#i think we need to kinder to ourselves about our expectations for how 'successful' a fanfic is

[pretz3l-log1c]

Recently I saw a post explaining cats vocalize around humans as a way to social signal. That Humans do a lot of social signaling as well. That's why people talk about the weather or will grumble about the long wait in line to the person near them. Or why people will ask 'Hey, how's it going?' and just want a 'good. Thanks for asking. And you?'. It's all about recognizing you're part of a group.

Then I saw, and reblogged a post, explaining that compared to most marketing stats, fanfiction is exceptionally above engagment averages at even 10% kudos per hits.

Yet, fanfic writers often feel as if they're screaming into a void and that engagement is down/dwindling/dying/etc.

So now I'm wondering if these two things are connected.

I think the problem fanfic writers are currently facing is a matter of community. In a way participating in fandom by writing fanfic is a way of social signalling. It is a way for the writer to go "I like this thing, don't you like this thing too?"

It's like the writer is calling out hello only for 90 out of 100 people to blankly stare at them. 10 out of 100 will wave hello. Only a few out of 100 will actually say something back.

Is it any wonder writers feel like they're screaming into a void? At least when you scream into a void you don't know how many people heard you, you just hear who screams back. It has to hurt mentally to put your heart out there and feel like it's being ignored.

I think about how forums of the early internet age have largely died off. How Tumblr engagement has ebbed over the years. How fanfiction has become some people's main means of engaging in fandom because it's 'free'.*

So I genuinely think the problem here is fanfic writers want community and are trying to gain that through fanfic. And they feel largely ignored/abandoned/snubbed because they're not recieving that engagement.

So my advice to writers:

turn off/hide/ignore your fanfic stats. If email alerts for kudos and/or comments spark joy then keep them. Otherwise turn those off as well.

create and/or join fandom focused discords. Find people you connect with and build a community that way.

put an author's note on your works that you like to engage with readers. That you want their thoughts, feelings opinions, etc. on your writing. Provide links for people to to chat you up on whatever social media site you prefer.

My advice to readers:

if you're going to talk to fandom friends about a fic you read, maybe leave a comment as simple as 'I love this and I'm going to share it with everyone I know.'

if you find a fic you regularly re-read or an author you loyally follow, let the author know that.

if a fic had a huge impact on you, let the writer know that.

Readers please note: I am not saying leave kudos more often, I am not saying comment on every fic. I am saying, in short, if it moves you then let the author know you were moved.

* yes I know fanworks are a labor of love/hobby and not actually free for the creator at least in time/effort. I write fanfic. I'm just saying it doesn't typically cost money to consume.

[dear-mahal-ko]

Some things remain to the a lesson for the future

As sometimes I feel life pauses in moments, when you want to treasure them, as you wish it could just last forever..in a way..those memories, will never be forgotten. Does anyone feel like that at moments ?

Well I can say one thing:

Its a reminder that time and yourself can tell how your life will go. The effort, the chakra, faith you have will help you direct your life. I am not saying that you have to be perfect at all. Not at all. Whatsoever. I sometimes think I am crazy. Talking to myself giving the pep-talk. But not a lot of people realize that we all have tendencies to do so.

We don’t realize we are getting older. When we were children, we ought to wish to be older, but now we find ourselves in the point of our lives wanting to just live in the moment. What I thought I’d be in my late twenties, is nothing compared to what I thought at fifteen years old. Thought I’d marry my highschool seeetheart, finished college, had a stable job and had children by 30. Im two years to being thirty and I am no where close to any of what I thought. Sometimes having so much expectations given upon you weighs you down that all you want to do is breathe. What you feel in the moment.

Let yourself feel.

Growing up with asian parents too much expectations were given. The typical filipino mindset: no boyfriend until 30, finish a medical degree. You could not go to college and not do a medical field. Get married with an asian and then have kids. There was no room for error and if not there was a whole speech about their sacrifices they have done for us to get here.

Don’t get me wrong:

I utterly respect my parents highly, that I understand their sacrifices. But neither of them ever will understand being an only child is was a curse for me. I never had anyone to talk to when i needed someone to talk to. When i wanted to voice out my opinions, my parents told me I needed help and needed to see a psychologist. When they told me that I felt like there was something wrong with me. And only Medical field was the only option because that was my safe zone and the PRACTICAL CHOICE, since my cousins and aunts had a high rating of great money and success in life. And passion for your love of art was not getting you anywhere.

Reality seats in:

I took the leap of faith and took my architectural designing major and my studio fine arts minor and I love every single moment of it. The process, the ideals behind it and the conjunction of art, math and science together all made sense to me. But when I got the rejection letter of not getting into the program ( 40 people were accepted into the program out of 400 that applied). My world stopped to be honest. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like my whole life I had to prove so much to get where I am and now I am still struggling with telling myself good job. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to have moments of weakness. But its hard for me to face it that I may never get to live my dream, all my life according to my parents, I am a bit of a failure.

“You need to be better at this”.

“You lack this trade”.

“You should have been done with school”.

“Are you going to finish school when you are 40?”.

“You had one job to do: finish school”.

Things like those sentences : go through my head when I am in a bubble of cycles.

The regression of self dissappointment to myself.

But i want to try something different for 2023 :

Be kinder to yourself.

I know we tend to be hostile to ourselves when things don’t go our way but I promise you, it wont be like this. You are growing at your job, though there are times you want to breakdown because of the hardships and expectations from a company that will drive you insane. But you know you are trying your best to be okay, to do your best, and keep existing despite everything that is happening .

Everyone just wants to be accepted, loved for who they are and be supported by the people that we love dearly. Keep fighting. Keep pushing. Keep moving. Keep hustling. And keep loving yourself.

~Sam

[mentalhealthandgames]

Analysis on Celeste:

Celeste is an Indie 2D platformer developed and published by ‘Extremely OK Games’. Its plot is simpler than the ones of the other two games as it consists of much more gameplay (consisting of platforming) than the other games I am discussing: it’s about a girl whose default name is Madeline who wants to climb a mountain called Celeste Mountain.

Madeline has anxiety, and has to learn breathing techniques to prevent panic attacks. I think this is good because breathing techniques are very useful against panic attacks, and the way they are incorporated in the game means the player can practice them alongside Madeline which might encourage them to use breathing techniques in real life in situations where they may be needed. Although the gameplay mechanic of using the breathing technique to progress is shown to not always be successful, I think this is also important because sometime breathing techniques or other coping mechanisms won’t work. For me, for example I have had many times where breathing techniques have helped me get through my panic attacks more easily and many other times when I’ve been far too overwhelmed to focus on them properly and therefore struggle with the panic attack for longer.  The way the game makes the player help Madeline through her panic attacks I think also provokes empathy in the player as it really puts them in her shoes.

The player never finds out the cause of Madeline’s mental health conditions, which I also think is a good thing, because most media shows mental health conditions as caused by severe trauma, and that can be the case, as trauma is seen as a common cause for most mental health problems. However depression and/or anxiety can also be caused by other factors, such as stress, lack of sleep, drug or alcohol abuse or a combination of similar factors or by trauma that isn’t as severe as ones shown in media. There is some discussion in mental health communities of how the idea mostly spread by the media that most people with mental health conditions have developed them as a result of severe trauma can be harmful to people whose mental health conditions developed as a result of other factors. This is because it can make people feel that their mental health problems are not as valid or serious as those of people’s that did develop from severe trauma, which is not the case, as all mental health problems are valid and should be treated seriously. Therefore the fact that the cause of Madeline’s mental health problems is not explained makes it more relatable for more people with mental health conditions and also might bring awareness to people who don’t have mental health problems that they can just be a part of life that developed without any severe trauma as the direct cause.

A main part of the plot is a character who I have seen referred to as either Madeline’s subconscious or the physical representation of her mental health conditions, known as ‘A Part of [Madeline]’ in the game and referred to as Badeline by fans and in game extras. I will refer to her as Badeline simply because it is easier. Badeline consistently attempts to prevent Madeline from completing her climb of Mount Celeste, mocking, chasing and fighting her. In Chapter 6 of the game, Madeline after a talk with her friend Theo (who had taught her the breathing technique), confronts Badeline, saying: “you’re everything I need to leave behind”. Badeline gets aggressive and when Madeline tries to use her breathing exercise Badeline stops it from working and Madeline falls down all the way back to the base of the mountain. There she once again meets a recurring character simply known as Granny, who recommends that Madeline talks to Badeline instead of fighting her, saying “figure out why she’s so scared”. When Madeline finds Badeline again she tries to talk to her, and tries to convince her to join forces. Badeline gets angry and they then start to fight. Badeline then says: “Fine. You win. I guess you don’t need me after all. If you want me to go away, I’ll try.” Madeline replies: “that’s not what I want. I need your help now more than ever. Please. Let’s work together… it’s okay to be scared.” They then hug and recombine into a levelled up version of Celeste who finally is able to finish climbing the mountain (or rather fly through it). “Madeline never “defeats” her anxiety and depression. Though you spend the majority of the trek fighting against and trying to escape [Badeline]—or, rather, her self-loathing and low self-esteem—you ultimately crest the mountain by realizing that mental illness isn’t something you can browbeat into submission. Madeline learns that hating her anxiety and depression only exacerbate their effects. By accepting every facet of her personality, and learning to be kinder to herself, Madeline finally climbs Celeste Mountain. “Creating this game and guiding Madeline through her journey made it obvious to me that acceptance was the only way forward,” Thorson wrote me. We all owe ourselves that kind of realization” (Clarke, 2018). I think this message of acceptance is a very important one. People with mental health conditions spend a lot of their time struggling against their conditions and trying to regain control of their life, but accepting their mental health conditions as part of life can actually make it easier to carry on with their life. This is a message that really resonated with me personally as when I was hearing voices as a result of my psychosis I felt like I was constantly fighting against myself to try and move forward. This ending, of Madeline accepting all of herself, subverts expectations and stereotypes, as most people see mental health something to be pushed down, hidden or beaten.

Maddy Thorson (the creator of Celeste) has said that the game is based on their own experiences with mental health as well as those of their team. “Our top priorities were to tell a story that meant something to us and explore these topics from a individual perspective, to draw players into this world with these characters we grew to love,” Thorson said. “Our intention going in wasn’t to represent mental illness in general, or to make a ‘how to deal with depression’ guide, and we didn’t think to consult professionals on the topic” (Grayson, 2018). This makes the representation feel extremely genuine. The game has been praised by many fans and critics for how relatable its mental health representation is. It is incredibly successful for an Indie game and given that the story is entirely about mental health, this implies that mental health representation that feels genuine and relatable is important for a lot of people. Maddy Thorson, when asked “how many copies has Celeste sold to date?” in an interview from 2019, said: “I don't have an exact up-to-date number, but I know we're coming up on a million copies soon. Which is unbelievable to us” (Marks, 2019). Given that the interview is from 2 years ago, the amount of copies sold is likely past one million by now.

The game is a platformer and was designed to be extremely difficult, but also to give hope and encourage the player not to give up, which I think is echoed in the message as Madeline is shown to be brave for accepting herself and her mental health problems, which is essentially the opposite of giving up. The game also has an ‘assist mode’ which includes motivational phrases such as “you can do this” to encourage the player to keep on going and the difficulty of the game can itself also be seen as trying to represent how difficult struggles with mental health can be. I think the game was made for people with mental health conditions in mind as a large part of the target audience as Maddy Thorson said it was therapeutic to make and clearly shares their own, and their team’s experiences with mental health and so is relatable for a lot of people with mental health conditions. In fact almost every review I read on Celeste also included the reviewer sharing their own mental health experiences and how the game resonated with them.

Overall it is probably the most popular of the games I am discussing and I think that is for a good reason. I found it an incredibly striking and genuine story of struggling with mental health with important messages such as ‘don’t give up’ and ‘self-acceptance is important’. These messages are said often and can be patronising but playing the game and experiencing Madeline’s struggle to accept herself and to manage to achieve her goal while struggling with her mental health makes those phrases feel real and possible to achieve.

References:

Marks, T (2019) Celeste Sequel (Probably) Won’t Happen, Developer Says. Available at:

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/07/celeste-developer-doesnt-want-to-make-a-sequel-new-game-in-the-works (accessed at: 24 February 2021)

Clarke, N (2018) My Biggest Revelations of 2018 Came From an Indie Video Game. Available at:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa5937/my-biggest-revelations-of-2018-came-from-an-indie-video-gameAccessed at: 24 February 2021)

[burgundydahlia]

Do you ever find that it seems like Emma Watson gets too much of the blame and hate of what went wrong in the hp movies (specifically with romione characters) when we should be blaming the writer, director, and producer of them. I also don't like how people go hardcore on her and call her eyebrows when we don't do that with Dan and Rupert who i think had some bad moments in the films but wouldn't ever nickname them or constantly berate them. She ain't perfect but some need to chill

Allow me to preface this by saying I have no desire to accidentally call anyone out or hurt anyone’s feelings. I know that some of the people I interact with regularly and whom I like a lot have very strong opinions about Emma, and I don’t begrudge them their feelings whatsoever.

