by Taylor Clark
The most legendary hypochondriac in history, though, was the poet Sara Teasdale, who even employed her own full-time nurse. One day in 1933, a blood vessel burst in Teasdale's hand, which the poet interpreted as a sure sign of an impending stroke; convinced of her grim fate, she decided to skip the formalities and take a massive overdose of sleeping pills. The coroner later reported that she'd been in perfect health.
Often, our stress level depends more on how we perceive a set of cognitive variables than on the specific demands of that situation. (p. 109)
Morgan claims that the way we talk to ourselves about stressors is equally important. How you frame something in your head has a great deal to do with your neurobiological response to it, he told me. Once you start saying to yourself Oh my goodness, this is awful, you begin releasing more cortisol and start this cascade of alarm. But when you say to yourself, I know what to do here, or see things as a challenge, then that turns into a much more positive response. p. 112
...Maddi is adamant that any one of us can instill these resilient attitudes. We know we can train people to increase their hardiness, Maddi said. It involves showing people how to deal with their stressful circumstances through problem solving, coping skills, social support, and effective self-care--rather than just giving up. Hardiness trainees learn to identify their stressors and to challenge their negative beliefs about them, like the idea that they're helpless to change a tough situation or that it's safer to give up on a problem when it grows difficult. They practice setting goals and taking small steps toward accomplishing them, slowly building up thir sense of control over their own destiny. In talk sessions, therapists help them to put their stressors into perspective: they see how turmoil often leads to accomplishments and personal growth and how change is an essential element of life. p 115
After obwerving countless assaults, Wigram began to pick up on a peculiar pattern in each twenty-two man platoon. Whenever a platoon ran into enemy fire, Wigram noted, the troops would react in three very distinct ways. Without fail, a few soldiers would go to pieces and "start making tracks for home." Another handful of men would respond valiantly, opening fire and advancing. And the majority of the troops? Wigram said they would enter a state of bewilderment, unsure of how to act; they became "sheep" and would only do their duty when prodded by a strong, decisive leader. p. 240
This treacherous freezing reaction is startlingly common in crises. In the 1970s, the psychologist Daniel Johnson found that when he asked subjects to perform a chllenging and novel task under high pressure, 45% of them shut down and stopped moving for minimum of thirty seconds. They just quit functioning, he later told the Time reporter Amnda Ripley, they just sat there. Under life threatening stress, complex brain processing plummets and the neural mainframe often maxes out, leaving us with instinctive reactions and deeply worn routines; it's as if such an experience can be too monumentl for the brain to compute. Leach says that even in the most ideal of circumstances, the brain needs at least eight to ten seconds to process an unfamiliar situation, but intense fear and stress make that task even tougher. When our brains search their data banks for the right course of action in extreme danger and come up empty, Leach claims, they shut down. We freeze. We do nothing. p244
In combat you do not rise to the occasion--you sink to the level of your training. None of us cn safely rely upon antasies of our innate heroism when the moment calls for it, Grossman says, because a life-threatening crisis makes our normal experience of reality fall apart. Only the man who prepares for disaster can hope to respond well.
...in the middle of this panic-fueled dash, a miracle happened: Kummerfeldt's training kicked in. This little voice in my head said, hey dummy, go sit down, he recaleld. So I went over to a log and sat down. This is precisely what he advises lost hikers to do today--to get off their feet. Next Kummerfeldt followed his second protocol: he took a drink of water. A drink of water is incredibly clming, he explained...These two things, getting off your feet and hving a drink of water, are two absolutely incredible lifesaving steps. p. 257
It is what we do with that fear reaction that determines our fate, Kummerfeldt says. In his classes today, Kummerfeldt teachers a model called STOP to get through wilderness survival situations: stop what you're soing, sit down, and let the adrenaline subside; think about your options; observe your environment; and plan how best to survive. Then get to work. p258
Bravery isn't being fearless. Bravery is being scared and doing the right thing anyway. p266
By now the overarching point should be clear. How did Cooper really stay cool under life-threatening pressure? The same way everyone else we've met did it: by working with fear instead of needlessly wasting energy fighting it, by focusing on what needs to be done instead of on worries, and by taking action. Cooper wasn't necessarily good at not feeling afraid...what Cooper had become good at was making this fear irrelevant. p271
How to be afraid:
1. Breathe. (square breathing)
2. put your feelings into words. Talking or writing about an emotion like fear helps the brain to prosses it behind the scenes; it allows the mine to sort out thoughts and feelings instead of just churning over them repeatedly...s;eaking compassionately and honestly about emotions, without judgement or sel-blame, helps us come to terms with them....William Faulkner once wrote, I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
3. Train, practice, prepare. If an upcoming presentation has you anxious, rehearse it under realistic, flexible conditions until delivering it becomes routine.
