To the Editors: Michael Wood, alluding to Robert Bresson’s practice of letting quotations speak for him, writes, “When Mozart says of certain works of his that ‘they are brilliant…, but they lack poverty,’ he is close to the heart of Bresson’s aesthetics.” Mozart, unfortunately, never quite said this.
Author: signordal
How To Control Negative Thoughts: A Practical Approach On How To Suffer Less
It is well-known that thoughts create emotions. But, the full consequences of this fact are largely misunderstood.
Thoughts create emotions. Then, those emotions guide our behavior. For example, the thought “I’m never going to succeed at school, why should I even study?” creates emotional distress. That emotional distress can easily trigger coping behaviors, like binge-watching House of Cards or mindlessly refreshing Instagram every five seconds.
That’s just the beginning of the spiral, though. That where learning how to control negative thoughts become difficult.
After you’ve been binge-watching TV or staring at your cell phone for an hour, you’re going to have a new thought, “Damn, I shouldn’t have wasted an hour on my phone. I’m so stupid. I’ll never pass that class.”
These thoughts create more emotional distress and that leads to more coping behaviors.
But, wait a minute!
Shouldn’t that thought help motivate you to study? Isn’t calling yourself out in an honest way helpful? Don’t you have to fight your way out of stress? If we were completely logical creatures, you’d be right.
Our thoughts don’t directly lead to behaviors. They create emotions which lead to behaviors. This creates a trap that is exceedingly easy for us to fall into.
The first step in this example is the thought, “I should be studying right now.” This creates the sense that we aren’t being productive enough and that we are screwing up. The emotion we feel because of this thought isn’t motivation, but distress.
What do humans do when they feel distressed? Cope. What are the most common coping behaviors used in 21st-century life? Electronic media, food, and drugs.
This is a counter-intuitive idea, but it has very important implications.
In her best-selling book, The Upside of Stress, psychologist Kelly McGonigal writes: “When I speak with physicians, I sometimes ask them to predict the effects of showing smokers graphic warnings on cigarette packs. In general, they believe that the images will decrease smokers’ desire for a cigarette and motivate them to quit. But studies show that the warnings often have the reverse effect.
The most threatening images (say, a lung cancer patient dying in a hospital bed) actually increase smokers’ positive attitudes toward smoking. The reason? The images trigger fear and what better way to calm down than to smoke a cigarette? The doctors assumed that the fear would inspire behavior change, but, instead, it just motivates a desire to escape feeling bad.”
This pattern is a lot like psychological quicksand. As soon as we have a negative thought, like “I should be studying or I shouldn’t be eating this pint of delicious Cherry Garcia Ice Cream.”, our instinct to fight it gives that negative thought more emotional charge. That emotional charge is expressed as an increased feeling of distress which makes us think even more negatively. And, before long, our head is beneath the sand and we’re suffocating from what was originally just a relatively benign negative thought.
Break Free
Negative thoughts create negative emotions and that leads to negative behaviors.
This is an extremely frustrating pattern that can easily affect our behaviors and the quality of our lives. The solution isn’t to learn how to think more positively or to learn how to control your emotions. The solution is much more obvious than the traditional approaches, yet it is also more elusive.
To escape the vicious cycle of negative thinking, you must accept the negative thought as it is. Just like in a quicksand, to stop sinking, you must stop fighting it and be still. With negative thoughts, you must learn to compassionately accept them as they are.
Once you learn to accomplish this effectively, you will still have negative thoughts. However, they will drift away like clouds on a gentle breeze instead of darkening into a storm of emotional suffering.
See Also: 5 Steps To Release Bottled Emotions And Live Happier
The root of our suffering is our belief that we can (or even should) eliminate negative thoughts and emotional pain. The thought that suffering is ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ is already a negative thought by itself. This way of thinking makes stress a trigger for more stress.
To escape this spiral of stress and suffering that we get trapped in, we must learn to relate to our thoughts differently. Modern psychologists have developed effective strategies to accomplish this.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, cognitive fusion is a state in which we become entangled with our thoughts and we lose the ability to distinguish between thoughts and objective reality. Author Russ Harris says, “In a state of fusion, a thought can seem like: 1. the absolute truth 2. a command you have to obey or a rule you have to follow.”
