Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Boxer
Everyone has heard the original recording of the song "The Boxer" written in 1968 by Paul Simon and performed by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. It was an instant classic and remains an enduring classic. Last night on American Idol, contestant Lee DeWyze did his version of the song, and it gave me goosebumps for a couple of reasons: first, Lee changed up the melody somewhat and put some high notes in it that were not originally in the song; second, the song itself is enough to stir anyone with a beating heart and a soul that is full of "divine discontent and longing," as Kenneth Grahame penned in the first chapter of "The Wind in the Willows" in 1908. This book is definitely worth re-reading (or reading if you have never done so), and this song is definitely worth revisiting.
Click on the hot link below to hear Lee DeWyze do justice to this well-written lyric.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbIO39VlZ8
The only other notable person to record "The Boxer" was Alison Krauss who sang it with her band in a Paul Simon tribute done in 2007. This is also classic Alison Krauss (with her unparalleled, magnificent band Union Station) before she went nuts going off the ranch with Robert Plant and singing all kinds of atonal modern stuff. I hope she comes back to herself and her bluegrass roots because she is an incomparable bluegrass writer and musician, and she knows how to put together one of the best string bands in the universe. I know God is proud of AKUS.
Click on the hot link below to get down and mellow with the AKUS version of "The Boxer." What a wonderful tribute to Paul Simon, and what a soulful gift to the rest of us. Thank you to Alison Krauss, her indomitable Union Station band, and to Lee DeWyze for reminding me of a song I've never forgotten but haven't heard for far too long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Lwx9F81Zs
Emmylou Harris also admirably sang "The Boxer" at a concert in Stuttgart in 1994. She is accompanied by the not-shabby Nash Ramblers in the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNMBI9dutlM&feature=related
And, finally, here are the lyrics for your meditation. Try not to cry. I dare you.
I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told.
I have squandered my resistance,
For a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.
All lies and jest.
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy,
In the company of strangers,
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin' scared.
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters,
Where the ragged people go.
Lookin' for the places, only they would know.
Lie-la-lie ...
Asking only workman's wages I come lookin' for a job,
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue.
I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome,
I took some comfort there.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la.
(Instrumental break)
Lie-la-lie ...
And I’m laying out my winter clothes, and wishing I was gone, goin’ home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleedin’ me, leadin’ me goin' home.
In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade,
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him 'til he cried out in his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains.
Lie-la-lie ...
Click on the hot link below to hear Lee DeWyze do justice to this well-written lyric.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbIO39VlZ8
The only other notable person to record "The Boxer" was Alison Krauss who sang it with her band in a Paul Simon tribute done in 2007. This is also classic Alison Krauss (with her unparalleled, magnificent band Union Station) before she went nuts going off the ranch with Robert Plant and singing all kinds of atonal modern stuff. I hope she comes back to herself and her bluegrass roots because she is an incomparable bluegrass writer and musician, and she knows how to put together one of the best string bands in the universe. I know God is proud of AKUS.
Click on the hot link below to get down and mellow with the AKUS version of "The Boxer." What a wonderful tribute to Paul Simon, and what a soulful gift to the rest of us. Thank you to Alison Krauss, her indomitable Union Station band, and to Lee DeWyze for reminding me of a song I've never forgotten but haven't heard for far too long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Lwx9F81Zs
Emmylou Harris also admirably sang "The Boxer" at a concert in Stuttgart in 1994. She is accompanied by the not-shabby Nash Ramblers in the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNMBI9dutlM&feature=related
And, finally, here are the lyrics for your meditation. Try not to cry. I dare you.
I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told.
I have squandered my resistance,
For a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.
All lies and jest.
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy,
In the company of strangers,
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin' scared.
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters,
Where the ragged people go.
Lookin' for the places, only they would know.
Lie-la-lie ...
Asking only workman's wages I come lookin' for a job,
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue.
I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome,
I took some comfort there.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la.
(Instrumental break)
Lie-la-lie ...
And I’m laying out my winter clothes, and wishing I was gone, goin’ home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleedin’ me, leadin’ me goin' home.
In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade,
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him 'til he cried out in his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving, I am leaving."
But the fighter still remains.
Lie-la-lie ...
