They Recovered The Scream

AP

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Police recovered two paintings they believe are the Edvard Munch masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna," two years after masked gunmen seized the priceless artworks from an Oslo museum in a bold, daylight raid, authorities announced Thursday.

The painter of The Scream died in 1944 at the age of 80, but many people overstressed by elements of the modern world have related to this painting until it's become an icon for today and not just some relic from 1893.

X-ray Music

Kevin Kelly

In the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1950s underground night spots would play music pirated from the west. The only media they had were recorders etched into discarded X-ray film.

These creations didn't last as long as vinyl records, but the look of them is more memorable. Check out the images.

Rethinking: Every Man For Himself

Washington Post

A federal judge yesterday threw out a lawsuit by coal miners demanding that the government do more to ensure miners have working oxygen supplies and know how to use them.

Most of us will never step into a mine so why should we give this story a second thought? Corporate representatives tell us that market forces should be allowed to work. But personal responsibility has limits.

How can personal responsibility and market forces ensure that all of the water you drink isn't contaminated?

We don't like feeling out of control, but much of life is out of our lone personal control. That's why we have city, county, state and national government. What we can't control as a single individual we can control collectively. Water treatment, the availability of emergency responders and many other things that we may be so used to that they are nearly invisible except when they fail us.

If we wait to pay attention until we have a crisis, that crisis will be bigger than it needs to be.

We can take personal responsibility by doing our part to support systems that are effective and refusing to be conned by those who demand personal responsibility as a way of dodging responsibility for their actions.

On this first year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans, we shouldn't need this reminder.

See Spot Drive

AP

BEIJING (AP) -- A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China's Inner Mongolia
region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday. No injuries were reported although both vehicles were slightly damaged, it said. The woman, identified only be her surname, Li, said her dog "was fond of crouching on the steering wheel and often watched her drive," according to Xinhua. "She thought she would let the dog 'have a try' while she operated the accelerator and brake," the report said. "They did not make it far before crashing into an oncoming car."

Since so many people think about their pets as their children, eventually one of them would forget that dogs enjoy bumping into each other.

Technorati tags:
Life

Re-thinking: Your World History

ABC News

Born in 1988, incoming freshmen grew up knowing only two presidents, searching for Waldo and eating dolphin-free canned tuna. Those are some of the 75 cultural landmarks on the Beloit College Mindset List, an annual compilation that offers a glimpse of the world view through the eyes of each incoming class. The list was released Wednesday by this private school of 1,250 in this southern Wisconsin city.

and

Students didn't agree with all the items on the list, for example, that they grew up with reality-television shows and have always had access to their own credit cards. "I think these things might apply to some people, but not to everyone, said Brigid Wold-Walsh, 18, from Seattle.
Nief acknowledged that most of the items are relevant to white middle-class America.

This list is a good reminder about assumptions and how different events serve as the touchstones of childhood. But cultural icons from the last 18 years or less aren't all that shape a childhood.

My parents and grandparents passed on many of their touchstones to me. I experienced the great depression in two very different ways (California middle-class comfort vs. a Wyoming homestead and the CCC). Since my parents were older than the parents of many of my peers, what I learned from them was very different than what many of my classmates learned from their parents and grandparents.

A good friend of mine who is only months older than I am has a very different perspective on key cultural events. She is an American who spent most of her childhood in Japan while her parents were missionaries. Everything I absorbed from TV as a child and all of the American fads are meaningless to her. What I assumed to be universal I learned is very specific to my experiences and my observations.

My world history is much more personal than any list could encapsulate.

But lists such as the one produced by Beloit College give me a way to shake up my assumption of what everyone knows to be true. As long as we see the world from only one perspective, the world remains in many ways two dimensional.

Technorati tags:
Beloit College Mindset List,

Re-thinking: Don't Marry A Career Woman

I blogged about the Forbes article of that name written by Michael Noer at Abyss2hope but there is a fundamental flaw in the article that I overlooked. I didn't acknowledge that it's true that men shouldn't marry a career woman. It's just as true that he shouldn't marry a non-career woman.

Men should marry a person not a label. Women too.

The inability to see past the label is the real problem and what spells trouble for a marriage, not whatever label could be applied to a potential spouse. Labels rightly apply to cars and boats and other objects.

People are more than their labels.

