Month: June 2017

June 24, 2017

Accentuate the Positive

Psychologist Lea Waters has written a book called ‘The Strength Switch’ about raising children and how we can help them to emphasise positives. Although I haven’t read a word of it, I heard her talking on the radio and was struck by a couple of ideas she discussed.

Firstly that we are hardwired to look for the negative in any situation and in our world generally. It makes evolutionary sense that looking for danger would be a survival characteristic. Obviously it is those who survive that get to reproduce and we are more likely to survive if we moderate our risk taking behaviour. (Contrariwise, those who have the courage to take some risks are seen as attractive, so I guess this must also be a survival trait.)

ACCENT POSITIVE - WORST CASE.jpg

Secondly that our brains are so plastic and able to change that we can alter our attitudes and way of thinking at any age. Although it is easier to alter thought patterns etc when we are under 7 years of age and during adolescence, when a lot of brain ‘rewiring’ is naturally occurring.

There are several methods we commonly use to alter our attitudes. One way we can improve our self talk is through positive affirmations ie. the practice of giving ourselves positive messages to counter habitual negative thinking. Another way to alter our negativity is by simply interrupting the negative thoughts using more neutral thoughts, images or meditations. The trick is to do this often enough that positive thinking becomes the new normal for us.

Below: Examples of affirmations designed to help us improve and enjoy life (http://myimagequotes.com/c/happy-uplifting-work-quotes-best-positive-quotes)

I believe Lea’s book concentrates on how we can reframe the messages we give our children to enable them to be more positive in their attitudes. Speaking as a parent, it can be hard to remember to put a positive spin on our messages.

I tried myself to phrase my parenting messages in more positive language. Because, quite apart from any other reason, I wanted the actual message to be heard and remembered, not it’s opposite. For example saying “don’t forget to take your bag” is more likely to result in a forgotten bag as the active word is “forget”, where as ” remember to take your bag” emphasises “remember”. Of course we can take positive reframing to extremes as the cartoon below illustrates.

ACCENT POSITIVE - POSITIVE THINKING

We may not want to be ‘happy’ all the time, and it wouldn’t be appropriate anyway. However, most of us have times when we concentrate on the negatives in our lives and only increase our own suffering. Myself, I tend to be a glass half empty person, but the optimist in me believes I can improve that situation.

 

Alison

June 18, 2017

Ageing and Appearance

How we rage against the dying of the light. How we hate losing our spot in the limelight, our time to shine, our turn to be the young, beautiful and noticed ones. We hear about the grey nomads, the invisible aged who are overlooked in shops and generally by the young and interesting of our community. Lately there have even been media complaints about the generation that won’t retire so younger people can have their jobs, or won’t move out of their homes so young families can multiply in their place.AGEING - SENIOR DISCOUNT.jpg

Has there ever been a time when the older generation were more universally resented and wished other where? When elders were less respected in the community, less seen as the repository of wisdom and seen more as a burden that younger people have to support? We have become so afraid to age that it is common for the old to hide their age, as best they are able, with makeup, exercise, dress and even surgery.

But there are actually quite good reasons that we age and look as if we are ageing.

Comedian Dylan Moran joked that Mother Nature rewards ageing women going through menopause by “giving them a little beard”. And he wasn’t far wrong. Although we may fight the signs of ageing Nature is without mercy and has no further use for us when we can no longer reproduce. The races gene survival is improved if we become less sexually attractive to potential mates as we age, so the fertile don’t waste their time and efforts on us.

When Steely Dan wrote about the generation gap they spoke of communication and social differences experienced. “Hey Nineteen that’s ‘Retha Franklin, She don’t remember the Queen of Soul…. Hey nineteen, No we can’t dance together, No we can’t talk at all….. She thinks I’m crazy, but I’m just growing old.” And it’s true, it is much harder for people of different cohorts to find topics of conversation, similarities and issues they find interesting or agree on. People of similar ages have gone through the same world events and often similar life experiences, their siblings, partners, friends and parents are of similar ages and are of a similar life stage. If we look alike it’s much easier to find someone to befriend someone with whom we have things in common, someone like us with similar goals and interests.

Below: Three generations of one family are easily separated by their looks (http://www.brunet.ca/en/advices/beauty-every-age.html)
AGEING - GENERATIONS.jpg

Finally the appearance of age can be seen as a kindness. If we are obviously older our fragility and need can also be seen so other’s may care for us and offer us the assistance we need now.

AGEING - MEDICATION

Really it’s only fair that we move aside so that others may have their turn in the sun.

