My girl is a rescue, sort of. We found her on Craigslist. We are not sure about why her family gave her away other than to speculate she willed them to with her doggie superpowers so she could get to us. That sounds nuts maybe but she is that kind of dog. She is a Golden/Yellow Lab mix and should be hyper and goofy and prone to eating shoes. She is none of those things. She is calm and patient and loving which brings me to the point of all this, what she has taught me.

She came into my life at a pivotal time. It was the end of one cycle of change and the beginning of another, although I didn’t know that yet. She showed me that small things, like taking her for a walk, helped clear my mind so I could make good decisions. These were BIG kinds of decisions and I have sorted out more in this last year while waiting for her to poop than in the previous 5 combined.

She showed me that mellowing out is not as hard as it seems. As I grow anxious and fretful at the dinner table with the chaos of bickering children, I look over and see her lounging on the couch. I stop ranting and say “I need more of that!” pointing at her. My step son says “Don’t we all?” and we laugh and then we have that very thing.

When I am alone in the house and it is cold out at night, I am no longer alone. Neither am I cold. She is my constant companion, a presence that, while not human, is alive and soothing. It allows me to remain in myself while looking at her. She curls her hulking self up to me no matter how small the available space and loves me in the way dogs do…because we are here and we are worth loving, nothing more.

When I see her play with my partner and watch all the concern drain from his frame, I am grateful again. She shifts us from our worried heads to our immediate present. Play with me, love me. She is like a child that way but she clearly holds more wisdom and is less fragile and dependent. Play with me, love me and I’ll teach you something. This is all I am. This is all I need. This is all you need, at least right now.

She does other stuff too. She eats snotty tissue from the trash, she sheds, she begs for food in the kitchen and she left the most vile smell on my comforter last night but none of that irritation matters to me. I view her like a living meditation, a touch stone of present being. I want to be more like her.

This is about a dog but I think it’s more about being connected to something grounded and uncomplicated. I am convinced that we all have some dog zen (or cat zen, or horse zen. . .maybe snake zen? Whatever you love) in there somewhere. We need to find it and then spread it around to others. Be the serene in the chaos. Be the love without judgement. Have a good roll in the grass.

*shake shake shake shake* *flop*

WARNING:  This post contains stereotypes. I know not every man relates to what I’m writing here but I’m speaking to those who do. I also know that this may speak to some women.  So, ignore it if it is not relevant and change or eliminate gendered words as you see fit.  Okay, enough qualifying.

Therapy, what’s up with that? Why should you spend an uncomfortable hour in a room with a total stranger talking about private things you wouldn’t even tell your mom? Why spend time considering how you feel?

Feelings are controllable, right? Just pack ‘em up and put ‘em away. Yup, just stick them away in that shed out back and don’t look at them. Never. Look. Even when you hear noises, loud noises…don’t go back there.

That scream inside the shed will stop eventually if you don’t disturb anything, or if you have another beer…that could work. But don’t have too many beers ’cause then the shed gets sloppy and stuff starts leaking out around the bottom of the door. Stinking putrid ooze of rotten whatever is in there and it is vile I tell you, vile. You don’t want that gettin’ out.  People will talk.  They’ll know you have a stinky shed full of feelings and thoughts and fears that you can’t keep organized. 

*waves hand in front of face*-This is not the shed full of screaming crap you are looking for. I’ll just call you Dr. Spock and it’s all good (if you can excuse the mixed sci-fi metaphor).

So…how often has that approach actually worked for you? And, if it has in the past, how is it working now that you have an intimate partner? Kids? Stress at work? Yup, it really starts to stink out back doesn’t it.

I’m going to put it to you this way…real men clean up the shed. Real men brave the stink and say, “Hey, that’s my stink and I’m going to do something about it.”

But what can you do about it? And no, “scoop it back up and stick it in a drum in the shed” isn’t a long term solution.

Think of a therapist as your personal toxic waste clean up consultant. Here’s a basic clean up plan:

 1. Remove the overgrowth.

Overgrowth usually consists of anger interspersed with grandiosity or arrogance. A thick layer of insensitivity may also be present. Barriers consisting of withdrawal, obliviousness and an obsession with sports, video games and other addictions of choice can round out this containment strategy. It has to go. If you can’t get to the door of the shed, obviously, nothing else can happen.

 2. Identify the toxin

The most common toxic elements housed in men’s sheds are a deep fear they are unlovable, shame about who they really are and grief around loss of caregiving as a child. There are lots of variations and subsets but it all comes down to fear, shame and sadness.

3. Sit down with yourself for a while

The toxin, in its raw form, can seem unbearable, impossible, disastrous and devastating. Far better to turn back to self-righteous anger, Call of Duty or porn, right? Well…no, not really. That’s covering up the stinking screaming with other stuff. In fact, by engaging in the customary avoidance strategies, you are creating a world where those that care about you and want to connect with you are pushed away and hurt. They start to accuse you of being lazy-disappointing-selfish-neglectful-cruel-promise breaking-lying-cheating…whew…smell something brewing here? It stinks.