What's needed is the ability to see a potential spouse's full humanity and the ability to get beyond what a spouse will do for you. Shallow marriages may endure for years but at their core, they will never thrive without a great transformation.

Details that seem shallow are important in a marriage. If one person wants to live close to family and the other wants to live at least a thousand miles from the nearest in-law, that's a detail that can break an otherwise solid marriage. This is especially true if the spouses' method of resolving this difference conflict.

From the approach Michael Noer took in his article, his approach to marital conflict seems to be, "I'm the man, what I say goes." That approach can get a man what he demands, but even when it does, it makes a marriage lonely because the marriage has stopped being a full relationship.

When you fully control a relationship, you diminish it and yourself, and you give the other person a strong motivation for wanting something far better.

From the, "Hey, marriage would be perfect if it weren't for those pesky women," camp of men, here's a transcript of comments made by Today on Fox News, host Michael Jerrick.

I also find it fascinating when men who use status and money as a lure don't understand why they only reel in women who are after their status and money. Rather than seeing how their actions led to the result they don't like, they put all of the blame on women.

Technorati tags:
Life, Success, Personal Growth, Marriage

Re-thinking: Planets (part 2) Pluto Out

But with the controversy, how long will this decision last?

AP

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but
scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday.

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines.

But why exactly?

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine.

That still leaves the task of finding a new mnemonic for remembering the names and order of the remaining 8 planets in our solar system.

But if Pluto isn't a planet, what is it?

Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet?

Stay tuned.

Technorati tags:
Pluto, Planets

Re-thinking: Using Scripture To Fire Annoying Employees

Don't we all wish we had divine authority to rid our workplaces of those who bug us in some way? If we did, we could avoid taking any responsibility for our part in the situation.

The downside of attempting to make a firing 100% divinely based is that we humans can quickly give God a bad name.

The following case is a perfect example of this and isn't exempt because the events and people came into conflict inside a church.

Yahoo News (hat tip to Bring It On!)

LaBouf and the church board fired Mary Lambert, 81, earlier this month in a letter that cited the scriptural qualifications for Sunday School teachers, Lambert said.
"They quote First Timothy Two, 11-14: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent," Lambert said, reading from the letter.

and

The board of the Watertown First Baptist Church said in a statement on its Web
site that the scripture rules concerning women teaching men in a church setting
had only played a small part in Lambert's sacking.

"Christian courtesy motivates us to refrain from making any public accusations against her," the board said.

Apparently, this 81-year-old Sunday school teacher wasn't submissive enough to the pastor or the church board. Good thing they stopped her before she influenced any impressionable young minds.

Oh, wait, she taught Sunday school for more than 50 years.

The true reason for her firing must have been something other than her gender since that hasn't changed in the last 50 years. After reading the entire article, it appears that the decision to fire her came first and only then did this pastor go looking for scripture to justify that firing.

This pastor would have been better off by telling the truth and saying that this particular woman didn't work with him or with the board in the way they wanted her to.

When we pass the buck for our personal decisions to the Bible or any other book we consider holy, we diminish what we hold dear. And we diminish ourselves.

Technorati tags:
Mary Lambert

Carnival For Book Writers #5

Welcome to the August 23, 2006 edition of the carnival for book writers.

craft

In "A series of stumbles and wrong turns" posted at The Publishing Spot, we're provided an overview of what you can get from a creative writing workshop.

editors

In Victoria Strauss -- Another New Alert on Writer Beware posted at Writer Beware, we get a report of complaints about the publisher Quiet Storm.

literary agents

In Getting Published - 5. Advice from UK Literary Agent, Lucy Luck (Podcast) posted at Fusionview, we get to hear an interview rather than read one.

In How to Find a Literary Agent posted at Eric Nylund, we get advice on different ways to contact literary agents.

In I Don't Understand It posted at The Man in Black, we get a discussion from an editor about why 5 months after moving to a new house, agents are still sending submissions to him at his old publishing house.

In Victoria Strauss -- New Alert on Writer Beware posted at Writer Beware, we get information about a court judgement against a literary agent.

In non-virgin queries and "This and only this" parsed out posted at Miss Snark, we get one agent's answers to a question about re-querying and a question about requested material.

In Long Time No Post posted at Wylie Merrick Literary Agency, we get a discussion on rejections and spam filters.