But in answer to your question Nonny, yes, I think Emma Watson gets a lot of shit thrown at her and, more often than not, it quickly becomes unfair, mean, or downright rude.

The long and short of it for me is I think it’s more than okay to not like an actor or actress, but when we place the blame for many of the things we don’t like about a film on one person, especially one who was a young teenage girl at the time of filming, it gets really ugly really fast. I don’t really understand how anyone could think a 16-year-old actress truly had any major influence over a massive blockbuster franchise based off an even more successful book series, but I see a lot of that sort of chatter when posts about the movies pop up. And while I could get on my soapbox and start pontificating about how sexism is so deeply ingrained in our society that we place undue burden and expectations on women and girls and how it colors our attitudes and thoughts even when we otherwise like to think of ourselves as champions for women, I don’t think that’s going to benefit anyone at this moment in time (and I don’t want to sound like I’m nagging - also something I can blame on society’s sexist backbone!)

As for the name calling? I think it’s incredibly petty and not a good look at all and a big reason I feel that way is because I see it as adults making rude comments about a teenage girl’s acting skills since that’s the timeframe their referencing. And it’s one thing to say, “I really don’t like Emma Watson’s acting because I think she’s over the top and disingenuous,” but to call her names or give her a childish nickname like Eyebrows? It’s just plain meanspirited. 

Now, I do want to make a point of saying that some people have admitted to getting caught up in the Tumblr echo chamber from time to time (and really, who hasn’t?) and have since said they want to try and be kinder and I believe them. I think we all have it within us to say or do things in the moment that are mean or hurtful but, upon reflection, we feel really crummy about. So I’m hopeful that some of that bullshit mean girl behavior will start to subside. Then again, there are some people who are going to continue to really dislike her and be unkind, so who knows?

Honestly, it’s not my style to try and call anyone out. And I am not here to try and make anyone feel bad about themselves or judge them. But it’s also not my style to engage in that sort of toxic behavior either. I’m more the type to try and kill them with kindness and focus on the good things rather than the bad.

Thanks, Nonny!

[angelinewanderland]

Is it a new year already?

In 2017 I vowed to walk into the new year with the right attitude instead of wishing for the year to treat me the way I think I deserve to be treated. I would have hoped that after the disaster of 2016 things would finally start to go back into alignment. But oh how wrong I was. Little did I know the barrage of things that would come with 2018 (starting with January) and later leave me with lessons like humility, patience and perseverance. I was lucky that the previous year had taught me about resilience or I wasn’t sure how I would proceed…

Most of 2018 taught me that life is about accepting where you are and accepting that if you are still required to grow through your journey, you will often times be thrown outside of your comfort zone to keep you on your feet.

While I have no idea what comes with 2019, one thing I hope to do next year is to begin to find out what it is I’ve been called to do in this life and to not give myself such a hard time in the process. 

For too long now have I’ve compared myself with others that I have completely forgotten what it is that makes me who I am and what my greatest qualities are. That’s why this year I vow to focus on my strengths and weaknesses, because I believe that everyone deserves to find out what they’re good at, what makes them happy and how they can contribute their skills to the world.

I often found myself asking, why are we so often comparing our life with others if no one lives the exact same life? Everyone has their own definition of what being “Happy” and “Fulfilled” means and what each person defines as “Success”

For example some people may connect their happiness and success with fame and money. 

Others define happiness as having a 9 - 5 job, buying a house, getting married and building a family. 

Nowadays, Millenials can be found travelling the world, creating their own start up or taking some years off to “find themselves”. They’re becoming more self aware, more innovative, more adventurous and prefer to take the time to find a career doing the things that they enjoy doing. 

All of these are lifestyle choices...

Neither are good nor bad, they’re everyone’s personal choice...

And yet…

We find ourselves comparing our lives to others because somehow we seem to think we all want the same things...

Aside from the obvious social media culture that we now live and breathe in, I can understand that we are constantly pressured to meet and live up to some kind of global lifestyle expectation.

However, after a few years of moving around trying to settle into one life, one country and one home, I found that, the same shit happens in every place....and at the end of the day, all these expectations are just an illusion...

Life is what you make it

Someone can make a good life for themselves according to their needs and wants, but it doesn’t mean you have to match up to it. Perhaps what is best for them isn’t the best for you. 

In fact, what all this ends up doing is make a lot of people depressed because we can’t all meet those unrealistic expectations...

Why? 

Because we’re not all reaching for the same goal!

When I was 25, I thought we all had to follow some imaginary timeline like get a job, get married and have kids, if you do these things in order you will be happy and successful. Then I turned 30 and 31 and saw couples get divorced or struggle with having kids, people changing their careers, people going back to school after 30 (myself included), unexpected illnesses or early deaths and I realized, boy that was some imaginary bullshit we all had to work hard for just to be disappointed.

So instead of wasting more years of our lives thinking we need to be something special to feel fulfilled, why can’t we be friendlier with our thoughts and needs? Why can’t we ask ourselves instead, what it is that would bring us peace of mind and what is it that will drive us to live our best life? 

By the way, here’s a little hint. 

The answer should never require the approval of someone else. 

I thought that was my life until I realized people change their minds all the time. 

So how can anyone truly make someone else happy when no one can be truly happy because there is no solid definition of happiness? It keeps changing! 

But even more importantly, how can we make anyone happy, if we aren’t even happy with ourselves?

So for those who haven’t found their calling (like me), I hope this year you will get to celebrate you! That you will be kinder with yourself and with your thoughts and needs. I hope this year you will do what you need to do to find out your greatest qualities and strengths so that you can finally shine a light in this world. And finally, I hope this year brings you more at peace with yourself and I hope that this is the year you will find what you have been looking for.

[ask-dr-knockout]

New Job and Confessions

So hey guys, just a heads up I'll be starting my new job here soon in a few days. I just finished the remaining documentation and stuff like that. *Takes deep breath*

I'll be honest I am watching inspiring shows and listening to calming music right now between work in an effort to kind of keep myself positive and a little bit distracted from thinking any negative thoughts or allowing insecurities to fester.

I do apologise for a lack of posts lately and offtopic content as I know I have active RP I need to reply too and catch up with as well as commissions. Thanks for your patience my friends. Please bear with me.

I'm sure we all can relate to feeling a bit uneasy when it comes to change good or bad. It's new and it's a bit frightening at times. I'm about to go through alot of that soon. I've made alot of promises to my family and myself lately too. I want to make sure I do my best.

Not only for the new job but to commit to my own personal health and well-being again by keeping up good routines and cultivating good habits.

This is the first true full time job I'm taking on again since my family went through tragedy 4 years ago. This is a very difinitive time for us and I want to focus and make sure I do everything I can to succeed.

I'm finding myself in the same position my mother was in before she became sick. After financial hardship in the family, my mother went through rigerious training for a new job in order to help support all of us.

Despite her own unbelievable hardships while sick and going through chemo my mother continued to work and even passed her tough training for her job before she became to Ill and had to take medical leave. If it had not been for her efforts we would have not made it.

She did it for dad and I.

In the short time she was with that amazing company she forged bonds and friendships that could have lasted for years to come because that was who my mother was. Strong, determined and outgoing. She was going to go so far they would have promoted her. I sometimes wonder why God took her from us things would have been so much easier to bear if she had healed. She was/is the heart of us. She was my best friend before I had any friends. She still drives me to succeed as any good mother would.

I'm so proud of my mom and my dad for fighting through and being there for each other and me. I'm crying as I write this now but I want mom to know it's my turn now and I'm going to make her proud. If my mom could pass her training as sick as she was to support us I have no excuse but to do my very best like she did. I hope that I can succeed, this family needs some WINS. I owe that to her and dad for being amazing inspiring parents.

I'm tired of holding myself back from living a normal stable life both financially and emotionally. I figure if I can just get past this change I will start to get used to a new and better rhythm in my life once again and will have accomplished something meaningful.

I've been so used to putting out fires or relying on others to take that leadership and provide, but i think it's finaly time to cultivate and rebuilt again and this time I'm going to make that happen on my own merits. I want to do this for so many reasons.

I've had plenty of time to process everything that happened in the past. I can finally talk about subjects that hurt deeply or handle the slightest hint or mention that before could leave me in rough emotional states. I can recognize the fact I'm finally healing.

Where I won't pretend that I'm 100% recovered however, I now have regained enough of my old self to move forward again. I have found tools to work and manage that grief and pain. I've laid out a plan.

I realize I'm rambling alot right now but I need to get these feelings out and the more I say the easier it is to face.

The more I type the more likely I am to stick to my own personal proclimations and goals.

So yeah, I am just trying to keep positive and confidant. For Mom, Dad and myself.

This is going to be outside my comfort zone as it is a completely new field to me but I just gotta keep up the resolve. Lol man, I haven't even started yet, it could be easier then what Anxiety/ uncertainty likes to make one think. Gotta avoid overthinking it and take it one day at a time. I wish I didn't overthink things so much haha. feeling uncertian right now isn't going to help.

Also, this isn't so much just an update post I guess as an outlet to affirm my own choices that what I am doing is the right thing because it's so far from what I ever actually invisioned myself doing. Of course sometimes it's those things that bring us the most happieness too. Life is just not perdicable despite how often we have our own goals in mind. I find it's sometimes best to go with the flow and take what opportunity is presented. And this IS a career opportunity I can be proud of. And I'm a bit overjoyed it is not retail again. I've done retail so much in the past. I finally have found an opportunity I can grow and advsnce within this company. Where hard work supposedly Does get recognized.

But don't get me wrong. My heart still yearns for a career in the arts but I know we can't always have it our way and things may have to come in time. I tried for years to get where I thought I wanted to go without the success I was seeking. It doesn't mean I've given up but I do have to make a new strategy on how to move forward. And with financial stability and new skillsets to fall back on it also opens new opportunities for me as well. I'm making a calculated decision to persue a better future. The dreams are not dead.

Sometimes we have to take a less obvious or indirect route to achieve our goals and be pragmatic. I think the important thing to remember in any choice we make is to stay true to ourselves and especially those we love.

I can do this and I'm not going to let my insecurities get in the way of persuing a better path. but I think I may need help and encouragement from my friends. I really am not good with the solitary thing lol.

I kind of depend on you guys. You really do help drive me. Kind words and actions go a long way they are invaluable to me. Someday soon I hope I can give back to these special people in my life. Hugs

If I know myself, I know that I can be a bit hard on myself too. Another reason I truly depend on my friends. I have alot of big dreams because of my own high expectations and sometimes that can crush me when I think about how far off those aspirations still are. But maybe it's time to start living each day for what it is and having smaller goals leading to something bigger instead.

I'm working on being a kinder person to others but also to myself. I read recently how much our inner voice can truly play a role in our lives. I'm also saying this too for anyone else dealing with that. Be kind to yourself. Coach yourself like you would a close friend you want to help. Give yourself a break when you don't always succeed. If I fail at this new job it just means it wasn't the right fit. But I will have failed knowing I did my best first. At least I can mark that off my list too and move on to the next thing that might be even better.

But anyways yep, I want to keep driving for rideshare on the side as well as working on my freelance art/ cosplay. I don't want to give those things up because they are very much apart of who I am and what I love.

I admittedly still have some doubts about running myself down or the opposite never having the will to alot time for those passions anymore. To be honest I think the second out of the two is my greater fear. I tend to get focused on one task at a time but this job will require me to become more adept at multitasking or stopping and switching gears. not just in the job itself but in managing every aspect of my life. I hope I can learn to do this better as I can be a bit obsessive and too focused on one thing at a time. Also getting bored with one thing. It's definitely a skill I have to work on.

*Sigh* I have to admit too, there's so much riding on this too as I will need to work rideshare the first 2 weeks after i get done with my normal full time training hours to still handle the bills before I can begin to rely more on my new work schedule. After that I can limit my driving to maybe a few hours on the weekends so that I can begin to replenish savings for the future. This probably also means I may be less likely to be attending as many conventions as I used too in the past at least for this first year. But we'll have to see how it goes.

I'll be praying for energy and resolve and any support/prayers or well wishes is super appreciated on all of this. I'm going to need it in the upcoming weeks.

Anyways thanks for reading and allowing me to vent my feelings out to you guys. Your the best.

[kirstymcneill]

Effective Activism in a Time of Coronavirus: what are we learning six months in?

This post first appeared on Global Dashboard on the 8th of July 2020.

Nothing I’ve read has captured our times and our task better than this essay from Western States Center ED Eric K. Ward: “leading in easy times is, well, easy. But these times are not them”. Leading in difficult times is unbelievably hard, but we will all be better at it if we share what we’re learning and invite others to challenge our thinking and contribute their own. In that spirit, here are the four things that I think are emerging as lessons about effective activism in a time of coronavirus.

In a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose

My timeline is still going nuts for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s powerful “Message from the Future”. The bit that gives me pause comes in at the 3 minutes mark, “the world’s leading climate scientists told us we had 12 years left to cut our emissions in half, 12 years to change everything”. It was released, of course, before the coronavirus crisis, but the pandemic has given prominence to a similar rhetoric elsewhere.

