#124 – MARY POPPINS – 1 November 2017
This will be self-help month. Its called self-help, so I acknowledge that I am talking to myself. As with all self-help advice, whether costly or free: take it or leave it.
Topic #1: living with doubt. We are entreated to overcome doubt. There are proffered techniques: focus, visualize, suppress, dominate, eradicate, at least fake it till you make it. When you doubt you’re done. The other guy (its always a guy), the one without self-doubt, wins every time.
My fellow doubters: this approach is doomed to fail. You cannot vanquish doubt. He/she/they is part of you. You can, however, partner with doubt. Sometimes your partner will torture you. Other times he will serve you. Occasionally she will leave you alone for respite. But they are a part of you. Embracing doubt is self-embrace. Feeling much better, now (I think … but I’m not sure …).
#125 – PINNOCHIO’S UNCLE – 2 November 2017
Topic #2: self-approval. It’s hard to do things for oneself. It’s easier to behave in ways that garner approval from others, because that is what we are taught to do and rewarded for doing from early on. It begins with gold star stickers in kindergarten. In an early grade, my class was assigned the drawing of a self-portrait. The teacher criticized mine. I remember confusion: if it’s a picture of me made by me, whose approval matters? Eventually it gets so muddled that the only way we please the self is through the lens of pleasing others. How to untangle this? I doubt (topic #1) I know. Sometimes I feel myself ageing out from the need for external validation. But why am I building a pubic facing website? And do you like it?
#126 – RED UMBRELLA – 3 November 2017
Topic #3: what to do? Here’s a well known and useful decision matrix to use when thinking about what to do with and for oneself:
One’d like to be in zone 4 all the time. Well, some of the time. Once in a life.
#127 – THE CEILING – 4 November 2017
Continuing Topic #3: what to do? Zone 2 is the most interesting one – things at which you excel but don’t much like. This ties right back to doing things to please others rather than self (topic #2). If I was constantly told I was pretty good at making images but really didn’t enjoy it other than for that feedback, why should this be a hobby? For many, work falls into Zone 2 (“You’re a solid performer, Smith, asset to the company.” “Thanks, but I still hate this job.”)
Zone 3 is a good place to be. If I like making images but I’m not particularly good at it, can I overcome the “not good” labelling and have my fun anyways? Little kids know about this zone, because their pleasures have not yet been ruined by self-criticism and fear of others’ disapproval. They will clunk away at things for the sheer joy of it, results be dammed. In fact, Zone 3 is as good as Zone 4.
Zone 1: little comment required. Dark skies. Get out as soon as you recognize where you are.
#128 – MOONSTRUCK – 5 November 2017
Topic #4: guilt. I don’t think it’s an emotion. I don’t think it is natural. I think it is a control mechanism, invented and exploited by generations of humans to direct and constrain the behavior of other humans. Foul stuff, serves no noble purpose. Feels lousy too.
#129 – PATCH – 6 November 2017
Topic #5: anger. Chantel Hébert, a Canadian media hero of mine, says she does not do anger because it gets in the way of clear thinking. She’s right. Furthermore, anger is in my observation almost always self-directed. But it manifests outward, against others. This makes it hard to disentangle what is going on: externally-directed internal anger is too easy to justify. As Chantel says, gets in the way of clear thinking.
Be kind to yourself.
#130 – HIGH NOON IN THE VAMPIRE’S LAIR – 7 November 2017
Topic #6: humility. The April 2019 edition of SATA (an airline based in Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores Islands) features an article about a valued, retiring employee, Fernando Rodrigues. It’s a warm testimonial that you would only see in a small operation. Fernando started as cabin crew and retired as head of quality control. At the end of the accolades comes this quote from Fernando: “I have never done anything of too much importance. I just did my job to the best of my knowledge, trying always to measure the impact of my actions on those around me.” Nice code.
#131 – QUICK SKETCH – 8 November 2017
Topic #7: leadership. There are three things to measure about aspiring leadership candidates: capability, integrity, and ambition. In what ideal order would you rank them as leadership qualities? I would go integrity first, capability next, and argue that ambition is irrelevant to leadership performance. I put integrity first because leaders with low integrity and high capability are dangerous. These are the leaders who cunningly fake integrity even as they wreck the place. But in the real world, all you need is ambition. And if it happens that ambition is strong in many who lack integrity and capability, well that’s why there are chronic leadership problems across organizations everywhere.
Humility, in this game, is often a liability. The meek shall not inherit the earth, because they are elbowed aside by the ambitious.
