Friday, December 24, 2021

Wise notes and quotes 2021

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common-this is my symphony.”

~ William Henry Channing

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“Humor is tragedy plus time."

~ Speaking of Psychology Podcast. "What makes things funny?" with Peter McGraw, Ph.D. 

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“I had broken the fundamental rule of psychotherapy. Do not strip away a patient’s defenses if you have nothing better to offer in their stead.”

~Irvin Yalom, “Momma and the meaning of life: tales of psychotherapy.”

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 “Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes sense in a stable world where we get rewarded for conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in the rapidly changing world where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.”

~ Adam Grant, “Think again: the power of knowing what you don’t know”  

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 “He wouldn’t know what to feel until he knew what to think.”

~ Toni Morrison, “The Song of Solomon”

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 “Listen, the problem isn’t how hard you’re working, it’s that you are working on things that aren’t right for you. Your goals in motivations aren’t harmonizing with your deepest truths.”

 “Now, I have something scary to tell you. You don’t have that much time left to live. Whether it’s five years or 55, it’s not all that long. You have no time waste on suffering. No time to keep torturing your nature to serve your culture. The time for integrity is now.”

“Every day you make thousands of tiny decisions about what to do with your time. Every single choice is a chance to turn toward the life you really want. Repeatedly putting a little less time into what you don’t love, and a little more into what you do love, Is your next step on your way to integrity.”

“What would you do if you were absolutely free?”

~ Martha Beck, “The way of integrity: finding the path to your true self.”  

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“Like fighting an addiction, being an anti-racist requires a persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”

 “One of racism’s harms is the way the falls on unexceptional black person who is asked to be extraordinary just to survive.”

~ Ibram X. Kendi, “How to be an antiracist”

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 “The moral arc of our life bends toward meaning, especially if we bend it that way with all our damn might.”

 “If you are uncomfortable—in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused—you don’t have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”

~ Glennon Doyle, “Untamed”

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“Your past is not an excuse but it is an explanation”

~ Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce D. Perry, “What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.”

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 “Most of us most of the time live with unquestioned belief that the world looks as does because that’s the way it is. There’s one small step from this belief to another: other people view the world much the way I do. These beliefs which have been called naive realism are essential to the sense of a reality we share with other people. We rarely question these beliefs. We hold a single interpretation of the world around us at any single time. And we normally invest very little effort in creating plausible alternatives to it. One interpretation is enough and we experiences as truth. We do not go through life imagining alternative ways to see what we see.”

~ Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment”

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 “From a purely biological perspective, we humans are feeling creatures who think, rather than thinking creatures who feel. Neuroanatomically you and I are programmed to feel our emotions. And any attempt we may make to bypass or ignore what we are feeling may have the power to derail our mental health at this most fundamental level.”

“Anger is an energetic response to pain.”

~ Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, “Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life”

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 “You have a burden. The richer the soil, the more unforgivable the failure to cultivate it.”

~ Irvin Yalom, “When Nietzsche wept”

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Chinese parable - Is it good? is in bad? Maybe so, Maybe not. We’ll see. | Dr. Marlo Archer

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Alexithymia “emotional blindness”: An inability to identify and describe one’s feelings or emotions

~ American Psychology Association dictionary

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A conversation between Pico Iyer and Elizabeth Gilbert on what it means to retreat into smallness, and grapple with a complex understanding of hope, as the world continues to overwhelm.

~ OnBeing podcast  

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“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I've learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?”

“Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you.”

 “If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt. We seem to be living in an age when we’re bombarded with entreaties to be happy, but we’re suffering from an avalanche of depression. We’re urged to stop sweating the small stuff, yet we’re chronically anxious. I often wonder if these are just normal feelings that become monstrous when they’re denied. A great deal of life will always suck. There will be moments when we’re riding high and moments when we can’t bear to get out of bed. Both are normal. Both in fact require a little perspective.”

 “When it’s really cold, the snow makes a lovely noise underfoot, and it’s like the air is full of stars.”

“This isn’t about you getting fixed,” he said. “This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.”

~ Katherine May, “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times”

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 “Enlightenment is the supreme tolerance of cognitive dissonance.”

