How to be kind on world kindness day

This Saturday it's World Kindness Day

WHAT IS KINDNESS?

Philospher and psychologist Piero Ferrucci says kindness is composed of 7 ingredients:

Empathy
Understand a friend, see his point of view instead of answering with anger or impatience.

Modesty
Be humble with your friends, listen to them instead of boasting about your successes.

Patience

Connections are more important than gaining three minutes. Think about this next time you impatiently stand in line at the supermarket.

Generosity

Offer an object, a feeling, a thought, time. It allows you to go from owning to the pleasure to be with your friends.

Respect

Listen to the other without judgment. Accept his point of view even if it's different from yours. It gives the other the space he deserves. Without this respect, kindness remains superficial.

Loyalty

It forms the base of constant solid relationship with those we love. Being loyal allows you to be in line with yourself and to keep our word.

Gratitude

Measure the chance you have to be healthy, thank your loved ones to be there for you,... Gratitude allows you to feel content with what you have and are without taking it for granted. Gratitude nourishes the sensation of plenitude and softens our regrets and frustrations.

BEING KIND IS GOOD FOR YOU

1. It makes you happy.
2. It reinforces your immune system (check out research of Heartmath)
3. It improves the performances of others (The Art of being kind)
4. It relieves pain (The Healing Power of Doing Good)
5. It gives pleasure (Healthy Pleasures)
6. It is motivating.
7. It is contagious (The Art of being kind)

PRACTICE KINDNESS TODAY

1. Distribute coffee or tea in the street (to the homeless, the mailman, the paperboy...)
   
2. Organize a fundraiser for a charity.
   
3. Bring flowers to someone you like.
   
4. Thank the teacher of your child with a little gift.
   
5. Leave a big tip to the waiter and leave a note of thanks.
   
6. Invite a neighbor or lonely elder for dinner.
   
7. Write to someone you have lost touch with or are angry with.
   
8. At the hospital, visit those who get no visitors.
   
9. Put some coins into the snack dispenser with a post-it that says 'Enjoy'.
   
10. Play 'I noticed': observe your colleagues, friends and notice their new outfits, haircuts etc and compliment them.

For more ideas, visit:

Acts of Kindness
World Kindness Movement

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Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear - Cheri Huber

Let's say you are a starter.

You have this great project of bringing creativity to your workplace. You decide to tackle the beast with baby steps and start with an informal
creative workshop among close colleagues.

You have decided about the content and activities of this first workshop. You have set a date and invited everyone. Everyone has confirmed their attendance.

And then FEAR sets in.
You start doubting.
You start thinking you will fail.
You start thinking that your colleagues will find your activities ridiculous.

We human beings still have some instinctual fears.

We have quite a few conditioned fears (if your mother was afraid of spiders and jumped and screamed each time she saw one, it is very unlikely that you love arachnids).

We also have the sometimes unfortunate gift of anticipation. We anticipate terrible things that might happen -- things we have heard about, read about or seen on TV. Or things that we simply imagine could happen (because as starters we have a wild imagination with tons of ideas of what could happen to us, right?)

Fear is a contradictory feeling as it can be exciting as well. Just look at the people who love horror movies or roller coaster rides.

So you have this workshop in a month time and you want to silence the doubting and fearing voices telling you that this is all ridiculous and that you will become the laughing stock of the company.

Fear extinction involves creating a conditioned response that counters the conditioned fear response.
Most behavioral therapies for fear extinction focus on exposure.
For instance, therapy for a person with a fear of snakes might involve visiting a snake farm repeatedly and taking small steps toward touching one.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. -- Audrey Lorde

Eight Practical Tips

Below is a summary of the article "What are you afraid of?: 8 secrets that make fear disappear" which offers these tips for dealing with everyday fears:

1. It doesn't matter why you're scared. Knowing why you've developed a particular fear doesn't do much to help you overcome it, and it delays your progress in areas that will actually help you become less afraid. Stop trying to figure it out.

2. Learn about the thing you fear. Uncertainty is a huge component of fear: Developing an understanding of what you're afraid of goes a long way toward erasing that fear.

3. Train. If there's something you're afraid to try because it seems scary or difficult, start small and work in steps. Slowly building familiarity with a scary subject makes it more manageable.

4. Find someone who is not afraid. If there's something you're afraid of, find someone who is not afraid of that thing and spend time with that person. Take her along when you try to conquer your fear -- it'll be much easier.

5. Talk about it. Sharing your fear out loud can make it seem much less daunting.

6. Play mind games with yourself. If you're afraid of speaking in front of groups, it's probably because you think the audience is going to judge you. Try imagining the audience members naked -- being the only clothed person in the room puts you in the position of judgment.

7. Stop looking at the grand scheme. Think only about each successive step. If you're afraid of heights, don't think about being on the fortieth floor of a building. Just think about getting your foot in the lobby.

8. Seek help. Fear is not a simple emotion. If you're having trouble overcoming your fear on your own, find a professional to help you. There are lots of treatments for fear out there, and no good reason not to try them under the guidance of someone with training and experience.
   

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive --
the risk to be alive and express what we really are. -- Don Miguel Ruiz
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you
really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you
think you cannot do.  -- Eleanor Roosevelt

I will report on how I managed to silence my doubts and fears 
and the outcome of the first creative workshop in about a month...

Source: How fear works

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The touch of a hand...

In Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan dreams of meeting the man who will bring her a feeling of peace and security by the simple touch of his hand.

Each human seems to secretly aspire to such a feeling. Is it a Hollywood fantasy or is there some reality behind this idea that a simple hand contact is able to 'talk' to our inner being?

Over the past 20 years, sociological studies have shown that people who live - happily - in a couple are in better health. They have less colds, cardiac illnesses and even cancers (1). Some studies suggest that this is thanks to the effects of physical contact.

At the University in Zurich, Switzerland, researcher Beate Ditzen has asked women who are happy in their marriages to pass a test in public and in front of a jury. As in 90% of the people this generated a high level of stress. Some of the women did not have any contact to their partners before the 'test'. Their cardiac rythm and level of stress hormones (like cortisol for example, principal biological indicator of stress) increased brutally. Those who had received words of encouragement before the test did not escape from the effects of stress either.
However, those women who had received a little shoulder or neck rub (ten minutes with a little oil) from the partner they love, passed the test with much greater calm. Their cardiac rythm and cortisol level stayed normal as well (2).