Social Justice
There is a stanza in Curtis Mayfield's song "People Get Ready" (see blog post below this one) as follows:
"There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner who would hurt all mankind just to save his own. Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner, for there's no hiding place against the Kingdom's throne."
This is just a different, lyrical way of saying that "The love of money is the root of all evil" (The Bible) or "Behind every great fortune is a great crime" (Balzac).
Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is all afluster that Congress is about to pass a financial reform bill (Senator Dodd - Democrat from Connecticut) that would seriously regulate Wall Street's ability to make up shit as they go along, create phantom derivatives and credit default swaps, and fundamentally take your money and mine and gamble with it at no risk to themselves, meanwhile raking in personal and corporate profits that would make even Croesus blush.
As you will remember, Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 to 546 BC until his defeat by the Persians in about 547 BC. He was, of course, renowned for his wealth, and often you will hear people say that someone is "richer than Croesus" or, in extreme cases, "richer than God." How did Croesus get so wealthy? He derived his wealth from gold deposits in the river Pactolus, said to have been left there by the mythological King Midas. Croesus was also heavy into "trading and mining." Do you suppose he sent slaves into his mines? To quote Sarah Palin, "You betcha."
Croesus tragically misinterpreted the oracle that told him that if he crossed a certain river he would destroy a kingdom. He didn't realize the kingdom that would be destroyed would be his own.
While I understand Mayor Bloomberg's concern that leaning too hard on Wall Street may possibly cause these criminal bankers, investors, and hedge-fund managers to abandon New York City for a more lenient venue (Somalia, perhaps, where there is no government and, hence, no friggin' regulation), I do have a suspicion that Mayor Bloomberg is willing to participate in "hurting all mankind just to save his own."
I have concluded that those amoral, godless, spiritually bankrupt, incompassionate, self-absorbed, selfish, greedy jackasses who yell the loudest about government interference and "social justice" (like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, just about everybody on FUCKS NOISE, the Grand Obstructionist Partygoers) are doing so because they are RICH, and they want to STAY RICH. Their kind of money is something you and I cannot even imagine, and rich people will do anything and everything to protect theirs. Screwing you and fucking with your mind in the process is a small spiritual price for them to pay to acquire, preserve, and grow their wealth. They love unfettered capitalism. They would like nothing more than to disband the governmental controls that purport to keep their unfettered and unmitigated greed in check (and we've done a pretty bad job of keeping capitalism under control, much to their glee).
The next time you hear a politician or somebody with a cable television show railing against healthcare reform, financial reform, "entitlement" governmental programs (like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Unemployment Compensation), welfare, student loans, unions, and foreign aid, ask yourself if that ignorant mouthpiece has a lot more money than you have. If the answer is yes, then you can be assured that this shill is not concerned one whit about your well-being or security but is, rather, concerned with his or her personal wealth and power. The more money they have, the louder they scream about government regulation and any public policy that has anything at all to do with helping the "little people." Little people are only allowed to exist because we provide exploited labor and exploited services, and we pave the way for rich folks so they can live the American dream.
You can't earn a living wage because to do so would deprive the rich people of their due. Maybe you are earning a living wage, but if you are, you are part of a small minority. Good-paying jobs that are NOT in the financial sector are very hard to come by now, aren't they? Non-union jobs are generally not attached to high salaries, especially in the manufacturing, service, and industrial sectors.
World-wide, the outlook for average people is even worse than it is in the United States. One billion people in this world live in abject poverty. Over three billion people in the world live on less than $2.50 a day. And 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.
Women in the USA make 80 cents on the dollar compared to what men make in identical jobs. That's a drop of 1 cent since last year. Real wages are going down. Women's wages are going down. Down, down, down. Following this recession/depression in the United States, whatever jobs will be "created" now will have lower salaries attached to them. Count on it. Corporations love to downsize and love to have fewer employees doing more work for less money. They love it. It's one terrific way for them to maximize their profits so they look good to Wall Street and can keep their shareholders happy.
Will there be class warfare in this country? In the world? Those gun-totin' teabaggers who are so concerned with protecting their second-amendment "right to bear arms" should be more concerned with protecting their (and your) right to earn a decent living from the rich who would make us all slaves if they could. Working-class people are already de facto slaves.
