Category Archives: Personal Development

Health, Personal Development, Sport

The New Mental Health Mantra

It’s all getting a bit ridiculous wouldn’t your say – this new mental health mantra. Suddenly there’s this new excuse for failing or missing the show. When nothing else sticks…just pull this one out of the hat because the whole internet universe has gravitated toward it and you know how politically incorrect it would be to call it out as “bull”.

You see few of us are ever faced with perfect circumstances when delivering the goods. There’s always something in the context of the playing field not to mention haunts from the past. That is what makes the show adrenaline filled and exciting. One is faced with the task at hand along with the context in which we present ourselves albeit the training and obstacles overcome. We may not meet a standard we expect of ourselves but a measure is taken at a point in time. It’s not a matter of win or go home. It’s a matter of doing our best.

If you put your name forward as a contestant, you have a duty to meet the obligation unless obvious unforeseen circumstances present themselves practically. If you don’t feel up to the task…then don’t put your name forward.

At Wimbledon, Naomi Osaka took an entry spot from an embattled tennis player who would have scrambled to qualify likely indebted using scarce resources to travel amidst COVID concerns. In the world of professional tennis there is much disparity in pay between players who consistently make it through to later rounds and players who qualify to make the draw.  Osaka is wealthy. Many of her tennis compatriots are not. She should have thought of them before deciding to contest the event if she was stricken with mental anxiety.

The Simone Biles situation is unfathomable in the context of my aforementioned. If she had thought that her mind was in such a state that she could not pull off the difficult dangerous manoeuvres, with the support of her coach she should have simply adjusted her routine accordingly in order to honor her commitments to her team, and her country. In my opinion, government funding should be withheld from athletes who fail to appear in the Olympic Arena having qualified citing a “mental health” concern. As far as I’m concerned, any individual who has demonstrated the characteristics and training necessary to qualify for international competition also possesses the mental acuity to perform.     

Personal Development, Philosophy

The Oversensitive

I’m starting to see a lot of victimhood and oversensitive reaction as I read the press. Let’s start with the Julie Payette matter. Irrespective of what you think of her credentials to run the Governor General’s office, I’m wondering why she was permitted to get away with bullying staff at the very first instance. Why would anyone in a workplace tolerate abuse?! I’m perplexed because there are protocols that all employees in every job can undertake to ensure their safety and civility in the workplace but they fear retribution and they are unwilling to fight the good fight until a form of group think is established amongst many. Then suddenly there’s a movement. It’s wimpy and was evident in the Julie Payette debacle.

Next up we have Governor Cuomo from New York. I’ve watched the guy in action when he was dealing with the New York COVID problem and I viewed him to be a pragmatic leader. It’s looking like his conduct around women was not always dignified. I make no excuses for him but it’s not news to you that particular cultures have a manner of machismo that has been condoned for decades without consequence. He is a smart man and in his position should have been able to stifle any impulse to act on any Italian culturally laden proclivity. My question is why are these women not smacking him and don’t give me the “I might lose my job sob story”. Need we open a committee or investigation to deal with the oversensitive?

Now we also have Meghan Markle accused of bullying staff. This was an actress for God’s sake with no experience in management.  What was she doing leading people? How can you blame her for a situation she was thrust into without the tools for the job. Now she’s gone – so what’s the problem?

I’m sure you’ve seen much more than these three examples of wimpy whiners who fail to call out conduct at the first instance and then look toward society for redress years later. Some of it is frankly absurd but the lawyers are lapping it up. 

Lifestyle, Personal Development

The Online Learning Phenomenon

Caught a piece of the local Calgary news tonight and I’m watching kids sitting behind a computer at home possibly with a parent who is ill suited for assisting with the curriculum. Apparently, the fear of sending kids to school has been so great that the board suggests that the numbers of home schooled in Calgary equates with 30 new schools.

In person teachers have training and experience to spot weakness in a child and react accordingly. The in person school environment also in theory facilitates the social development of a child so long as the school environment is socially healthy. Parents certainly will be cognizant of these elements forgone in the home environment. Parents will be able to monitor progress comparatively with benchmarks but trained teachers would still be more attuned toward applying corrective measures and provide an unbiased perception of a child’s developmental progress.

The new age parent may be in for surprises when their kid reaches late teen age years discovering that the broader world is not as hospitable as mom’s home office. 

Personal Development, Philosophy

A Place Still For Satire

I muse about what witty comedians of yesteryear would make of our “new world order”. I’m thinking that they’d be stupefied by the abundance of new material right at their fingertips. Without question, there’s an introversion going on with the internet playing a role which is restricting folks from escaping their rational mind. Twitter is the platform right now which most readily exemplifies the overblown pragmatism facing mankind. My new coined phrase is “intangible tolerance” when comparing today to pre-internet. There used to be something healthy about not knowing and not having google at our fingertips. We could just let it all be and since we didn’t know…we could count on our friends and family not knowing either. Therefore we need not have judged or be judged – so much. Of course this is an oversimplification but I digress further.