In another study, the same team followed 50 couples very closely for a week. The more men and women touched each other or made love, the lower their cortisol level was. Here again, it was not the quality of spoken emotional exchanges that made the difference, but the time spent each day touching each other's hand, embracing each other or rubbing the skin. The more stress they had at the office, the more noticeable these protective effects of touching were on cortisol increases (3).

Monkeys, dogs, cats and even children seem to know better than we how to take care of their physiology in this way. Animals are continuously seeking physical contact with those they trust. They feed from it like from other energies: air, water, food, a log fire, the sun...

For us adult humans, it seems to be an aspect we neglect often. How many men and women are in a couple with someone who, deep down, they can't smell, let alone stand to touch? Other couples on the contrary, surprise us sometimes in that they seem completely odd and unmatched in their interests or origins, but one sees immediately that they are 'settled' when they are near or very close to each other.

Without a doubt they answered this 'animal' call from deep down that made them feel that something - their cortisol? - reacted to the physical presence of this partner.
And here we have another energy, an inexhaustible and free source from which we can all profit and give as a present before each exam, important meeting at work or simply like that, for no reason, like one breathes or bathes in the sun.

To feel, through the softness of the hand, the sweetness of life.

Freely translated article from Psychologies.com magazine Jan09.

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Tis nothing good or bad/ But thinking makes it so - William Shakespeare

I invite you to discover below TED talk from Daniel Gilbert, psychologist and happiness expert, author of  Stumbling on Happiness.

He is able to prove that having too many choices - something we consider being positive - can work in our disadvantage and make us unhappy.

I always considered choice to be a luxury, but Gilbert got me thinking... I find it deviously and devilishly interesting to see how humans can be tested into traps they create themselves. I know myself and I would have pondered and worried about having picked the right picture. 

Thus, sometimes, not having a choice actually makes you happier - in the long run anyway.

Quote from Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759

"The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another... some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse for (sic, printed quote says "from") the horror of our own injustice."

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Your talent lies in your choice - Stella Adler

(picture CHOICES by Melanie Weidner)

Asking questions are the most important first steps to positive changes in the development of your talent, your career.  The act of asking questions sets our course to investigate, explore, wonder, and do.

Questioning stimulates action. 

Questions enhance our choices, and our results. 

So find out what's on your mind. Look at a problem, a path you consider, a goal you are looking for and ask yourself many questions. Look at it from many different angles, points of view. 
Pretend to be someone else, say your complete opposite, and think about what such a person would choose. How does that make you feel? Does it confirm your choice or make you doubt?

Choice is nothing else than the chisel we use to sculpt our life. Every choice we make takes us closer to or further away from our goals.

As Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, "He who chooses the beginning of a road, chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end."

Sometimes, when we get to a fork in our road, we will find that one of the paths is easy to take. But that may be the only good thing about it. Is it a path of temptation? Or is it a noble path?

Besides smart versus stupid and good versus bad choices, there is also the choice of non-action. If we don't make a choice, we do nothing. And we have to be aware that it is our decision to do nothing. We give over to fate to sculpt our life instead of shaping it ourselves.

We have to ask ourselves whether we can do this or whether we just want it because we are tempted? We have to always look for the good. No life is so difficult that it cannot be made better by changing and improving our attitude. Because if we cannot change the circumstances, we can always change ourselves.

When we make a choice, do we make it out of habit, for instant rewarding or is it really a conscious choice, made especially for that occasion and reason? It is not always easy. The journal Nature suggests that in order to explore new and potentially rewarding options, the brain has to override the desire for immediate profit. Do you want to wait 10 minutes to eat two cookies or do you want one cookie now?

Having a cookie now caters to the immediate desire for pleasure, but waiting a little bit for the two cookies may be the more logical, most rewarding option.

"By exploring, we are forgoing the comfortable option in order to do something that might be better in the long run." says Nathaniel Daw,  co-author of the study.

Read also an earlier post of mine on Choices are luxuries - or are they?

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Attitudes are contagious - is yours worth catching?

The Impact of Social Presence on Moment-to-Moment Evaluations

- or why we prefer to watch television with other people.

Why do we prefer to watch football or Dr House with our friends and family? Because of a phenomenon called 'emotional contagion'. Psychologists of the University of Chicago filmed the faces of people watching a tv program together. Conclusion: a unification of emotions is happening, with looks deviated from the screen to 'capture' the expressions of fellow spectators. The feelings of the different people end up forming a general dominating impression. We are comforted in our judgement when we perceive that our couch neighbor is experiencing a similar feeling; and when we feel an emotion that diverges from him, a doubt pops up. Individual emotions hence find themselves 'reprimanded', the general feeling becoming 'the good opinion'. On the contrary, when people watch the same program individually, the contagion does not operate anymore. Ditto in the cinema. The big screen and the obscurity plunge us into a sort of bubble. Hence the sentiment of solitude when asking 'You liked it?'

Consuming with Others: Social Influences on Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of Experiences

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Anything you resist, persists - and gets stronger.

Apparently 'working on yourself doesn't work'.

At least according to Ariel and Shya Kane who wrote a book with the same title. I am currently reading books about creativity, personal and spiritual growth, getting things done and how to start.

The book was a quick read and the first night reading in bed I was alone and able to concentrate on the message. As always, I find it hard to 'get it' while reading. Not because of the language per se, but because I cannot get my mind to wrap around it and understand mentally and physically what is meant by the message.

So the authors had explained how to get to the moment and that like on a map, you first need to know where you are to find out how to get to where you want to go. Yes, I get that.

The book continued about 'awareness' - which I already find a difficult word (in the esoteric sense) to deal with - and the difference between change (which 'is incremental and happens over time: past/future') and transformation (which 'is exponential and instantaneous: now'). I was tring to grasp that concept in my late at night mind.

Their explanation on prejudices and how having to be right all the time (even when you're wrong and especially while you're right) gets you in a circle of having to prove the other wrong. To be really alive you have to stop wanting to be right all the time. That still made sense to me although I have a tendency to wanting to be right...

The book continued onto our past and our memories and successfully proved to me why my memories are mostly wrong and if they are right they represent me at that time in the past from which I have evolved since.

And then the book started to go what I call 'a bit weird', i.e. took turn which was a bit too esoteric to my liking. The authors were explaining a private consulting session where just by massaging and 'being present without judging', the consulting woman had a breakdown remembering something from her past which changed her life forever. Yeah, ok then. I continued reading nevertheless.

