Archives for category: The Big 5
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Choosing Practices That Work

March 21, 2018 //
2

I’m contentedly sipping my coffee this morning and anticipating the long weekend in the country. I’m even looking forward to the drive, which would seem strange if it weren’t for the weird new little practice I started practicing days or weeks ago (I don’t remember now, long enough to have already become a thing I do); I make a point of reminding myself why I’m using the car, before I start it up, before I pull out of the driveway or parking space, before I start driving anywhere at all.

My commute has been much improved, and seems to get continuously better, and I am, each time, less reactive, less annoyed, less angry, and less likely to arrive home feeling that I’ve basically just wasted those minutes of my life – or even aged myself further by way of added stress. 🙂 Pretty good outcome for what amounts to 3-5 minutes just talking things over with myself. lol

It’s a simple practice. I sit for a moment, and take a few deep cleansing breaths, and ask myself a question. “What’s the point of this trip in the car?” The first time or two, I stuck to old habits, and framed my answer as “getting from ___ to ___ by hh:mm”. This, unfortunately, wasn’t helpful for me; I have hang-ups about time and time management, and the focus on time resulted in a focus on the outcome itself, and resulted in an increase in both anxiety and aggression. I felt as if everyone was in my damned way, an impediment to my forward momentum and timely arrival. Nope. Not helpful at all. I switched things up a bit, and focused on other important qualities about driving places: enjoying the time, arriving safely, creating an overall safe and comfortable shared experience alongside my fellow travelers. No kidding. The first time I focused on the safe arrival aspect, I found myself amusing myself with “safety games” – could I make this particular drive safely, without aggravating myself or other drivers, and also fully 100% participate in our social contract by also following all the traffic control rules and laws? Making “enjoy the time” a goal in my commuting experience ended up taking a lot of pressure off me to get somewhere else to enjoy that time, and I stopped driving around with the implicit understanding that driving around is a shitty experience to be kept short, avoided, and endured, and started… enjoying the drive. It’s nice. Much improved.

I still get frustrated by all manner of ass-hattery and douche-baggery. No doubt. I’m incensed when entitled fuck-nuts decide the right-turn-only lane at a particular intersection is an ideal way to simply get around all of the rest of us, also going that direction on that road, also waiting at that light. Yep. Totally human. I even feel a certain smugness about not doing that douche-bag bullshit, I totally do. lol Because… fuck that guy. I’m better than that. Well… at least about stealing the right away at that intersection right there. (Still totally human, probably should avoid being smug, in general.) …But, I feel less aggravated than I did, and less likely to hit some breaking point that could result in real rage, which is a huge win.

It’s a simple enough practice. Doesn’t work at all if I don’t practice it (confirmed). Works pretty well when I do. 🙂 Your results, no doubt, may vary. It’s the way of things, isn’t it? What works for me, however profoundly, may not work for you. Try it out, find out for yourself, and either adopt it as a practice that works, or discontinue it as a practice that does not work for you. 😀 Of course, if it “isn’t working” the first time, it is a practice, so you’ll likely want to try it a few times… you know… practice it. Be sure it isn’t working, or find out that it does. 😀

It’s a new day. A good one for beginning again. A good day to practice what works. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Seriously? You Could Do Better

March 16, 2018 //
1

Couldn’t we all do better? A bit? Give that some thought. Are you really the person you most want to be? Every day?

I am feeling frustrated with humanity, generally, and it pivots on competing memes, the willful stupidity of human beings defending pet ideologies, and the unavoidable truth that every damned one of us has some pretty fucking hateful moments, and lugs around some pretty vile baggage. I’m mostly quite done with every damned body pointing at the other guy with criticism about hate, seemingly unaware that they, themselves, have some similarly hateful moments.

Fuck, people, look in the god damned mirror.

I’m not making this point unaware that I am, myself, quite human. On the contrary, I am frustrated and puzzled by some basic confounds in my own thinking. I am concerned about implicit biases I am likely wandering around with, that may inform my decision-making in a fairly stupid way. I worry that things I think I “know” are not well-grounded in fact, to the point that I am regularly seeking proof that I am wrong. (Because, frankly, finding out I am wrong is the only shot at correcting poor quality reasoning – I don’t give fuck-all for being right, and it isn’t helpful to “know” that I am, when it comes up.)