The solution to cognitive fusion is learning cognitive defusion. According to Harris, “This is where we can observe our thoughts and see them for what they are – just products of our busy minds.”
There are numerous strategies that can help us achieve cognitive defusion. Here, I’m going to focus on one that is both easy-to-use and highly effective.
Labeling is a mindfulness technique that allows us to defuse from our thoughts. It helps us identify our thoughts as subjective opinions, instead of objective facts. I recommend practicing labeling as a dedicated daily meditation practice (5-15 minutes to start). This will help you build it into a natural thought habit.
How to practice labeling
Either during a sitting meditation or anytime throughout the day, notice your thoughts. For example, you might notice you have the thought, “I don’t want to be meditating right now, I have more important things to do.”
To label this thought, simply tell yourself, “I am having the thought that I don’t want to be meditating right now.”
If you are having the thought “I am too tired to work right now”, label it by telling yourself, “I am having the thought that I am too tired to work right now.”
Labeling also works with sensations and emotions. For example, “I am having the sensation of tightness in my neck,” or “I am having the feeling of anxiety.”
The practice is fairly uncomplicated and making it into a habit won’t take long. Of course, the more you practice this during dedicated meditation, the more you will naturally label your thoughts in your day-to-day life.
Labeling won’t eliminate your negative thoughts or emotional pain and it doesn’t have to. The point of labeling is learning to become aware of your thoughts so that pain does not need to become suffering.
Have your efforts to eliminate negative thoughts or emotional pain ever panned out? After years of struggling against pain, has it become clear that the traditional approach of coping through escapism or self-punishment doesn’t work? Maybe fighting pain just creates more pain.
Experiment with this technique and notice if it affects how you relate to your thoughts. Do they become louder or quieter? More invasive or easier to manage?
You may find that once you start to create distance from your thoughts (without trying to change them), that they affect you less.
You may notice that you still have the thought, “I’m never going to succeed in school, there’s no point in studying,” and that thought may still be painful. But, the thought isn’t you now. It’s just a thought and the pain is just pain.
You may notice that you are now able to accept stress as something that happens. Now, you can experience it without needing to avoid it through coping. You may notice that your thoughts and pain no longer spiral into stress and suffering. As a result, the quicksand no longer sucks you in. You’re able to surrender to it and you can finally be free.
See Also: 3 Simple Steps to Balance Your Emotional State
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Soldiers to Students: The G.I. Bill’s Legacy
Sometimes Cheryl and I talked about her seven months, about the wives left behind, about her family, her job, her boss. Sometimes she’d ask little questions. Sometimes I’d answer. And glad as I was to be in the States, and even though I hated the past seven months and the only thing that keep me going was the Marines I served with and the thought of coming home, I started feeling like I wanted to go back. Because fuck all this.
—from “Redeployment,” the title story in Phil Klay’s award-winning 2014 collection
The G.I. Bill (formally, the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act) was signed into law on June 22, 1944. Regarded as one of the most successful and far-reaching political measures in postwar America, the G.I. Bill provided a range of financial and educational support, and over the next decade almost 9 million veterans went to college or into training programs. When those veteran-students joined the workforce, getting the skilled jobs needed to support their growing families, the nation’s economic and social landscape was transformed. This portrait of the Greatest Generation, proudly returned from war and pursuing unlimited opportunities, is sometimes offered (for example in Suzanne Mettler’s Soldiers to Citizens) as the last available snapshot of a cohesive nation striding confidently towards domestic prosperity and international power.