I could relate again to the explanation they gave of 'being in the moment'. We all think that there has to be a reason for why we are the way we are. Attached to our life story, we blame someone or something. What if there is no reason? Basically, you can't blame how you are being in this moment on the past. You can't fix your childhood or anything else that happened in the past. I can see that.

Getting past the past is done by forgiveness. Forgiving the past instead of working on yourself to try to fix it. Moving from a psychological framework to an anthropological one (notating, neutrally observing what you witness without trying to change what is seen). When you're a child you judge your parent because you are unable to share the adult's perspective - by virtue of age and lack of maturity. The authors suggest that you try 'being' the other person rather than 'judging them from the outside'.
Though I can see their point, I am not sure how a child that was abused for example would be able to do that. Of course I agree that when you forgive you really and above all free yourself. But their example on one of the authors' mother just didn't hit home with me.

The book then continued with the principles of transformation. By this time I was sitting in bed with serious hiccups and was trying to hold my breath, swallow funnily etc to get rid of them. Nothing would do. I was reading the first principle which says

'Anything you resist, persists - and gets stronger'

(for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction).

The second principle says

'No two things can occupy the same space at the same time'.

Physically (no two person can sit in the same chair at the same time) or mentally (you cannot be happy and sad at the same time).
The third principle says

'Anything that you recreate or have be exactly as it is, will complete itself and disappear. In other words, if you let things actually be the way they are, they disappear'.

As I was reading, I was thinking about my hiccups and decided to just let them be. I tried to be 'in the moment' and give them the space they were already occupying anyway. And, believe it or not, they vanished. I couldn't believe it myself. I was stunned.

I continued reading with interest about how 'Each moment became a separate jewel in time. Not to be gotten away from or ignored, nor to be compared to the moment preceding it.' So being happy is not better than being sad. One cannot be happy all the time and we should quit pursuing that feeling and being present in all states of emotion we are in. Because the only moment true and lasting happiness can be achieved is NOW. 'Until you are willing to be the way you are - in any given moment - you can never be happy because happiness is only one of many emotions that human beings are capable of experiencing'. Cristal clear.

The authors continued to explain that the experiences we live through are written on our hard disk. Whenever we experience something similar, a window pops up and reminds us that we have lived a similar experience. The thought processes or emotions derived from such experiences tend to pop up and try to guide us in our 'now' experiences. But what happened then is not necessarily relevant or equal to now and we should stop ourselves from listening to 'old recordings'.

So should we make choices ('a selection made after consideration that is reflective of your heartfelt desires or authentic wishes' - basically 'expressions of your heart') or decisions (which are 'intellectually determined, based upon your considerations' - basically pro and con facts)?
Like with memories, decisions we made in our past cannot be blueprinted onto our current or future life. We should avoid linking that registered information to today's happenings. So no more 'déjà vu', no more telling ourselves the same things we did in the past, no more getting defensive about something or wanting to be right all the time.

The authors say we cannot get rid of that behaviour but bypass it and awareness is the key. We should 'notice our behaviour like anthropologists, it will allow us to disengage from old decisions'. We should live in the now, stop complaining and 'resisting circumstances in our life because that will only perpetuate dissatisfaction and generate pain'. Ahuh.

So I am thinking that I need to be aware of what I am doing, note what I am doing without passing judgment. I find that very difficult though. If I do something like yell at my boy for some silly thing he did that I don't approve of, all I can think about is that I should'nt be yelling at him, that I should try to better myself in order to find another way to tell him that what he is doing is wrong. Now that's not being in the moment and observing without judging, is it?

Trying to be better would be a decision which kills off alternatives. 'A simple noting that things are different than what you would prefer - and the way is open again'.
See, that is where I don't follow (yet).

And the book ends with an excerpt of Sengtsan's hsin hsin ming 'The great way':

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.

Mmmmhhh... So I cannot have any preferences for anything? I am not sure how that is supposed to work.

All in all the book gave me some insights and additional thoughts on the 'living in the now' concept that I am interested in at the moment. But I was lacking a bit of hands on exercices to take home with me.

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Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean - David Searls

Kris Carr found out she had cancer at age 31. She set out on a mission to conquer this disease highlighting the personal, crazy, sexy side of cancer.
She appeared on Oprah (see details here) and seemed such a wise, smart and full of life woman to me.
What a way to approach cancer. Check out the Crazy Sexy Cancer video:


The book Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips
Crazy Sexy Life forum site
Crazy Sexy Cancer
Kris Carr's blog
Kris Carr Photography
Interview with Kris on We Like it Raw

After Kris, Oprah had Randy Pausch on (see details here)who gave a sort of lecture which made me cry. He is dying of pancreatic cancer and only has a few months to live.
Here is his last lecture:


Randy Pausch's website.

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Do you consciously or unconsiously adjust your judgement and actions

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails 
-- Bertha Calloway

This morning the word ADJUST popped into my mind.

According to the Free Dictionary it means:

1. To change so as to match or fit; cause to correspond.
2. To bring into proper relationship.
3. To adapt or conform, as to new conditions: "unable to adjust themselves to their environment"
4. To bring the components of into a more effective or efficient calibration or state: adjust the timing of a car's engine.
5. To adapt oneself; conform.
6. To achieve a psychological balance with regard to one's external environment, one's needs, and the demands of others.

And my thought took the train:

• A tree adjusts the growth of its branches to twist around an obstacle. It adapts its growth path if planted askew on a cliff and finds its balance.
• The earth adjusts to the ever changing course of the swelling river.
• The virus adjusts to the medication human invent to counter it.
• The animal adjusts to its changing habitat and climate by adopting new ways of living.
• The shore adjusts its pattern according to the waves that hit it.

Adjusting means CHANGE. And humans are known to fear change. And our amazing ego's always cry out 'Why should I change?'

Whenever we encounter a situation or person that is, at first glance, different from what we believe in, what we think we are, what we stand for, we have the immediate tendency to judge. If we meet someone who we know is a teacher, a bus driver or CEO of a big company, we are influenced by or lead to expect things according to their social position because of what this position means in our society.

And once a situation or person judged, we find it difficult to change this preconception. It becomes a prejudice and means that we are making a decision before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case or event. Sometimes we were taught such prejudices by our parents and social surrounding. Sometimes we simply judge people or situations because of our bad mood that morning, because we are stressed, because we do not have the time to listen to them.

More often than not, we find out that we were wrong.

