Anyone interested in a reflective moment?
No? Too bad it’s my site!
Watch (and listen to) this short animation inspired by Alan Watts.
Bet you can’t guess who produced it!
Joshua Denney
Catalyst for Change
Category: Insight (page 1 of 2)
You don’t like your job and everything you’ve applied for has come up nil. What can you do to change that?
Things like location, resume, cover letter, skills, credentials, social network, scope of search and the presentation of all of the above affect this. Consider each and what it might mean to you.
Feeling like you do not have an exit or out is only your own mind creating a block of vision.
You do have outs; you just can’t see them yet, because you do not understand them yet.
To quote the Matrix, ‘You cannot see past the choices you do not understand.’ This is very true! Writer’s block occurs in the short term, but stops the writing forever.
The same applies to your job. You must know that you will someday be working at a better job, making a better career.
Ok, now that you are over the fact that you have exits, you just need to plan them out. Back to figuring out what you can do with the things that affect your ability to gain a better position, career-wise.
Hopefully by shedding the illusions and focusing yourself on things you can make a difference with, you will lower your levels of stress, benefiting all areas of your life very quickly.
So, you don’t like your job? That’s very uncommon. Most people do. Haha.
Understand what it is: money, ‘credentials’, validation (a little or a lot), opportunity.
Money: helps with your basic survival and luxuries (however large or small they may be).
Credentials: could mean you can get that next job easier, it could mean you get looked at a certain way (career/job-wise), it could mean that you are taken more seriously when you propose an idea.
Validation: you went to school, you tried, you learned, you succeeded in these tasks. You graduated and ‘logic’ says you now get to use these things. Life says otherwise, but no matter what, you will use things you’ve learned every day.
Obviously you wish you didn’t spent so much money on something that doesn’t seem to be helping you and may be hindering you (re: student loan, lack of money to pay it, and the sacrifices you make because of it).
Opportunity: is the chance to make more money, get a better position, make sure you are on the train when the next opportunity stop comes along, etc.
When I say understand ‘what a job is’, I mean I want you to shed any fantasy you might have of it being great or something other than what it means to you (see above plus your own additions).
Nope, probably not your dream job, probably not enough money, you probably aren’t appreciated, you aren’t flexing your thinking muscles enough, no challenge, bad location, maybe other things.
So let it become your vehicle…or part of it.
A job serves certain purposes, it can take you places (but you don’t know where yet) and it does allow you to survive financially, in turn physically, emotionally, socially, etc.
Take these thoughts and now project where you’d like it to take you. The stars, yes of course, to the top. Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know how far you wanna go.
Regardless, what is it able to do for you today, this week, next month, this year to get you to where you want to go?
If it does nothing else but allow you to survive and think of what to do next, is it worth something? You need to really think of how to leverage it.
I seek to understand.
All my life I’ve been trying to understand. Everything.
I’ve been trying to understand simple things like radios and walkmans and more complex things, like relationships and human behaviour in general.
In most situations, I don’t follow the normal route of action or reaction, because I want to understand its insides and unbiased results of my alternate route.
Some people call this strange or weird. I suppose it is. If nothing else, it is not ordinary, and that is against which everything is judged, is it not?
Is it merely a tendency of thoughtful insight? Is it an abnormal hunger for something I’ll never be able to attain? Is it the way I learn, or is it learning itself?
I’ll tell you what it is.
All my life I’ve been searching for reasons. The reasons I never knew my parents as parents together, but parents apart. The reasons why I felt like I didn’t belong. The reasons why I didn’t have to try too hard…yet should have tried so much harder.
Justification?
Anyone can justify anything. Virtually anything can be related to anything else.
Forget that for now, because we need to understand.
Understanding is relative of course, but we’ll forget that too. Let’s just say understanding is absolute.
Perhaps this is my ‘seek to be understood’ phase?
True understanding is not easily gained. Often we say we understand, only to scratch the surface of the given issue’s complexities. I believe a paradigm shift must occur for true understanding to occur.
A person must rearrange their beliefs in favour of new and unfamiliar ones. The mind must be absolutely open to accept that another way, beyond your current path, is possible.
The Art of Understanding is made up of many parts. Here are some of the points I will touch upon in my quest to (understand and) be understood:
The Empty Cup – Live as though you can fill your mind with knowledge at any given moment.
The Message and the Medium – The path you must take towards understanding must follow some assumed constants. A message can be overshadowed by improper use of a certain medium of communication.
Listening and Sensitivity – Inflections in the voice, tone, body language, rhythm and the words you choose to use are all apart of active listening for greater understanding. Being sensitive to minor abnormalities or changes gives you greater insight into the true meaning of what is being communicated.
The Sum of the Parts – Understanding how smaller parts fit together to create or make a larger entity or situation will bring you closer to an understanding of the sum.
Think Like Them – Role playing, judging actions and reactions, understanding character and motivation, incentives for behaviour and their processes to better understand the world. Knowing your subject allows you to execute your skills effectively.
The Tidy Box – Your perfect image, their perfect image. Each play off each other, causing a lifetime of inaccurate responses and feelings. Break away from your tidy box and see through theirs.
Look From the Outside, In – Keep a good perspective as though you were not immersed in the situation. Seeing how the greater picture of how things relate to each other and how they might affect each other will only prove to improve your understanding.
Think From the Inside, Out – Understanding the core values that make up your own and other people’s true selves will help you gauge motivation and bias.
Find the Pattern, Break the Pattern – Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is crazy. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is crazy.
Learn, to Teach – We often push ourselves, or force ourselves into a different state of insight when we take the perspective of a teacher. Whatever we are seeking to understand, will often come through stronger when using this technique.
Imagine – There is no greater weapon than this, to be used in the path towards understanding.
Changes are Constant – Changes must be embraced. Change is important for growth.
These are only brief explanations. I will expand and give examples to illustrate each idea.
Does this make any sense so far?
I think the answer may lie in your inability to distinguish the true emotions from the false emotions. (I’m not accusing you of anything, merely speculating.)
Of course, both are real responses, but the fundamentals of each are very different.
For example: a basic emotion such as fear can exist, without prejudice. The emotion exists, and it does not care whether its reasons are valid or not.
Take a misunderstanding or miscommunication, and you can easily have the emotional response of fear. We often fear that which we don’t understand.
Would the response be ‘false’, given that you don’t fully understand the situation and there may actually be nothing to fear?
True or false?
If you were standing on the edge of a cliff without a safety harness, fear would be a natural response. Is this response more accurate or ‘true’?
Understanding
Is there a way to fully understand every situation, and every reaction a human being can make?
On what terms would you be able to understand? Scientific? Spiritual?
If you could understand every situation and subsequent reaction, would you cease to emote or would it be a truer form of emotion?
Would it be an enlightened state of being? Does it really matter?
Could it be that we are worried of what damage our image might take if we stray from the tidy box we’ve presented ourselves to be?
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