Here in the UK, for example, the Build Back Better coalition argue we are in a similarly transformative moment: “let’s not go back to normal … what we do next could change everything”. And the crisis has seen a new lease of life for the slogan “we won’t go back to normal when normal was the problem”,  first used in protests in Chile towards the end of 2019 but now turning up everywhere from graffiti in Hong Kong to the fridge doors of activists to university research programmes.

That positioning is understandable – many of our missions face an existential threat from climate change and the need to dismantle white supremacy and racism could hardly be more urgent. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that we have to focus on winning big rather than talking big.

How should we respond to the evidence that many people are absolutely desperate for a “return to normal” and not sure if they’d like to change very much, never mind “everything”? Roger Harding’s essay here charts that the crisis has seen a big spike in demand for nostalgic television and music, and it may not be an accident that the BBC’s coming of age drama Normal People is the breakout success of lockdown. If what’s happening in popular culture is any guide, people want to look back before they move forward. We need to accept that in a fight between a rewind and a revolution, revolution’s gonna lose.

Likewise, publics may not recognise the two separate worlds that Arundhati Roy charts so beautifully in her “The Pandemic is a Portal” essay. In Roy’s telling, we are faced with “a gateway between one world and the next” and the choice before us is whether we “choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us” or whether we “walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”.

I wonder how many people see the pandemic in quite this way, with a clear delineation between the old world ‘yesterday’, the crisis ‘today’ and the recovery ‘tomorrow’. Some may also see today’s pandemic as merely what journalist Ros Wynne-Jones called “a grim dress-rehearsal” for the emergencies to come. For that constituency there will be a real premium on immediate strategies for securing recent gains, starting with the list George Graham lays out here.

Fighting campaigns that can deliver immediate and tangible change isn’t a substitute for bolder transformation, but it is a necessary precursor to it, because strategies which confuse a public appetite to build back better with one to build back completely different just aren’t going to attract a big enough base. As one union organiser told me, “there’s no point asking people to trust you to organise a revolution if you can’t get a microwave in the staff canteen”.

‘Don’t mourn, organise’ is the wrong mantra for our times. We need to do both

I’ve written before about the work we’ve been doing to defend aid and development in the UK. It’s good work – innovative, strategic and delivered with discipline. I’m proud of it, and of our success in defying political gravity to maintain support for aid in the face of sustained attacks. We have, however, just suffered a huge defeat, with the Prime Minister choosing to abolish our world-leading development department in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis for 100 years and on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the “great generation’s” Make Poverty History campaign.

It isn’t hard to see what is going on here. A ‘new front in the culture war’ is opening and it’s increasingly clear that “retoxification” is not a by-product of the strategy, it is the strategy. At the end of 2019 I felt that identifying models that could galvanise but not polarise was the core strategic campaigning question of the decade, but I now feel it’s a much more insistent one that should dominate our summer.  

Professor Tim Bale’s excellent research into the divergent attitudes of voters, activists and political leaders shows where we are headed, at least in the UK. The voters who have ‘lent’ their votes to the government on the basis of values alignment and economic competence are going to start peeling off fast as soon as furlough ends, unemployment climbs and the government’s reputation for economic competence takes a battering. At that point, this research implies, there’s no strategy available to the government other than dialling up the cultural campaign. We can expect to see more, and not less, of “the war on woke” and an increased push from the ‘Britannia Unchained’ generation in the cabinet to do away with regulations and protections.

If that analysis is right, activists have a strategic choice to make and only a matter of weeks to make it: are we here to win a culture war, or to end one?

Of course we need to spend this period re-strategising, including asking ourselves the question campaigners most hate to answer, but need to: if you’re so smart, how come you’re getting beaten so badly? But more than that, we need to give ourselves the time to mourn what we have lost.

We have literal grieving to do – for all the people who have died before their time, the pain compounded by the knowledge that structural racism and poverty have done as much damage as biology here. And we have grieving of the more abstract sort to do too – the kind of coming to terms with loss we all need to do when something we truly value, not just desire, has gone.

The Collective Pyschology Project’s “This Too Shall Pass” report gives us a toolkit for how to grieve but it is actually earlier work by its founder Alex Evans that tells us why activists have to learn to grieve. If we don’t work through denial, anger, bargaining and depression properly, we’ve no hope of getting to acceptance and, therefore, to a place where we can see clearly what our next move should be.

I’ve written elsewhere about the power of Andrew Tenzer’s “The Empathy Delusion” report but his latest research, “The Aspiration Window” should also give activists pause for thought. If we, like our colleagues in communications, also score highly on a sense of personal agency, that can be a tremendous source of resilience and optimism in normal times. It is, however, a recipe for burn-out and guilt in these times. We have to accept we can’t campaign our way out of a pandemic, and we can’t always beat overwhelming political odds.

“Don’t mourn, organise” is the wrong mantra for now. Let’s do both.

Think global, act local has come of age – but we need to buttress it

Many of us have spent many years desperately trying to generate a sense of global citizenship, recognising that global problems need global solutions, but global solutions need global constituencies to push for them. The pandemic has helped illuminate that like nothing else in our lifetime – and events like the Global Citizen #TogetherAtHome concert have given our sense of interconnectedness a public expression.

While some governments have pushed a sense of national exceptionalism (and certainly benefitted in the short term from a ‘rally around the flag’ effect), there’s actually limited evidence that people are identifying particularly fervently with the nation state, despite its prominence in everything from paying our wages to dictating when we can get a haircut.

Instead, counter-intuitively, we seem to be feeling simultaneously more local and more global than ever before. This will be welcome news for community organisers and internationalists alike, but we shouldn’t take it for granted that this feeling will be permanent.

Here in the UK, British Future’s Sunder Katwala’s careful reading of the polls throughout the crisis gives him a cautious optimism – we feel that we are likely to come out of this crisis more connected and kinder than we went into it, but this effect is much more pronounced about people with whom we have direct social contact. The more we know people, the more we trust them, and the street or estate where we live is now full of people we newly know.

Likewise, findings from the team at the Neighbourly Lab suggest a new sense of connection is powerful at a micro-local level, but it will need permanent infrastructure to be instituted quickly if the new neighbourliness is to be maintained. “The Moment We Noticed”, from the Relationships Observatory, makes a similar case, pointing to how “ten million willing citizens have chosen to spend at least 3 hours a week caring for one another” and inviting us to consider what we can do together to sustain new relationships into the future.

Both reports also contain some interesting watch-outs about what might happen when we move from the ‘honeymoon’ to the ‘disillusionment’ phase that is often seen in the aftermath of an emergency, and encourage us to recognise that communitarian feeling is often rather fragile and dependent on a sense that others are doing their bit.

Certainly our thinking when we put together the “#OurOtherNationalDebt” essay collection was that a focus on repaying those who’ve made an outsized contribution (or paid an outsized price) at this particular time was more likely to command sustained public support than anything that felt like a reheat of long-held pre-pandemic positions. Society might have changed a bit but in general it’s still the case that we quite like the people we’ve got to know, but we’re also alert to any signs of free-riding or, worst of all, queue-jumping.

Elsewhere in Europe, the European Council on Foreign Relations call both the idea that there has been a sudden surge in belief in an expanded role for the state and one in nationalism “illusions that could lead European governments to fall foul of public opinion as they plan the recovery”. Instead, they show “that the overwhelming majority of people want more EU cooperation”, but recognise that this is motivated more by a sense of wanting collective insurance than a rejuvenation of a sense of common ideals.

At the same time, the OECD predict that it’s at least possible that global aid flows will be maintained or even increase in coming years, pointing to some successes in securing debt relief, multilateral funding for Gavi and an increase in support for humanitarian efforts.

Part of what is going on here is the public’s sophisticated understanding of the coronavirus – that the experience might be universal, but it is it not uniform. We understand that there are people in precarious employment in every country, parents struggling to put food on the table in every country, children trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide in every country. Lockdown and school closures in particular have been near-universal experiences, but their effects have been far from uniform between countries or inside them. People get that both local neighbourliness and multilateralism can provide particular protections, mitigating catastrophe and smoothing out vulnerabilities a bit.

Support for both local mutual aid efforts and international solidarity efforts is, in other words, conditional. We instinctively feel the local and the global are the right levels to deal with different elements of the pandemic and its effects, but we want to be sure everyone is pulling their weight, and we’re getting enough out of it for what we’re willing to put in.

That means we need to be planning now for campaigning infrastructure that can turn the new neighbourliness into the new normal, while helping people draw connections between their new local involvement and the need for active citizenship at a national and global level.

The Dignity’s Project’s research on the mutual aid movement suggests there are foundations already in place, but activists will need to be careful not to over-interpret the data, with 57% of respondents saying “mutual aid groups like mine have nothing to do with politics”.

So if we want people to move towards more active civic involvement, to make what the New Citizenship Project calls the big shift “from consumer to citizen”, we need to introduce the idea of political activism as something that sits in service of, and not in a separate realm to, people’s individual moral choices and willingness to muck-in locally.

The new National Health Team is one attempt to operate at these three levels – individual, local and political. The coming months are likely to see a flowering of these kinds of efforts, as we increasingly recognise that none of individual behaviour change, local volunteering or traditional advocacy-led campaigning will be enough on their own.

An imperfect message that gets heard is better than a perfect one that doesn’t

The social change sector globally is currently producing a large number of really superb messaging guides around coronavirus and there are some brilliant research projects on the go about attitudes about everything from climate change to regulation to social security. The challenge for our movements is whether we can do enough with the insights once we have them.

Two barriers present themselves. The first is that research which shows how to communicate for one purpose (for example, to shore up support for aid, in the case of our Public Insight 2020 project) will not necessarily be widely adopted by people with a brief to communicate for another important purpose (for example, recruiting donors or promoting an organisation’s brand). That’s not just the case for international issues – the tension plays out around storytelling efforts on domestic poverty too. Organisations with enough marketing budget or media reach to make a dent in public opinion are, almost by definition, also likely to be delivering frontline services under the extraordinary pressure of rising demand and falling income.

Meanwhile, many of the organisations which are nimble enough to internalise the insight lack the reach to make it count. Across our fields we’ve got a lot of money being spent crafting narratives no-one is going to hear. It’s time to get much more serious about thinking about our routes to market when we embark on insight work and we need to be willing to pay for the distribution as well as the design of the messages.

Serious strategic communications efforts cost money – and mobilisation efforts which can actually leverage the latent political power of the people who agree with your message even more so. At Save the Children we’ve introduced a strong organising flavour into our campaigning work (as Tom Baker lays out here) and in the Aid Campaign we’ve focused on building local ‘power postcodes’ groups in the places that matter most. We will be spending the summer thinking about how to scale that work.

While it’s massively welcome that we’ve seen a big uptick in the amount of insight work big NGOs and funders are investing in, it’s all pretty academic if we’re not overlaying it with an understanding of political geography and overlaying that in turn with investment in local power.

We are only six months into the coronavirus crisis and don’t yet know when – or how – it will end. What we do know is that activism is unlikely to be what speeds our exit from the crisis, but it is the single biggest determinant of whether that exit is equitable. This moment demands our best ever work and we won’t do it without plans to deal with the biggest strategic challenges in front of us. This list of four may be incomplete, but it’s where I think we should begin.  

[eabhaalynn]

Ian Curtis, Telecouselling and Kindness: Mental Health Awareness Week 2020

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one. I’m very cautious when writing about mental health. Primarily because I don’t want to seem disingenuous or want my own experiences to detract from the experiences of those less fortunate than me. Though, admittedly also because I feel like talking about mental health gets repetitive and boring for other people, and the more that people talk, the less people want to listen, and the less people empathise. While I appreciate that this is mainly just my anxiety talking, and a few unsolicited comments from months ago, it’s difficult to not internalise it.

On this, the first day of Mental Health Awareness Week, I woke up to the suggestion of “Ian Curtis” trending on twitter. Forty years today, in the early hours of the morning on May 18th, 1980; the Joy Division frontman took his own life at just twenty-three years old. Curtis’ struggles with his own mental health are well documented in his lyrics, and yet they were not realised, even by those closest to him, until after his death. He suffered from epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterised by recurrent seizures, and also from severe depression. Retrospectively, we look at Ian Curtis’ life, death, and legacy as a terribly sad story. A broken mind, if you will, a tormented soul. We even credit many of his most poignant writings to the pain he was experiencing. But we can never quite realise what he was living through, not even those closest to him did.

Ian Curtis was a genius, his lyrics have transcended generations, the distinctive sound of Joy Division has influenced the direction of alternative music for generations. On many a walk around Manchester’s rainy Northern Quarter, their presence can be felt everywhere, their name is almost synonymous with the city and its culture. At yet, at the very cusp of all of this success, the band lost its frontman. It was the eve of their first ever North American Tour, their second album, Closer, was to be released just two months later.

And yet, he was really depressed. He was struck down by the same illness that affects about 1 in 5 of all of us at one given time.