The current meme is that 47% of people in this country pay no federal income tax. Why is that? Could it be because they don't earn enough freakin' money to qualify? You betcha. They pay plenty of other taxes (sales tax, FICA, gas tax, etc.), but I guess that doesn't count. How many of the really wealthy pay federal income tax? Most corporations pay no income tax. Most rich people avoid paying income tax because they can afford lawyers and accountants who know the legal loopholes that are built into the tax code. How did these legal loopholes get into the tax code? Rich people lobbied our representatives in the Congress to enact them into law. That's how. Rich people rule this world. And they want to keep you on a "subsistence existence" so you don't have the resources or energy to overthrow their privileged reign or foment a revolution. No social justice here, please. You can only be assured of healthcare, justice, or security if you are rich. The rest of us can go fornicate ourselves.
"There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner who would hurt all mankind just to save his own. Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner, for there's no hiding place against the Kingdom's throne."
This is just a different, lyrical way of saying that "The love of money is the root of all evil" (The Bible) or "Behind every great fortune is a great crime" (Balzac).
Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is all afluster that Congress is about to pass a financial reform bill (Senator Dodd - Democrat from Connecticut) that would seriously regulate Wall Street's ability to make up shit as they go along, create phantom derivatives and credit default swaps, and fundamentally take your money and mine and gamble with it at no risk to themselves, meanwhile raking in personal and corporate profits that would make even Croesus blush.
As you will remember, Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 to 546 BC until his defeat by the Persians in about 547 BC. He was, of course, renowned for his wealth, and often you will hear people say that someone is "richer than Croesus" or, in extreme cases, "richer than God." How did Croesus get so wealthy? He derived his wealth from gold deposits in the river Pactolus, said to have been left there by the mythological King Midas. Croesus was also heavy into "trading and mining." Do you suppose he sent slaves into his mines? To quote Sarah Palin, "You betcha."
Croesus tragically misinterpreted the oracle that told him that if he crossed a certain river he would destroy a kingdom. He didn't realize the kingdom that would be destroyed would be his own.
While I understand Mayor Bloomberg's concern that leaning too hard on Wall Street may possibly cause these criminal bankers, investors, and hedge-fund managers to abandon New York City for a more lenient venue (Somalia, perhaps, where there is no government and, hence, no friggin' regulation), I do have a suspicion that Mayor Bloomberg is willing to participate in "hurting all mankind just to save his own."
I have concluded that those amoral, godless, spiritually bankrupt, incompassionate, self-absorbed, selfish, greedy jackasses who yell the loudest about government interference and "social justice" (like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, just about everybody on FUCKS NOISE, the Grand Obstructionist Partygoers) are doing so because they are RICH, and they want to STAY RICH. Their kind of money is something you and I cannot even imagine, and rich people will do anything and everything to protect theirs. Screwing you and fucking with your mind in the process is a small spiritual price for them to pay to acquire, preserve, and grow their wealth. They love unfettered capitalism. They would like nothing more than to disband the governmental controls that purport to keep their unfettered and unmitigated greed in check (and we've done a pretty bad job of keeping capitalism under control, much to their glee).
The next time you hear a politician or somebody with a cable television show railing against healthcare reform, financial reform, "entitlement" governmental programs (like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Unemployment Compensation), welfare, student loans, unions, and foreign aid, ask yourself if that ignorant mouthpiece has a lot more money than you have. If the answer is yes, then you can be assured that this shill is not concerned one whit about your well-being or security but is, rather, concerned with his or her personal wealth and power. The more money they have, the louder they scream about government regulation and any public policy that has anything at all to do with helping the "little people." Little people are only allowed to exist because we provide exploited labor and exploited services, and we pave the way for rich folks so they can live the American dream.
You can't earn a living wage because to do so would deprive the rich people of their due. Maybe you are earning a living wage, but if you are, you are part of a small minority. Good-paying jobs that are NOT in the financial sector are very hard to come by now, aren't they? Non-union jobs are generally not attached to high salaries, especially in the manufacturing, service, and industrial sectors.
World-wide, the outlook for average people is even worse than it is in the United States. One billion people in this world live in abject poverty. Over three billion people in the world live on less than $2.50 a day. And 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.