Mind space pre-internet had more plasticity because neural receptors weren’t so fatigued with stimuli. Cognitive freshness was easier to access and within such a state would be acute to satirists stirring the social landscape for fun. You’ve all seen your good jokes fly overhead more because of the receiver distracted by reactionary thoughts compounded through a bombardment of stimuli. Receivers have simply not been in the ready position and you witness it every day. 

A whole industry has evolved around assisting those stuck in the reactive mind. Ekhart Tolle comes to mind as an author who eloquently portrayed the phenomenon is his book “The Power of Now”. There are others more attuned at helping those transfixed by thought obsession. However; I might suggest diagnostic tests you can perform on yourself. Do you feel “heavy” or “light” in reacting to stimuli? Another test is whether you believe your level of concentration meets a standard set by yourself. Thirdly, you want to know how readily you can enter a place of creativity in absorbing and expressing.          

Philosophy, Personal Development

Comments on The Industry of “Personal Growth”

Before I start….let me premise with the statement, I believe in “personal growth”

 Here is where I differ from folks who circulate in the industry of “personal growth”. We do most of our learning as humans between the age of 0 and 15 years of age and for developing success habits our parents indeed played a large role in our growth….like it or not.  Somewhere along the line in our formative years we were learning about consequences to our behavior. We were learning about rewards emanating from work and behaviors which would lead to successful relationships. We were learning right from wrong, etiquette (maybe), how to overcome, and skills necessary to complete tasks. We were learning adaptations and workarounds. We were up to challenges or we weren’t. If we were not, then we ran the risk of isolation. We learned when not to say what we were thinking. We learned to speak with strength in the right context. We learned how to assess environments with our intuitive senses and feedback mechanisms. All this was going on prior to the age of fifteen. A tremendous amount of stimuli came our way.    

So, this personal growth industry wants you to believe that you need to be remade or remove much of what you had already learned or discard baggage or eliminate dysfunctional relationships. Some other person is going to do a quick assessment on your weaknesses having not lived through your years of development assumedly by injecting a bag of tricks from the self help domain in order to make you new and improved.

I suggest that if you believe you need to find a better version of “you” that you assess your situation and work it backward for yourself for starters. Then entertain bringing in somebody else to assist with your own assessment.  You do have the capacity to be honest with yourself but you must do so in the context of some reading or watching / listening to course materials in the area in order to stimulate regions within you that yearn to be fortified. Engagement with a practitioner will be much more fruitful having researched yourself first and identified sources of trouble.

It’s difficult to witness the disingenuousness of unqualified people prescribing without the authority to do so. It’s even worse to watch the low esteemed subject themselves to others when they’d be better served in solace with abundant materials available. The kinds of people one wants to see more of in the personal development space are those who have achieved what they’re espousing.

Personal Development

Ever Present Master Class

It’s becoming more common….the “Master Class”. It’s so vain. Don’t get me wrong. I have no difficulty with people posing as experts but these “master classes” are growing “long in the tooth”.

What’s most interesting is that predicates associated with trainings can be out of date in short order due to changing social and economic landscapes.

What appeals to me are “values” and “merit” but not so much “tricks” and “gimmicks”. You see you can’t teach me values and merit. It’s engrained through a history of nurturing from parents, fundamental education, inquisitive proactive learning, and life experience.  Philosophical expression consequently manifests intuition and common sense. You don’t need to put a bible in front of me either to differentiate right from wrong.  I sense these master classes pose as substitutes for the tepidness of an individual to execute on what one already knows but is overly fearful of risk.

Certainly the master class promoters are cognizant of the impact of a “leftist” education on the autonomous will of the individual. Why not just step into the void and patronize with pretention presuming that all are meek and imperceptive of aloofness. Well, I call it out.  

Politics, Lifes Lessons, Personal Development

All This Hatred

I woke up this morning to a USA Today headline “The man is pathetic”: Giuliani attacks Cohen. My gut tells me that those spewing such vitriolic comments likely have ethical dilemmas themselves which brew underneath a bravado like facade.  This seems to be the new normal in politics. In an era past when differences of opinion could be debated with intelligence and unwritten rules of conduct, it’s now all out unfiltered attack based on emotionally planted self centred ego driven applause seeking irrationality.

It’s quite obvious to the bystander that Trump’s ex lawyer Cohen succumbed to heat applied by Trump during tenuous transactions arising from Trump’s business and personal conduct. In the remote chance you haven’t been witnessing Trump’s bully like conduct and visceral need to react intensely to any slight against him through his twitter account, never mind his propensity to litigate contractors in business, you can easily formulate through a “paint by numbers” like puzzle that this seems to be a man who takes every occasion to wield financial power regardless of ethical implications. Now, he is facing the music as he deserves. I had actually seen enough simply through his conduct in the election campaign that this was a man unfit for office. In spite of nepotism rules, Trump somehow determined that his daughter and son in law despite their youth and inexperience in governmental affairs would be apt “Advisers to the President”. I actually believe the man has some merit and humanity behind his veil which has unfortunately been voided by aberration.  