So why do we have this tendency to put a stamp on everything we see or meet? Do we do this consciously or unconsciously?

According to Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts:

The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this ordinary memory the preconscious.

The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.

Whether we do this consciously or not, we should try to enter each situation and encounter each person with an OPEN MIND. What is our role in this encounter? One of the major reference points when thinking about role is our appreciation of ourselves. We need to consider the sorts of values that we should be appealing to e.g. respect for persons, the promotion of well-being, a commitment to the search for truth, the fostering of democracy, and embracing fairness and equality. It also entails thinking about our intention – which may be different in each situaiton – and the sort of environment that needs to be cultivated.

Do we need to and can we adjust our point of view, our thoughts and behaviour enough in order to really HEAR the other person? Can we open up our minds enough to really listen, to not judge? Do we want to just win an argument or are we really looking for the facts? Do we speak our minds? Do we know our minds? Do we have (conscious or unconscious) preconceived ideas about a subject or person?

TEST:
It is well known that people don't always 'speak their minds', and it is suspected that people don't always 'know their minds'.

Go to Project Implicit where you will have the opportunity to assess your conscious and unconscious preferences for over 90 different topics ranging from pets to political issues, ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music. At the same time, you will be assisting psychological research on thoughts and feelings.

Take a demo test.

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Mind-set matters -- Why thinking you got a work out may actually make you healthier

As the commitment to our New Year's resolutions wanes and the trips to the gym become more infrequent, new findings appearing in the February issue of Psychological Science may offer us one more chance to reap the benefits of exercise through our daily routine.

Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer and her student Alia Crum found that many of the beneficial results of exercise are due to the placebo effect.

The surgeon general recommends 30 minutes of daily exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle. While this may be harder for those who are required to sit behind a desk for eight hours, other jobs are inherently physical, like a hotel housekeeper. 

On average, they clean 15 rooms per day, each taking 20 to 30 minutes to complete. According to the study, the housekeepers might not perceive their job as exercise, but if their mind-set is shifted so that they become aware of the exercise they are getting, then health improvements would be expected to follow.

The researchers studied 84 female housekeepers from seven hotels. Women in 4 hotels were told that their regular work was enough exercise to meet the requirements for a healthy, active lifestyle, whereas the women in the other three hotels were told nothing. 

To determine if the placebo effect plays a role in the benefits of exercise, the researchers investigated whether subjects' mind-set (in this case, their perceived levels of exercise) could inhibit or enhance the health benefits of exercise independent of any actual exercise.

Four weeks later, the researchers returned to assess any changes in the women's health. They found that the women in the informed group had lost an average of 2 pounds, lowered their blood pressure by almost 10 percent, and were significantly healthier as measured by body-fat percentage, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio. These changes were significantly higher than those reported in the control group and were especially remarkable given the time period of only four weeks.

Langer writes, "Whether the change in physiological health was brought about directly or indirectly, it is clear that health is significantly affected by mind-set." This research shows the moderating role of mind-set and its ability to enhance health, which may have particular relevance for treating diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

###

Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science, is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. For a copy of the article "Mind-Set Matters Exercise and the Placebo Effect" and access to other Psychological Science research findings please contact Catherine West at (202) 783-2077 or cwest@psychologicalscience.org.

Contact: Ellen Langer langer@wjh.harvard.edu

Association for Psychological Science

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Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts

You don't choose your family, you are born into one.

No matter how hard they try and even by doing the best they can, your parents are very likely to f**k you up (see also the book 'They f*** you up' by Oliver James). Some of us realise this sooner, some later. And it isn't until we realise this, that we are able to distance ourselves from them as adults, to become our own standalone selves.

When we become a parent ourselves, we become a little bit wiser. We also start to understand a few things about our own parents. Because: being a parent is not easy. It is hard because the moment the offspring is born and you start to love them to pieces, you also have to start letting them go.

And I guess parents can never entirely let their children go. My dad is the best example of that. Even though I am married with two kids, he still likes to 'meddle' with our lives. Not in a bad way - he always means well - but it feels a bit invasive at times :-) He is very much a DIY kind of guy. He can make something out of nothing, repair everything and if you ask him for a certain tool or item you can be sure he has it in his workshop (he keeps and stores EVERYTHING). That's why we like him.

What we like less is when he comes to our house unannounced to take away our garden furniture in order to sand and paint it.

What we do not appreciate is when he goes into the garden and puts all the pieces of the to be mounted swing-set on top of each other in a corner so that the grass does not go yellow underneath. For the record: these items had all been spread out neatly by number and in the order they were supposed to be mounted and we had to spread them out all over again...

What we find annoying is when we notice after he left that he has moved things in the garage - just because he thinks it is better to put them there instead of here.

What bothers us is the fact that he just does these things without asking our permission. We would probably have said yes to the sanding and painting of the garden furniture. But him taking it, just ruined the whole idea.

What irritates us is that by doing things a certain way, HIS way, he indirectly tells us that OUR way is wrong.



I do not come from a family that talks much - I mean, we talk, but not about the really important things like problems, feelings etc. So telling my dad that these gestures were not appreciated and why, was a major step for me. I first called my mom to let off some steam. Then I let a few days pass. Finally, I confronted my dad.


What can I say...? It's like he shuts down to this kind of conversations. Yes, he heard me. Yes, he will ask in the future. But did he understand why? No. And will he stop doing the things he does? Probably not.

I know he is probably not going to change - not until he understands our point of view. And he is just a stubborn kind of guy that won't admit he can be wrong. It runs in the family :-)

But I am glad and a bit proud that at least I am now able to talk to him about these things.

Thanks to Sunday Scribblings for triggering this post about Family.

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Boundaries don't keep other people out, they only fence you in.

When you grow up certain circumstances and events in your life have such an impact on you that they make you cringe, retreat into your protective shell and build a fence around yourself. Such boundaries are to keep others from coming too close, from hurting you again or from seeing a side of you that you don't want to show.
Most of the time you are too young and naïve to realise that such fences or walls do not always do you any good. In fact, they may (temporarily) protect you from being hurt and deceived, but in the long run they only fence YOU in. Defences that served you well as a child to ensure survival can, when carried into adulthood, may actually cripple you.
They prevent you from living your life, your real life, the 100 percent one, the rollercoaster up and down ride that you are supposed to take to feel alive.

You may be waiting:
- for life to happen,
- for the right person to come along and solve all problems,
- for the right circumstances,
- for the right job,
- for others to change...