‘Well I could call out when the going gets tough,

The things that we’ve learnt are never enough.’

You’d think, you would hope, even, that we would do something about this. An illness so prevalent it affects somebody close to everybody, one that takes so many young lives. Ian Curtis’ story should have been a warning to us all, to value our young men and look after their mental health. And yet, today three-quarters of all suicides in the UK are men, and the suicide rates for men under 45 are consistently the highest of all demographics.

Today, we find ourselves on the cusp of yet another mental health crisis. Resources have been diverted, once again, away from University mental health services, GP receptionists seem to be guarding repeat prescriptions like they are the pearly gates of heaven itself. And that is before we even begin to describe the vast, wide reaching and, so far mostly unexplored psychological consequences of, you know, living through a Pandemic.

We have all been stuck in our houses for two months, this is completely unexplored territory for medicine in the UK, and psychiatrists are already warning of the fall out to come. I can only speak for myself when I say how much I struggled. From leaving behind a life at University at the beginning of the pandemic, to not seeing anyone except my immediate family for months at a time, to losing the micro-rewards of normal life (read; biweekly coffee expeditions). It has been difficult. Yes, we are all in this together. But how can we be expected to know that when our only interaction is through a computer screen?

This is all before we even begin to describe the anxiety surrounding a pandemic, the grief over lost friends and relatives, and crucially, the grief over lost time spent with those friends and relatives.

The guilt associated with every mundane task weighs down on all of us. And you can bet there is someone out there telling us all to grow up and wise up, because at least we have our health.

For the first time ever, I have tried tele-counselling. A truly bizarre experience but one for which I am very grateful. There are also plenty of resources online to help guide us a little bit through this colossal storm. And in my very humble opinion, I think any comparison to life pre-lockdown is redundant. I have stopped caring about my productivity levels, I’m trying hard not to dwell on my weight or to hyper-fixate on my, admittedly, faltering, physical appearance. The world we used to live in simply does not exist at the moment. And for now, that is okay.

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness. And I know that kindness is a quality I cherish in others. The world is a very nasty place - Especially at the moment. And we could, and should, all be kinder to one another this week and for many weeks after it. Smile at that stranger when we are allowed to go outside without face coverings again. Empty that dishwasher for your ma. But just as, and perhaps even more importantly, we need to be kinder to ourselves. This lockdown is going to be a watershed moment in all of our lives. Living through it, having to experience it, will have built so much more resilience for us all than we probably can’t even begin to see yet. In the before times, I spent too much time worrying about what people thought, too much time worrying about how my actions were perceived and construed. I let my naturally affectionate self be buried under the weight of other people’s actions. I said ‘no’ to too many nights out, to too many coffees and dinners and pints. I didn’t buy the shoes one too many times. I have never been kind to myself.

This life is beautiful, even if it isn’t right now. Things will be beautiful again. Stay safe and be kind to yourself.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2018registrations#suicide-patterns-by-age

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/t-magazine/bernard-sumner-joy-division-book.html?mcubz=3

[pjstafford]

Fail Better.

I posted this on face book two years ago today.  Thought I would post it here with an update.  

Been preoccupied with this all week-end and so going to spill it all here in a public forum. About 23 years ago I worked at St. Martin's Hospitality Center for the Homeless and I remember a Christmas Sunday morning when I gave a mother a box wrapped that said boy age 6 on it (no idea what was in it because someone else had wrapped it) and about an hour later I heard this yell that went through -out the shelter -" Santa found me I got what I wanted" and this little boy ran the length of the shelter to go outside to play with his football.

I swear this is true, on the bus on Friday I was talking to this man in his mid twenties who is not currently homeless but was telling me that he lived here as a child at Joy Junction and I told him oh, that was probably the time I was working at St. Martin's - and he repeated the story to me from his perspective. without me having told him anything about it. He was that little boy. He still loves football - is a cowboys fan.

Now - if this was a hallmark movie- he would have been a nicely dressed, successful young man informing me that this moment changed his life. Instead he is a man who has been homeless most of his life, struggles with drug and alcohol addiction (but is currently clean) and likes to drift from place to place so probably will not be here long and my guess will have some homeless nights in his future. He does however seem to have a genuine exuberance for life and a belief in the goodness of mankind which is remarkable.

Naturally in my self-absorbed way I have spent a lot of time this week-end thinking not about him but about myself 23 years ago. I truly loved that job- respected the leaders of the agency, loved my co-workers, loved working with the population - but it was crazy - as client advocate I was responsible for enforcing the rules (or making exceptions) related to drinking and drugging and violence. This means that the primary responsibility for escorting drunken, violent and in some cases hardened criminals off the premises was 5 foot 2 me with my long red hair, round gold glasses and wholesome smile-" I'm going to have to walk you off the premises and you are ban from services for a week now, sir" I was the weapons person making sure everyone turned in their weapons and got them back at the end of the day. By the way - I was really good at this. I routinely put my body into dangerous situations. I remember the time a guy easily 6 foot five had a iron rod raised above his head with every intention of killing someone and me running in between throwing up my arms and saying stop. I don't think I will ever forget the look on his face as he looked at me and threw the rod away - like I was the craziest, stupidest little thing he had ever seen- just pure and utter disbelief on his face. I remember a day a man came in and told me he had just had open heart surgery and had escaped from the hospital because he was in jail for murder and he wasn't going back and me convincing him that he was going to die if he didn't and calling for the police and him sitting right beside me until the police came. We became pen pals for a while.

I've been trying to put myself back into the mind set of that younger me and I know there is no way I could do that job now - first of all the physicality of it, the adrenaline highs and lows several times a day, the stress, the knowing people I cared about were in danger. I do not have the physical. mental or emotional capacity to do that job right now despite being years older and wiser. I am in every sense a weaker human being than I was then.

The odd thing is that while the memories are so clear, they are almost memories of another person - a person I really liked - but a person I don't conceptualize as a younger me and a person I don't think would conceptualize me as an older her. She had a complete lack of fear, a complete faith and trust in mankind, and at the same time a softness. She was not a vulnerable person but was a person people might perceive as being someone to protect - I know the word was out on the street that if anybody had ever harmed me there would have been retribution- I was beloved, accepted and protected even though my job was so dangerous at times- now they have metal detectors and security guards. The person I am now is a person who fears, who feels vulnerable, with a lot more faith in herself but almost no faith or trust in mankind and yet I don't think people would see me as vulnerable - I have a hard exterior and in some ways a hard heart. At least that is the self-perception of myself.

Its the life is a journey point of view that I think I am having trouble with here. In the past I have always been able to say - oh, I did this and it led me to this - and that taught me this and this experience made me change in this way, Now looking back in this time frame I just see I was one way and now I am different. I don't see the road winding to bring me here. The thing that is really odd is I think of myself as so tough and hard right now - I can do anything and survive anything. I know i can because experience tells me I can.Yet right now visualizing what it would take for me to do the job I did 23 years ago, I know I could not withstand the physical, emotional or mental pressures. Its the realization that instead of being the stronger person I thought I was I may actually be so much weaker than I ever realized. That's pretty shocking for me. Some of it is I have more fear of unforeseen circumstances. Even though I know I can withstand any hardship,I dread that I might have to.

And if it is the fragility of age...then I need to live in denial, I guess, because weakness is not my cup of tea. I know I need to replace anxiety about the future with eagerly anticipating tomorrow. replace hard, resilient strength with strength that comes from a softer and kinder heart - probably am giving up on restoring my faith in mankind, though- not expecting that any time soon.

2017 update:  Wow- two years ago when I wrote this.  It was in 2016 that I began to see my belief in myself and my need to do it on my own as not resilience but, to quote Browning’s Paracelsus, “an arrogant self-reliance.”  I have today far less faith in myself.  I am so unsure of my step and know that I am so much more likely to fail at my endeavors than I believed I was in the past.  Yet, remarkably, I have a stronger faith in mankind.  That has been, to some degree, restored.  When I was at one of the lowest times of my life and feeling hopeless, people reached out to help me - surprising me - strangers, close friends, new friends I only barely knew, a man from a long ago past.  My hardened heart had no choice but to soften as my arrogant self-reliance fell away.  I think what i know now is how every single human being in life fails themselves and others at time because the ability to fail in an epic manner is one thing we all have in common.  This doesn’t mean that we should lose our faith in mankind or even in ourselves, but that we should see the times  we fail as human and the times we can help each other as an opportunity.  The words of Beckett is the refrain that now runs through my head:  “Ever tried. Ever Fail. No matter. Try again. Fail Again. Fail better.” 

[zygomatic-process-2018]

Open your possibilities

As most of us know, communication is key when participating in a successful relationship. It’s important to check-in with friends, family, colleagues, etc. We are all interconnected, and when we share our lives with others, we open ourselves up to possibilities we could have never experienced had we stayed in the isolation of our comfortable life.

As we get older, it becomes harder and harder to spark connections with others. Our fears have had time to create scar tissue that is not easily removed. Plenty of us have had various failings in relationships with valid reasons for not trying to have a connection again. The more we do this, the more miserable we get because we are not meant to hide from the world.

I’m a true believer in sharing the good, the bad and the ugly. Now, I don’t go around sharing on a soap box on the corner, although I guess you can consider Facebook/Tumblr as a paralleled virtual platform. I selectively choose those I want to share my experience with. I have thought about this topic for quite some time, and I am realizing that people I encounter have experienced such deep hurt in terms of trust that they completely close themselves off to any prospect of happiness. Happiness requires a certain level of openness, so it can be challenging when trying to obtain happiness by being closed off. Some people claim to try but stay guarded. This is not trying.

Surprisingly this element has been part of my success where others haven’t found the same positive experience. This time around I chose not to be guarded. I reached a point where I had thrown everything out the window I thought I knew about myself. I figured that I had “tried everything” so I might as well do something else for a change. I started slowly sharing the lessons I learned about myself along the way (e.g. I found out I need to be prepared and when I don’t, I make bad decisions).

You know what happened? People gave me sighs of relief and felt open to share in their own struggles. I created better connections. I shared with more successful people than me and they gave me advice. They too craved connection and learned from some stuff I experienced. I found commonality among people around me, I started feeling “normal” (more on that later), and I gained way more confidence knowing I was standing in my own truth. I gained knowledge about my strengths as I learned about other’s struggles. I saw more weaknesses and solutions. I was given a drive to move forward and all it took was opening up about my life’s journey.

Elon Musk (*swoon) talks about how people are kinder than you think. I have found that to be true, and maybe that has to do with my age range. The older I get, the more of a magnet I am for the people that are meant to be in my life. I choose to stay open even knowing that I have the potential to be hurt. At least this time, I am taking a different approach and it is yielding different results.

Instead of acting like I was perfect, I started acting as if I was experiencing life for the first time. This concept came to me naturally when I realized that I try the same actions over and over again, expecting different results. HAHAHAHAHA!!! How funny is insanity? Maybe it’s only funny in hindsight but that’s the beauty of growth. You learn to laugh at your own thinking and instead of holding on to the negative why behind your actions, you just move on and try something different the next time. Dwelling on shortcomings doesn’t help you grow, but taking action to improve in even the smallest ways will help you get out of the dwelling mentality.

Here are some things I have done to snap me out of the dwelling mind:

-Write out the despair and highlight what is actually true (yeah, this writing thing is important). Pay attention to absolutes: it’s always, or never something. That simply isn’t true.

Example Statement: I am always so dumb.

Why this isn’t true: You obviously are smart enough to survive life this far and smart enough to see your need for self-improvement. This is far more self-reflective than most people. You obviously are able to read and that shows you have intelligence. So yeah, you aren’t ALWAYS dumb. And dumb is probably a really bad adjective for what you really mean. You aren’t dumb. You are most likely forgetful, clumsy, naive, unprepared, etc. Those things aren’t signs of intelligence; these things are signs of unskilled actions. These are the frictions points and areas where you need some more mindful action.

Start using better words to describe exactly what you are and try to stick to labels you believe you can change. If I think of myself as clumsy, I know I’m not dumb and I know I need to take my time when handling fragile things, or watching where I’m walking. The mindfulness part comes when we I slow down enough to recognize where I may fail, then slowly working through that situation to make sure I’m not making preventable mistakes. When you categorize things into incorrect labels that aren’t quite fitting, you contribute to your low self-esteem. You actually start believing what you say about yourself, even if you aren’t saying it out loud.

Communication is key right? Well what about the communication you have with yourself? Are you kind? Are you patient? Are you treating yourself worse than everyone else in your life with words or thoughts that aren’t constructive? Do you honestly think you can attain the things you want by acting this way? I found that it never worked for me and this different approach has created a safer environment for my own development.

Make today a great day because you have the power to do so. Love you all!

[auskultu]

In Defense of Old Folks Over 25

Albert Rosenfeld, Life, 25 August 1967 

A few of my friends lately seem mesmerized by a favorite statistic they keep quoting, half in resignation, half in alarm: "Do you realize that before long more than 50% of the population will be under 25?” It is as if there were some unwritten understanding that, when the magic 50% figure has been passed, the over-25s will be expected to step aside and let the majority take over. And that if we lack the grace to do the decent thing, we old folks shouldn't he too surprised to find ourselves hooted out unceremoniously by the raucously impatient members of the Right Now generation.