Therapy helps you find the ways to sit down with the sad, shamed, fearful parts and realize they are you. They don’t stink that bad unless you let them rot alone in the dark in the shed out back. You may even start to have a bit of compassion for yourself, stop being so judgmental, let someone love you for you and not the unreachable standard of strong manly perfection you think you should be.

A good therapist knows how to help you sit with those things and not feel like you want to die or kill something. A good therapist knows how hard it is for you but that therapist doesn’t let you off the hook. In therapy you can figure out how to make sense of yourself and give meaning to suffering. You would be amazed at how a little meaning imparts nobility and honour to an otherwise despair filled scenario. Once you have your sense of honour back, you can deal and deal well. Deal like a man, from a place of strength that comes from your fearless compassionate sniffing of your own stink.

Real men check out the shed. They run a conduit out there and install a lighting fixture. They inventory, organize, fix the broken stuff, value the antiques and don’t let the rot eat away the preciousness that is their heart and soul.

Thinking about you guys and how beautiful y’all can be makes me want to cry. Maybe you will too, but I swear, it’ll be between you, me and the shed.

Thanks mystery nominator .

However, I’m using the term mothering here because I want to gender it. I want to talk about the experience of mothering from the perspective of a female gendered person or a person inhabiting the role of a female gendered person. I don’t want to idealize it. I want to complicate it.  I want to give it its full due.

It’s hard to figure out how to say what I’d like to say.  Mothering is the most profound, grounding, growth inducing journey I have ever embarked on. It is necessary.  It is to be honoured. 

It is also the most limiting, disempowering, resource sucking, emotionally dangerous journey I have ever embarked on.

How can I reconcile this? Does it matter?

There are some givens I’m working with, some things that, in another forum, I’d  passionately deconstruct and critique.  I haven’t the space to do that here.  I will therefore state the givens, so you know what I mean.

It is a given that women are culturally expected, and in some cases mandated, to be the primary caregivers to babies and young children. It is a given that affordable, reliable, quality child care is not universally available or accessible.  It is therefore a given, that many, many, many women, whether professional, blue collar or pink collar have to interrupt their participation in the work force to take care of children. It is a given that interrupting participation in the workforce creates economic and social disadvantages for women that, in many cases, can never be regained.

That’s some harsh truth. Most unfortunately, it is a harsh truth that many of us are either not aware of or consciously ignore as we embark on the mothering path. Our cultural narrative says that we can do anything, be anything, accomplish anything we want.  Another chapter of that narrative goes on to be profoundly puzzled about the lack of participation of women in higher echelon jobs (board rooms, law and accounting partnerships, heads of state etc.), or generally higher paying jobs (consulting, commissioned sales work that isn’t retail, trades etc.).

It’s not just discrimination based on gender.  It’s structural barriers.  It’s things like, “I took five years off to be a good mom and now I’m out of date” and “I can’t work a 70 hour work week because I have to pick them up from daycare every day” and “I can’t travel because I don’t have consistent reliable overnight child care”.

What has this to do with therapy? Okay, I admit it. I went off on a little rant there, a little passionate deconstruction.  I’ll leave that task unfinished and get back to my point.

Sometimes, feeling better about our situation results from understanding the full nature of the reality of what has happened and why.  We are then acutely aware of both how it all happened and our choices going forward.  We can weigh our choices and focus on what is really important, acknowledging that because of all the social/structural/cultural constraints I ranted about just now, our choices may be limited. I rant about why they are limited but, when I work with my clients, I need to focus on the post-rant, where the rubber hits the road.

What does the average stressed out, depressed, bewildered-at-how-this-happened-to-me mom need to know?  What does she need to do?

First of all, motherhood is a necessary, honourable, skilled, contribution to the world, the economy, the social fabric, the future, the present and the past.  When we don’t honour ourselves, others have trouble seeing what we are worth.  Do not undervalue your role!

Second, if you feel like someone stole your brain, body and soul, you are probably correct.  However, there is some hope to take at least a portion of those things back.  It takes work.  You will need to find or create your own networks of support.  You may need to demand things of a partner that he or she didn’t expect.  Children are, by their nature, selfish beings.  It’s a survival skill.  However, that does not mean your needs as a person are no longer relevant. Your wellbeing is important, not selfish!

Third, be proactive. Plan to reengage in the world. If you are not going back to a career, plan for other kinds of reengagement.  Volunteer. Take up a cause you are passionate about. Organize support for moms in your neighbourhood. Anything that makes you think, plan or achieve something beyond what may have become a very small world, is good. You have a future as a human after your mothering role diminishes, plan for it!

There is a fourth point.  It’s touchy and not in a touchy feely way, more like a please-refrain-from-identifying-this-horrible-reality way.  I think I have to make this point because I see the consequences of not paying attention to it every darn week.