In that case you should take a hard and honest look at yourself. And that is tough. Because what you don't realise is that most of the time YOU are the only one that is able to change this, to tear the walls down, to stop wearing a mask, to stop pretending, to stop cheating yourself. It is tough, because you don't always like yourself all that much. So you cover up, you embellish. And hence send a wrong message; give a distorted image of yourself.
It is hard to always be who you really are deep down, to stand up for your convictions, to admit you don’t know, to be strong, to be weak, to let someone else in all the way.

But it is the only way of living. Or else you will continue to search for a thing, a person, an opportunity which will make it all better.
YOU are the only person who can live your life, who can decide how to live it, who can change it. And if you cannot change a situation or a person, you can always change your attitude towards it. And that is what makes all the difference. Without being YOU, life will just pass you by, life will just be a series of happenings you live through instead of choosing them, life will not be all that exciting. Sure, it is safe - or it seems to be - but it is boring and not very fulfilling and something is missing. To be YOU you have to let go of the fear. You have to take risks: of getting hurt, of not being liked.

• Stop doing things in order to keep the peace.
• Stop belittling yourself.
• Stop waiting or searching for someone that will change the situation you’re in.
• Start liking yourself.
• Start trusting yourself and your ideas.
• Accept to make mistakes.
• Expect to be laughed at.
• Look at your experiences and try to learn a lesson from each of them.
  
  
  Read more:
  http://www.coping.org/innerhealing/boundary.htm
  http://www.guidetopsychology.com/boundaries.htm
  http://helpyourselftherapy.com/topics/bound.html
  http://www.danenet.org/dcccrsa/saissues/boundary.html
  http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/Articles/boundaries.htm

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The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything - Milan Kundera

How STUPIDITY makes us grow.

Certain psychological phenomena can be called "stupidifying":

The too fusional love between a child and his parents that keep him from becoming autonomous:

Because he loves his mother too much, a child can stay in his beatitude of an impotent infant, his 'baby attitude', persuaded that his mother expects that of him.

According to Francoise Dolto a child has to go through several successive separations: weaning from the bottle to discover the pleasure of the diversified foods of adults, detachment from its mother to become autonomous...

The 'stupid' child is not an 'idiot'. It is a child scared by the perspective of growing up. And when children do stupid things they follow a normal evolution: they try to oppose themselves, to separate from their parents.

A child that is 'stupid' in school often signals that an unvoiced event or family secret is a 'parasiting' on his cognitive functions.

The insecurity of the adolescent who plays the fool because he does not know yet who he is:

Psychoanalyst Paul Denis advances the hypothesis that 'behaving stupidly is a defence mechanism to face emotions that are too invading and to give one countenance'. The mask of stupidity would protect us from scary situations and never experienced social roles:

• the adolescent in love sniggers because he refuses to admit his feelings (to himself)
• touched or stressed by an essay he is to present to class, the adolescent plays the fool or the cool to make his friends laugh
• the adolescent lazes around instead of confronting his intellectual limits

This 'stupid' or silly behaviour of adolescence pops up again in adult life. As soon as an adult feels uncomfortable, not in his place, not recognised, silly jokes pop up during an evening where friends and colleagues discuss subjects we know nothing about etc.

The neurosis that makes an adult regress to an infantile stage.

Freud divided childhood into several stages: the oral stage (the stage where children place every object that comes their way into their mouths), the anal stage (the stage when children become aware of their 'waste management' and all they talk about is pee, poop and fart) and the phallic stage (the stage where a child discovers the stimulation of its genitals).

Some adults regress to the anal stage, the stage where mastering and self control was the most important. They seem to like aggressive, stupid and nasty jokes and have a sick need for control. They need to have the last word, and by definition, all others are idiots. Their contradiction is ridiculous but their narcissism keeps them from recognizing their wrongs. They never feel stupid.

Some adults regress to the oral stage: they talk a lot and with assurance of everything, even the things they don't know much about. And they don't worry that better informed others might find such a deluge stupid.

For anal personalities, the other is stupid, for the oral personalities the other simply does not exist.

Other adults have complexes and are generally victims of their incapacity to detach from their parents. To educate oneself implies a transgression, a freedom of mind of which they are afraid and don't allow themselves. For parents, infantile love is source of intellectual inhibition, it prevents the child from thinking by itself and adopt personal values, it renders the child stupid.

*****

So before we call someone stupid, let's look at our own kind of stupidy. Did we not say something too quickly without thinking it through? What is the value of our idea? Is our idea a valid one or have we just been repeating it automatically over the last years? Do we agree with something just because we are too lazy to think for ourselves or maybe want to conform with a group of people?

Obviously we cannot continuously question what we are saying before saying it . We would not be able to think anymore. So sometimes we take on a few phrases or expressions that are in fashion and seem to say it all. Like 'politically correct' for example. We run the risk however, that we do not push our reflexion any further anymore.

Cultivated people are not necessarily less stupid. Cultivated people are sometimes less flexible in their thoughts, unable to listen ot others or put their ideas to the test.

I guess intelligence rhymes with vigilance. We should from time to time stop and think about, reason with and question what we have been thinking. We should listen to philospher Vladimir Jankelevitch and 'behave as if nothing, in this world, is a given'. In order to do that one needs a lot of self confidence however, to admit that one does not know, to ask for an explanation.

In order to be less 'stupid' we should:

Decentralise
Solitude, isolation, habits make us stupid. Be curious, enrich your social, cultural and intellectual life.

Take time to think
The stupid thought is always the one to come out first. It is said under an emotion, it is impulsive and nervous. We often regret having said it afterwards. Take time to think. Time it the best ally.

Doubt and question
Our ready-made ideas are reassuring and comfortable but keep us from thinking. It is essential to question ones certitudes, even if we loose our maks a bit. It is the only way to stay open to contradiction, to the 'other'.

Get to know yourself
What happens to us is not always the fault of 'bad luck' or the 'stupidity' of others. It is useful to find out why and how part of us, of our desires, or our fears is connected to the events of our lives. That helps us to get our of an intolerant and vain thinking rut.

Freely translated from content of Psychologies.com magazine Feb08.

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The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude - Oprah Winfrey

There are good and bad reasons to change:

One should not change for someone else

Some might want to transform their personality to keep their partner for example. However, it is impossible to desire for the other. When we try to redefine ourselves for someone else we interpret their needs, not ours. And hence the base for change is falsified.