Most of these friends of mine tend to he in the age group that runs from, say, the late 30s to the early 50s. Most of them have teen-age children. Some have had big troubles with their kids. Others, like me, have not had trouble yet (my oldest is only 15), but wonder how things will go in a quick-change world where youth in general seems so obstreperous and rebellious, where sub-teenie-boppers go tripping off defiantly to Hippieville, where motorcycle kills flaunt a fashionable brutality and wear swastikas mainly to upset their parents.

The young rebels constitute only a minority of the new generation. But they make such a noisy and colorful minority and are so well publicized that they have begun to affect the style of life and cast of thought of nearly all youngsters everywhere. The most dissatisfied seem to come from reasonably well-to-do middle-class families. They get whatever they want materially, do whatever they want socially and morally, and take their privileges for granted. They are great at spending their folks’ money to indulge their wants (they are financially courted on all sides because of their affluence) while cussing out their parents as money-grubbing materialists (one of the kinder things lliey say about them). Through it all, the kids act as if they were conferring a favor, and the parents act as if they owed the kids an apology.

Well, maybe they do. If you as a parent never set any limits, how are the kids to know where the limits are? You know that your child shouldn’t get his fingers into light sockets, and you see that he doesn’t. You know he mustn’t cross a busy intersection against the red light, and you see that he doesn’t. When you know things, and he knows that you know them and mean it when you say "No,” you don’t get too much of an argument. This is especially true at that troublesome stage of growth where it is easy for a child to go on the mistaken assumption that, because his muscles and sex organs and voice box have taken on adult dimensions, so has his judgment. Firmness at this point at least gives the child something definite to rebel against. Who can respect a marshmallow?

I’m not saying we ought to take a tough-top-sergeant, they-ought-to-be-spanked attitude, or lose our sense of humor. We have a lot to learn from the new generation, even from its more bizarre members. There is much to he said for their cool, swinging style. The uninhibited dancing and the easier attitudes tow ard sex bespeak a genuinely joyous vitality and a freer sensuality. They have moved the eye of morality away from sex to the larger issues of race relations anil international affairs, and have suggested, by their protests, that "My country—right, not wrong” might signify a deeper patriotism than "My country, right or wrong.” We should value, too, their impatience with cant, hypocrisy and dishonesty. They don’t want to be conned. ’’Tell it like it is,” they say, and that’s the way we should want to tell it.

But wre should never let them get away with the pose that they have just freshly invented truth and beauty and goodness and awareness and brotherly love. All these were abroad in the world when they got here—not as empty concepts hut as powerful forces. The world is admittedly in a mess, and the young may feel alienated in it. But it was a mess when we got here, too. Though we might not be able to convince the kids, we know that this generation has labored mightily, not without some success, and not without a modicum of idealism and altruism, to buy time for mankind to keep trying to muddle through. We fought a major war to keep the world from being inundated by one totalitarianism, and we have waged a continuing cold war to keep it from being inundated by another. We have poured our resources into helping other nations, and have passed social legislation in our own so sweeping in scope that no one with any memory at all can deny the vast improvement. Not enough improvement, to be sure. And we have made our share of mistakes. But to blame our generation for the mess is just plain nonsense. Nor need we take the kills’ word about howr total the mess is. They may call our society a ’’nowhere scene,” hut we know how much there is of value, how much there is worth saving.

The discontented youngsters of this new generation, all the way from the hippies of Psychedelia to the revolutionary activists of the New Left, have every right to carp and criticize. But so far I have seen or heard very little in the way of constructive suggestions from them, other than the most crude and simplistic nonsolutions to our very complicated troubles. What fruitful insights and programs have they to offer us? I can’t help wondering if they ever wonder what their children will have to thank them for. For fouling their chromosomes with LSD? For dropping out and copping out at a time when society was never in greater need of their participation? What are their credentials for billing themselves as the take-over generation?

One of my friends recently lent me a magazine, pointing out, with an uneasy laugh, a short story entitled ’’The Day It All Happened, Baby.” In the story—well, it all happens, Baby. A folk-rock hero is steam-rollered into the Presidency, the motorcycle hoys and the teenie-hoppers take over, and the nation’s elderly minorities (over 35), especially parents, are herded out onto reservations where they are kept high and happy on drugs. My tendency was to laugh, too. at the wild improbability of it all. But the laughter didn’t come out very hearty.

Not that I think for a minute that it’s really going to happen, Baby. Not here and now. I can’t imagine that America’s elderly types, even those over 35, would ever he soft-brained and soft-bellied enough to put themselves at the mercies of the very young. The Right Now generation will be running the world soon enough. But not Right Now, please.

[talabib]

How To Lead With Courage

Managers and executives all over the world want to know how they can become more effective leaders. Should you prove yourself by demonstrating your power over subordinates? Would you command more respect if you changed your job title? In fact, if you want to become a better leader you’ll need to forget all about status, titles and power plays.

Instead, get ready to engage your heart and mind as you go on a journey to discover how the most courageous leaders think, feel and behave. You’ll look at what concepts such as trust, honesty and failure can tell you about daring leadership, and challenge conventional wisdom about how the most successful among us operate.

You’ll also discover the impact of your values, emotions and interpersonal relationships on your effectiveness as a leader. Finally, you’ll learn why, in a competitive and hostile working culture, you nonetheless need to let yourselves be vulnerable if you want to get ahead.

Far from being a weakness, vulnerability is an essential asset for innovation.

What makes you feel vulnerable? Experts have posed this question to thousands of individuals over the years, garnering responses that will probably sound familiar. Vulnerability is the first date after your difficult divorce, starting to run your first business or how you feel when you get laid off from work. In fact, vulnerability is a universal human emotion that we feel when we expose ourselves to others and during times of risk or uncertainty.

Nonetheless, despite being such a common feeling, there are some damaging myths surrounding vulnerability, particularly that it equals weakness.

Experiences that make you feel vulnerable, like losing a job or putting yourself out there emotionally, can bring feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and a desire for self-protection. However, there is not a single piece of empirical data to suggest that vulnerability is associated with weakness. In fact, the opposite is true: acts of courage are impossible without first putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

Not convinced? Just consider the question that experts put to a room of special forces military personnel in 2014. After explaining that vulnerability is the emotion that accompanies risk and uncertainty, the experts then asked these brave, tough soldiers whether any of them had ever undertaken or witnessed a courageous act that did not require them to feel vulnerable. Unsurprisingly, none of the soldiers could come up with a single example of courageousness in which vulnerability hadn’t come along for the ride. In other words, as soon as the audience focused on their actual experiences of being courageous, the myth of vulnerability and weakness crumbled.

And vulnerability isn’t just essential to courage. In fact, it is the cornerstone of human innovation and creativity. Why? Because there is so much uncertainty inherent to the creative process that successful innovation usually requires a healthy dose of failure along the way. On a cultural level, this means that a society that equates vulnerability with weakness is likely to struggle to produce new ideas or fresh perspectives - although some individuals will inevitably go against the grain.

As Golden Globe-winning actress and writer Amy Poehler points out, it’s very difficult to let yourself be vulnerable, and those who can are often society’s dreamers, thinkers and creators.

Courageous leaders give and solicit honest feedback.

Sometimes, the truth hurts. In the early days of starting her own company, Brene Brown’s employees asked if they could sit down with her and discuss some concerns they had. Stunned, she listened as her employees relayed how bad they thought she was at time management and pointed out her habit of setting unrealistic deadlines that they often struggled to meet.

Although their criticisms were hard to hear, she was grateful for her team’s honest feedback. Why? Because she believes that being clear is being kind, and that it’s unkind to be unclear. Indeed, entering into all communication with a spirit of clarity and honesty, both at home and in the workplace, is a simple yet transformative step that all leaders should take.

Unfortunately, research has shown that the majority of us sidestep clarity in our daily interactions because we feel it's kinder to do so. But is it really?

We may tell ourselves that we feed people half-truths to make them feel good, but often we’re really avoiding honest and confrontational conversations because they make us uncomfortable. Clear communication would be far kinder and more productive in the long run. After all, if you fail to be clear about your expectations for a subordinate simply because doing so is difficult, you’ll likely just end up blaming them for failing to deliver further down the line.

One of the most important things experts have learned from years of studying leadership is that leaders need to spend a significant amount of time communicating about their subordinates’ feelings and fears. If they fail to do this, they can expect to spend even more time attempting to manage their workforce’s unproductive and ineffective behavior.

Importantly, leaders can solicit clearer feedback from subordinates by really listening to them.

Once you ask someone about their true feelings, leave a lot of empty space and drawn-out pauses in the conversation. In other words, try to stop talking. This may feel uncomfortable, but have faith that, when they’re ready, the other person will fill the silences with their true thoughts. When they do begin talking, try not to start mentally formulating a response right away. Instead, concentrate on listening to their concerns. Just remember that they are being kind enough to be clear with you – return the favor by really listening to them.

Core values anchor and guide daring leadership.

The modern workplace can often feel like a gladiatorial arena – a battle for supremacy that, while not a matter of life and death, still requires bravery and plenty of blood, sweat and tears. During moments of struggle, whether at work or in our personal lives, it’s tempting to throw up our hands and exit the arena.

How can we find the strength to keep going? Importantly, when we find ourselves face down in the dirt, it’s our values that motivate us to get back up again and keep daring to give it our all.

Our values inform our judgments about what is most important in our lives. The most courageous leaders are those who had the most clarity about what their values are. During times of uncertainty and vulnerability, their values were an important support to them, a ‘North Star’ that helped guide them through periods of darkness. They were more willing to take risks, secure in the knowledge that their values would guide them through without compromising their integrity. Knowing what was most important to them was vital to their ability to be daring leaders.

So take the time to ask yourself: What are your key values?

Making a list of things that are highly important to us might be a straightforward exercise. When we whittle our list down to just two things, though, it really becomes useful. For example, Jess narrowed hers down to the key values of courage and faith. Why two? Research derived from hundreds of interviews with global executive leaders, has found that most leaders identify ten or more core values. The leaders most willing to experience vulnerability and demonstrate courage, on the other hand, anchored themselves to no more than two. It makes a lot of sense - two values are actionable. But if every single value on the less daring leaders’ long lists is highly important to them, then none are truly driving their behavior. Consequently, their values become a meaningless list of words that make them feel good.

To avoid falling into the same trap, we can name our two most important values, let them guide our behavior and hold them close when times get tough.

Trust is an important and multifaceted aspect of our working relationships.

How trustworthy are we, and how many people do we truly trust? Astonishingly, most people report that they themselves are entirely trustworthy, but that they trust only a small number of other colleagues. It seems that most of us have some trust issues to work on.

First, though, we need to ask ourselves: What does the concept of trust actually mean? A team of researchers has pinpointed seven separate behaviors that encourage trust, expressed together with the acronym BRAVING. BRAVING can be a useful way to inventory strengths and areas for improvement in working relationships with subordinates. So, what are these behaviors?

The B stands for boundaries. This element of trust involves respecting others’ boundaries. If either party is unsure of the other’s boundaries, they ask whether or not something is okay, and the other person feels comfortable enough to say no if it isn’t.

The R stands for reliability, or doing what we say we will. In a work context, this translates into being aware of our abilities and limitations so that we don’t end up overpromising and under-delivering on commitments.

The A stands for accountability. We take ownership of our mistakes, apologize for them and try our best to make amends.

The V stands for vault. We can think of ourselves as a vault of information that other people have shared with us over time. An important aspect of trust is not passing on information that is not ours to pass on. Other people need to trust that we will keep their confidences and also need to see that we are not sharing other’s confidential information with them.

The I stands for integrity - choosing courage instead of comfort, and doing what is right rather than what is easy, fun or expedient. It also means practicing the same values that we preach.

The N stands for non-judgment, which means people know that they can tell us how they really feel or ask for help without expecting us to judge them for doing so.

The G stands for generosity, being consistently generous in our interpretation of the words, actions and intentions of others. People are more likely to trust us if they know we always see the best in others, rather than the worst. Implement these behaviors to become a successful, trustworthy leader.

Learning how to fail helps us to be brave.

Believe it or not, business leaders could learn a lot from skydivers. Before aspiring skydivers are allowed to hit the skies, they spend numerous training sessions learning how to hit the ground safely by simply jumping off ladders. The lesson for leaders? If you’re going to be brave, then it’s best to prepare yourself for bumpy landings. In other words, you need to learn how to be resilient.

Unsurprisingly, things are done differently in business than in skydiving. Leaders and leadership coaches are usually aware of the need for resilience training, but these skills are usually taught only after a failure or crisis has already happened. It’s comparable to teaching newbie skydivers the right way to hit the ground after they’ve already landed, or worse, when they’re already in free-fall.