Phil Klay served in the Marines, and after returning from Afghanistan used the G.I. Bill to get a degree in creative writing. His Redeployment transforms raw experience into fiction; in See Me for Who I Am we get the raw experience itself, as told by others who have studied under the G.I. Bill. The collection is the product of a veterans-only freshman seminar taught by David Chrisinger, a lecturer at University of Wisconsin−Stevens Point. Chrisinger describes the work of his student-veterans as an attempt to bridge the soldier-civilian divide by describing “what it’s actually like to be in the military, to go to war, and to come home.” In “The Fires That Mold Men into Weapons,” Chase Vuchetich traces his decision to enlist to his childhood memory of “sitting next to my dad at his reloading bench, where he would make ammunition and listen to George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ ‘Bad to the Bone.’ ” For a ten-year-old with a “warrior class” childhood, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center felt like “someone had just poured gasoline on my pile of wood.” He dropped out of high school in his junior year to join the Marines and was soon in Sangin, Afghanistan, his education there beginning with a late-night seminar from the soldiers he and the others were replacing — survivors going home the next day, giving a crash course in survival to the new recruits:
“I want you guys to understand.” He stared at the wall as the lights on our headlamps flickered. “You might have to kill women and children . . . Can you do that?” His fire was out; even with the light on his face, his eyes were black as if there was no soul left inside. He was twenty-one years old. His clothes were filthy and tattered. Although he couldn’t grow much more that a ratty mustache, he looked like an old man, tired and beaten down
In Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger cites anthropological and behavioral evidence indicating that the most important factor in the readjustment process is not how a soldier responds to what he did in war but how his society responds to his return. The process of transitioning from a close-knit platoon back to life at home requires “social resilience” — a network of meaningful social connections, readily available in some communities (Junger offers kibbutz settlements in Israel as an example) but hard to find in America:
Resources are not shared equally, a quarter of children live in poverty, jobs are hard to get, and minimum wage is almost impossible to live on. Instead of being able to work and contribute to society — a highly therapeutic thing to do — a large percentage of veterans are just offered lifelong disability payments.
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Wonderful House Located in Indian Creek Designed by Studio MK-27
This wonderful home overlooking the surrounding canals is located in Indian Creek, a wealthy village in Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA. In its spacious exterior it has a swimming pool where we can swim with a variety of fish and enjoy in a different and unique way, a 200-foot-long bridge over the lagoon which leads us to the home’s entrance, and a dock space to accommodate a 90-foot-long yacht. It is..
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Within sight of New York City skyscrapers, Jamaica Bay Wildlife…
Within sight of New York City skyscrapers, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is an 18,000-acre wetland estuary surrounded by the Rockaway Peninsula to the south, Brooklyn to the west, and Queens to the east. An area almost equal to the size of Manhattan, the bay consists of numerous islands, a labyrinth of waterways, meadowlands and two freshwater ponds. The refuge provides an accessible and unique environment for both wildlife and urban recreation. Photo by Micael Fano (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).
How To Overcome Obstacles: 5 Ways On How To Be A Conquerer
To stress you out beyond your normal limits with extreme mental and physical challenges to make you worthy of serving with the world’s most elite fighting force. This is the simple principle of the US Navy SEALS.
But, don’t confuse simple with easy. In order to be one the greatest warriors on the planet, you must conquer the obstacles in front of you. If you only endure, you will become just another failed statistic.
During BUD/S training, the most iconic and demanding event is Hell Week. Candidates are put through extremely rigorous exercises for 5 days straight with less than a few total hours of sleep. Activities will include running, swimming, paddling, push-ups, sit-ups, rolling in the sand and log PT.
Out of approximately 40,000 Navy recruits a year, only 250 (or less than 1%) actually possess the mental and physical toughness necessary to make it through Hell week and become a SEAL.
How To Overcome Obstacles
It isn’t always the largest and strongest men or the fastest swimmers or runners that complete the training. It’s most often those who have the strongest will and a burning desire to not give up. Champions know that the only way to the finish line isn’t going around the obstacle but through it.
And the same goes in the real world.
Obstacles, struggles, and sufferings are inescapable and are very real in the human experience. The simulated harsh conditions of Navy SEAL training parallel the authentic harsh episodes of real life. Successful Navy SEAL candidates feed off of the intensity, employ mental toughness, resist the seeds of doubt and are relentless about finishing.
And like the SEALS, in order to navigate through a real chapter of suffering, you must use obstacles as leverage instead of shackles holding you from success.