Women in the USA make 80 cents on the dollar compared to what men make in identical jobs. That's a drop of 1 cent since last year. Real wages are going down. Women's wages are going down. Down, down, down. Following this recession/depression in the United States, whatever jobs will be "created" now will have lower salaries attached to them. Count on it. Corporations love to downsize and love to have fewer employees doing more work for less money. They love it. It's one terrific way for them to maximize their profits so they look good to Wall Street and can keep their shareholders happy.
Will there be class warfare in this country? In the world? Those gun-totin' teabaggers who are so concerned with protecting their second-amendment "right to bear arms" should be more concerned with protecting their (and your) right to earn a decent living from the rich who would make us all slaves if they could. Working-class people are already de facto slaves.
The current meme is that 47% of people in this country pay no federal income tax. Why is that? Could it be because they don't earn enough freakin' money to qualify? You betcha. They pay plenty of other taxes (sales tax, FICA, gas tax, etc.), but I guess that doesn't count. How many of the really wealthy pay federal income tax? Most corporations pay no income tax. Most rich people avoid paying income tax because they can afford lawyers and accountants who know the legal loopholes that are built into the tax code. How did these legal loopholes get into the tax code? Rich people lobbied our representatives in the Congress to enact them into law. That's how. Rich people rule this world. And they want to keep you on a "subsistence existence" so you don't have the resources or energy to overthrow their privileged reign or foment a revolution. No social justice here, please. You can only be assured of healthcare, justice, or security if you are rich. The rest of us can go fornicate ourselves.
Thank the Lord for Crystal Bowersox
Last night on American Idol, Crystal Bowersox from Elliston, Ohio, sang Curtis Mayfield's song "People Get Ready." Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions were popular in the 1960s. For more information about them, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield#Early_years_and_The_Impressions
People get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
People get ready for the train to Jordan
It's picking up passengers from coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board 'em
There's hope for all among those loved the most.
There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there's no hiding place against the Kingdom's throne
So people get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
Click on the hot link below to see Crystal Bowersox's fabulous version of the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Ic90JkAQA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield#Early_years_and_The_Impressions
People get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
People get ready for the train to Jordan
It's picking up passengers from coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board 'em
There's hope for all among those loved the most.
There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there's no hiding place against the Kingdom's throne
So people get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord
Click on the hot link below to see Crystal Bowersox's fabulous version of the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Ic90JkAQA
Sunday, March 28, 2010
SADD
Shame.
Abandonment.
Depression.
Despair.
It is said that "shame is among the most unbearable of human feelings, regardless of our age or station in life."
Guilt reflects on what we do, but shame reflects on who we are. I think we first experience shame in the eyes of our primary attachment figure, such as a parent, and the unexpected disapproval, usually around the age of one or two, shatters our infantile illusion of power and importance. Without warning, we are ejected from paradise, and it can only be because we are bad. We feel bad; therefore, we are bad.
For too many little children, this experience is repeated over and over in the course of socialization, and it is so crushing that they never quite get over it and spend their lives feeling this "unbearable feeling of shame."
Recent research in neurobiology has shown that a child's developing brain is not yet ready to process the intense experience of shame and that the lack of an emotionally attuned parent at this crucial time can actually stunt, for life, the growth of the neural pathways for regulating such profoundly unpleasant emotions. What helps the infant's brain develop properly is for parents or caretakers to provide what the young brain is not yet able to, and that is the soothing or comforting of the very shame that has been inflicted.
"Shame on you!" "You should feel guilty." "You're bad." These messages are common, and, of course, they inflict sometimes life-long damage. If our parents, caretakers, siblings, authority figures, or significant others in our childhood lives wittingly or unwittingly give us these messages, society later does little or nothing to ameliorate them. It's baggage that stays with an individual to work out on her or his own, if ever.
Shame, along with abandonment for "being bad," is a recipe for psychological disaster. It doesn't take much imagination to see the linear relationship between these insalubrious mental states and depression/despair. For some, the only comfort lies in believing that "once you give up hope, everything is easy."