#132 – GRASS FIRE – 9 November 2017
Topic #8: can people fundamentally change? I know someone who did. Switched it up completely from being an unhappy person in the wrong circumstances who exported all that negativity onto others, to becoming a settled person who radiates positivity. Only I don’t think he changed so much as he found a way to recognize and become himself. He shifted his perspective, environment and balance of priorities in order to allow the better him to flourish. He peeled back the layers and uncovered himself. That is hard to do. It is rare. It is a coming home exercise.
#133 – BABEL – 10 November 2017
Topic #9: coming home. A restaurant with only five tables, but I hear the murmur of four languages. A dog underfoot, no menu, elegant bespoke food, heavenly music (Llasa, Ana Moura, Dead can Dance, Ennio Morricone). After the wine, hallucinogenic grappa from an unmarked jug. The North Atlantic Ocean crashing ashore outside the window. America beckons. This is the most westerly restaurant in all Europe, and I’m sorry I cannot tell you its secret name or location. (Googling “most westerly restaurant in Europe” won’t help, you get only wannabes in all the wrong places. Instead, you must walk to the end of the last road.) The owner and chef, name also withheld, spooling up the next CD, says “this is not a restaurant, not a cafe, not a disco, it is my life.” Darkness falls on the ocean. This is his coming home.
#134 – CHESS MOVES – 11 November 2017
Topic #10: stress management. You have your set of tried and true stress relievers. But what if they no longer work? You start stressing over needing new ones, desperately trying harder. Spiral. Chances are your time-tested strategies are as good as ever. The problem is your stressors have become overpowering. They can no longer be managed. This means they must be eliminated from your life. That is your number one job. After that, you’ll put things back into place. Yes, sometimes you can’t eliminate the source of overpowering stress right away. But don’t abandon the mission, because the only thing worse than intolerable stress is chronic intolerable stress.
#135 – OBSERATORY – 12 November 2017
Continuing Topic #10: stress management. A popular saying is “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Incorrect. What strikes but doesn’t kill you leaves you weaker. Leaves scars. The best stress management strategy is usually: walk away. Sometimes you can’t. You can’t prevent or avoid your mum’s death, and you ought not walk from the mourning journey that follows. Quitting your job because of an abusive boss only works if you can still feed yourself. Sometimes stress is worth it. You might push through the stress of public speaking because what you want to communicate delivers benefits that outweigh the performance anxiety.
But often you can walk away. Social stressors are a good example: just walk from the stress-making people in your life. They are not about to change their ways. Then you’ll have more energy for the stresses you cannot or do not wish to avoid, and, best of all, for the happy making parts and people of your life.
#136 – TALL HATCHLING – 13 November 2017
Topic #11: when you can’t go on. The productivity models underpinning both the industrial age and the digital age are to always keep going, at the most efficient rate, like a machine or device. A cessation of output is a breakdown. And so, we little flimsy humans stupidly emulate our inventions and expect to operate in the same manner. Young ciber-entrepreneurs are all over the internet – check out Medium on any random day – writing about their various techniques for powering up and powering through. Need time off just to wallow? – well that’s a breakdown. Only it’s not. We are biological, not computational. We are lumbering organisms, not precision mechanisms. We are weepers and dreamers, not automatons.
#137 – WATCHING – 14 November 2017
Topic #12: dog genes. If I come home beaten down by the day, or by someone, or by myself, there’s Ollie the dog, completely in the moment. Even when things get bad (someone he loves goes away, he loses his hearing, his ageing joints hurt so he cannot frolic on the beach) he still gets up to face a new day completely in the moment. He still goes to bed and curls up; he is a very good sleeper. His wags his tail. I want more of that. Ollie would say, “then don’t think so much about stuff. Get out of your complicated human head. Practice less self-help.”
Dogs achieve mindfulness without effort.
#138 – DANTE’S DANCE – 15 November 2017
Topic #13: inside your head. There’s lots of advice to get out of your head (like Ollie’s, above) or to get things out of your head. But inside your head is a wonderful, secret, cozy place. Sometimes it’s good to share things. Other times, the thoughts generated or memories stored inside ought stay there. The very act of sharing them diminishes them, fouls them. The minute you’ve said it and are looking around the table, it’s too late. You realize something got twisted in the translation from in your head to out in the world. You realize you can never take it back onto itself. Better to keep some things tucked away inside your head. Wear them, own them, bathe in them. Don’t instagram them. This is essential aloneness and having this is good for you.