But there is a better way. Research has shown that when it comes to teaching leaders resilience skills, timing is everything. Specifically, teaching them early on as part of a wider training program is more likely to result in them demonstrating courageous behaviors. Why? Quite simply, they are confident in their ability to get back up again if their daring behavior doesn’t pay off. So companies that fail to instill these resilience skills in their workforce are effectively deterring their leaders, both present and future, from bravery.

Some organizations may worry that teaching leaders how to fail from the get-go promotes a culture of low expectations. In fact, the opposite is true. For instance, in the Brown’s own company she makes it a priority to teach failing and resilience skills as part of the onboarding process for new recruits. It’s the company’s way of telling new joiners that bravery is expected, thus failure is also expected once in a while.

Interestingly, this emphasis on resilience is nothing new. You may well have seen company slogans urging you to “fall forward” and “fail fast!” But without a resilience skills program to back them up, implemented at an early stage in a leader’s development, these slogans can do more harm than good. Why? Because leaders who fail without the resilience skills to cope quickly find themselves dealing with a double dose of shame – the shame of the initial failure quickly followed by the shame of struggling to pick themselves up again despite all the shouty motivational slogans urging them to learn and move on.

Perfectionism holds us back from self-improvement and true courage.

Right from childhood, we seek to shield ourselves from vulnerable feelings like disappointment, hurt and diminishment. By building a wall out of our behaviors, emotions and thoughts, we protect ourselves from the big bad world. But to live and lead with courage, as we already know, we must let ourselves be vulnerable. This means letting down our walls and recognizing protective thoughts and behaviors for the defense mechanisms they really are.

One of the most pervasive types of self-protection is perfectionism. To become daring leaders, we must rid ourselves of perfectionism. To do so, let’s start by busting some of the myths around this damaging phenomenon.

Perhaps the most damaging myth of all is that perfectionism is about self-improvement and striving for excellence. But in fact, perfectionism is really about attempting to win approval. Most perfectionists are raised in environments that praise their exceptional performance, for example in athletics or school. As a result, perfectionists develop a damaging belief system that follows them into their adult lives, anchoring their whole sense of self in accomplishments and brilliant execution.

This locks perfectionists into an exhausting behavioral pattern of pleasing people, perfecting efforts, performing for others and proving themselves. People with a healthy drive for success, on the other hand, are much more self-focused and inspired by asking themselves how they can improve. It’s a stark contrast with perfectionists, who ask ‘what might others think of me?’

Significantly, leaders who armor themselves with perfectionism often assume that this way of thinking will bring them success. They couldn’t be more wrong because there is a much darker side to perfectionism, going way beyond the need to please.

Disturbingly, research shows that perfectionism is associated with addiction, depression and anxiety. Furthermore, perfectionists are more likely to miss opportunities and experience mental paralysis that keeps them from fully engaging in life. Why? Because their fears of being criticized or not meeting the expectations of others keeps them from entering the messy arena of life, where healthy competition and striving for true greatness occur.

To become a daring leader, take off the armor of perfectionism and jump into the fray of life. You might make mistakes in the process, but you’ll gain something valuable in exchange: the courage to succeed and lead.

When we open ourselves up to vulnerability, we open ourselves up to courage and creativity. When we let go of our perfectionist tendencies and our fear of failure, we find the bravery to improve ourselves and to have difficult, important conversations with our colleagues. In other words, we need all of our emotions on board if we’re going to become daring leaders.

[repertoire-art-design]

Labor of Love 

  Have you ever painted your house?

I believe all worthwhile projects are a labor of love. We are painting our 1910 Craftsman house this summer. It had been badly neglected for years before we bought it. Neglected like humans are neglected. To the point of not knowing who she was anymore. Lost in a land of discontent, shame and embarrassment. Many of us have known that feeling. But the good news is that we can choose to recalculate, re-evaluate and reinvent ourselves. I am choosing for her. I think she will be thrilled!

The plan from the moment we bought the house last summer was to paint her this summer. Now that we are close to finishing the project, I am finding I can take a breath and think (and write) about the process. Not unlike human processing, this has been a bit overwhelming and anticipatory. I changed my mind or questioned my choices of color and placement numerous times before, during and after the painting began. Although I knew that I would become impatient as we went along, just like any art project, I kept wavering. Will I like it when it is done? What if it doesn’t go well. What will people think? The usual misgivings that for me at least, always end in some version of satisfactory if not complete assurance that I made the right decisions. Sigh.

It’s about the process

It always seems to be about the process with me. You too? I am often more obsessed with the process than the result. Whether it be a journal entry, a painting, a yoga practice or my garden. I just love getting in there and making a mess. I get nervous as the project transitions, and then at some point completely hate where I am at. But eventually I finish; am thrilled with the results, and realize that I miss the process the most. That leads me to the next project or being willing to do it all over again!

Don’t get me wrong. The final result is satisfying too. Even the planning. Although I am not the most patient person with a long process like painting a house, the bigger picture is important to keep in mind as well. Her (the house’s) renovation and preservation is always on my mind and remains simply a labor of love. I like thinking about the next step and the next and the next. Planning colors. Problem solving how we are going to get to the top of the eaves, where to go to get window screens, what are the best tools for the job. I think obsession is the right term at this point.

Salvage

For those of you who don’t know me well – I save everything. I don’t mean like hoarding. I mean literally I try to save things from dissolving into nothingness. That includes our house, inanimate objects, antiques, plants, clothing, you name it, I am willing (and sometimes able) to salvage it. Human beings are no different to me. I always think that every human has a lighter, kinder, more empathetic side, and I work to bring that out in others around me. I hate waste and I love problem solving. I am happy and willing to take on a “project.”

The littlest cutting from a plant gets put in water or propagated in soil to grow roots. I re-match earrings to a new partner when I lose one. I save and reuse whatever I can. I am a saver, a repurposer – a recycler. I hate to throw things out. And houses are no exception. I love our old house and I want her to shine again

Back to the process of salvaging and saving her. This old house is still charming. She has “good bones” as they say. But even so, she needed some serious prep work before we could even begin to paint. Removing old gutters, scraping, sanding, caulking, replacing sections of rotted siding, the list went on and on. Four full days just to get her ready for paint. And then lots of TLC as we went.

Choices

And unlike most people. I can’t just use a color for the body and one for the trim. I have to add detail and accent every dang part so she has personality. Her previous owners had chosen hideous colors years ago and she had been stuck “wearing” it shamefully ever since. The neighbors told us that the old colors were ugly. And asked immediately last year if we were going to paint.  (We expected that question) They had nicknamed the house the “cappuccino cowboy.” I thought the old colors reminded me of Halloween candy corn . All orange and brown and tan and yellow. Horrible colors that didn’t go together for any purpose. Hideous in fact.

Before and After

When you see the “afters” it will make sense. But she needed more than just a spit-shine, she needed a complete make-over. Like those people on the morning shows, where they take them backstage, cut and color their hair, do their makeup, put them in new clothes and they look 10 years younger. It has been a long couple of weeks, but she is about ready for her debut. Someone asked my husband if we were still painting. “What is taking you guys so long?”  He answered. “Do you know how many colors we are using?” and “You know my wife…” I think that is a compliment. Really I do.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Color List:

Body- light gray

Trim – white

Windows – black

Upper shingles and lower trim – dark gray

Screen doors and accent molding – light grass green

Main doors and porch accent  – deep Bordeaux wine

There is always more!

Outside we have also salvaged the landscaping. Fixed and recouped the lawn. Trimmed perennials back to tame and separated bulbs to replant. We brought in starts of lilacs, tiger lilies and peonies from the family lake place and gathered rocks from the lake bed over the winter for pathways through the garden and larger ones for accents throughout the beds. We brought in over 5000 lbs total of sand, gravel and river rock to make paths and create water runoff areas under the eaves. We even recreated the lattice under the porch. We rebuilt and reattached flower boxes and added hanging plants and other planters from found objects. All in all, most things, other than exterior paint have been foraged, reused, or repurposed saving so much money! It has taken time of course – most of my husband’s vacation, but we are close to the finish line as I type this.

Inside, over the winter we pulled carpet, painted, removed and replaced lighting that didn’t fit the decor and in general gave the interior a facelift. We uncovered a window that had been paneled over, and completely redid the screened in porch as well.

Icing on the cake

But the outdoor painting project this summer is the icing on the cake. Really thick buttercream frosting kind of icing. She is finally going to be pretty again. A proud old lady with a new haircut, color, mani and pedi. All the things any girl needs in her life, old or young. And I think she might be the most exciting art project I have ever created in my life.

So when you look at the befores and afters, and  even though we still have many more projects to do, remember that this old lady is getting younger every day. Like humans, who get to grow and change and learn no matter how old we are. I believe houses also have a long life; a story to tell; inspiration to lend. Both houses and people need others who love us, respect us and nurture our souls. Those who will share and support us as we age – our village. Those that can see through the age and experience to see the beauty inside.

Village

We have experienced such support by all the people who have literally pulled over to compliment our project while in progress. Even taking care to social distance! As if somehow they already knew we would be successful in our monumental endeavor. People have honked in support, walked or biked past and even stopped to give thanks for what we are doing. Admiring. Encouraging, complimenting and sighing. The support has been downright awesome! What a lovely experience to live in a small town where people have taken the time to care. Today a women stopped to invite me to join the “garden club!” She’s not finished yet. I will add more to the slide show later this week but you get the idea. I think this labor of love was worth every part of the process.

Depth

Process this: the depth and breadth of it all is that we long to be more, do more, and ultimately be our best selves. To do that, we need support. We just need a hand up, a little nudge, some inspiration and a paint brush to get us started. Then one day, when the process has run its course, we have sloughed off our old skin and we are new again. I think she appreciates that we cared enough to see beyond the surface and search for the beauty that still lies within. Process leads to discovering what you knew was there all the time. You just have to jump in and do it!

P.S. Next we are tackling the carriage house!

Labor of Love Labor of Love  Have you ever painted your house? I believe all worthwhile projects are a labor of love.

[canadajoke5-blog]

6 Negative Self-Talk Phrases to Cut Out of Your Vocabulary

I used to be a terrible communicator. I was the queen of slamming drawers, closing the dishwasher loudly, walking away during a stressful conversation without saying a word. I hated confrontation; it made me so uncomfortable that I would shut down and get quiet, almost like my mind would go blank and there’d be nothing for me to draw on. When I felt attacked, I’d get defensive and end up saying things I didn’t mean and then feel badly about what I’d said, beating myself up for it. Also, I had problems with silence. Put me in a room and I’d be the first to fill the space.

Then something—everything—changed. My first love tragically passed away, and with his passing the world looked different. What I saw was that life was too beautiful to be upset all the time, constantly comparing, competing, thinking this is right that is wrong. Life was too unpredictable to disrespect others and myself with my interactions. Life was to be enjoyed, not to suffer through. I wanted to feel present, to enjoy my time here. I read books, took courses, signed up for workshops all on this quest to care for myself; to understand how to feel good in my day-to-day.

No matter the class, or teacher, or mentor, over and over again I found that the root of my unhappiness and insecurity was how I communicated with myself. How I talked with myself dictated so much of how I felt and that was reflected in how I talked to other people. Although I wanted to be open and understanding and compassionate, and to celebrate others, all I could do was react from a place of insecurity because I felt like others’ goodness took away from mine, or their successes somehow made mine further out of reach. Comparing myself to others made me even more reactionary, pushing me to be passive-aggressive and blame others for what I wasn’t feeling or doing.

In all the soul searching I did after my first love’s passing, I realized that to really enjoy each moment, to be here now, I had to teach myself a new way of interacting—with myself.

All day long, we’re all in near constant dialogue with one person—ourselves.

This means that the words we choose have an incredibly powerful effect on how we see the world and ourselves. Simple statements like “nothing looks right on me today” to the more damaging “I can’t do anything right” can affect our day in the same way that dark clouds or rain might affect an otherwise sunny day. I realized that to enjoy my life, to really see that the world is full of possibilities rather than liabilities, I needed to let go of negative self-talk and speak to myself from a place of compassion; to be aware of any self-judgments and biases that arise, and replace them with truthful, helpful, and kind language.

Using this style of self-communication changed my life. It increased my self-esteem, reduced stress and anxiety, and helped me understand my own feelings and the feelings of others; it enhanced my overall appreciation for life and helped me create a more calm, balanced, and energized life. Through this practice, I’ve become a better friend, daughter, sister, wife, aunt, and mother.

As I started to see how the practice of what I call Intentional Communication was helping me, I began sharing it through articles, and soon after people started asking for guidance. I became a certified meditation and mindfulness instructor and then published a book called How to Communicate Like a Buddhist. After the release of the book, I created an online course; coaches, therapists, educators, individuals, social workers, and heads of organizations took it and told me about the changes they were seeing in how they interacted with their clients, students, employees, friends, family, and partners. Recently I published a second book, Talk to Yourself Like a Buddhist, focusing on how to talk to yourself with intention and compassion.