In The Handshake Agreement posted at Bookends LLC, we get insight into why agents may insist on a written agreement.

In Saying Goodbye to Your Agent and When the Agent Says Good-bye posted at Pub Rants, posted at Pub Rants, we get a discussion about the end of the author/agent relationship.

In Jumping Ship posted at Miss Snark, we get her take on switching agents.

In it's not your fault, but I just don't want you anymore posted at Et in Arcaedia, we get a post about agents and rejection, from publishers and authors.

marketing fiction

In Enduring Themes in Chick Lit posted at Pub Rants, we get information useful to those writing fiction aimed at women.

In Today's interview: Cover artist, James Griffin posted at Dusted by Whimsy, we get a peek into one of the creative minds who works behind the scenes, but plays a powerful role in getting readers to pick up a book.

marketing non-fiction

In 10 Steps to Writing an Ebook - Part 1 posted at Mindful Entrepreneur, we get advice for those considering working in this format.

In Designing metaphors posted at A Girl's Guide to Managing Projects, we get an author's impression of the cover art used on her first non-fiction book.

whatever

In Honesty posted at Murder She Writes, we get a post on pen names and privacy concerns.

In My Experience Of Writing 26 Ways to Feel Good Vibes posted at Dreaming Of Reality—Adventures on the grid, an author looks back from his book release date.

In Do I Gotta? posted at Murder She Writes, we get a discussion of the career benefits you can gain by volunteering to help the writers' organizations you belong to.

In A Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 1 [updated] posted at Daily Kos, we get a post from an author and editor.

In Big Bad Book Blog Links 08-18-06 posted at Big Bad Book Blog, we get links to interesting articles on the book business.

In The Archimedes Palimpsest posted at Living the Scientific Life, we get a little perspective on the power of books and the importance of putting knowledge into a book.

That concludes this edition of the carnival for book writers.

If you have written or read a blog post that is useful to book writers, please nominate it for the next edition of carnival for book writers using our carnival submission form.

Links to past editions and information about future editions can be found at http://carnivalforbookwriters.blogspot.com

Technorati tags: carnival for book writers blog carnival blogging writing literary agents books publishing

Re-thinking: Irrationality

When we call someone or ourselves irrational, it's almost always an insult. But what does it really mean when someone is irrational? And are all those who are rational superior to all those irrational people?

Often when we use these terms, irrational equals emotional and rational equals lack of emotion.

Yet a total lack of emotion makes someone sociopathic.

If you are labeled irrational because you approach issues from a visceral perspective rather than a detached, intellectual perspective, the experience which makes an issue emotional needs to be respected.

It's easy for those who have never gone hungry to be rational about poverty. But that distance also means they don't truly understand those who are irrational on the issue.

However, feelings alone can be shortsighted and may lead us to make decisions that come back to bite us. This is amplified when we are disconnected from the source of our feelings. Reconnecting to the source of our triggers can be traumatic, but it can show us the rationality behind irrational feelings or reactions.

Respect what the rational and the irrational each have to offer you. For when you combine these two, you will be able to tap into great ideas that have great heart. And you will have the motivation to propel you when you have no logical reason to hope for success.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Psychology, Personal Development

Re-thinking: Powerfulness

Have you ever hurt someone without meaning to or without realizing you had the power to hurt that person?

Are you a powerful person?

For all of us the answer to both questions is yes. The only answer that's in doubt is whether you understand and respect your power.

You have power every time you interact with other people.

Road rage is an expression of power, but it isn't a respectful use of power. It doesn't respect others, but it also reveals a need to over-compensate for a feeling of powerlessness. Others must be taught that they can't get away with not respecting us on the road.

If you have issues that make you want to punish anyone who threatens your power, you need to deal with those issues directly not through lashing out. But lashing out is easier and in the moment, it can be far more satisfying. Maybe even euphoric.

But the satisfaction from that type of power can't last.

If other people make you become aggressive and you can't own your words or your actions, you need to step back and see that between each stimulus and response you have a choice. The resulting behavior that comes from ignoring that choice or continuing to follow the easiest path belongs only to you.

He or she did NOT make you do it, whatever it is.

If you don't use your power respectfully, you will be responsible for damaging relationships you don't want to harm. If you use your power with force, you may be responsible for a crime that can land you in jail.