What’s specifically giving me metaphysical indigestion this morning is the head-on conflict between posts/memes/commentary suggesting that “gun control is not the answer –  be kind to lonely kids!” is The One True Way, and the other batch retorting “don’t suggest anyone else is responsible for violence except the sociopaths committing it – you could be encouraging vulnerable kids to become entangled with sociopaths!” because setting good boundaries is The One True Way. Fucking hell – are we all really that stupid? Is it not 100% entirely obvious that this is a false dichotomy? That the jigsaw puzzle of American violence is a tad more nuanced than that? Fuck your overly simplistic idiocy. So done with that kind of simple-minded horse-shit.

It matters how we treat people. It matters what we accept, as a culture, with regard to how people treat each other. It matters when we frame the discussion in terms of the value of one group of lives or another, or the worth of one individual or another. It matters how we talk about – and how we prosecute – violence. Yes, when we let domestic violence crimes go unnoticed, undiscussed, and unprosecuted, we build a culture in which some children grow up thinking their anger (an emotion, nothing more) has more value than the actual lives of others. We created that scenario as a culture, as a society. We deepen it when we devalue women, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. When we foster rape culture, and suggest in our institutions and laws, that how women dress or behave is somehow righteous justification for another human being’s lack of self-control over their use of sexual behaviors, we defend violence over “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are at fault for the culture that exists.

Does that mean we are also accountable, individually, for the individual acts of violence of other individuals? Nope. We are each responsible for our own actions… including those actions that foster a culture of violence. So. Yeah. It’s not us vs. them. It’s not as simple as a single choice between two clear options. It’s about actually fucking being aware of the consequences of our actions, and of our institutions and laws, and we are responsible for the society we create. We built this. Stop acting fucking surprised. Fucking fix it.

Fuck, I am so angry about this. Just do better, damn. How fucking hard is that?

What are you going to do to make this a better country to live in for everyone who lives in it? (Yes, including people who are incarcerated, people who are poor, people who are undocumented – have you read some of what they are put through? Every.Damned.Day. “Inhumane” doesn’t begin to describe it, and that’s really not okay.)

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do better. Just that. Something. Each day, today too, I am going to put my will and my actions toward being a somewhat better human being than I was yesterday. And again tomorrow. Then again the day after that. I will spend a lifetime working towards being the woman I most want to be, building the world I most want to live in. Tearing down the bullshit and baggage I learned growing up, or later on, or built myself. No excuses. I can do better.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories anger, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Do Better Than That

March 15, 2018 //
0

I mean, it’s just a suggestion. However well you’ve human-ed, so far, do so just a little better today. You’ve had more practice. You’ve got more perspective. You’ve gained experience over time. So, how hard can it be to step up your game, just a smidgen, today, in comparison to all those days that have gone before?

I listen to the ssssshhhh ssssshhhhh of the traffic passing by on the road just in front of the house. Rainy morning? Sounds like it may be. I think about the day ahead. I consider it in the context of days to come, and days that have passed. I find myself thinking about the future, and my relationships – all sorts of relationships. My relationships with partners and metamours are “just the big ones”. Family, too, and those are sort of… inescapable parts of the social experience of living a human life. They tend to add a strangely random quality to my experience, simply because I don’t choose those in the same sense as I choose all the other relationships, and they bring along all manner of things I might have chosen to leave behind. All of us having our own experience, understanding the world, each of us, in the context of our own experience, filtered through our own strangely distorted lens. I think about friends. Associates. Buddies. Acquaintances. Dear ones of all sorts. New friends. Long-time friends. Friends “I don’t actually like” are rare for me, and I contemplate why that is, too. You are on my mind and in heart, today, humanity. 🙂

I could do better. I know more than I did yesterday. I am more skilled at life and love. I have accumulated some small amount of wisdom over time, always in limited supply, and I’ve put down a great quantity of baggage. I’ve given up my youth, but I’ve gained an immense appreciation for the chance to live life. Strange journey.

I could do better. I have opportunities in life, now, that I would not have recognized decades ago. I have new perspective. I care about things that I once could not fathom even being things, at all. I have learned the unavoidable weight and truth of privilege, and what unarguable social responsibility that brings.

I could do better. I’ve grown so much. Still… in spite of the growth, there is no question there is further growth ahead, and that I could still do more, better, more often, for more people, just generally. I could be kinder when I’m tired. I could be more understanding when I am frustrated. I could be more patient when I am pressed for time. I could be more considerate, more respectful, more open, more compassionate, more reciprocal – and every day this is true, when compared to the day before.