When my clients start paying attention to how they’re speaking to themselves, they see how they perpetuate the thoughts and feelings they don’t want through the very language they use on themselves. They realize that so much of the dissatisfaction, anxiety, and fear they feel originates with them—and thus they are able to break the pattern and move beyond it.

Making this change in how you speak to yourself is not easy. Shifting our language is a practice, and it isn’t about replacing a negative with a positive; what we are looking for is an alternative that does not promote suffering and is kind, honest, helpful, and unbiased.

Here are six common phrases that promote suffering, and more constructive alternatives that can help you be kinder to yourself in small but powerful ways.

It’s unlikely there will be a day when we defeat negative self-talk once and for all. Watch out for these common expressions and use them as an indicator that self-judgments and evaluations are happening that may not be true. When we talk to ourselves from a place of kindness, we can move past our old judgments and the suffering they cause us in our everyday life.

1. Instead of: “I’m an idiot.”

Try: “I’m not understanding this right now.”

A common phrase I hear a lot is "I’m an idiot." What “I am” plus a description does is imply a fixed or permanent state. There is nowhere for you to go with this type of language, no opportunity for growth. Instead of making a mistake, you are an idiot. Instead of not getting that promotion, you’re a loser. Instead of taking care of your needs, you are selfish. You take a description and make it a part of who you are. If you tell yourself you are these things often enough, you start to believe it. The problem is that this leaves no room to be more than one thing. But if we replace it with relative language such as, “I’m not understanding this right now,” or “I’m acting like an idiot right now,” you leave room to change and bring an observational perspective to yourself and how you feel.

2. Instead of: “I should be _____ by now.”

Try: “I could be _____ right now and I’m choosing to _____ instead.”

Not meeting an internal expectation is one of the biggest ways we create negative self-talk. Think of how you talk to yourself if you don’t meet your internal expectations, or if you don’t reach the goals you’ve set for yourself.

The implication of this negative self-talk is that what you are right now isn’t good enough. You can change this type of self-talk by substituting “could” for “should,” which keeps you grounded in the truth instead of expectation. “I could be married right now and I’m choosing to focus on my career instead.” “I could be financially stable right now and I’m choosing to take a risk and go out on my own instead.”

Also, when you notice you’re using this type of language when you’re let down by an internal expectation, you can ask yourself, “Could this be better than what I’d originally planned?” You might be pleasantly surprised to see where not sticking to the plan can take you.

3. Instead of: “It’s all my fault.”

Try: “I played a part in this situation and am only responsible for my own decisions and actions.”

The I, Me, My pattern to negative self-talk is when you believe that what others do and say is a reaction to you. This happens when you take personal responsibility for the actions of others or for entire situations, and as you can imagine, judge yourself negatively in the process. The truth is that others are responsible for their own choices, just as we are responsible for ours. You want to come from a place of observation and acknowledge the role you have in a situation and nothing further.

4. Instead of: “I never should have…”

Try: “If that hadn’t happened, I…”

Regret is extremely powerful when it comes to generating negative self-talk. It occurs when you look back at your past, at things you did or failed to do, and beat yourself up for the action or inaction. Why this form of negative self-talk is so subtle is that people mistake the judgment of their past as the truth. You want to look for the unexpected benefits, even if it takes years to uncover them. Consider the present benefits of past events: If that hadn’t happened, I never would have met, experienced, seen, etc.

5. Instead of: “They must think I’m _____”

Try: “Their actions are just their actions, nothing more or less. They don’t mean anything about me.”

These kinds of phrases are the most common type of judgment that leads to negative self-talk. When you assume you know what others are thinking or feeling about you, you judge that their thoughts or feelings are negative, and then you berate yourself because of this judgment. In other words, you actually agree with the assumption you’re making, even when it has no basis in reality. Our assumptions are more often reflective of what we think of ourselves than what anyone else thinks about us.

The key to switching your language here is to focus on the facts in any situation and to be cognizant of any story your mind wants to create around the facts. You can’t know what anyone else is feeling or thinking; focus on what you know to be true. Instead of saying something like, “He thinks I’m not good enough,” focus on the action itself. So it’d become, “He didn’t invite me to join his team. All that means is that he didn’t invite me to join his team, nothing more or less.”

6. Instead of: “Why can’t I be like them?”

Try: “They are doing so well; there is enough good in the world for all of us.”

When we compare ourselves to others, we see something they have or some characteristic they possess and judge ourselves as deficient when we don’t measure up. I call this comparing your insides to someone else’s outsides. In other words, if you compare how you feel on the inside to how someone else looks on the outside, you’ll always come out deficient. Comparing ourselves to others creates our own suffering. Much of this habit is rooted in societal ideas about what is important. Who defines what attractiveness is? How does one define intelligence? The next time you find yourself comparing, shift your focus to observing any differences between you and the other person and celebrate their uniqueness as well as your own. Instead of viewing life as competition, view it as cooperation.

Source: https://www.self.com/story/negative-self-talk-phrases-to-cut-out-of-your-vocabulary

[getseriouser]

20 THOUGHTS: Sorry Harry, pretty sure Rachel already moved to Seattle and married Mike???

AND we thought we had nothing to offer on the Royal Wedding.

As far as we can tell it was a joyous occasion to celebrate one single family’s reign over not just the UK but anyone still under the monarchical Commonwealth heavily improved by the inclusion of a batty Bishop from Chicago who added real flavour to the pomp and circumstance.

Bless him.

Otherwise, in the real world, one club from Tullamarine tagged themselves out of the Royal Rumble and one from Royal Parade tagged themselves in... 

And yes, I know, wresting fans, you don’t tag yourself out of a Royal Rumble, but it meant we could use the word royal another couple of times, given the week’s events, oh never mind, onto the week in footy:

 1.    Let us start with the Bombers. Saw it mid-week from John Worsfold in his demeanour and it carried on into the game on the weekend. There appears to be the emergence of a real edginess to the team. It’s almost as if they’ve flicked a switch, finally moving on from this ‘recovery’ mode, a forced developmental phase, feeling the effects of those year-long suspensions. It felt like last week and then in their win over Geelong they became a serious side that no longer had any excuse or hangover from that period where expectations were lowered – now it’s about being taken seriously with no lingering effects of that time. Game faces. Desire, want, effort. Their coach is no longer helping a club out of travesty and is now demanding ruthless excellence. Let’s see where they go now.

2.    Also, their form line shows great promise. In that whilst they have lowered their colours in their loss to Carlton, on Anzac Day, etc., they have shown to be capable of competing with the better sides. Only West Coast, Port Adelaide and Essendon have three wins against teams currently in the top eight. That’s something to build from. Their six losses to date will hurt their chances but on paper this is a list good enough to make finals and win one, their task will be to try and get there from this far back.

3.    A small exercise to gauge form and credibility from nine rounds in, given some teams have had easier draws, or some teams have cashed in accruing wins against the bottom clubs: if we attribute 18 points for every team who has beaten West Coast right down to 1 point for defeating Carlton, and tally it all up, it makes for interesting reading. Even though Melbourne has won twice as many games as Essendon, because the Bombers have defeated the Crows, Power and Cats, they would be higher on this form ladder; the Dees yes have defeated the Roos but aside from that their other wins are against the current bottom five. Sydney would leapfrog Richmond because they defeated the Eagles in Perth, the Tigers got spanked at their attempt. Everyone else is largely where they sit on the real ladder give or take a few spots, so for those clubs their ladder position is somewhat validated. But interesting that Melbourne and Essendon essentially swap, despite how we ‘think’ they are going.

4.    Last one on the Bombers, sorry Cats fans (positive couple on you next), Devon Smith continues to lead the way. Last week we spoke about his pressure and if his teammates could follow in behind. Another ten tackles on the weekend, moves into no.1 in the league now, but this time he had plenty of support and that showed in the result. He would be All-Australian squad for sure right now.

5.    Onto their opponents on Saturday, couple positive and then a negative. Firstly Tim Kelly, out of the Rising Star calculations because of age but he is the best first-year player by far. The 23 year-old, a second round pick last year (Geelong took Lachie Fogarty ahead of him) after coming second in the Sandover, looks like a 100-game veteran from the get go. One of the Cats’ most important onballers already, averaging 22 touches, five inside 50s, four tackles and four clearances a game, he is a bonafide AFL jet. Great recruiting.

6.    Just want to touch on a sliding doors moment out of the continual fallout in the life of Bomber Thompson. We all know the Essendon drugs scandal has left such a lasting impact, for life, for so many involved, but without the intervention of someone like Brian Cook, this scandal could have so easily played out down at Geelong instead. Thompson got Stephen Dank into the Cats’ football program back when he was senior coach but stronger heads within their tent, whilst sticking with Bomber which ultimately proved a masterstroke, gave Dank the boot for grounds probably very clear in hindsight. When Bomber moved on and joined the very inexperienced Hird at Essendon, a club who didn’t have the ‘strength’ of leadership like Geelong with Cook, Frank Costa, etc., Bomber played the ‘Dank card’ again, no-one intervened, and the most tormented chapter of one of the league’s great clubs ensued. Given the state of affairs with Geelong at the time, had Dank stayed at Kardinia Park it could have almost undone that club, so if it was Brian Cook who intervened, bloody hell, that’s massive.

7.    Pointed out on one of the Monday night football programs that this marvel that is having Dangerfield and Selwood joined by Ablett in the centre square is far from being the effective weapon the rest of the comp thought it would. They have started 14 centre bounces so far this year for only three successful clearances. That’s bizarre. Mind you, they have only started so few together because with the likes of Kelly, Mitch Duncan and others, the luxury of Dangerfield or Ablett down forward is a weapon in itself.

8.    China. Why are we taking some of our national culture over and trying to make that work in their backyard? How narcissistic of us! I mean it’s not like, shoe on the other foot, we let them, say, I dunno, bring their cuisine here and put a gazillion takeaway outlets on every corner, selling whatever it is they make, rice or meat or something, in something as preposterous as rectangle, clear, containers…. So that analogy doesn’t work, but nor does footy in China. Kochie. Bin it please. Nobody is bothered. But I am now definitely having beef and black bean for lunch, how delicious?

9.    Carlton had their pants pulled down on Sunday by a Dees team that, yes, as we said, hasn’t beaten tonnes, but to their credit have been as impressive as a top-eight fancy can be in dispatching those lower clubs. But for the Blues, it is not all doom and gloom. This is still a young group who yes, will cop it this week, but we were piling into Essendon only seven days earlier so it can so quickly change. Plus, missing their two best players on the weekend, Charlie Curnow and Sam Docherty, the latter out for the rest of the season of course, they possess a very rusty captain, and are playing a lot of youth which is always a rollercoaster ride in itself – the kids were good for the Dees on Sunday but not so much were the Blues’ kids the same time.

10.Now St Kilda. Let’s be honest, Collingwood did not at all play well. The Pies don’t for whatever reason play Etihad with any alacrity (a home game against the Bulldogs this week at the same venue is anything but a home game) but even though they almost went a final quarter goalless under a roof, they had no troubles with getting the four points in reality. On talent, you could argue the Saints really struggle to stack up with any other club, so when their President still holds top four ambitions, either there’s a lot of untapped chemistry still to propel his team up the ladder or they desperately need a big fish or two to take the rest of the playing list there. Not good.

11. And as for old mate Tim Membrey, a horror two weeks. Kicked 1.8, so many of them were straightforward set shots that he has missed to all sides of the goals, so it’s not just a bad slice or hook, everything’s going wrong. If he doesn’t have a good week in front of the sticks this week I fear he will need to be dropped to find form. Which is a shame because everything else in his game is ok for playing inside 50 in a poor side, getting plenty of touches and taking good catches. It’s just the finishing.

12.On the flip side, gee, Jack Darling, a legitimate star is born. Always thought he was a bit flaky, happy to do the easy bits and be a ‘foil’, but overshadowing Josh Kennedy in a side that’s winning well is no small feat. Working very hard, showing as good a hands as any in the comp, and if you look at the last two premiers, a forward, in form, of Jack Darling size is part of the perfect recipe.

13.Getting way too far ahead of ourselves in May, but the Eagles are packing out that new stadium just nicely week in week out, so some home finals there would be another level, especially if the Eagles are able to host some deep into September. The game is in good nick in Perth and Adelaide, job well done.

14.As for finals, top four, at this point, we’d be pretty happy pencilling in, in very strong HB lead, Richmond, West Coast, Sydney and Adelaide, in no order. The reigning premier look good things to be thereabouts again, their opponents on Sunday look better still, the Swans might be better than the Eagles, and the Crows, doing really well thus far given their injury list to show that 2017 can still be bettered.

15.So, for the final four spots, Melbourne despite the form we exposed above has the talent to convert a 6-3 record into at least 8th, Port Adelaide, probably, then we’d be thinking two of Geelong, Hawthorn, North, Collingwood and GWS. 13 wins, or at least 12 and a half if your GWS, is what you’ll need. The Roos and Pies have the kinder draws in that group – that win for North up in Sydney will be enormous come the end of August.