If you have a people in your life who don't use their power respectfully toward you, the responsibilty for that misuse of power is theirs even if you triggered them somehow. You do have power, but just as we shouldn't underestimate our power, we shouldn't overestimate it.

People can try to rob you of your power by making you responsible for their reactions to you. It's fine to assess your own behavior, but it's not fine to own other people's reactions.

Sometimes the most powerful decision is the decision to retreat from a bad situation. If someone nearly runs you off the road, it takes power to let a bad situation go without making it worse by racing after that car to teach the driver a lesson.

There will be times when conflict must be faced, but it can be handled respectfully, at least by you. If someone tries to draw you over a line you don't want to cross, do what's needed to avoid taking the bait.

Respect your power and the power of others and surround yourself with people who respect your power and their own whenever possible. When you are around people who don't respect your power boundaries, give them a demonstration of what respectful boundaries look like.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Personal Development

Re-thinking: The Face Of Poverty

NY Times

OAKRIDGE, Ore. — For a few decades, this little town on the western slope of the Cascades hopped with blue-collar prosperity, its residents cutting fat Douglas fir trees and processing them at two local mills.

Into the 1980’s, people joked that poverty meant you didn’t have an RV or a boat. A high school degree was not necessary to earn a living through logging or mill work, with wages roughly equal to $20 or $30 an hour in today’s terms.

But by 1990 the last mill had closed, a result of shifting markets and a dwindling supply of logs because of depletion and tighter environmental rules. Oakridge was wrenched through the rural version of deindustrialization, sending its population of 4,000 reeling in ways that are still playing out.

Many people excuse doing nothing about poverty because of the assumption that external improvements make no real difference. But if external changes can bring rising levels of poverty, external changes can bring lower levels of poverty.

But the key to reducing poverty isn't change, it's effective change.

Should we blame the government and politicians for laws and programs that are an ineffective waste of tax dollars?

Yes and no.

We have more power than we realize to influence government and politicians. Corporate lobbyists don't have to be the only voices your representatives hear. Visit Congress.org to see some of the ways you as an individual can influence your representatives.

Many public efforts taken to clean up poor urban areas are in fact efforts to clean areas of poor people. That's easier for people to accept in urban areas where it's assumed that the poor are that way by choice and are a morally deficient blight.

Expressed in 2005 dollars, the average pay for a full-time worker in rural Oregon fell to $27,600 in 2005 from $34,200 in 1976. Over the same period, average pay in urban counties in Oregon climbed to $37,800, putting the rural-urban gap at $10,200 and rising, according to the Oregon Employment Department.

Since this problem is systemic, the solution can't be limited to individual change. That means personal responsibility won't be enough to keep this rural-urban gap from continuing to widen. Technology should be a tool to give those in rural areas access, but that requires infrastructure.

And if you ever catch yourself sneering at the urban homelessness, read this San Francisco Gate article. (hat tip to Sinister Girl)

You never know if some natural or economic disaster will turn the tables on you and strip you of resources you assumed were permanent.

If nothing else, you can help by going through your pantry periodically and donating to a food shelf the non-perishables that you aren't likely to eat rather than letting those items sit there until they go bad.

Technorati tags:
Life poverty homelessness

The Deadline For The Fifth Edition of Carnival For Book Writers Is Tomorrow

The 5th edition of the carnival for book writers will be posted here on Aug. 23. The submission deadline is tomorrow, Aug. 20 at 11 pm so there's still time to submit your blog article, or someone else's, to the next edition of carnival for book writers using our carnival submission form.

What I'd especially like to get are posts that give insider views of the business of book publishing. If you've read or written a great post that contains insights from a literary agent, book publisher, editor or published author, please nominate that post.

Links to past editions and information about future editions can be found at http://carnivalforbookwriters.blogspot.com

Technorati tags: carnival for book writers blog carnival blogging writing literary agents books publishing

Re-thinking: Powerlessness

Have you ever turned away from a serious problem because it seemed too massive to change?

I have and I regret doing so.

No matter how big a problem or issue is, you still have some power. If nothing else, you have the power to choose how you will react to a problem that is completely outside of your control. If you can't make the situation better, you can do something that will prevent yourself from being totally out of control.

Some people will insist that you have no power because they don't want you to know that you do have power. "Hey, that's just the way things are. Get used to it," can be said very easily by those who benefit from the way things are.