One should change for oneself

As the change concerns us, it has to be a personal move. The wonderful thing about it is that the other (the partner,...) will of course profit from our transformation.

One should not change to flee reality

A love story turning bad, a daily rythm that stresses us and makes us unhappy...and up pops the need to change and turn the page. But when we flee, the first thing we encounter on our road is exactly what we have wanted to get away from. We change jobs to get away from mobbing colleagues and around the corner the new colleagues are doing just the same. To change one has to first face one's own demons.

One should change to confront one's reality

Change necessitates to be ready for a profound exploration of oneself and the relations to others. This entails going through some kind of crisis. If it is painful it is because it obliges us to question our certitudes and to consider our dark side...before attempting to change.

One should not change as a reaction

Changing as a reaction to something, for example after a breakup, becoming the opposite of what one has been before, or behaving in a way that does not correspond to one's moral or inner feelings. Founded on the lie to oneself, this type of change is obviously ephemeral and may generate a painful shift.

One should change to enrich oneself

Change means enriching oneself with 'other elsewheres', hence open up to others and other situations, learn to understand and get to know them. In the long run, this can become a way to acquire a certain power, but a power put 'at the service' and not 'against' others.

Site of interest:

Changing Minds

Everybody's changing by Keane

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While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about - Angela Schwindt

Francoise Dolto had a very singular vision of the child. She was a paediatrician and psychoanalyst. She thought that word, explanation and communication was very important in the construction of an individual.

I am currently reading a few books by her which regroup a series of questions and answers she gave during dedicated radio broadcasts. Parents would write letters with their educational questions about their children, and Dolto would answer them during the radio show. This took place in the 70ies but still now I find her explanations and advice valid and useful.

Her thoughts were quite revolutionary at a time when it was thought that infants cannot understand nor suffer from what happens in reality. But she also addressed mothers, distressed parents who want to read and understand the symptoms of their children.

Of course a baby cannot talk yet, but Dolto anticipates that he can listen, understand and be pacified by a true voice if targeted at the child directly. She says 'children have a language before they speak a language'.

Children always understand.

Indeed, she contends that they understand in the womb. They need to be spoken to, to have things explained to them. They need to be listened to; their views need to be respected.

Dolto insists that no matter how painful, children must receive an authentic response to any question.

Although I do not agree with everything she says, I do agree with the fact that one should explain things to children and that, contrary to what we think, they understand a lot at a real young age. Our oldest son, now 20 months, has changed his behaviour slightly after the arrival of his brother one month ago. Of course he presents the normal and healthy jealousy traits, but sometimes he tends to cry out instead of talk to me. One day I was trying to get him to eat his soup as he had told me he was hungry. Immediately after the first spoonful he wanted to get out of his chair and refused to eat. Once out of the chair he said 'eat' again. Once in his chair I decided that he was going to stay there. He started to cry out - now this is a crying without tears, just a kind of discontented shouting for something I could not understand. At the same time his little brother was crying in the next room. You can understand that this situation was slowly getting on my nerves. After trying to discipline the eldest to no avail, it hit me. He was trying to communicate the same way his baby brother was, by crying. Once I understood that I tried to talk to him saying that his baby brother cries because he cannot talk yet. That his only way to tell me what he wants is by crying. But that he, the older brother, can talk and can therefore TELL me what he needs or wants. He does not need to cry. He looked at me with a frown like he was thinking very hard. Then he smiled and said 'eat'. He did not cry out anymore and finished he soup in no time.

I had my proof that talking to my child, explaining things to him even though I might think he is too little to understand helps.

The other day the oldest was staying over at my parents for two days (including one night). When he got back home he did not fall asleep as usual that night and we had to get him out with some milk and talk until finally, later on he fell asleep. We figured that staying over at his grandparents probably wasn't such a good idea with the new baby around for he might think that he is being pushed aside. The next time he went to his grandparents, I explained to him hat I would come pick him up that afternoon and that he would sleep at home. That he was going to his grandparents because I needed some time to do grownup things and take care of the baby but that this did not mean that I did not love him or tried to get rid of him. When he left with my father he turned around and said 'Mama pick up' meaning that he had very well understood me and knew I was coming to get him. Since then he presents no more sleeping problems.

I guess the above two examples are in line with what Dolto preached. I probably would have reacted in such a way even without having read any of her advice. I am a talkative mother and wherever I am with my children I constantly babble away at them telling them what I or we are doing. I guess Dolto just pointed a finger at something I unconsciously knew but probably was afraid of doing thinking my kids were too young for adult explanations.

At the moment my oldest starts pointing at his penis, saying 'zizi' and 'papa' and 'mama'. So I guess I have to prepare myself on explaining to him that mama does not have a zizi... I will hurry and read up on the subject :-)

Sources:

A Christian Educator out of the ordinary

Stefan Beyst

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Poverty is the mother of crime - Marcus Aurelius

US man faces potential 30-year prison sentence for stealing a doughnut.

Picture this: a guy tries to steal a doughnut - probably because he is poor and hungry and just wants to eat. On his way out the shopkeeper tries to hold him back and maybe he pushes her a bit trying to get past her.

Turns out that the push is now being treated as minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanor shoplifting charge into a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. Given the hungry guy's past criminal record, prosecutors could boost that sentence to 30 years to life.

30 years of imprisonment for stealing a doughnut? Because of the principle that 'a crime is a crime', 'everyt crime should be treated equally' and 'it's not the doughnut, it's the assault'?

So the guy has a past: he has been arrested more than a dozen times for crimes ranging from shoplifting to drug possession to torching a car for insurance fraud. He has done time in prison for these crimes. Not 30 years but the allocated time for crimes such as these.

Has anyone ever asked him why he keeps committing 'minor' crimes? I assume he is not rich, probably has a drug habit. He is trying to get by with the little he has and seems to be caught up in a vicious circle.

Don't get me wrong, I do not tolerate nor agree with his crimes. I am just saying that a stolen doughnut is not enough crime to deserve 30 years of imprisonment. And even if he did go to jail for 30 years. What happens when he comes out? He still has no money, his addiction has probably worsened (don't tell me they don't do drugs in jail) and where will he go from there? Probably to another store to steal something to eat.

It is clear that in order to eradicate crime, we need to address the root causes. These include, but are not limited to, greed, inadequate corporate oversight, poverty, lack of education, homelessness, drug addiction, racial hatred, and lax gun laws.

