Posts Tagged ‘mytho-poetic’
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom
Anais Nin
I wonder when that time comes?
We fret when we are not blooming
I think we always know when the blooming is about to happen just as surely as some days we wake up and know we will tear through the to do list. But we can’t bloom all the time and when we aren’t blooming, we fret.
- Some times we are anxious to flower before our time. We are not really ready to bloom. We are just anxious that we will miss the summer. We want reassurance like a child needs to know how many nights to Christmas.
Our sense of timing has gone missing. I am sure we could get it back with a few moments quiet contemplation or a five minutes of genuine listening to a friend’s distress.
- Other times we are reluctant to bloom and we miss the summer. Sometimes we are not paying attention or we are trying to blackmail the world.
Maybe we need to “go out” and get in touch with the world to see if we notice the seasons changing. Maybe our friend needs a brief of fresh air or a change of scenery.
- Other times we need to blossom but the weather is foul and we don’t want our fine petals to be cast into the wind. We fret because we also know that there is no time other than now. “Conduct you blooming in the noise and crack of the whirlwind.” says Gwendolyn Brooks.
Maybe we stopping through vanity. Yes, we will be ragged and have no idea where our petals will fly. Maybe they will just lie unnoticed.
But it is time to bloom. And we can’t remain in a tight bud out of vanity. It is time to burst into flower.
We always know when we are about to bloom
We will know when we are going to bloom anyway. Though we may have no applause.
No need to be vain. Bloom.
Autumn will come soon and we will be in another season of our lives.
I think back to the most frustrating times of my life and I felt exactly like David Whyte standing in front of a ravine, desperate to be the other side and with palpitations because it seems impossible.
Whenever we feel frightened it helps to visualize the ravine. And draw the ravine on a piece of paper.
- What is on the other side that we want so deeply?
- What is the gap and the frayed rope bridge that seems too dangerous to use?
- And where are we now?
I want to be clear: when we are really frightened, we forget to do this. And we chide ourselves for forgetting! But we shouldn’t – we are anxious because our dream is important!
When we remember, our task is to imagine the ravine and draw, or jot down, our answers to all 3 questions.
Then we concentrate on question 3 and write down everything we can think about where we are now. We might want to concentrate on the other two questions. That is understandable but we should write down point after point about HERE & NOW. Set a goal – write 1, then write 2 more, then write 2 more, until we are on a roll.
Lastly we underline the parts that work well. This is important. We go through our list of HERE & NOW and underline what works well.
And if you don’t think of something that will move you forward, write to me and complain!
But I guess you will write to me to say how well this method works.
Come with me!
- Think of your biggest dream that you have put aside to attend to your obligations or because you think you have to be cautious during the recession.
- Feel your fear and honor it! You only feel fear because this goal is important to you.
- Then draw the diagram and remember to write down in detail where are now Finally, underline what works well.
Are you feeling better? Can you see a way forward?
Prepare for a winning week!
Related articles by Zemanta
- The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
- Do you live restlessly in the shadow of adrenaline-inducing goals? (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
- The psychology of forward movement – kept real (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)
In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.
Dante in the Inferno
Mid-life crises, sudden loss, tragedies, and world-wide financial crises are certainly different in degree, and different in content. But they have one thing in common.
They are unpleasant to experience. We feel that we have lost our way. And we have a vague yet pervasive feeling that there isn’t a way and that we were mistaken to believe that there is.
David Whyte, British corporate poet, explores this experience in poetry and prose, and uses stories and poems about his own life to illustrate the rediscovery of our sense of direction, meaning and control.
Using his ideas and the ideas of philosophers and poets before him, we are able to refind our balance, and live through the financial crisis, meaningfully and constructively.
Come with me!
David Whyte has a 2 disk CD, MidLife and the Great Unknown.
If you get a copy of his CD, I will listen to it with you. And we can discuss it online?
Positive psychology and the credit crunch: some people got it sorted ages ago
Posted October 11, 2008
on:What’s morale like where you live?
During the last week, I have seen person-after-person say they are exhausted, catch a cold, and just slump, sometimes close to tears.
My favorite radio programme, Any Questions, (here on Fridays 1900 GMT) is normally my laughter medicine for the week. This week it was sombre. Jokes ran to not moving the capital because we don’t want to live with banker, politicians and the press.
What is the most cheerful story you heard this week?
But all is not sombre. On Twitter, one lively entrepreneur opened two new businesses in the last month. This being the beginning of the academic year in UK, people are starting new courses, making new friends and enjoying themselves.
On another erratically running train, overfull with two lots of passengers (those for our service and the previous service that had also broken down), I opened a conversation with someone carrying a book on classical music. He has an interesting story.
So what has opera singing to do with hands-on farming?
He introduced himself as an opera singer. I found it interesting that he l lived so far from London. Oh, he said I am also a farmer. And my father sang well, but for fun. I sing professionally and run my farm of 150 acres. By day, I work the farm, and then I go by train to London (2.5 hour journey) to sing and return home to midnight (another 2.5 hours). Often the only sleep I get is on the train.
