I think noticing is a skill, and I've noticed in my family the men (from my son, me, and my Father) have ADHD/ADD. I've read quite a bit about that, and have learned one opinion has it pegged as a 'caveman skill' from another time when to be aware, really aware, was vital to surviving. Long periods of waiting, watching, looking - nothing, until something changes and if you didn't notice and act on that something, well - too bad for you. Fast forward to today's education swamp otherwise known as bush's 'no child left behind' and well, you couldn't engineer an environment where that disposition could be at a greater disadvantage. That 'skill' gets you labeled, regretfully and extremely sorrowfully, special needs. Meanwhile my daughter's get straight A's and wouldn't notice if the sun didn't come up, but they're the smart ones. And no, before somebody says 'you don't have to have add/adhd to notice things…', I don't think its that simple either. Anyway, good reading.
but what are others learning from you? Maybe its a quality over quantity perspective, maybe not. Why not give back and share some of your insights and lessons - just sayin.
This is a great article about mastering emotional resiliency. Great video about “seeing” other people; being empathetic to those around you.
I also enjoyed many of the comments as well, thank you.
I wanted to share one additional idea about this concept of empathy and emotional resiliency. I believe it can transcend time as well. This is a bit loosely connected but in my mind it fits with the topic.
My grandmother died at 91 earlier this year. Her father (my great-grandfather) died when she was 14, and he was 46 in the 1930’s. The story goes that at 35, he almost died, getting deathly ill, but he made supplications to God to preserve his life for enough time for two goals; to live long enough that all his children would remember him, and that he could pay off his debts so that his family might have the wherewithal to support themselves without him. Well, he got his wish; he lived almost 11 more years. After this time, his youngest was 12, so all his children remembered him, and in his pocket, at the time of his heart attack and death, was the receipt for the last payment for his debts. My grandmother dearly loved her father, and often spoke of this just before her death.
Thing is, I now know this man, my great-grand father. I too now have young children at home. I to this year have made a promise to make an effort to get out of debt ASAP to secure their support in the future. This great-grandfather has become a hero to me; he has given me emotional resiliency and strength.
I will say that everyone here has connections to others through time if they look, which is a huge source of knowledge and strength. Empathy over time and space is real. Empathy makes us human, and wakes our subconscious; it heals us and motivates us.
To end, I really liked the article, thank you all for your insights.
This puts me in mind of an AA meeting I was attending years ago in the smoky basement of a church some were in Portland Maine. Being new to the 12 step community I was sitting quietly trying not to be noticed listening it a young man at the front of the room attempting to make people understand his situation. He had been going on for several minutes about how he had a disease, how it wasn't his fault and how no understood him. From some were in the gloom at the back of the room came a gravely voice, "Fuck You" it said. This hit me as an epiphany. Here I was surrounded by dozens of people who were working very hard at saving there own lives, who had an excellent idea of what I was going through and who weren't going to buy any bullshit. If I was going to get the most out of the program I was going to have to be excruciatingly honest with myself and everyone else. AA has a great many useful slogans. One I have taken for my own is "If your world looks like shit, you probably have your head up your ass". I have found these to be very useful words to live by. I continue to be grateful for my alcoholism as it has forced me to learn to build and maintain emotional resilience or die. A hard school, perhaps, but for me, well worth attending.
John G
Dave,
In case it wasn't clear, my primary contention was with the accuracy of the following statement:
"Perhaps not a lot, but one marked difference between communism and capitalism is that the former provides at least the basics of sustenance."
I find it both timely and fascinating that you chose to ignore the very statement that I most strongly emphasized and preceded with bold text.
And whether I chose to be shocked or not is my prerogative. Why do you wish to invalidate my personal experience? Am I not entitled to it as a human being?
I would like to share this woman with you. She has some really practical advice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1iVE8wxGwA
Fair question. I guess it has more to do with my being comfortable being a reader and thinker than a writer. Not that I don't like writing but for me writing takes a lot of time of which I find myself always pressed for.
I think it is important that a person who finally has to give up helping a loved one should not feel guilty. Often times the cure is to hit rock bottom so explicit help must be withdrawn.
troof-ao-I'm confused. I was responding to troof, but … is that the same as ao?
Your bold text was all about a completely different thread - communism, history, etc, which wasn't the focus of the dialog for me. So…guilty as charged, I ignored it.
That's because for me the interesting bit was your shocked emotional response rather than the particulars of what you were shocked about, especially because for me it was a one line remark in passing that wasn't at all central to the matter at hand. As Chris observed in his post, one person is shocked by the same material that doesn't shock someone else, and (I think in this case) that has to do with the scripts running inside us. From what I can see you likely have one running inside you about Russia and Communism, so you latched on to that one sentence of Chris's post and went off about it.
For me, emotional resilience (just to remind - its the topic at hand) is about looking inside myself as to why I "go off" about particular things. When I get really upset about some posting, I try to ask myself, "why did that piss me off so mightily?" When someone unfairly slanders me, what is it about the unfairness that bothers me? Why should I care? But the intellectual approach of "why should I care" doesn't help at all - its only the emotional release that helps. So I take responsibility for my own emotional reaction, release it, and (sometimes) see if there's something I can learn about myself, and then I respond. When I don't take the time to release it, I usually regret what ends up coming out of my keyboard.
Do you still feel invalidated after reading all that?
I have now read Chris’ article and all the comments twice. This is a very important topic. Just the other day, my wife and I were discussing how, when difficult times come, many people we know will just give up. Through suicide, alcohol or drugs they will find a way to not engage the struggle.