I guess I’ll begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Humans Are So… Human

March 12, 2018 //
0

I look back on the weekend and find myself smiling in spite of notes of discord and discontent in life’s song. Learning to recognize the difference between emotional climate and emotional weather has been useful. 🙂

I spent what felt like a deliciously long Sunday on leisurely self-care in the form of housekeeping, marveling at the quality of my time, having not spent the morning in a fury heading up the highway. The drive itself was leisurely and pleasant. I arrived home feeling more balanced and content to begin with, and I guess it makes sense that the day was therefore more easily a pleasant one.

Why do I find myself, even now, surprised when things work as intended? When a practice intended to improve emotional resilience does do that, why would I be amazed? Is it only because I fought so hard to achieve that result using means that could not be expected achieve it at all, and grew to believe it was therefore not achievable? We screw with our own thinking far too much for our general well-being, don’t we? That’s what I find myself thinking about this morning.

My thoughts began with a meme posted by a new friend. Some random obvious-seeming list of statements that bites at me and worms into my consciousness expecting my agreement – and since there is a list, it’s likely I may agree with one or more of the listed statements, but… why would I swallow a pill of unknown origins handed to me by a relative stranger, based on casual assumptions about the effects, and no real data or confirmation of what, precisely, is in that pill, and the effects will be?? I wouldn’t do that. I know not to do that. We do that with our thinking all the fucking time, though, without pausing to consider just how important our ability to reason clearly really is, and just how fragile the sanctity of our cognition and will really are. Memes that “go viral” could be understood, seriously, as “viral”, indeed. A kind of sickness. A kind of contagion. Maybe mild and mostly harmless, but some of them really dig down deep and foster a sort of cultural reprogramming – and it would be wise to really consider them in context, more fully, and insist that the content we shove into our brains to be included in our actual thinking and behavior be, at a minimum, factually accurate. Just saying; don’t take poison. Even well-meaning, or humorous, poison has consequences.

We become what we practice. We “know” what we hear repeated often (even if it is not, in fact, true). Don’t just trust me on this; do your homework. Test your assumptions regularly. Try hard to prove yourself wrong, regularly – because you are wrong, more often than you know.

Don’t share poison. Don’t take poison. Practice cognitive good hygiene and intellectual self-care with the same rigor, attention to detail, and concern for your health and well-being that you do with your physical care (do better, though).

Don’t feed the trolls.

Don’t take the bait.

Do the verbs.

Begin again.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Difficult Curriculum

March 11, 2018 //
0

Sometimes life reminds me that I’ll be taking time for all the lessons – not just the ones I think I most want or need to learn.

Feeling well-loved takes many forms.

One of life’s least popular lessons, for me, has been subtle and regularly reinforced; we are each having our own experience. We walk our own hard mile. We see the world from the perspective we have. We work with what we’ve got. This is not subject to argument. It is what it is.

I learned another subtle lesson, some time ago, (and thankfully learned it most coherently through video content (Rick & Morty, mostly), rather than through heart-breaking personal tragedy); sometimes our “best” actions, our most willful intention to “do the right thing” still result in unavoidable suffering elsewhere, or a negative consequence that we are nonetheless responsible for. Again, it is what it is. Understanding that it is, may be the best route to mitigating such things in a way that lessens the negative outcomes in some way. Learn from the lesson. 🙂

I regularly learn (again, because, apparently, I forget?) how human I am, how fragile, how limited, how awkward, how fallible, how error prone… yep. All the things. So human. Being well-meaning? It’s not enough, far too often.

I’ve just finished the strangest weekend seminar in life’s university. lol There’s been coursework on Setting and Managing Expectations, Clear Communication of Boundaries, Building Healthy Relationships – that one was a pop quiz, and I’m pretty sure I flunked. I hope it gets graded on a curve. lol I think most of these are pretty essential life lessons (and skills), but I don’t think I’ll ever “master” any of them; there always seems to be one more opportunity to be more authentic, to speak more simply and clearly, to be more open, to be more compassionate, to show more respect, to be more considerate, to reciprocate more fully, to love more – and oh, my goodness, that one definitely matters most. Love more. Love first. Love a lot. There is so much to share with one another. We each have so much to give to the world.

…And…yes. There are mistakes to be made – because mistakes get made; we are human. We learn so much more from what went wrong than from what goes right. There are hurts that will be felt. There are needs that will go unmet. There are moments that will feel out of step. The wheel continues to turn. Speak up! Listen more. Really listen. No, seriously, shut up and really listen, most  especially if someone is saying they “don’t feel heard”. So much to learn to be skillfully human, to be beautifully, wonderfully, delightfully human, to be that human so profoundly content and emotionally well-developed that all the other humans rally around to bask in the warmth of comfort of that love… gotta have goals. I’ll keep studying. Keep practicing. Keep beginning again. 🙂

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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