4. Redirect focus--concentrate on th epresent moment and the task at hand....psychologists say that even pausing a few times a day and being present for a moment with what's going on around you (rather than with the monologue in your head) can help you to better inhabit the current moment.
5. Mindfully disentangle from worries and anxious thoughts--be mindful, watch your worries and let them coast by without getting entangled with them, or postpone worry--write it down and agree that later on you can worry about it for 30 minutes, which frees you up to focus on the moment. Over time, she says, you learn to better manage your anxious thoughts and they no longer run the show.
6. Expose yourself to your fears. If you want to remain locked into a fear indefinitely, then by ll means, avoid the situations tht make you anxious. But if you want to give your amygdala a chance to get over a fear, you must expose yourself to the things and ideas that scare you.
7. Learn to accept uncertainty and lack of control. Suppose you're worried you might be laid off from your job...if you bask in your uncertainty, (that is, expose yourself to your fear about the future), repeating the distressing thought "It's possible I could be laid off" to yourself without resisting your anxious emotional reaction, then you (and your amygdala) will eventually begin habituating to it. With enough exposre, the idea loses its power and becomes almost dull.
8. Reframe teh sitution--stay grounded in reason and remind ourself of the doubtlessly more positive reality of our situation. When you change the wy you ppraise a situation, you chnge your emotional response to it.
9. Joke around--helps us break out of a negtive point of view and see things differently.
10. Build faith in yourself.
11. Keep your eyes on a guiding principle.
12. Open up to fear unconditionally. Instead of battling fear, we just let it happen, and when the fight against it desolves, so does the torment. We slowly learn to live in harmony with fear, anxiety, and stress...
Acceptance and commitment therapy--Steven Hayes
Monday, April 22, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Proof of Heaven
My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.
The place I went was real. Real in a way that makes the life we're living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison. This doesn't mean I don't value the life I'm living now, however. In fact I value it more than I ever did before. I do so because I now see it in its true context.
...the "voice" of this being was warm and--odd as I know this may sound--personal. It understood humans, and it possessed the qualities we posess, only in infiniately greater measure. It knew me deeply and overflowed with qualities that all my life I've always associated with human beings, and human beings alone: warmth, compassion, pathos...even irony and humor.
...I had already been taught the one thing--the only thing--that, in the last analysis, truly matters. I had initially received this piece of knowledge from my lovely companion on the butterfly wing upon my first entrance into the gateway. It came in three parts, and to take one more shot at putting it into words (because of course it was initially delivered wordlessly) it would run something like this:
You are loved and cherished
You have nothing to fear
There is nothing you can do wrong.
If I had to boil this entire message down to one sentence, it would run this way:
You are loved.
And if I had to boil it down further, to just one word, it would be (of course) simply:
Love.
Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard to fathom kind of love but the day to day kind that everyone knows--the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children...in it's purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or that ever will exist....
The (false suspicion that we can somehow be separated from God is the root of every form of anxiety in the universe, and the cure for it...was the knowledge that nothing can tear us from God, ever.
Just as our brains work hard every moment of our waking lives to filter out the barrage of sensory information coming at us from our physical surroundings, selecting the material we actually need in order to survive, so it is that forgetting our trans-earthly identities also allows us to be "here and now" far more effectively. ...being excessively conscious of the worlds beyond the here and now would slow down our progress even more. If we knew too much of the spiritual realm now, then navigating our lives on earth would be an even greater challenge than it already is. From a more purpose-focused perspective, making the right decisions through our free will in the face of the evil and injustice on earth would mean far less if we remembered, while here, the full beauty and brilliance of what awaits us.
...That evil could occasionally have the upper hand was known and allowed by the Creator as a necessary consequence of giving the gift of free will to beings like us.
But free will comes at the cost of a loss or falling-away from this love and acceptance. We are free; but we are free beings hemmed all around by an environment conspiring to make us feel that we are not free. Free will is of central importance for our function in the earthly realm: a function that, we will all one day discover, serves the much higher role of allowing our ascendance in the timeless alternate dimension. Our life down here may seem insignificant, for it is minute in relation to the other lives and other worlds that also crowd the invisibel and visible universes. But it is also hugely important, for our role here is to grow toward the Divine, adn that growth is closely watched by the beings in the worlds above...