Decide what you want to preserve.

Decide what you are willing to sacrifice.

Change what you do.

Finding your power may start small or it may start big. Look first at how you can change yourself and your reactions to what makes you feel powerless. You might realize you have far more options that you imagined.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Personal Growth, Personal Development

Rethinking: Big Talk, Little Will

In Thomas Friedman's column Big talk, little will, he writes about the mistakes that were made in the war in Iraq, but the types of mistakes he accuses this administration of making are at their heart personal mistakes on the grandest scale.

So what's at the heart of the mistake?

Image = 99% of success.

But when the image of success becomes all consuming, the will to do the unglamorous tasks that are needed to succeed (like genuinely getting sweaty with effort) gets forgotten or moved down the to-do list until they never get done. That habit can cause many seemingly successful people to get into trouble. The appearance of career and/or financial success becomes more important than real meaningful success.

When image = 99% of success, you have to be on all the time.

That means the real you has to be missing from large chunks of your own life.

Sound familiar?

It does to me. For a variety of reasons I didn't think the real me was good enough.

I was wrong.

To keep from going at full speed until you hit a brick wall, you have to stop hiding behind the facade that you are on schedule, in full control and going in the right direction. For myself that meant taking a chance and making a major course correction in my life. It meant examining things about myself that I had refused to examine for years.

Switching out of the mode of big talk, little will can be painful, but I believe the potential rewards are worth the pain. I talk (or blog) a lot, but I try to stay away from big talk that falsely inflates who I am.

I may never look perfect, but attacks on my image tell me more about the attacker than it does about myself. I've gotten rid of that secret fear that all the naysayers are right about me.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Personal Development

Re-thinking: Shame On Me If You Fool Me Twice

The intent of the follow up to Shame on you if you fool me once may be good, but it can leave you feeling responsible for not realizing immediately after the first time that someone was fooling you.

Yet a pattern isn't a pattern with only one dot.

If you have a history with the person who fooled you once, that one dot may seem like an anomaly in an otherwise acceptable pattern.

Many times that's the case.

Otherwise trustworthy people occasionally hurt us.

But there are people who create acceptable patterns as a smokescreen so you won't see they are dedicated to fooling you again and again and again. Or they may feel fooling you makes them superior to you when that's not the case at all.

When you are fooled, don't take permanent ownership of the identity of sucker.

It's true that there is a sucker born every day, but I'd rather be the sucker than the one delighting in taking advantage of other people's trust.

When you meet people who would rather be the exploiter, be very careful. You never know when they'll turn on you.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth

Re-thinking: Planets

Reuters

The International Astronomers Union (IAU) put forward a definition of a planet on Wednesday that will expand the number from nine to 12, and create different categories of planets in a nod to technological advances that allow astronomers to look deeper into space.

In defining for the first time what exactly a planet is, a seven member committee of the IAU has offered some 2,500 astronomers and scientists gathered from around the world a chance to answer the key question: Does celestial size matter?

Forget the cost to change textbooks. How will all those students remember the name of the planets in order without a mnemonic like:

My Very Easy Method Just Simply Uses Nine Planets

for

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

Technorati tags:
Life definition of planet

Re-thinking: Committed Sex Drives

BBC: Security 'bad news for sex drive'

Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

and

They found 60% of 30-year-old women wanted sex "often" at the beginning of a relationship, but within four years of the relationship this figure fell to under 50%, and after 20 years it dropped to about 20%.

and

About 90% of women wanted tenderness, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship, but only 25% of men who had been in a relationship for 10 years said they were still seeking tenderness from their partner.

One of the scientists (a man, of course) concluded the difference is caused by human evolution. You can read the theory if you like, but if you believe that theory then this is a situation that will be as easy to change as magnetic north.

It's been said that in most relationships the man's body determines when the sex is over. Not because of biology, but because too many men assume sex should be like a bell curve.

When it's up, the sex should be too.

Good sex isn't only a race through the bell curve.

Satisfying sex that is part of a relationship should be about more than your biology.

In my own relationships, once the honeymoon phase ended, I could get an insult or the cold shoulder one moment and when the moment was right -- for him -- I'd get a request for sex.

Hubba hubba. Not.

Men, to tell a woman in numerous ways that she is a lesser being than you and then to expect her to prove you wrong by giving you hot sex is to set yourself up for exactly what you don't want.