Is there healthiness (like truthiness) in shame and guilt? In some cases, the answer is yes. If one has done something wrong, the conscience (provided one has developed) is there to offer up guilt as a mechanism for changing behavior and "making things right." If one is truly a bad person at times, by normative standards, then shame is also useful. Sometimes we feel bad about who we are because we ARE bad. If that leads to corrective attitudes, an increase in empathy and compassion, and better and more sociable behavior, then shame is useful. But it should be "ad hoc" shame and "ad hoc" guilt. No one can live under the tremendous weight of free-floating or traumatically induced (by others) shame and guilt. Shame and guilt should have a strictly defined purpose. If they have no purpose and don't lead to a spiritual improvement in our lives, they should be abandoned as a psychological or emotional fugue unless we want to voluntarily embrace insanity, self-abandonment, dysfunctionality, depression, and despair.
The kind of shame and guilt I am describing as unhealthy, unproductive, and soul-wrecking is the shame and guilt heaped upon us by others' unfair judgments and pronoucements, where shame and guilt are gratuitously used to allow someone else to feel psychologically or emotionally superior or in control by degrading us. When we internalize that kind of shame and guilt, it goes on autopilot and self-reinforcement, and that leads to the inevitable dark night of the soul. There is no love and no redemption in that unjustified shame or guilt. It must be purged or we never discover who we truly are.
Abandonment.
Depression.
Despair.
It is said that "shame is among the most unbearable of human feelings, regardless of our age or station in life."
Guilt reflects on what we do, but shame reflects on who we are. I think we first experience shame in the eyes of our primary attachment figure, such as a parent, and the unexpected disapproval, usually around the age of one or two, shatters our infantile illusion of power and importance. Without warning, we are ejected from paradise, and it can only be because we are bad. We feel bad; therefore, we are bad.
For too many little children, this experience is repeated over and over in the course of socialization, and it is so crushing that they never quite get over it and spend their lives feeling this "unbearable feeling of shame."
Recent research in neurobiology has shown that a child's developing brain is not yet ready to process the intense experience of shame and that the lack of an emotionally attuned parent at this crucial time can actually stunt, for life, the growth of the neural pathways for regulating such profoundly unpleasant emotions. What helps the infant's brain develop properly is for parents or caretakers to provide what the young brain is not yet able to, and that is the soothing or comforting of the very shame that has been inflicted.
"Shame on you!" "You should feel guilty." "You're bad." These messages are common, and, of course, they inflict sometimes life-long damage. If our parents, caretakers, siblings, authority figures, or significant others in our childhood lives wittingly or unwittingly give us these messages, society later does little or nothing to ameliorate them. It's baggage that stays with an individual to work out on her or his own, if ever.
Shame, along with abandonment for "being bad," is a recipe for psychological disaster. It doesn't take much imagination to see the linear relationship between these insalubrious mental states and depression/despair. For some, the only comfort lies in believing that "once you give up hope, everything is easy."
Is there healthiness (like truthiness) in shame and guilt? In some cases, the answer is yes. If one has done something wrong, the conscience (provided one has developed) is there to offer up guilt as a mechanism for changing behavior and "making things right." If one is truly a bad person at times, by normative standards, then shame is also useful. Sometimes we feel bad about who we are because we ARE bad. If that leads to corrective attitudes, an increase in empathy and compassion, and better and more sociable behavior, then shame is useful. But it should be "ad hoc" shame and "ad hoc" guilt. No one can live under the tremendous weight of free-floating or traumatically induced (by others) shame and guilt. Shame and guilt should have a strictly defined purpose. If they have no purpose and don't lead to a spiritual improvement in our lives, they should be abandoned as a psychological or emotional fugue unless we want to voluntarily embrace insanity, self-abandonment, dysfunctionality, depression, and despair.
The kind of shame and guilt I am describing as unhealthy, unproductive, and soul-wrecking is the shame and guilt heaped upon us by others' unfair judgments and pronoucements, where shame and guilt are gratuitously used to allow someone else to feel psychologically or emotionally superior or in control by degrading us. When we internalize that kind of shame and guilt, it goes on autopilot and self-reinforcement, and that leads to the inevitable dark night of the soul. There is no love and no redemption in that unjustified shame or guilt. It must be purged or we never discover who we truly are.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Class Reunion
In August 2010, the Belgrade High School (Minnesota) Class of 1960 will celebrate its 50th anniversary. I suppose that is an achievement of some sort. We started with 50 classmates, and very few of them have gone on to their alternative or heavenly reward. I wonder, though, how many have obtained their earthly reward.