In the depth of suffering, it is often the difference between conquering and enduring that determines the outcome of either breakthrough or breakdown. Enduring is passive, indifferent, weak and unintentional. Conquering is meticulous, purposeful and intentional. A champion’s mindset is all about conquering obstacles rather than simply enduring in hopes of making it through.
So, how do you become a warrior? Here are 5 ways to be a conquerer and not an endurer.
Be happy during the bad times as you would the good times
In a speech for the PGA Tour rookies, Tom Kite recapped the idea of “loving what you do all the time” perfectly. From the book, How Champions Think by Bob Rotella, we get a snapshot of what Tom said:
“If you’re going to play on the Tour, you have to love golf all the time,” he said. “It’s not going to work if you can only love it when everything’s going your way, every putt’s going in the hole, and every carom is bouncing into the fairway instead of out of bounds. It’s not going to work if you practice every day and only love it when the ball is going where you’re looking. You’ve got to love it when you practice day after day and you can’t find it. You’ve got to love it when every putt looks like it’s going in and then lips out. That’s what it’s about.” (How Champions Think, Bob Rotella).
When you land your dream job, you have to appreciate the bad days as much as the good days. When you find the greatest person on earth and want to spend the rest of your life with them, you take them in their most pristine condition and weather the storm with them when times get rough.
Know what you can control and what you cannot
In the early hours of December 10th, 1914, an explosion shook the city of West Orange, NJ. Thomas Edison’s factory was immediately engulfed in flames. Despite the joint effort of several fire departments, the blaze was too powerful and decades of work was destroyed in a fiery instant.
And how did Edison respond to this?
According to a Reader’s Digest article, Edison walked over to his son, Charles and said “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.”
Even though Edison was almost 70 years old and a lifetime of work was destroyed in minutes, he told a New York Times reporter that he would start rebuilding the very next day…and that’s exactly what he did. He realized he had no control over the situation and chose to work with the given circumstance and not fight against it.
It’s all about perspective. Edison’s perspective on the situation grounded him in the reality that there was absolutely nothing he could do at this time other than to rebuild. The damage was already done.
See Also: 7 Amazing Success Lessons from Thomas Edison
“It’s impossible to be angry and in a state of gratefulness at the same time.” -A Defined Life
How many times have you been in a situation, where a relatively-speaking, contextual thought should alter how you respond?
If your internet is slow on your phone, at least you have a phone equipped with up-to-date 21st-century technology. If your clothes are wrinkled in the morning, at least you have nice clothes to wear, let alone a job to go to. And if you are late to work and behind a really slow driver, at least you won’t get cited for speeding.
Viewing obstacles and struggles through the proverbial “could be worse” lens allows you to see the situation relative to someone who does not have your luxuries. It also sheds a sobering light on your life by grounding you in gratitude. It’s impossible to be angry and in a state of gratefulness at the same time.
See Also: One Awesome Tip On How To Shift Perspective
Focus on the little things
When the burden seems overwhelming or insurmountable, it is easy to give into the temptation of giving up. But the paralyzing situation you are in is almost, all the time, reducible to smaller parts. When you focus on tackling the fundamental elements of the situation, you can carve out a path to ultimate victory.
Henry Clay, a famous American orator and lawyer, was once approached by an illiterate man after giving a rousing speech. The admiring gentleman admitted to Clay that he could not read, but desperately wanted to be like him. Clay grabbed the young man and pointed to an “A” in his name on a poster and said, “That’s an A. Now you’ve only got 25 more letters to go.”
Defeating the obstacle in front of you is always manageable if you just start somewhere and focus on one thing at a time. Today it may be the letter “A” and only the letter “A”. Tomorrow or even next week, it may be the letter “B”.
We all want it to be over. But, saturating yourself in wishful thinking will cause you to never start the conquest or, even worse, cause you to fail to chisel your character and strengthen your essence. Every micro conflict of the whole is a teachable moment for you to learn and sharpen other areas of your life.
Know there is always a way out. Be an overcomer.
