Motivation – Something to Ponder About

We are All Imperfect

May 29, 2022May 29, 2022 Forestwood

Trial and Error

I note that some in society might acknowledge this way less than others. Complete perfection is impossible, unnatural, yet many continue to strive for it. Whole industries support the desire for perfection.

In whose eyes?

Could it not be a natural and normal state for us to be imperfect?

A person without flaws is hard to find.

Imperfection comprises many a conversation topic over dinner, in thinly veiled complaints with a neighbour or in chatting with a sympathetic friend, in the stories, books and academic circles. Just look at the sales of self-help books!

To strive to do better, to be better is an overarching wish. In raw, biological terms that drive is tied to survival. Trial and error, therefore, is a gift, a key to opening the door of knowledge, realisation and connection, the instrument to do better.

For in each clumsy attempt to do better, we do indeed learn something; we grow, we evolve. Even if we stumble, again and again, we learn what doesn’t work, often despite our actions failing miserably time after time.

A tenacious person falls seven times, and gets up eight.

For them, the inner drive to succeed is robust and unyielding, whilst others give in to apathy after the first failed attempt – their silver lining somewhat blackened.

Mistakes can be motivating or can be soul-destroying and an excuse for chronic apathy. Some mistakes are hard to take provoking strong emotion. The emotions can be pervasive, triggering feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment, anger and disappointment. We judge ourselves to have failed in some way, to have made a grave mistake.

We expected to do better.

Yet with each perceived failure, we do grow: armed with knowledge and better equipped next time a situation or problem arises. Intransigent folks might take longer to heed the subtleties of trial and error and so their journey becomes rocky, torturous and gruelling. They fling away or dismiss the gift of trial and error as if it’s irrelevant junk mail or a card belatedly received long after the day of celebration.

As Henry Van Dyke said,
“Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.”

We all begin life wanting to succeed, to achieve, to develop, to reach a level of contentment, yet often our environmental influences antagonize our conscience with self-admonishment or self-criticism.

Why are we so hard on ourselves when mistakes can be a gift, a learning process? Trial and error is part of that journey. Understanding that might just be a liberating step forward in the narrative of life.

Motivational, Philosophy

Problem Solving

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021 Forestwood

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
James Cameron

Most of the effort in problem solving is in firstly correctly identifying the real problem. Once it has been identified, a problem becomes much easier to break down into chunks. Find 15 minutes each day to slowly work through an issue that you have been procrastinating about.

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
Henry David Thoreau

Problems aren’t something to be ignored in the hopes they will disappear. A new problem might be seen as a new opportunity to progress further to the common goal.

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

“If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”
Jim Rohn

Mental Health, Motivational

What We Can and Cannot Change

Feb 7, 2021 Forestwood

Do you ever think about what you want to happen in a forthcoming situation? Or does worry get in the way and you tend to focus on what you don’t want to happen?

The Ego and Finding Fault

It seems our ego focuses naturally on the negative aspects, due to an outdated evolutionary adaptation and we are then in a postion that makes us hard-pressed to see positives.

Fault finding comes from believing your happiness comes from the world according to your liking.

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A post shared by MINDFULLNESS AND MEDITATION (@_mindfullyfresh)

We then tend to find fault with whatever is going on, to blame others or circumstances, especially where the outcome has been less than, what we consider, satisfactory.

This may have helped us survive in pre-historic times, where man-eating beasts lurked close by, but is hardly relevant to modern life. Now, our egos flood our brains with self-critical thoughts, most of which are not terribly accurate and anxiety quickly follows.

Lee Jampolsky once asked a stressed-out salesman,

“What is the real purpose of a sale?

Replying about his own needs and that he wanted to boost his sale stats, Jampolsky then encouraged the salesman to instead direct his thought focus outwards – ie. so that his real purpose in a transaction or interaction would be that he was genuinely interested in the person he was selling to, in being patient and kind and, to try to ‘see’ the customer’s heart.

To the salesman’s surprise, his sales rose significantly and he was no longer so stressed when he followed that sageful advice. His customers picked up on those non-verbal and verbal signals that he ‘cared.’