This is the true spiritual self that all of us are destined to someday recover. But until that day comes, I fell, we should do everything in our power to get in touch with this miraculous aspect of ourselves, to cultivate it and bring it to light. This is the being living within all of us right now and that is, in fact, the being that God truly intends us to be.
How do we get closer to this genuine spiritual self? By manifesting love and compassion. Why? BEause love and compassion are far more than the abstractions many of us believe them to be. They are real. They are concrete. And they make up the very fabric of the spiritual realm.
In order to return to that realm, we must once again become like that realm, even while we are stuck in, and plodding through, this one.
Om [the word he uses for God] understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly and personally than we can even imagine because Om knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the Divine for even a moment.
Humor. Irony. Pathos. I had always thought these were qualities we humans developed to cope with this so often painful and unfair world. And they are. But in addition to being consolations, these qualities are recognitions--brief, flashing, but all important--of the fact that whatever our struggles and sufferings in the present world are, they truly can't touch the larger, eternal beings we in truth are. Laughter and irony are at heart reminders that we are not prisoners in this world, but voyagers through it.
So was I communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn't feel that way. instead, I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, adn what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. omniscient, omnipotent, persona.---and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.
The place I went was real. Real in a way that makes the life we're living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison. This doesn't mean I don't value the life I'm living now, however. In fact I value it more than I ever did before. I do so because I now see it in its true context.
...the "voice" of this being was warm and--odd as I know this may sound--personal. It understood humans, and it possessed the qualities we posess, only in infiniately greater measure. It knew me deeply and overflowed with qualities that all my life I've always associated with human beings, and human beings alone: warmth, compassion, pathos...even irony and humor.
...I had already been taught the one thing--the only thing--that, in the last analysis, truly matters. I had initially received this piece of knowledge from my lovely companion on the butterfly wing upon my first entrance into the gateway. It came in three parts, and to take one more shot at putting it into words (because of course it was initially delivered wordlessly) it would run something like this:
You are loved and cherished
You have nothing to fear
There is nothing you can do wrong.
If I had to boil this entire message down to one sentence, it would run this way:
You are loved.
And if I had to boil it down further, to just one word, it would be (of course) simply:
Love.
Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard to fathom kind of love but the day to day kind that everyone knows--the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children...in it's purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or that ever will exist....
The (false suspicion that we can somehow be separated from God is the root of every form of anxiety in the universe, and the cure for it...was the knowledge that nothing can tear us from God, ever.
Just as our brains work hard every moment of our waking lives to filter out the barrage of sensory information coming at us from our physical surroundings, selecting the material we actually need in order to survive, so it is that forgetting our trans-earthly identities also allows us to be "here and now" far more effectively. ...being excessively conscious of the worlds beyond the here and now would slow down our progress even more. If we knew too much of the spiritual realm now, then navigating our lives on earth would be an even greater challenge than it already is. From a more purpose-focused perspective, making the right decisions through our free will in the face of the evil and injustice on earth would mean far less if we remembered, while here, the full beauty and brilliance of what awaits us.
...That evil could occasionally have the upper hand was known and allowed by the Creator as a necessary consequence of giving the gift of free will to beings like us.
But free will comes at the cost of a loss or falling-away from this love and acceptance. We are free; but we are free beings hemmed all around by an environment conspiring to make us feel that we are not free. Free will is of central importance for our function in the earthly realm: a function that, we will all one day discover, serves the much higher role of allowing our ascendance in the timeless alternate dimension. Our life down here may seem insignificant, for it is minute in relation to the other lives and other worlds that also crowd the invisibel and visible universes. But it is also hugely important, for our role here is to grow toward the Divine, adn that growth is closely watched by the beings in the worlds above...
This is the true spiritual self that all of us are destined to someday recover. But until that day comes, I fell, we should do everything in our power to get in touch with this miraculous aspect of ourselves, to cultivate it and bring it to light. This is the being living within all of us right now and that is, in fact, the being that God truly intends us to be.
How do we get closer to this genuine spiritual self? By manifesting love and compassion. Why? BEause love and compassion are far more than the abstractions many of us believe them to be. They are real. They are concrete. And they make up the very fabric of the spiritual realm.
In order to return to that realm, we must once again become like that realm, even while we are stuck in, and plodding through, this one.
