?
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?
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."
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