Back in earlier days, class reunions were more about who made it and became "somebody" after high school graduation. These get-togethers had the distinct flavor of "my car is bigger than your car" (house, number of children, academic degrees, money in the bank, notoriety, etc.) and less about shared (common) experience in this chaotic world of wildly competing interests, psychic comfort, or spiritual awareness. Classmates who felt inferior to the faux-gold standard of achievement and didn't possess sufficient bragging rights often stayed away from these reunions.
Now that we're all nearly 70 years of age, I wonder how the "group ethic" will have changed (if it has changed). Instead of going on and on about children, grandchildren, careers, and illnesses, I wonder if we will instead converse about whether what we've done in our individual lives has given us meaning, fulfillment, comfort, or wisdom and, if not, how we could find those things in the years we have left in this plane of existence. That would be a conversation worth having. If it's just another iteration of who's who and who looks "good," I think I'll skip this reunion too.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Master of My Fate
Psychologists generally agree there are 412 (but who's counting?) emotions. Of these hundreds of emotions, there are 8 major "negative" emotions and 8 major "positive" emotions. All of this is debatable, of course, but the 8 major negative emotions are fear, anger, shame, blame, regret, resentment, apathy, and grief. The 8 major positive emotions are joy/love, interest, enthusiasm, empathy, curiosity, boredom, laughter, and action. Most people don't think of boredom, laughter, and action as emotions, but when one considers that e-motion is energy in motion, then boredom, laughter, and action are definitely on the list. It is also theorized that a thought precedes an emotion.
Statistics show that the average human being has between 50,000 and 75,000 thoughts a day and that 80% of these are "negative" thoughts. By the time we are 40 years old, we have created and experienced about 730,000,000 thoughts. If 80% of those are negative, that means our minds are "programmed" with and have experienced, in a real sense, about three-quarters of a billion negative thoughts by age 40 (people over 40 can do the math). If we say 5 affirmations (positive thoughts such as "I am beautiful, unique, and loved") a day, which most of us probably don't do, the bottom line is still at least 49,995 negative thoughts a day. Furthermore, most of these negative thoughts have to do with the past or the future. They are not usually about the present moment in which we live, which is the only moment we are guaranteed to have.
Recent studies have shown that suppressing negative emotions (denying or blunting what one feels internally) is not helpful for learning, adapting, interpersonal interactions, or a sense of happiness. Emotional suppression has more to do with feeling an emotion than with expressing an emotion. Many emotions, especially negative ones, while felt internally, are better left unexpressed, but nonexpression is not synonymous with suppression. On the other hand, similar research shows that faking positive emotions does have a salubrious effect on learning, adaptation, interpersonal interactions, and one's own subjective estimation of happiness. "Fake it 'til you make it" is not just an off-the-wall humorous comment on how to"be" in this life. There is a well-known experiment that can lend proof to the assertion. It is about smiling. It has repeatedly been shown that the act of smiling will improve a person's mood even if the person does not feel like smiling. At the very least, smiling frequently will cause other people to wonder what the smiler is up to or knows. The secretiveness of the "knowing smile" can elevate some people's moods all by itself. Faking positive emotion works.
Faking it may, indeed, work with a whole range of positive emotions, but it doesn't work with knowledge deficits. Affirmations and positive thinking don't eliminate knowledge deficits. Mastery does. Mastery is not achieved by magic or magical thinking (e.g., if we ignore our problems, they will go away). Realizing that our errors or mistakes hurt ourselves and others, self-mastery is the real challenge in our lives. Achieving important goals takes time and hard work.
Randy Gage, an author who writes motivational materials, says that "mastery comes from confidence, confidence comes from experience, experience comes from practice, practice comes from commitment, and commitment comes from vision." Success is reading this list backward and working effectively and tirelessly from the vision to the mastery.