Om [the word he uses for God] understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly and personally than we can even imagine because Om knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the Divine for even a moment.
Humor. Irony. Pathos. I had always thought these were qualities we humans developed to cope with this so often painful and unfair world. And they are. But in addition to being consolations, these qualities are recognitions--brief, flashing, but all important--of the fact that whatever our struggles and sufferings in the present world are, they truly can't touch the larger, eternal beings we in truth are. Laughter and irony are at heart reminders that we are not prisoners in this world, but voyagers through it.
So was I communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn't feel that way. instead, I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, adn what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. omniscient, omnipotent, persona.---and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.
Finishing Well
For the record (for my record, lol) I didn't particularly love this book. I left it a very lukewarm review on Amazon. But there were still a few thoughts worth recording.
"I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. Something else. Something more unsettling and more tragic than dying frightens us. We're afraid of never having lived. Of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive. That we never figured out what live was for.
--Harold Kushner
...he (Harvard professor) stressed the fact that if his students really thought they only had a short time to live, they'd be spending it mending their relationships with friends, family, and God. Deep down, they know it's about relationships. But there they are, about to spend their next thirty years in a made scramble for family and fortune, with are antithetical to their declared values.
What keeps most of us from focusing on the things that matter is all the things that don't matter but add cost, particularly the cost of our most precious asset--time. We end up spending ourselves dry, adding small increments to our "money and status" accounts--which we already have plenty of--while depleting our "meaning" accounts, including our relationships with God, marriage partners, kids, lifelong friends, and others we're called to serve.
"I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. Something else. Something more unsettling and more tragic than dying frightens us. We're afraid of never having lived. Of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive. That we never figured out what live was for.
--Harold Kushner
...he (Harvard professor) stressed the fact that if his students really thought they only had a short time to live, they'd be spending it mending their relationships with friends, family, and God. Deep down, they know it's about relationships. But there they are, about to spend their next thirty years in a made scramble for family and fortune, with are antithetical to their declared values.
What keeps most of us from focusing on the things that matter is all the things that don't matter but add cost, particularly the cost of our most precious asset--time. We end up spending ourselves dry, adding small increments to our "money and status" accounts--which we already have plenty of--while depleting our "meaning" accounts, including our relationships with God, marriage partners, kids, lifelong friends, and others we're called to serve.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Entry
Nancy,
Here is a video of the entry and a bunch of pictures. Let me know if you need to see anything else! And thanks for your help,
Cindy
PS--remember, we are after LOTS of LIGHT!!
Here is looking up towards the current (dated) chandelier.
This is looking slightly to the left, then to the right,
Here is a video of the entry and a bunch of pictures. Let me know if you need to see anything else! And thanks for your help,
Cindy
PS--remember, we are after LOTS of LIGHT!!
Here is the view from the front door.
Here is looking up towards the current (dated) chandelier.
This is looking slightly to the left, then to the right,
And then towards the stairs. Finally, the front door from the inside.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Curtain Options
Ok, here are the options so far. If you click on the picture it should open it bigger for you. I could also get something plain & white...
The bottom pic is of the shower curtain that we've had across the window thus far. I really love the print & how it works in the room, but I've seen nothing remotely like it as I've looked for curtains, and I really (REALLY) don't have the wherewithal to find fabric and make something right now. None of these are terribly expensive options, so I figure that I can have them for a while and then later when I have time and want to do something different, I can.
I've taken the pics 2 ways so that you can see how it looks with the curtains "closed" and "opened."
Oh--pls ignore the boxes. As soon as we get one box unpacked, we bring in another. They've sadly become part of the landscape! (But at least we're making progress!)
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
To Heaven and Back
It was a good example (retrospectively, of course) of how easily things come together when one is moving in the direction of God's will. It has taken many years to truly learn that when everything seems difficult and feels as though you are swimming upstream, it is usually because you are not following the direction of God's will. When you are doing God's will, everything seems to happen without much effort or many obstacles.
The only scriptures she was able to focus on in the hospital:
First--"Rejoice always." 1 Thess 5:15
Later in the day--"Pray without ceasing." 1 Thess 5:17
Finally--"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God's in Christ Jesus for you" 1 Thess 5:18
Even the most terrible circumstances and events can stimulate great change in individuals and/or societies. Without observing cruelty, we would not be moved to compassion. Without personal trials, we would not develop patience or faithfulness. It is the recognition that our earthly concerns matter little when compared to life eternal that allows us to know joy in the midst of sorrow and worry. Have you ever really changed or experienced personal growth during times of comfort or complacency? The acceptance that change rarely comes without difficulty and challenge can truly free a person to "rejoice always." It also allows us to live daily with a grateful heart and "give thanks in all circumstances." No matter what the circumstances, we can be grateful that God fulfills His promises, that our faith is sufficient to sustain us, and that our eternal life is assured.