I agree with you that some of these causes are harder to eliminate than others. But without helping (or trying to help) criminals to get back on the right track before they get out again, they are doomed to just get straight back into the same downwards spiral.

In Pollsmoor, a harsh prison in Capetown (South Africa) of which Nelson Mandela was the most famous inmate, is filled with the most dangerous criminals and known for it's gangsterism. It is in this prison that an astonishing experiment took place, led by Joanna Thomas (from Cape Town's Centre for Conflict Resolution), to find out whether these criminals can change. The goal of these workshops is to transform the prison from a militaristic culture to a culture of learning, growth and development, where human rights are respected and people are treated with dignity and respect in order to achieve a reduction in the rate of crime and recidivism.

The goal is to come to a certain 'awakening' where one becomes conscious of things that seemed invisible before.

A prison is like a pressure cooker where everyone keeps everything (thoughts and emotions) to himself. And even if couples, gangs or fraternities are formed, everyone lives for himself, the indiviual must be very strong, contain everything and provide for everything. When you sit down in a circle with these inmates, talk to them and show them sincere interest you will very quickly get a catharsis effect.

Let them listen to some Verdi as sung by Pavarotti and something happens - an inmate maybe suddenly understands what the word empathy means. It might sound kitsch, but these men have very kitsch emotional reactions. They pass from toughness to tears without transition or intermediate state. Things are white or black, they are there or not. In most of the cases, this emotional infantilism comes from a blocked affectiveness development during childhood provoked by a mistreatment, often sexual, often at a very young age.

A big part of Joanna's work consisted in creating bridges between the white and the black, the good and the evil, the wound and the causes. She does not control the catharsis that this 'awakening' brings but she knows that she provokes it and knows the techniques that lead there.

The impact, if spectacular, is not always comprehensible. For us, letting ourselves fall down into the arms of colleagues is already difficult, even if it animates team motivation seminars. How to measure the emotional shock by the same exercise of this visibly troubled inmate who, for the first time in his life, has had a physical contact other than violent or forced? And throwing balls in a group obliges to have eye contact for something completely different than defiance, aggression or submission exchanged usually.

The instantaneous and impressive physical aspect of the process can be explained by the fact that if they were abused and beaten as children (something which the mind cannot comprehend without therapy), it is with the body that they attempt to make sense of things; the body becoming their thinking organ.

When I saw this documentary, I was impressed with the results. You saw these die hards talking about the people and inmates they have abused and killed and once they went to the workshop they were crying because their father had never loved them.

And that is what I mean by attacking the root causes...

So instead of incarcerating the doughnut thief for 30 years and sending him to a prison where his behaviour will only get worse, one should set him down and talk to him as one would to a child who stole a doughnut and ask him why he did it and take it from there. Life would be a better place if we treated everyone like that.

Sources

Press article on doughnut thief

Pollsmoor prison

BBC's Killers don't cry

Killers don't cry article in French

Prison's Transformation Project

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Delay gratification in the short term and enjoy greater rewards in the long term

The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable pre-requisite for success - Brian Tracy

If you put a marshmallow in front of your 4-year old and said that he could eat it immediately or wait until you returned and he'd get another one, what would he do?

My son is not 4 years old yet - but maybe I will do the test with him to find out what his behaviour tells me about his possible future.

Walter Mischel did this test with several hundreds of 4-year olds. They videotaped the kid's reactions. Some of them gobbled up the marshmallow immediately; some looked at it, smelled it, touched it but didn't eat it. Others started walking around, humming songs to distract themselves. One even licked the space on the table surrounding the marshmallow.

Fourteen years later, these kids are grown and the findings are quite dramatic.

• Kids who did not eat the marshmallow immediately but waited for the tester to return (and were thus gratified with a second marshmallow) seemed to show many more skills that make for success. They had many of the "habits of successful people": confidence, persistence, capacity to cope with frustration. The "waiters" were more socially competent and self-assertive, trustworthy, dependable and more academically successful.
  
• On the other hand, the kids who gobbled the treat immediately showed trouble subordinating immediate impulses to achieve long-range goals. When it was time to study for the big test, they tended to get distracted into listening to a favourite TV programs.

So what are "marshmallows" in our professional and personal lives? They are the activities which give us immediate gratification but undermine longer-range benefits. The desire to please everyone is a big "marshmallow".

It seems that the ability to delay gratification is a master skill, a triumph of the reasoning brain over the impulsive one. It is a sign, in short, of emotional intelligence (Definition according to Mayer, J.D. & Salovey, P. (1997): "The ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions, and to regulate emotions to promote personal growth").
And it doesn't show up on an IQ test.

Take the Emotional IQ test.

If there is a cornerstone to emotional intelligence on which most other emotional skills depend, it is a sense of self-awareness, of being smart about what we feel. Scientists refer to "metamood," the ability to pull back and recognize that "what I'm feeling is anger," or sorrow, or shame.

Metamood is a difficult skill because most of the time our emotions appear in disguise (the mourner is sad but may also be angry at the person for dying - the parent of a child who ran across the street is angry at the child for disobedience but may also experience fear of what could have happened).

Self-awareness is perhaps the most crucial ability because it allows us to exercise some self-control. The idea is not to repress feeling but rather to do what Aristotle considered the hard work of the will. As he puts it in the Nicomachean Ethics : "Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy."

Some impulses are easier to overcome than others. Anger, not surprisingly, is one of the hardest, perhaps because of its evolutionary value in priming people to action. The more stressed one is, the lower the threshold for release. Anxiety is another typical one.

Given sufficient self-awareness, people develop coping mechanisms. Sadness and discouragement, for instance, are "low arousal" states. If you go out for a run you are triggering a high arousal state that is incompatible with staying blue. Relaxation works better for high-energy moods like anger or anxiety.

Either way,

Be an optimist : When an optimist fails, he attributes the failure to something he can change, not some innate weakness that he is helpless to overcome.

The most visible emotional skills, the ones we recognize most readily, are the "people skills" like empathy, graciousness, the ability to read a social situation. Researchers believe that about 90% of emotional communication is nonverbal.
If you have a good ability to read emotional cues, you most likely tend to be more successful in your work and relationships.

In the corporate world, according to personnel executives, IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted.

So next time someone wiggles a marshmallow in front of your nose (or a carrot, or a special deal,...), think about it twice, breathe,...


Links
Time Reports - Understanding Psychology
Self-awareness
Non-verbal communication

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On raising bilingual children

When I was pregnant with our first baby an important question popped up. How do we raise our kid language-wise. I am a native Dutch speaker, my other half is a native French speaker. Together we speak French and we live in a country that has another, third language: Luxembourgish.