If your relationship is your identity, when it’s gone, so are you. If your job is your identity, when it’s gone, so are you. And if your identity or self-worth is wrapped up in something outside of your own existence or purpose, then you too will perish when those things fail.
Suffering is non-discriminant that it does not care how you came to meet it. There isn’t a more conservative version of suffering. If you want to win the war on suffering, you must first see yourself as an ascendant being with an independent meaning, where everything in your life is your responsibility.
If you approach your suffering knowing that you are an overcomer, you will overcome. It’s all about winning in your mind first and then taking action. As you fight, never forget who you are…an overcomer and nothing less than that.
Here is a way to illustrate the point.
With boiling water, you can create steam. With pressurized steam, you can power engines and turbines through mechanical work. This was part of a composite of revolutionary ideas that literally changed the landscape of our human experience. But, in order for water to turn to steam, it has to reach the exact temperature of 212 degrees. If 212 degrees is not achieved, then there is no high-pressurized steam, no mechanical work, no engine or turbine turning. In essence, there’ll be no Transcontinental Railroad or electricity to power millions of homes. 211 degrees, a simple 1-degree cooler, is really hot, but it won’t bring water to a boil.
The same is true of your identity. If you identify as an overcomer and nothing less, then you are an overcomer. This must be nonnegotiable. You must be relentless in this identity. Any moments of weakness will result in you crumbling and submitting to the obstacle in your life. The overcomer never taps out because they know there is always a way out.
Find meaning in your suffering
What if this thing that keeps you up at night affects how you interact with people, sustains your stress level and negatively influences your self-worth, is actually critical in strengthening you?
When meaning and purpose is found in one’s suffering, the conditions in which the struggle occurs are mutated in your favor. Instead of being held hostage by this ominous scenario, you ransom the situation for a net gain of self-betterment. You’re already suffering, you might as well get something out of it.
Nobody illustrates the need to find meaning in suffering better than Viktor Frankl. As a Holocaust survivor and world-renowned psychiatrist, it was a defined purpose and meaning-through-suffering that literally kept him alive among the prisoners around him who surrendered to the call of death.
For Frankl, the thought of seeing his wife again and finishing his lifework as a psychiatrist motivated and armored him for the battles he would go through each day. Thus, he found meaning in suffering in one of the worst events someone could possibly experience. As the conditions of the camp worsened and those around him gave up, his determination to survive intensified, simply because “the human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have meaning.” (Frankl)
“Despair is suffering without meaning.” -Viktor Frankl
Conclusion
This is the most important part of the message. If you don’t get anything out of this post, at least marinate on this thought.
You must not lose hope or courage. Fight through the struggle like somebody else’s life depends on it. Somewhere, a spouse, child, relative or someone you don’t personally know is counting on you. It’s not enough to endure the situation; some very important people in your life depend on you conquering it. That’s where you start learning how to overcome obstacles.
Just like the mission of the US Navy SEALS who are responsible for carrying out the most dangerous operations for the welfare of others, you are responsible for sustaining and providing positive living conditions for others, too.
Failure is not an option.
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Contemporary Apartment Designed by Geometrium in Moscow, Russia
This contemporary apartment, located in Moscow, Russia, and covering an area of 72.4 square meters, was designed by the architectural firm Geometrium. It was designed with a family with three children in mind, two of them already older and living on their own, while the smallest still lives at home. It consists of three social areas – living room, dining room, and kitchen – as well as a Master bedroom..
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A Cozy Scandinavian Attic in Stockholm, Sweden
This cozy Scandinavian-style apartment is located on Åsögatan, in Södermalm, a district and island in central Stockholm, Sweden. Its interior, covering a total area of 180 square meters, was completely renovated in 2014, and the result is absolutely stunning. The frontal part of the apartment has an open plan, which allows for a general appreciation of the entire space at first entry. And what a space – clear white inclined..