I suggest that Mr. Giuliani’s propensity to defend thePresident has more to do with his own need to have his ego stroked than anymisplaced loyalty. There are men who reach their twilight years and still donot discover the means to bypass this ego laden short circuitingmechanism. 

Upon posting, I thought this might go in my blog categorization of “personal development”.  Wink.

Uncategorized, Personal Development

Staying Inspired

How are you staying inspired? Who has the best staying power? It’s those who complement their training with influences of those who have achieved. It takes a continual dose and then an expanded repertoire of sources. You know why? It’s because you’ll get stuck. You’ll hit a plateau. Your mind will wander off. Hence; if you’re committed to continual improvement, you can schedule in your exposure to influence. You can make it a priority. 

I had no clue what I was getting into upon stepping into a musical journey with the purchase of an electric guitar having experienced an introduction to music theory through piano. I sensed that those rock icons were high school dropouts with some finger dexterity learned through rudimentary practice.  Well, I was delightfully short sighted.  It’s true that rock guitarists may spend much of their soloing time in the pentatonic scale with fundamental chords derived from the Circle of Fifths. However; many other accomplished guitarists are in fact versed in music theory with ear training to facilitate improvisation. The instrument itself has the potential to extend into all genres of music.

Then there’s the concept of “what to practice.” There’s a propensity toward practicing what you know instead of building, switching, alternating, completing, stretching, expanding, and redirecting.  I’m thinking that my guitar journey’s pathway to development is no different than any other pursuit in developing competence leading to mastery. What if we document practice sessions for planned later date reinforcement? What if we engage interpersonally with those who can supplement ideas? What if we intertwine the learning experience from our hobbyist pursuit with other facets of existence? Staying inspired inherently means not only the act of interpreting a production which compels but also looking deeper into the person behind the piece.    

First of all, are you spending the time? Secondly, are you spending it the right way? Thirdly, are you manifesting enjoyment of your pursuit through applied education? If you don’t have the time now, will you be sufficiently inspired at ground zero with the onset of retirement?     

Lifes Lessons, Personal Development, Philosophy, Uncategorized

Should You Compete

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Should you compete?   I contend you should.  Mankind’s betterment and the fulfillment of one’s individual aspirations are served by competition.  The motivating instinct is bread from dissatisfaction.  Should it be the Jones’ next door that you source as your opponent.  No, but it should be someone who has what you want so that you can get your own or better so long as the target  is inherent to yours or society’s common good.

The notion of not competing puts one on a path of contentment which can be instilled from feedback accumulated over time that one may not deserve victory.  Your boss certainly doesn’t want you to compete.  He doesn’t want you to take his job.  Your spouse doesn’t want you to compete for fear that the relationship becomes imbalanced.  Your pastor doesn’t want you to compete lest it create anxiety around scripture interpretations.  Your teacher doesn’t want you to compete considering  it might make work by stressing curriculum boundaries.  Yet, our system of economics in western civilization is set up for you to compete and some lack want of a win. Regressing from competition is akin to defining oneself by losing when in essence losing should be considered a seed for future growth.   We were all born to win but the aforementioned feedback loops creates sideline dwellers.

When teams are destined to miss the playoffs, players don’t become motivated to lose as an incentive to earn a better draft pick.  Players fight for a victory in pursuit of excellence and pride for what they do.  It is an instinct of the human form which cannot be denied.  You are no different with exception to possible cognitive forces arising from environment.

The zero sum game doesn’t always apply.  Win win relationships and transactions are created everyday by people keen to compete.

 

Personal Development

Little Bit of Eustress

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May 21, 2007

Learned this term Eustress in “Growth and Development” class in university. Was reminded of it on a conference call a few months back and again today upon leafing through one of my fave’s by Mandino.

“All too often we humans indulge in the cowardice of being too ‘careful’, selling out for a promise of security. And we get cheated. You’ve ssen it. The futility of using ones job as a place to hide. It’s futile to live for some future time when things will be different, believing that as soon as ‘I’m older,’ richer,’ ‘more educated,’ (or in a more sophisticated vein: ‘when I finish my therapy’) then all will be well ….dream on, for these are but futile delusions.”

– Og Mandino

The thoughts you processed today are enormous and they make up your identity which oftentimes goes unpublished and open to constant editing. The filter is mostly set to high and Og claims that you “insure yourself against danger.” Indeed, we’ve been conditioned to hold back in a fashion confined to society’s norms but have we not taken this lesson too far by repressing our inner most sanctum which reflects our true identity? Since when has the liberty police imposed sanctions against your free will to act passionately in a way that serves yourself and your fellow man? Speak up and be heard my friends.

“The pilgrims and the people with Columbus didn’t board up on three ships and come to America to get a job.” – Severn

Blair Sveinson
President
DMX Ecom Station