The stories of almost everyone who has spoken with me began with some sort of traumatic situation. This is fairly predictable, and it is unfortunate that we rarely have such intense spiritual connections except under conditions of dire stress. I believe that anyone can have the same connections and experiences that I have had, but I think we are too distracted by the world around us when we are under "normal" circumstances. When we are in dire circumstances, these distractions quickly fall away and we are able to discern that which is most important: our relationship with God.
Ultimately they must not only find God, but must freely choose to accept God's love and direction. God gave humans this ability to choose freely, which makes us ultimately responsible for our choices, our actions, and our lives.
People ask why so many miracles occurred in ancient days but not in our present time. I contend that there are just as many miracles occurring today, in the lives of ordinary people. But I also assert that most of us don't look for miracles, don't recognize them for what they really are, and don't really believe them to be of divine origin even if their miraculous nature is noticed.
My life's experiences would argue against the concepts of coincidence and luck It would support the belief that there is only the guiding presence and plan of God, who uses His assortment of angels and messengers to lead us and communicate with us.
King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that "people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end" and I would heartily agree. We live our lives in forward motion, but only understand them when looking backward. I would therefore challenge you to keep a six to twelve month journal of coincidence. In that journal write down the details of every "coincidence" you experience. In one column, write the details of each major event in your life...What are/were the circumstances surrounding your acceptance into college, meeting your significant other, finding your job, choosing where you live, and so on. Note every time the arrangements easily fall into place. Similarly, every time you struggle with a situation write down the eventual outcome. Write down the "bad" things that happen to you or others and, in an adjacent column, list what happens as a direct or indirect result of these bad things. I believe that when you look back through your journal at the end of your exercise, you will clearly see how many of people, events, decisions, and outcomes are interconnected. I think you will see a pattern of linkage that cannot be attributed to statistical chance. You will see evidence of God's work in your life, giving assurance that God has a plan for your life. you will begin to recognize coincidental events for the miracles they really are, and you will know that God is with you even in times of sorrow, loneliness, or other misfortune.
The only scriptures she was able to focus on in the hospital:
First--"Rejoice always." 1 Thess 5:15
Later in the day--"Pray without ceasing." 1 Thess 5:17
Finally--"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God's in Christ Jesus for you" 1 Thess 5:18
Even the most terrible circumstances and events can stimulate great change in individuals and/or societies. Without observing cruelty, we would not be moved to compassion. Without personal trials, we would not develop patience or faithfulness. It is the recognition that our earthly concerns matter little when compared to life eternal that allows us to know joy in the midst of sorrow and worry. Have you ever really changed or experienced personal growth during times of comfort or complacency? The acceptance that change rarely comes without difficulty and challenge can truly free a person to "rejoice always." It also allows us to live daily with a grateful heart and "give thanks in all circumstances." No matter what the circumstances, we can be grateful that God fulfills His promises, that our faith is sufficient to sustain us, and that our eternal life is assured.
The stories of almost everyone who has spoken with me began with some sort of traumatic situation. This is fairly predictable, and it is unfortunate that we rarely have such intense spiritual connections except under conditions of dire stress. I believe that anyone can have the same connections and experiences that I have had, but I think we are too distracted by the world around us when we are under "normal" circumstances. When we are in dire circumstances, these distractions quickly fall away and we are able to discern that which is most important: our relationship with God.
Ultimately they must not only find God, but must freely choose to accept God's love and direction. God gave humans this ability to choose freely, which makes us ultimately responsible for our choices, our actions, and our lives.
People ask why so many miracles occurred in ancient days but not in our present time. I contend that there are just as many miracles occurring today, in the lives of ordinary people. But I also assert that most of us don't look for miracles, don't recognize them for what they really are, and don't really believe them to be of divine origin even if their miraculous nature is noticed.
My life's experiences would argue against the concepts of coincidence and luck It would support the belief that there is only the guiding presence and plan of God, who uses His assortment of angels and messengers to lead us and communicate with us.