~ Robert Thurman

Also, a great interview with Robert Thurman on the “10% happier” Podcast  

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“In this world we walk on the roof of hell gathering blossoms”

~ Kobayashi Issa

Sunday, December 5, 2021

Ready For A Career Upgrade? Tidy Up Your Professional Life First

 This article was originally published on Forbes.com - click here to access

Cleanliness, simplicity, the absence of clutter, everything has its place: Those are all qualities of a well-organized physical space. Why does it feel good to be in a clean, well-organized space? Part of its magic is that it allows us to focus on the important things.

But what about our professional lives? If you were asked right now, “How is your professional life?” would you be able to use words such as alignment, clarity, certainty, intentionality and purposefulness?

Currently, there is a lot in the news about the phenomenon of the “Great Resignation,” the opportunities it may bring to the individuals wanting to make a career pivot as well as the driving forces behind so many people thinking of or making a career change. What’s important to remember is that as we switch companies, jobs and careers, the one constant remains — we bring ourselves everywhere we go, whether we realize it or not.

It is important from time to time to take stock of where we are professionally, to re-establish and reconfirm what is important to us and why it is important (or to do it for the first time, if you are just entering the workforce). 

Will you know if an opportunity knocks on your door whether this is something you want or something you “should” want? Will you be aware of what’s important to you in your next professional move? Will you bring the best version of yourself to that new opportunity?

There is a way to gain a feeling of tidiness and clarity as you take yourself to the next level of your career development. Let me introduce you to the professional organization model I call “O.C.C.A.,” which stands for organize, connect, create and act. The questions are meant to prompt deep reflection and, ultimately, action.

Organize

• Yourself

Do you have a vision for what your “ideal” professional life looks like? Perhaps you have just the beginnings of that vision. Time to polish it up and put it down on paper.

Take stock of your key professional artifacts. These may include your résumé, professional portfolio (e.g., your publications), your social platforms (LinkedIn profile), your website, etc.

• Your Time

How are you using your time currently? If you are truly honest with yourself, are you wasting a lot of it? Learn how to make a professional to-do list (not a wish list).

• Your Space

Do you have physical space where you can think and work? Is it organized appropriately? What tweaks can you make to transform it into an inviting space for creating, writing, thinking, etc.?

• Your Image

Do your outward appearance and internal self-image help or hinder your success? Give them some thought, and take steps accordingly.

• Your Support And Resources

What are you reading these days? What have you learned recently that made an impact on your line of thinking?

Who is on the board of your professional development advisors?

Who is giving you concrete and consistent feedback with candor and caring?

How are you taking care of yourself and paying attention to the state of your well-being?

Connect

• Connect with the world.

Do you know people who are highly successful in your field? How do they do it? How can you meet them and learn from them?

Recognize that knowing people in (and out of) your field and knowing about them is critical to your success.

• Use LinkedIn and your online presence wisely.

What will come up when someone googles your name? Try it, and see if the results correlate with your intentions.

Are you on LinkedIn? Do you maximize your presence there?

Do you have a website? Other online, social media presence? What story would someone conjure up about you if they were able to see all of it?

Create

• Opportunities

Think about the people who are important to you (professionally and personally). What can you do to be helpful to them? What opportunities can you create for them? It seems counterintuitive, but shifting focus away from your own needs and toward helping others can — and often does — lead to new opportunities.

• Visibility

Are you maximizing each professional event (virtual or in person) as an opportunity to meet new people?

• Positive Experiences

Are you following up and following through on your promises?

What would the last person you interacted with professionally say about you?

Act

You haven’t really decided until you take action. Actions always speak louder than words. What will you do today to tidy up your professional life and take it to the next level?

• Update your LinkedIn profile?

• Allow yourself to imagine what “ideal” looks like?

• Find a career advisor or a coach?

• Organize your professional image?

• Ask for feedback?

It may also be helpful to add an “R,” which stands for "repeat," at the end of O.C.C.A., because this process is ongoing and should be repeated, hence O.C.C.A.R.

Repeat

Schedule a periodic check-in and ask yourself how you are doing personally and professionally.

• What, if anything, feels disorganized in your professional life?

• Is there anything that you’ve recently read or learned about that you want to dig deeper into?

• With whom do you want to connect more, and how?

• What practical actions can you take so that your future self will thank you?

We don’t have much control of external forces, but we do have control of our own creativity, imagination and thinking and the way we interact with the external world and react to the circumstances of our lives. There is value in tidying up your professional life as a way to exercise your own sense of agency and create clarity of focus in the sea of uncertainty and potential opportunity.