There are four levels to the process of self-mastery. The first level is recognizing incompetencies or deficits in oneself. When a person does not recognize or acknowledge a knowledge deficit, that person does not care about improving his/her knowledge or skills. The second level is becoming aware that other people have desirable competencies or knowledge and that these are achievable. That is the first step toward learning. The third level is learning the basics and putting those into practice. Most people fall into this category because they limit their own knowledge and practice their skills selectively. This does not, however, constitute mastery. The fourth level is to assimilate more and more knowledge and skills and to practice using them effectively. Continual expansion of the fourth level leads to self-confidence, and that leads to self-mastery.
Statistics show that the average human being has between 50,000 and 75,000 thoughts a day and that 80% of these are "negative" thoughts. By the time we are 40 years old, we have created and experienced about 730,000,000 thoughts. If 80% of those are negative, that means our minds are "programmed" with and have experienced, in a real sense, about three-quarters of a billion negative thoughts by age 40 (people over 40 can do the math). If we say 5 affirmations (positive thoughts such as "I am beautiful, unique, and loved") a day, which most of us probably don't do, the bottom line is still at least 49,995 negative thoughts a day. Furthermore, most of these negative thoughts have to do with the past or the future. They are not usually about the present moment in which we live, which is the only moment we are guaranteed to have.
Recent studies have shown that suppressing negative emotions (denying or blunting what one feels internally) is not helpful for learning, adapting, interpersonal interactions, or a sense of happiness. Emotional suppression has more to do with feeling an emotion than with expressing an emotion. Many emotions, especially negative ones, while felt internally, are better left unexpressed, but nonexpression is not synonymous with suppression. On the other hand, similar research shows that faking positive emotions does have a salubrious effect on learning, adaptation, interpersonal interactions, and one's own subjective estimation of happiness. "Fake it 'til you make it" is not just an off-the-wall humorous comment on how to"be" in this life. There is a well-known experiment that can lend proof to the assertion. It is about smiling. It has repeatedly been shown that the act of smiling will improve a person's mood even if the person does not feel like smiling. At the very least, smiling frequently will cause other people to wonder what the smiler is up to or knows. The secretiveness of the "knowing smile" can elevate some people's moods all by itself. Faking positive emotion works.
Faking it may, indeed, work with a whole range of positive emotions, but it doesn't work with knowledge deficits. Affirmations and positive thinking don't eliminate knowledge deficits. Mastery does. Mastery is not achieved by magic or magical thinking (e.g., if we ignore our problems, they will go away). Realizing that our errors or mistakes hurt ourselves and others, self-mastery is the real challenge in our lives. Achieving important goals takes time and hard work.
Randy Gage, an author who writes motivational materials, says that "mastery comes from confidence, confidence comes from experience, experience comes from practice, practice comes from commitment, and commitment comes from vision." Success is reading this list backward and working effectively and tirelessly from the vision to the mastery.
There are four levels to the process of self-mastery. The first level is recognizing incompetencies or deficits in oneself. When a person does not recognize or acknowledge a knowledge deficit, that person does not care about improving his/her knowledge or skills. The second level is becoming aware that other people have desirable competencies or knowledge and that these are achievable. That is the first step toward learning. The third level is learning the basics and putting those into practice. Most people fall into this category because they limit their own knowledge and practice their skills selectively. This does not, however, constitute mastery. The fourth level is to assimilate more and more knowledge and skills and to practice using them effectively. Continual expansion of the fourth level leads to self-confidence, and that leads to self-mastery.
The test of self-mastery is to "reality check" knowledge and skills by exhibiting them to other practitioners with more experience in order to receive feedback on demonstrated competencies. Assimilating feedback and using it constructively will promote and enhance self-mastery.
The gold standard to measure the achievement of self-mastery is to ask the question, "Do I feel knowledgeable, skilled, and confident enough to teach this (whatever it is) effectively to someone else?"
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "A moving hinge does not rust, and running water does not stagnate." When it comes to knowledge and skills and self-mastery, we have to keep moving or we will perish. More is better.
The gold standard to measure the achievement of self-mastery is to ask the question, "Do I feel knowledgeable, skilled, and confident enough to teach this (whatever it is) effectively to someone else?"
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "A moving hinge does not rust, and running water does not stagnate." When it comes to knowledge and skills and self-mastery, we have to keep moving or we will perish. More is better.
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