No sex or unsatisfying sex.

Choose another way and you'll have a decent chance of getting a different result. Once you stop assuming you aren't getting enough sex because your partner has a lackluster sex drive, you can focus -- with your partner -- on dealing with the problems that send her sex drive scurrying away like an ant from the bottom of your shoe.

Think you can fix this problem by simply moving on to another partner? That will work as well as continuing a habit of pouring water in the gas tank of your next car. Eventually you'll figure out you need to modify your behavior or you're going to get the nasty feeling that all cars (women) are hexed.

The latter will let you see yourself as the injured party, but how satisfying is that?

90% of the women surveyed wanted tenderness. Try it, you might like the results -- for both of you.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development

Re-thinking: Mistakes Were Made

Have you ever been on the receiving end of that ownerless phrase, "Mistakes Were Made"? Did the person say it because they made a mistake like forgetting to take out the trash or was it used as a way to excuse something far more serious than a mere mistake?

I bet I know the answer.
I bet you do too.

How did it make you feel when someone deliberately hurt you and their version of taking ownership of that harm was, "Mistakes were made"?

Trivial.
Stupid.

Many of us want to get past conflict as quickly as possible but accepting a non-apology as if it were a real apology doesn't rid us of the conflict, it simply creates a mirage over the conflict. Because mirages disappear when you get too close, protecting the illusion means stopping all true progress in that area.

Mirages nourish no one.

Next time you are tempted to say, "Mistakes were made," remember what message that sends.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development

Re-thinking: Treadmill Boredom

Here's an ineresting video for all those who think using treadmills equals boredom: Youtube: OK Go - Here It Goes Again

Technorati tags:
Life, YouTube

Re-thinking: Hoping For Fear

In Paul Krugman: Hoping for fear the columnist discusses how some politicians deliberately use fear as a tool. While I believe this type of manipulation is unethical at best, I do believe fear has valid uses.

The key to the honest use of fear is that the goal is out there for all to see and is related to the fear.

For example, fear of cancer can lead people to go to their doctor for recommended screenings.

Unethical use of fear often utilizes a bait-and-switch strategy. The fear of cancer is used to sell a product that in reality does nothing to cure or prevent cancer.

Big difference. One use of fear helps you, the other exploits you.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development, Politics of Fear

Re-thinking: Hindsight is 20/20

Sometimes we do remember past events with 20/20 vision, but what can seem obvious in hindsight can seem that way because of our current emotions.

For many years I assumed all the signs had been there that my first serious boyfriend would turn on me and that I had willfully ignored those obvious warning signs. But the memories of his actions before that final betrayal had been enhanced, like the adding of a soundtrack to a horror movie so the audience will sense that some young thing is about to die and therefore be on edge.

The black cloud of impending disaster wasn't memory, but my feelings about those memories in light of what came later.

Once I realized my hindsight was tainted and not 20/20, I let go of feeling responsible for actions taken against me that I had no reasonable way of anticipating.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development

Re-thinking: Might Makes Right

Might doesn't make right. Might makes for lack of foresight.

When you are (or feel you are) all powerful in the moment, you don't have to worry about the consequences of your actions. But consequences have a way of finding you in the long run, maybe not in external consequences, but our actions can enhance us or they can taint us in ways that entwine themselves with our very being.

When those around you justify their actions through might makes right, watch out. You may not know what actions those people will take when they feel more powerful than you.

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development

Welcome!

Since my primary blog focuses on raising awareness about sexual violence and many people find that subject too intense, I'm creating this blog to discuss ways to create new models for living -- either after trauma or whenever an old model of living isn't working as well as it should.

My focus on Re-model 4 Life is going to be on how to have inner peace and contentment while still being aware of how much is wrong with your life and the world. As someone who had neither of those for far too long, and who is finally learning to find a way to balance optimism and the awareness of unwelcome realities, I will continue exploring how to maintain that balance.

Legal Notice

All anonymous comments become the copyrighted property of Re-model 4 Life. If you do not wish to grant Re-model 4 Life this right, it is suggested that you do not submit anonymous comments to this website.

Marcella Chester

Technorati tags:
Life, Self-Improvement, Self Help, Success, Personal Growth, Psychology, GTD, Getting Things Done, Success Strategies, Personal Excellence, Personal Development