He had a shock of immaculately coiffered gray hair as you expect from someone appearing on the stage. And with a happy smile on his face, he said, his son also sang, but he was a dancer. His son was off working professionally in Europe. (This is Britain – country undefined – just vaguely over there!)
My happy informant was both proud and embarrassed by his double career. He is lucky to have two jobs he loves but he is not sure which supports which.
I readily reassured him a business school would say he has a wise portfolio of investments. When one business is down, the other business is up – which is true it seems.
What is your most outrageous combination?
So remembering that the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness, what are your passions? What interesting passions are you combining?
And PS What do farming and opera singing have in common?
Apparently, you must be calm in both – calm to sing and calm to handle livestock.
What’s your brand of magic?
Character Strengths & Virtues as Classical Roles
This is one of the times when I am blown away by the depth and elegance of something on the internet(hat-tip to dubhlainn)
Micheldaw has recast the character strengths & virtues of Peterson & Seligman into the three classical roles of
- Priest/Scholar
- Knight Errant and
- Renaissance man.
(Girls, women, females, don’t worry, it works for us too!)
His document is on Googledocs. I”ve also linked to it on my positive vocabulary wiki. If you would like to contribute to that wiki, BTW, the password is “thankyou”.
Which are you?
And for the pundits:
- What do you think of the expansion of his list?
- Has he left anything out?
- What do you feel about the ancient 3 way grouping?
- I think it has overtones of McClellands three needs for achievement, power and affection?
- Does this list flesh out Bijoy Goswami’s three types: Maven, Evangelist and Relator?
- Which is linked to Malcolm Gladwell‘s Maven, Salesman and Connector?
- And of course the three themes in the Bhagavad Gita: Intellect (jnana), Action (karma) and Emotion (bhakti) – have I got that right?
Does Micheldaw’s work add value to your personal sense? And to your ability to help others?
PS Micheldaw, I didn’t comment on your post because you make us login!
A long back story
I took out Goodbye Mr Chips from my local library thinking it would be nice to relax for a couple of hours with this gentle, slightly sentimental, very inspirational movie. For non-Brits, this is a classic pygmalion, teacher story with romance thrown in. Think To Sir With Love, History Boys and Freedom Writers. I think when Yanks write pygmalion stories they are typically about basketball coaches. Britain has teacher stories.
Goodbye Mr Chips is a double-pygmalion story. Mr Chipping is an awkward “Latin master” in a “public school”. If you are non-Brit, read exclusive private school (or prep school in Americanese – a prep school here preps you to go to public school which takes you to the army academy or university).
Mr Chipping has two mentors. A charming relaxed fellow teacher and his wife. They are the catalysts in allowing Mr Chipping, or Chips as he comes to be called, to incorporate the softer side of his nature in his teaching style, reform the rugged-masculine-bullying culture of the school, and to encourage boy-after-boy, and their sons after them, to blend the feminine sides of their nature with the masculine demands of their school and obligations to country.
I thought I was borrowing the musical version with Peter O’Toole from the library. When I got home, I discovered I a new version with Martin Clunes, the star of the TV show, Doc Martin. He makes a marvellous Mr Chips with the mixture of clumsiness and kindness that we also see in Doc Martin. (He doesn’t sing btw, and nor do we hear the boys singing which we did in the earlier version).
The story seems slightly different too – but so be it. After this long back story, this is the quote I wanted to give you.
“I found that when I stopped judging myself harshly, the world became kinder to me. Remember I told you once, go out, and look around the world. Do that now. Only this time, let the world look at you. And the difference, I assure you, the world will like what it sees.”
Positive psychology is more than positive thinking
This is the concept which takes positive psychology far beyond positive thinking. It has echoes of the pygmalion effect, popularized in the musical My Fair Lady in which a flower girl becomes a lady. It includes the Galatea effect, ably researched by Dov Eden, who also researches the pygmalion effect in work settings. Basically, the Pygmalion effect is the effect of other people’s expectations on us. So a teacher creates clever pupils by expecting more of them. A teacher creates dull pupils by expecting failure and subtly communicating doubts and restricting the resources and time we need to learn. The Galatea effect works the other way around. It is the effect of our own self-perception. It is not that seeing is believing. But that, believing is seeing.
Is this new?
George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion 100 years ago. 150 years ago Goethe wrote:
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
– Goethe
The idea that we shape the future is so new to us in the west. The idea that the universe comes to us sounds a little new age.
Of course, we cannot do anything. We don’t want to do anything.
But there are some things, we want to do. And if we can imagine those things, if we believe in them deeply without effort, if they make sense, if they seem right in themselves, if we believe in them enough to take the first hesitant step,
if we believe in them enough to take the first hesitant step,then the universe conspires to help us.
Skeptical?
This is tautological, of course. It will work because it is right and it is right because it works.
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