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The Architectural Firm Geometrium Interior Studio Designed a Modern Apartment in Moscow, Russia
This apartment, covering an area of 109 square meters, was designed by the architectural firm Geometrium Interior Studio. The home is located in Moscow, Russia, and was designed with the needs of a family of four people in mind. The space, full of light and elegance, is a delight for the senses. Each of the chosen details speaks of simplicity and good taste. In the living room, the beautiful wooden..
8 Ways To Nurture Your Child’s Self-Motivation
Finding motivation can be a difficult task. You have work to do, but it’s easier and more entertaining to scroll through social media pages. With that in mind, you can imagine how much harder motivating kids is.
Think of the times your mom asked you to clean your room. Although you agreed and said yes, you probably went back to goofing off. And your mom probably resorted to nagging because of that.
Talking to your child and getting the results you want is a tricky thing to master. But, with the right mindset and positive speaking, you can help your child develop great internal motivation.
Here are eight ways you can start motivating kids.
Allow Choices
Letting your child have options is great because they get to feel like they have control of their choices. Don’t rely on that old parenting phrase of “because I said so.”
Instilling this kind of independence works doubly well. Firstly, they learn about personal responsibility. Secondly, you’ll be able to teach them how to handle tough situations without relying on you. Don’t be a tyrant with your child. Listen to what they want and work with them, instead of against them.
Use Praise, Not Criticism
This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s an important one.
Imagine you’ve given a big presentation at work and your boss tells you a hundred things that are wrong with it and how he wants it fixed. That certainly won’t make you want to do better. The same thing is true when it comes to motivating kids.
Scolding your child will not motivate them. So, instead of nagging, try to explain how you would have liked things done. You’re going to have to repeat your explanation if necessary and don’t hesitate to do so.
When your words turn into positive actions, make sure your children know that you appreciate their efforts.
See Also: Top 10 Tips to Help Children Develop Useful Habits
Let Them Try
Watching your child struggle to tie her shoes can be a little frustrating after the eighteenth time. You’ll want to jump in, get it done and move on to the next thing.
But, before you do that, take a moment and breathe. Letting your children try to accomplish something on their own will build up the internal courage to not only complete the present task but also to attempt more difficult ones.
Be Specific
Generic praise phrases like “good job” or “way to go” are nice, but they’re hollow praises. Generic congratulations won’t explain why or what happened.
When acknowledging your children’s effort, try to be very specific about why you’re giving a compliment. Emphasize how proud you are of your children for completing the task and not the task itself. This is also a great way to build their growth mindset.
A growth mindset isn’t focused on one task but the efforts used to complete it. Instead of seeing just a finish line, your children will learn the skills necessary to improve and move toward their goals.
Don’t Ignore Failure
You can’t have success without failure. Consequences are a real thing for children and adults.
At the first sign of trouble, you’ll want to jump in and protect your children. But, doing that at every minor convenience isn’t going to be motivational. Instead, they’ll expect you to always do that. It’s going to be hard, but you have to let your child stumble so that he can find his own footing.
Inspire, Don’t Bribe
Bribes won’t teach kids how to earn something based on their merit and effort. If you’re just offering a treat, then the motivation is just for the reward. For self-motivation, connect with your child’s interests and use them as teaching tools.
Be A Dolphin
Using the dolphin style will help boost your child’s motivation and confidence in their decision-making skills. What sets this style apart is that your goal as a parent won’t just be focused on punishing mistakes or praising triumphs. You’ll need to dive into the middle where you can be both encouraging and authoritative when you need to be.
Pay Attention
Every child is different and how they learn is going to be different, too. Visual learners, for example, aren’t going to really get much out of your lecture on how to clean a bedroom.
See how your child learns and use that as a tip to ignite motivation. If they have to use touch, let them help you with a task while you explain it. Try to find the best learning style for your child and run with it.
See Also: What You Need To Know About Teaching Children Values
Most people view motivation as a strictly internal process. But, with the right outside encouragement, you can help create a great inner cheerleader for your child. With these tips and patience, you can help make your child stronger both emotionally and mentally. Think of the words you wanted to hear when you were struggling with a tough math problem or feeling stressed about a competition. You can use your experiences to help your child grow a strong core of motivation.
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Sig Nordal 