Wendi’s comments struck the most personal chord with me. The first foundation of any emotional resilience I claim to have, comes from the belief that there is a purpose and plan to the universe and that we all have a significant part to play. That the ultimate ending will be for good.
When difficult times come, either from external sources, or from my own internal insecurities and neurosis, this foundation allows me to eventually work through my thought processes to acceptance. Then to action, if that is what is required, or if action is not required on my part, it allows me to let go, let others, let the universe.
This could be an easy way to escape responsibility and to just slide along, allowing the universe to do its thing. Fortunately or unfortunately, a confessor, a psychologist and several older mentors have instilled in me the need and the appreciation of doing, as Wendy calls it, “a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself”. (I love the way you phrased that idea. I am long familiar with the concept but I had never heard it described in those words.) The surprise is that you always find strengths as well as faults if you sincerely look at yourself.
The longer I live, the more I realize that emotional health, like physical health, is an ongoing process. Just like our physical bodies, our minds have well and not well times. One day I handle things fine and the next totally blow it. The challenge is to keep going. Fostering emotional strength is also a slow process. Patience is required, and just like any biological process some emotional changes cannot be ‘built or constructed” but must be allowed to grow and mature at their own pace.
As we can see from the various comments here, emotional development is also intensely personal. No two people evolve in exactly the same way. What works for one person can be hurtful and destructive for another. This is an area of growth where you cannot copy someone else. At the same time you cannot be critical of something that works for someone else but not for you.
In this realm everyone has to do their own hard work.
Great video.
I am living and learning every day in the same way…
"I really appreciate that Peak Prosperity offers a place for these discussions because in my opinion this is the single most important part of preparation. When TSHTF, all you have is your own abilities in the moment. Nobody knows what twists and turns we will face and we can all improve the likelihood of faring well by taking care of our inner world as well as our outer."I couldn't have said this any better. Thanks SG. What is your opinion on using meditation for trauma? - Cheers - P.
Thank you for your reply Chris. I'd like to comment on some of your comments.First of all, your statement about "beliefs vs. opinions are in play because of the emotional content of the response" is, in itself, a belief, not a fact or an evidence based statement that is proven by any of the literature that I'm aware of. You've seemed to come to accept this statement it as a hard and fast rule whereas I think "an unflinching look at facts and data" will show that there is an absence of facts and data to support such a supposition. I may be mistaken, however, so if you can point me to a suitable reference, I'd be eager to investigate it and alter my opinion according. I definitely think there is validity to your statement but I'm not willing to embrace it as wholeheartedly as you have.
We do indeed have "a very active and controlling emotion-based limbic system" but it is not necessarily "operating all the time". Although my statement:
"You were designed with emotions for a particular reason. There is an increased survival potential tied with emotion. If you think being emotionless in such a context is advantageous, I'd be interested in your explanation of why mankind evolved with emotion rather than without. Mr. Spock is fiction, not reality."
was addressed to mememonkey, I'd be interested in your take on the matter. Do you have any thoughts on why we have a limbic system and why we have emotions? I can't hope but notice that you are not fully comfortable with the expression of emotions that could potentially raise conflict but they obviously are part of the human experience for a reason.
With regards to your statements:
"Finally, Troof, I would note that your list rather conveniently begins in 1900, which was right after a number of mass mortality events that coincided with capitalism.
For example, the U.S. Native American population in the year 1500 was estimated to be around 15 million but had been reduced to only 237,000 by 1900, making it one of the most sustained periods of genocide on record."
my list wasn't "conveniently" post-1900 to avoid any earlier events. It simply addressed what I felt was your inaccurate statement about communism, an "ism" by the way that was brought up by you in contradistinction to another "ism" brought up by you. As an aside, I don't think I would have gone the "ism" route in the first place but that's my opinion. But getting back to the subject, these events are during times we are all familiar with and some of us have even lived through. With regards to the decimation of the Native American population being genocide, this particular assertion is questionable and open to debate.
http://hnn.us/article/7302
From that article:
To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design. - See more at: http://hnn.us/article/7302#sthash.jLEdzyl2.dpuf
To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design. - See more at: http://hnn.us/article/7302#sthash.jLEdzyl2.dpuf
To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design. - See more at: http://hnn.us/article/7302#sthash.jLEdzyl2.dpuf
To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design. - See more at: http://hnn.us/article/7302#sthash.jLEdzyl2.dpuf
These events, which transpired over several centuries, were not, for the most part, an overtly planned genocide happening within a much, much shorter time frame such as was instituted by the Stalinists and the Maoists. The decimation of the Native American population was brought about largely (but admittedly not entirely) by the accidental introduction of disease (although, in later years, there appears to be some indication that certain pathogens were purposely introduced). In truth, considering "body counts" of who killed who by direct violence, the Native Americans actually killed more European Americans than vice versa according to one reference which detailed the exchanges and the numbers, event by event, dating from the 1600s. Unfortunately, I can't find that reference at the moment but I know it exists since when I discovered it, I was actually surprised by the numbers.
Also, with regards to "a number of mass mortality events that coincided with capitalism", being coincident with is obviously quite different from being causative of. In addition, your argument is a bit of a strawman since my contention was with communism providing "at least the basics of sustenance" and nothing else. I think history shows that this statement is patently false.
I agree that consciousness, mindfulness, and awareness are key to improving the human condition but one must remember that exclusion of emotion is not a pre-requisite for a more enlightened condition and is definitely not a pre-requisite for survival. Strong emotion can be the driving force keeping one alive in life threatening situations. BTDT.
P.S. Sorry for the quadruple duplication of the cut and paste part. I just can't seem to get rid of that.