16. Speaking of North. Hobart. Why are we there? This column is not against Tasmanian footy, not at all, we love Tasmanian footy like Rafael Nadal liked pottery class at high school, but less than 10k there on a lovely Saturday afternoon at Bellerive. Yes, North probably gets a better cheque for the game than if there’d been a crowd twice the size at Etihad, but clearly the locals are showing that they will turn up for their own mob but no-one else. The Hurricanes games in the BBL sell out, so the Taswegians are giving the Roos lip service.

17.Can we then get a Tassie team eventually? Not soon. Here’s why. 18 teams is possibly too many, which I’ll mention next, so we aren’t close to 19, 20 teams in expansion, it would then need to be an existing team moving south. Well how about North themselves? Now they didn’t take a massive package to head to the Gold Coast, so why take something smaller to cross Bass Strait, they are actually ok without being strong at the moment off-field, debt free, and only some on-field success away from a possessing a reasonable membership base. So, unless the league bails on the Suns or Giants such is the mess they find themselves in, sorry Tassie, no dice.

18.State of the game, have we got too many teams? Have we considered that the declining visual of the game has been pretty much aligned to going from 16 to 18 teams? 44 more players each week take the park in our wonderous, elite competition, that prior to would have been found in reserves footy. You think about the fringe players in the lower teams, be it youngsters who are getting games too soon, or guys at their second or third clubs now getting regular gigs, these players would just not be featuring pre-expansion. The talent pool definitely doesn’t extend to filling say 20 good, quality sides each week, we know this, so have we pushed the boat out too far by heading to Surfers Paradise and the Municipality of the Greater Western Sydney Shire Council?

19.Some non-footy to finish, firstly the cut lunches thrown at AAMI Park last Saturday. Yes, we’ve probably rightly outlawed physical violence in all our codes, but how about the nostril flaring, trouser-buckle adjusting taking place in the commentary box to lounge rooms everywhere when Curtis Scott, the 20-year-old Melbourne Storm centre, landed a couple beauties on the yappy Dylan Walker from Manly. He only got a two game suspension for that too, so given the arousal he gave red-blooded footy fans who yearn for the biff, and probably the extra couple thousand Insta DMs from the fairer sex who like a bad boy, I say a good weekend’s work to you, young Curtis.

20. And lastly, ice hockey. The NHL expanded from 30 to 31 teams this season, becoming the first major league to set up camp in Las Vegas. The expansion process was different to what we see in AFL, essentially each of the existing 30 teams could ‘protect’ ten of their roster from the Vegas franchise who then picked one ‘unprotected’ player from each club to create theirs. A bunch of misfits, average players, no stars, who would battle to be relevant and competitive in year one. This week though they defeated Winnipeg four games to one in their best of seven series to be crowned Western Conference champions and will play Tampa Bay or Washington next week for the infamous Stanley Cup. 500-1 at the start of the season to win the whole thing, and if they win four more games they will do just that. The kind of stuff they make movies about. Less of the dancing minions and talking safari animals, more movies like this please. Amazing story.

(originally published May 23)

[joeahj]

Engagement

Pity: Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings, and often has paternalistic or condescending overtones. Implicit in the notion of pity is that its object does not deserve its plight, and, moreover, is unable to prevent, reverse, or overturn it. Pity is less engaged than empathy, sympathy, or compassion, amounting to little more than a conscious acknowledgement of the plight of its object. Sympathy: Sympathy (‘fellow feeling’, ‘community of feeling’) is a feeling of care and concern for someone, often someone close, accompanied by a wish to see him better off or happier. Compared to pity, sympathy implies a greater sense of shared similarities together with a more profound personal engagement. Sympathy is the act of feeling for someone (“I am so sorry you are hurting”). However, sympathy, unlike empathy, does not involve a shared perspective or shared emotions, and while the facial expressions of sympathy do convey caring and concern, they do not convey shared distress. Sympathy and empathy often lead to each other, but not always. For instance, it is possible to sympathize with such things as hedgehogs and ladybirds, but not, strictly speaking, to empathize with them. Sympathy and empathy often lead to each other, but not always. Sympathy should also be distinguished from benevolence, which is a much more detached and impartial attitude. Empathy: Empathy can be defined as a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. Empathy has been defined as the state where people (i.e., perceivers) represent the same emotion they are observing or imagining in another person (i.e., social targets) with full awareness that the source of their own experience is the other's emotion. Empathy involves feeling with someone (“I feel your disappointment”). With empathy, one shares another’s emotions. Empathy involves not just feelings but thoughts, and it encompasses two people—the person we are feeling for and our own self. One cannot empathize with an abstract or detached feeling. To empathize with a particular person, one needs to have at least some knowledge of who he is and what he is doing or trying to do. As John Steinbeck wrote, ‘It means very little to know that a million Chinese are starving unless you know one Chinese who is starving.’ To put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we must strike a balance between emotion and thought and between self and other. It demands the mental dexterity to switch attunement from other to self. Pause, put one’s interpretation on hold, and explicitly check in by observing, “Wow, that sounds really important. Tell me more of the story.”  If others question why one is acting differently, talk openly about the changes. “Sometimes I get so caught up in your feelings, I forget about my own. I’m trying to get better at balancing that.” Don’t worry about hurting someone else’s feelings. If the person has empathy for one, the conversation can lead to a closer connection. What turns empathy into a true high-wire act is that its beneficiaries find the attention deeply rewarding. That puts the onus on us to know when to extract ourselves from someone else’s shoes—and how. Recognizing and sharing someone else’s emotional state is a complex inner experience. It calls on self-awareness, the ability to distinguish between your own feelings and those of others, the skill to take another’s perspective, the ability to recognize emotions in others as well as oneself, and the know-how to regulate those feelings. Reining in overempathy requires emotional intelligence; its underlying skill is self-awareness. Emotional intelligence always requires being empathic with oneself. And that paradoxically allows one to be even more present for those you love. Empathy, compassion, and loving kindness need special protections. One needs always to be prepared to explore and meet their own needs. If one is not used to thinking about them, one might not even be fully aware of what those needs are. Whenever one’s empathy is aroused, regard it as a signal to turn a spotlight on one’s own feelings. Pause (taking a deep breath helps) to check in with oneself: What am I feeling right now? What do I need now? Once one knows what one needs, one can make a conscious decision about how much to give to another and how much to request for oneself. It helps to nurture relationships with people who are mindful of the needs of others. Taking action on one’s needs calls on the skill of self-management. Once one starts noticing the ways in which one becomes absorbed by other people’s intense feelings, especially their negative ones, one can create some distance—even insulate oneself if necessary. To help manage the mixed feelings that a surge of empathy may create, one can change the way one communicates. Clearly state that one cannot meet another’s expectations at the moment if necessary: “You know, I’d really like to talk to you about this, but not tonight. I am completely wiped out myself. Can we find time tomorrow?”. This is to avoid neglecting one’s own feelings; avoid feeling as if being held hostage by the feelings of others; avoid being overly empathic which leads to the loss of ability to know what one wants or needs, diminished ability to make decisions in their own best interest, experiencing of physical and psychological exhaustion from deflecting their own feelings, lack of internal resources to give one’s best to key people in one’s life; avoid regularly prioritizing the feelings of others above their own needs often leading to generalized anxiety or low-level depression, a feeling of emptiness or alienation, or dwelling incessantly on situations from the perspective of another. It is normal and necessary to be tuned in to someone else’s feelings, especially when one is very close to that person. The empathic understanding of the experience of other human beings is as basic an endowment of man as his vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The desire to be heard, known, and felt deeply never disappears. It is a part of the human experience to put someone else’s feelings before your own once in a while, but not consistently. Empathy is often confused with pity, sympathy, and compassion, which are each reactions to the plight of others.  Conversely, psychopaths with absolutely no sympathy for their victims can nonetheless make use of empathy to snare or torture them. Empathy works like a spotlight, highlighting certain people in the here and now, making their suffering salient to you; only lights up what you point them at as a spotlight; is vulnerable to bias and indulgence. Empathy is limited in scope. Empathy is innumerate, favouring the one over the many through the “the identifiable victim effect”. Empathy often focuses attention on short-term rather than long-term consequences. How empathy picks favourites is through corresponding to the experience of empathy brain areas’ sensitivity to whether someone is a friend or a foe, part of one’s group or part of an opposing group; is through corresponding to the experience of empathy brain areas’ sensitivity to whether the person is pleasing to look at or not and much else; through people’s tendency to feel for those who look like themselves. + Cognitive empathy can be a great source of pleasure, involved in art, fiction and sports; can be a valuable aspect of intimate relationships by making you kinder to the person you are empathising with (Giving—and getting—empathy is essential in intimate adult relationships. In successful adult relationships, the flow of empathy is reciprocal: Partners share power equally and move back and forth between giving and receiving. When one partner does more of the giving, however, resentment is likely to build.); is personal human contact. - Empathy is a poor moral guide. (To the extent that we can recognise that the numbers are significant when it comes to moral decisions, it’s because of reason, not sentiment. Empathy can be exploited for emotion.); grounds foolish judgments and often motivates indifference and cruelty; can lead to irrational and unfair political decisions; can spark violence as our feelings for the sufferer can motivate anger towards whoever caused the suffering (Rejoice to see the sufferer attack their adversary in their turn, eager and ready to assist them. People who are highly empathetic tend to be more violent and punitive when they see someone who is suffering. Although highly empathic people are good at spotting the emotions of others, they do not necessarily interpret those emotions correctly. They might spin an inaccurate narrative about why someone else is having a particular feeling, or they may get stuck in feelings arising from within. Empathy tilts the scale too much in favour of violent action.); impoverishes psychological well-being when empathy becomes the default way of relating; is imbalanced between partners who give or receive empathy in situations of unequal power (Those in the low-power position are more likely to defer to the needs of those in the high-power position, as it helps them hold on to the attachment at the cost of becoming the architects of their own disenfranchisement.); capacity can be strained in situations of concentration on someone else’s needs (important for all caregivers to find support from people who can offer the same kind of support for them).

Compassion: Compassion is a caring concern for another’s suffering from a slightly greater distance and often includes a desire to help. Compassion is the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related. Compassion is when feelings and thoughts associated with our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person include the desire to help. Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With compassion, one not only shares another’s emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism; “loving kindness” with distance from their pain and perspective. When one feels compassion, their heart rate slows down, one secretes the “bonding hormone” oxytocin, and regions of the brain linked to empathy, caregiving, and feelings of pleasure light up, which often results in one wanting to approach and care for other people. One way to ensure one is taking care of someone one loves while keeping track of one’s own feelings is to convert excess empathy to compassion. When a friend is distraught, instead of assuming the feeling of distress oneself, take a breath and a step back and say, “That sounds so awful. Is there something I can do for you?” Reason and self-control can go well with compassion. Compassion is not "about doing a favour for anybody but ourselves. Since self-worth comes from doing something worthy for yourself, be mindful of compassion. People’s capacity for compassion is a defining feature of what it means to be human (societal compassion?). How do people navigate the essential struggle of everyday life? The fundamental conflict of everyday social life is when to put your own needs above the interests of someone else – and when not to. People are always trying to figure out that balance. Finding the balance of managing compassion, fear of the person and fear of compassion is a shared responsibility. It is about whether individuals can do a little more on a daily basis. Compassion can be an intuitive form of high-risk altruism (impulsive) or thoughtful maintenance lasting years (considered). Compassion consists of thinking, acting, the goal on the other person’s welfare, one’s actions having consequences for the other person, likely possibility one’s actions will diminish own welfare (putting self at risk), no reward or recognition anticipation. Compassion is the strongest instinct in humans, surpassing self-interest. Compassion isn’t something you’re born with or not. Compassion can be strengthened through targeted exercises and practice: look for commonalities; cultivate mindfulness; encourage cooperation not competition; see people as individuals (not abstractions); remove blame; think one is capable of making a difference; curb inequality; be receptive to other people’s feelings without adopting those feelings as one’s own. Compassion is contagious. + Compassion can improve health. Compassion makes us feel good. Compassionate action activates pleasure circuits in the brain, and compassion training programs, even very brief ones, strengthen brain circuits for pleasure and reward and lead to lasting increases in self-reported happiness.  Being compassionate—tuning in to other people in a kind and loving manner—can reduce risk of heart disease by boosting the positive effects of the Vagus Nerve, which helps to slow our heart rate. Compassion can improve well-being. Practicing compassion could make one more altruistic, helping one to overcome empathic distress and become more resilient in the face of others’ suffering. Not regulating compassion works for self-interest by not forcing trade-offs within the individual’s moral self-concept. Being (consistently?) compassionate increases social adeptness, decreasing vulnerability to the harmful effects of loneliness and depression. Compassion can improve relationships. When people experience compassion, their brains activate in neural systems known to support parental nurturance and other caregiving behaviors. Being (consistently?) compassionate increases optimism and supportiveness when communicating with others. Compassion increases satisfaction and growth in friendships. Feeling compassion reduces vindictiveness. Compassion can increase positivity and work commitment while a compassionate work culture increases work satisfaction and teamwork with less burnout.