Contemplating Goals

Without the ego naturally defaulting to negative, there is room in our minds for all sorts of alternative thoughts.

Contemplating a more positive goal at the beginning of any situation may help influence the outcome, (even if you are not convinced of its worth, at first).

What Went Wrong?

Don’t waste your precious time on analysing what went wrong with a situation. Ignore those feelings that you have been short-changed in lifeas they tend promulgate the victim concept, which only makes you feel worse.

Think about what your goal is, making it pertinent to your perception and personal actions and see what happens.

We can attract the exact things that we give thought oxygen to or dwell on.

Jampolsky believes that we can direct ourselves to be peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside.

Do you Agree?

blogging, Mental Health

Kurt Vonnegut

Nov 24, 2020Nov 25, 2020 Forestwood

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favourite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theatre, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
Kurt Vonnegut

POINT: Lots of things are worth doing because they bring you joy, and for no other reason. Do them, enjoy them, be fulfilled.

Do creative things that make you happy!

blogging

Priorities

Nov 2, 2020Sep 1, 2021 Forestwood

As I contemplate what to write in a ‘death letter,’ to my daughter, I came across the following text.

They are not my words but I thought it important to reproduce it here for others to read. I do not know the author. If someone knows who wrote this, please let me know in the comments and I will gladly update the post and credit them.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

The Important Things in Life

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 Beers.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’
The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car… The sand is everything else—the small stuff.
‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.
If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.
Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’
The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

blogging

How to Deal with Internet Criticism

Oct 25, 2020 Forestwood

Carol Burnett once said:

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
Carol Burnett

Carol’s quote came to mind recently, when I received some strongly-worded criticism in response to a post I’d made, on a social media group. Whether my words were truth or lies, seemed less relevant than the individual opinions of the responders making the comments.

It seemed some people relished an opportunity to vent their spleen, albeit in an anonymous way.

Normally, I’d be a little rattled by heavy-handed criticism, but I’m no longer surprised by being hammered with a critical counter-argument, at least on social media.

And yet, in distancing myself from reacting to the negative commentary, I began to feel like some kind of stone-hearted internet troll.

Aristotle was unsurprisingly philosophical about criticism:

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
Aristotle

I wondered should we ignore all negative feedback and scroll on, or respond to critical comments? If so, how?

Criticism of others’ opinions via the internet, and indeed, cyber-bullying, itself, has seemingly reached pandemic proportions. Thankfully the blogging world is mostly immune to negativity, but it did make me wonder how others dealt constructively, with heavy-handed criticism.

An American Politician, Sam Rayburn once said,

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

www.wiseoldsayings.com

Marc and Angel advocated creating space between hurtful words and feelings.

“Accept that someone else’s opinion is NOT your problem.”

“How you seem to someone and how you actually are, is rarely congruent.
Even if they get the basic gist of who you are, they’re still missing a big piece of the puzzle. What someone thinks of you will rarely contain the whole truth, which is fine.”
Marc and Angel

A measure of acceptance that we are all flawed and that we are all different, is echoed in this anonymous saying from wiseoldsayings.com

Criticism is the disapproval of people, not for having faults, but having faults different from your own.

Perhaps we can all agree to disagree?

Have you experienced reactive negative criticism on the internet to a post you made?

How did you handle it?

Is there a better way to respond?

Community

Worldly Wisdom

Oct 8, 2020 Forestwood

No one can climb a tree with no branches

– Finnish proverb

What do you think the underlying message says. Does it refer to the support of friends and family that folk find so essential to personal growth and development?

Or, could it refer to the many divergent paths one might consider, or does take throughout life, before we reach our ultimate destination or end goal?

I often find there is profound wisdom in proverbs, sayings and quotes and I marvel at the way they are so succinct in communicating messages, to the reader. Mostly anonymous, they come to us from past generations and from across cultures. They speak of the experiences of lives lived and lessons learned. Quotes, like proverbs, make us think more deeply about something.