King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that "people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end" and I would heartily agree. We live our lives in forward motion, but only understand them when looking backward. I would therefore challenge you to keep a six to twelve month journal of coincidence. In that journal write down the details of every "coincidence" you experience. In one column, write the details of each major event in your life...What are/were the circumstances surrounding your acceptance into college, meeting your significant other, finding your job, choosing where you live, and so on. Note every time the arrangements easily fall into place. Similarly, every time you struggle with a situation write down the eventual outcome. Write down the "bad" things that happen to you or others and, in an adjacent column, list what happens as a direct or indirect result of these bad things. I believe that when you look back through your journal at the end of your exercise, you will clearly see how many of people, events, decisions, and outcomes are interconnected. I think you will see a pattern of linkage that cannot be attributed to statistical chance. You will see evidence of God's work in your life, giving assurance that God has a plan for your life. you will begin to recognize coincidental events for the miracles they really are, and you will know that God is with you even in times of sorrow, loneliness, or other misfortune.
Monday, December 3, 2012
How Will You Measure Your Life?
For those of my classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow unhappiness, I can't help but believe that their troubles stemmed from incorrectly allocating resources. To a person, they were well-intended...intending to build a satisfying personal life alongside their professional life, making choices specifically to provide a better life for their family, they unwittingly overlook their spouse and children. Investing time and energy in these relationships doesn't offer them that same immeiate sense of achievement that a fast track career does. You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis it doesn't seem as if things are deteriorating. Your spouse is still there when you get home every night... In fact, you'll often see the same sobering pattern when looking at the personal lives of many ambitious people. Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter most...
It's rarely easy. Even when you know what your true priorities are, you'll have to fight to uphold them in your own mind every day. For example, like many of you, I suspect, I'm naturally drawn to interesting problems and challenges. I can lose myself in one for hours...but I know that spending my time this way is not consistent with my priorities. I've had to force myself to stay aligned with what matters most to me by setting hard stops, barriers, and boundaries in my life--such as leaving the office at six every day so that there is daylight time to play catch with my son..I have to be clear with myself that the long-term payoff of investing my resources in thie sphere of my life will be far more profound.
...there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg. As a parent, you will try many things with your child that simply won't work. When this happens, it can be very easy to view it as a failure. Don't. If anything, it's the opposite... Instead, you have just learend what does not work. You now know to try something else.
Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be amont the sources of the deepest joy in our lives. They are worth fighting for.
The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life. but you have to be careful. When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake . By the time serious problems arise in those relationships, it often is too late to repair them. This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, as if it's not necessary.
Each of us can point to one or two friendships we've unintentionally neglected when life got busy. You might be hoping that the bonds of your friendship are strong enough to endure such neglect, but that's seldom the case. Even the most committed friends will attempt to stay the course for only so long before they choose to invest their own time, energy, and friendship somewhere else.
I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care. But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening First, you'll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere--in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention. They love you and they want to support your [career] too. That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world. If you don't nurture and develop those relationships, they won't be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life.
"Treat people as if they were what they outhg to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."--Goethe
It's rarely easy. Even when you know what your true priorities are, you'll have to fight to uphold them in your own mind every day. For example, like many of you, I suspect, I'm naturally drawn to interesting problems and challenges. I can lose myself in one for hours...but I know that spending my time this way is not consistent with my priorities. I've had to force myself to stay aligned with what matters most to me by setting hard stops, barriers, and boundaries in my life--such as leaving the office at six every day so that there is daylight time to play catch with my son..I have to be clear with myself that the long-term payoff of investing my resources in thie sphere of my life will be far more profound.
...there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg. As a parent, you will try many things with your child that simply won't work. When this happens, it can be very easy to view it as a failure. Don't. If anything, it's the opposite... Instead, you have just learend what does not work. You now know to try something else.
Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be amont the sources of the deepest joy in our lives. They are worth fighting for.
The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life. but you have to be careful. When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake . By the time serious problems arise in those relationships, it often is too late to repair them. This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, as if it's not necessary.
Each of us can point to one or two friendships we've unintentionally neglected when life got busy. You might be hoping that the bonds of your friendship are strong enough to endure such neglect, but that's seldom the case. Even the most committed friends will attempt to stay the course for only so long before they choose to invest their own time, energy, and friendship somewhere else.
I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care. But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening First, you'll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere--in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention. They love you and they want to support your [career] too. That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world. If you don't nurture and develop those relationships, they won't be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life.
"Treat people as if they were what they outhg to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."--Goethe
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