 

Alison

 

June 12, 2017

“It Belongs to them Let’s give it back” …. Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds are Burning’

For many years there’s been talk about giving the land back to the first people to settle in this country and its an issue in many other lands too. I wanted to explore this idea, and I mean really take it to its ultimate absurdity. Is it possible to give land back to the original settlers and what might happen if it could be done?

Let’s consider giving all the lands that have been stolen or taken by a stronger, greedier or more cunning people, back to their original owners. How would we determine who these people are? Once we decide who the original owners are, how would we find their descendants?

Below: What does it take to convince adventurers that a land is legitimately occupied?LANDRIGHTS - WHOSE FIRST

In Australia it looks to be a simple matter as there are many people still living on their traditional land. But there are many descendants of the first settlers of this country who don’t live in recognised, traditional lands. There are displaced peoples who were taken or lost to their families whom it would be difficult to identify with any degree of surety.  There will be also be those who falsely identify as first peoples if there is something to be gained.

Of course Australia was only taken from its first settlers a few hundred years ago. Imagine if this process of giving land back to the first settlers was carried out worldwide. Humans have been a very aggressive and mobile race. What happens in countries where wave after wave of invasion and displacement occurred? Would we give Britain back to those who lived there before the Roman conquest? I have no real grasp of ancient history but apparently there were inhabitants in the UK prior to the Celts over 2,000 years ago. Should we DNA test everyone to ensure we get it right?

Below: 500 years ago the occupants of America consider the problems of immigrantsLANDRIGHTS - NATIVE VIEW.jpg

Unfortunately that will only shift the problem by displacing other people. Of course there’s going to be enormous numbers of displaced peoples, new populations who feel dispossessed. I expect we’d have most people suddenly homeless and a tiny few people owning everything. They’d just be different people, so no change there.

History has moved on and the world continued to turn. I think there must be better solutions than giving land back to displaced people. There’s a strong argument that no one owns the earth. We only assert our right to use the land in the face of other’s claims. I heard it likened to fleas arguing over who owns the dog.

Maybe we need to find better solutions than returning lands to those who lived there previously. Maybe we can work together to compromise and find workable solutions that respect and support each other. Maybe there are ways that different cultures can co-exist supportively with each other, despite current and historical worldwide, bias and violent clashes?

 

Alison

June 3, 2017

Lying and Misdirection

What is a lie? As I’ve probably quoted previously (from Pontius Pilot in the film ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’) “We all have truths. Are mine the same as yours?” Aside from how differently individuals perceive, pay attention to and remember any event, when we talk about the event there is the issue of what we are prepared to reveal about ourselves by how much and in what way we tell others.

LYING - LOOK AT IT THAT WAY.jpg

When I read the news report concerning Senator Jeff Sessions’ (84th Attorney General of the United States of America) meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak twice during the Trump campaign ”Sessions’s statement said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.” I thought, “is this a clever lie, where you have used your words to deceive and misdirect? ….and it turns out he had….”Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions, denied he had deceived the Senate. “There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” Flores said in a statement, noting Sessions had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors last year. “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign – not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the armed services committee.” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/02/jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-trump-campaign) even if these conversations took place during the campaign!

Many people twist words so they can tell themselves they are telling the truth, even though there is a lie hidden in the ‘truth’. So I thought I would write about the ways we lie.

So moving on from our own unconscious bias, let’s look at what happens when we deliberately lie? I’ve always thought it was important to tell as much of the truth as I can in any situation. The example I gave earlier shows how we can lie by telling a portion of the truth and use language to conceal the lie.

Lying by omission is very common, we leave out the part of the story that we wish to conceal. “I went to the store and got the bread” but perhaps I didn’t pay for it, or I went to the wrong store or got the wrong bread. When the problem is uncovered later, the defence is “You didn’t ask me…”whatever the issue is, even though the question was always implicit in the first piece of conversation.

LYING - UPSELLING.jpg

I personally enjoy supplying imagined, missing words to reviews of movies, books etc. For example n the review “…..I laughed ‘till I cried” could have been extracted from a longer quote such as, “I was looking forward to being able to say I laughed ‘till I cried, unfortunately the only thing funny about this show was that it called itself a comedy”. My point is that when a partial statement is used we just don’t know what is being left out.

Another common way of lying is to use a tone of voice that implies the statement is a lie, even if it is the exact truth – “Of course I forgot to close the door.” may be the exact truth, but if the tone of voice is sarcastic, the lie is often heard instead of the truth.

I think we see it as some kind of magic show where we see if we can be cleverer than our ‘audience’ by using misdirection rather than an outright lie. We fool them and therefore show how smart we are.

So what if we were judged on intent rather than the words we use or our actions?

Alison