After some research and reading of books, I came to the conclusion that information contained on the web and in books is helpful but that each situation is different and particular. Hence, there is no one-solution-fit-all.

I was born and raised in Luxembourg but up until the age of 4 only spoke Dutch at home. Getting to Kindergarten I did not understand a word of what the kids were saying. Back then (early seventies) the community was much less international than it is now, so I was the minority. I do not remember feeling left out for long though. I do not remember having any difficulty language-wise.

The particularity about Luxembourg is that Luxembourgish is only an official language since the 80ies and that French and German are the norm when it comes to written language. Our schoolbooks were in German, so after learning to speak Luxembourgish, German was the next (at age 6) and French shortly thereafter (at age 7). I had no problem with German, as all the books were in German, Luxembourgish (in which I was by then fluent) is very close to it and most television was in German. I had a bit more difficulties with French, but so did everyone else. Eventually English was added (at age 13) with which I had very few problems compared to my fellow students. Later, during my career, I also came to learn Italian and Spanish.

When asked which language is my mothertongue I have a hard time choosing between Dutch and Luxembourgish. Dutch because it was my first language - but I never poperly learned how to write it and being a kid of expatriats, the language the parent's speak is not always up to date. Luxembourgish because it is the language I was most immersed in during childhood (I count and most of the time think in Luxembourgish) but it was never taught in writing and there is hardly what can be called literature available in that language.

Over the years my brain has gotten so used to all the languages that switching from one to the other is not a big deal. I speak much more English and French nowadays than I do Luxembourgish so I find myself thinking in the language I speak.

We have decided to raise our son with the OPOL method: One Parent, One Language. I speak Dutch to him, my other half French. My parents, who watch him a lot too speak Dutch to him as well which means that currently his most strong language is Dutch and his first words (he is almost 16 months now) are mainly Dutch. But he understands my other half perfectly and the daycare speaks French to him too so the first French words are coming as well. When he goes to school (at the age of 3) he will be immersed into the Luxembourgish environment (as I was when I was little) and will learn Germand in primary school. He will already have perfect knowledge of French by the time his friends are starting to learn it - so that's one less to worry about.

What we do still not know is how we deal with education after primary school. Luxembourg has a variety of schools on offer (European School, International School, French School) - all of which are far away from where we live. So logistically it would be a drag. Financially they are also quite a burden. And to top it, these schools are hard to get into because priority is given to European Community workers, French Nationals etc.

We do think however, that higher education focused more on one language (French for example), with books, teachers, literature in that language (instead of German and French and English etc) would be an advantage.

We believe that raising a bilingual kid is easy on the homefront but difficult in an international environment where the school system does not have a primary language focus.

I'd be glad to hear your experiences in this area. Email me.

Links:

Raising Bilingual Kidsin German and English

Bilingual Families Web Page

Raising Bilingual Children by Marsha Rosenberg

Multilingual Children's Association

Bilingual Babies ORG

Bilingual Baby EU

Bilingual parenting in a foreign language

Bilingual resources

Kids Bilingual Network

Bicultural Family Network
The bilingual Family Newsletter
Multilingual Matters Publications
Opol 4 us

FRENCH:

Enfants Bilingues

Enseignement bilingue Plurilinguisme et Transculturalité

Le Monde Bilingue

DUTCH:

Wereldexpat

Kind en taal

Vraagbaak kindertaal en meertaligheid

Schools in Luxembourg:

European School Luxembourg

International School Luxembourg

St George's International School Luxembourg

Ecole Francaise Luxembourg

Lycee Francais

Waldorf School

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Choices are luxuries - or are they?

Strolling through the aisles of the supermarket, I like to have a large choice of jams or teas. New and exotic flavors tingle my curiosity in experiencing something new on my bread in the morning. I choose with pleasure.

However, it is with much less pleasure, let alone curiosity, that I choose my laundry detergent from the large offer on the shelves. I usually go by price and ecology label.

The same goes for restaurants: I enjoy choosing from a smartly chosen list of courses but I hate going through a 20 page menu in a Chinese restaurant where you order a number instead of the name of the plate.

And when my company changed from a default (e.g. safe) pension investment plan to one where I could actually choose where to invest my money (and what level of risk to take), my initial choice was to stay with the default for lack of knowledge of the other options and fear of making a mistake or taking a risk and 'wasting' the money.

So when is it good to have a choice? And how many alternatives are healthy for the human mind to tackle?

If one has a choice of 20 jams, does one buy more than one? If yes, is it out of (positive?) frustration?

The problem surely has to do with deciding what your preferences are. If out of the 20 jams you are unable to say which ONE you like best (because there are at least 2 or 3 you like a lot), frustration is around the corner.

Now, I agree that choosing a jam, even out of a selection of 20 on display, is not that hard and it doesn't affect your wallet all that much either. However, when I suddenly had to choose my pension investment plan, the possibilities left me flummoxed.

Don't get me wrong: I thought it was a good idea to get a choice. I am pro choice. To me it means (although it doesn't necessarily equal) more freedom. But one is only able to make an intelligent choice if one has all the necessary information and views on possible effects of the different outcomes in order to be able to analyse it properly.

Sometimes however, thinking too much about possible outcomes or having too much information can be harming in the sense that it overloads your brain and prevents it from making a clear-headed decision. Sometimes it is good to get other people's opinions. Sometimes it is good to just follow your gut feeling.

I guess the most important thing about having choices is that they are indeed luxuries because they mean a certain freedom. Choice makes you more indepedent and responsible for your future.

So next time you have a hard time choosing something, think about the many people who do not have that luxury. Would you rather be in their shoes?

Here's a related poem:

Make Your Choice
Sometimes you wait for destiny's touch
to help pick your choices, decisions and such
change all your maybe's into yes's or no's
direct your own path that you should have chose

But waiting allows your goals to be tweaked
by weakened decisions preferred by the meek
your roads will be handpicked by unknown fate
and then comes regret, and by then it's too late

Your decisions and choices are easy to make
but your excuses are many, and reasons all fake
step up and stand tall, announce your decision
don't ever look back with mirrored revision.

Poem by Michael Charles Messineo
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewpoetry.asp?id=106177

Related read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/weekinreview/27port.html?ex=1186632000&en=ae02937b34e12af9&ei=5070

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