Don’t become completely dependent on your partner, socially or financially. There are two reasons for this.  First of all, relationships are healthier when both parties have strong connections and resources other than their primary partner.  It’s better for the relationship and so it’s better for you and your children too. The second reason is the tough one.  While parenting is much easier when there is another parent, single mothering happens to nearly half of us.  And while that doesn’t mean that the other parent always up and disappears, you, the person who sacrificed her career, social and professional contacts, will be expected to reengage with the world whether you are ready or not. Even if you’ve never had a career, if you maintained your social and familial supports, you will have a leg up on getting back out there and starting one.

If all this has turned you off mothering, well, that’s understandable.  Mothering isn’t actually an imperative we all have to follow (see my previous post).  However, those of us who do engage in that adventure rarely regret it.  It’s my hope that more of us engage in an eyes open sort of way, having in mind points similar to the above.  I think they can be summarized like this:

1. Be Proud of Yourself
2. Take Care of Yourself
3. Plan for Yourself
4. Don’t Abandon Yourself

Wow, that sounds like advice I’d give to my children.  Mommy’s wisdom. That’s good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

I have compassion for this state.  There is real pain there, but I wonder why there is an unspoken assumption that the thing you have right now does not qualify as “a life”.

The place of a woman in the world has shifted tremendously in the last 100 years or so.  We have gone from being a chattel (like a cow or a piece of furniture), to being a person with rights, responsibilities and self-determination.   And yet, there is a script that lingers, rattling around in our sub-conscious minds.  The script says that if you are not partnered, with children, you have somehow failed to live up to this thing called “having a life”.

The desire to partner and have children is often attributed to a mysterious entity called the “biological clock”. What exactly does that mean? A biological clock in human beings actually refers to our Circadian rhythms, our sleep patterns and how sunlight affects these patterns.  The concept of biological clock regarding child bearing actually refers only to fertility levels and not the “desire” to have children.  It is true that the viability of eggs in the ovaries starts to decline after thirty.  The physical probabilities of child bearing are reduced.  However, only when you add an imperative to bear children, does this become some kind of raging impulse to find a man and have a baby. 

In much of the popular writing on the idea of a “woman’s biological clock”, the desire is presented as a fact and as something natural. The unsubstantiated implication is that natural things are biological things and biological impulses must be obeyed. There’s the imperative.

But we are also social creatures who live in a culture of our own creation.  That culture has rules and expectations and sometimes, the imperative that seems natural is really cultural.

Whenever I see a cultural imperative that is sold as natural I have to question it. I can’t help it. It’s my nature.

Go ahead and call me a radical but I’m going to suggest the notion that being in a partnered relationship and procreating is not the only way to have a life.  This is not to say that relationships are not important.  Humans are biologically wired to seek those out. Neither am I saying that physical intimacy is not important.  Humans are definitely wired to seek that out.  I am saying that there are a myriad of ways to be in the world that have all these elements but do not require the cookie cutter approach to “having a life”.

But I need to back up a bit because there is a real person on my couch crying.  That real person thinks the reason she doesn’t have what she thinks she should have is because she is doing something wrong, is unlovable, unworthy, ugly, cursed etc. These feelings of inadequacy are reinforced by the cultural expectation that she should be “ahead” of where she is by now, measured in partners and babies. 

Why is that the only measure for her? What if there were other options?

What if the measure could also include career and academic accomplishments, contributions to community, a supportive social network and creativity?  You know, the kind of thing that men often get accolades for because they have awesome supportive women running their lives in the background.  Why is it that women can’t claim the value of this for themselves? With or without supportive partners running around in the background?

I want to convey to the individual on my couch that, rather than “no life” she has the most tremendous opportunity.  Go out and live the life you have.  Connect.  Contribute. Create. Understand that those things have value and that you are valuable in your own right.  Your mom may not agree.  Your girlfriends may be getting married.  You are sick of baby showers. Do not make the automatic jump to despair.

There are other women, crying on my couch.  They are married with three kids and “no life”. They gave up their career and now they watch their partners achieving and doing while they are unable to engage.  They have to deal with the costs of those choices too.*

You are a beautiful, autonomous, accomplished human being with a world in front of you.  There may be love, friendship, art, compassion, fun and community just waiting for you to look up and jump in. It may look totally different than what your mother imagined but it’s yours. Live it.

*I’ll be writing a post on this topic next

This Time of Year, is weighted with a nearly inconceivable number of expectations, traditions, possibilities, hopes, tragedies…it just doesn’t stop. It is exactly that weight (and its impacts) I wish to discuss.

I am now going to speak the unspeakable…for many people, this is a profoundly unhappy Time of Year. If you aren’t one of those people, that is fantastic but if you are, you need to know, you are not the only one. I might even venture to say that this Time of Year is unhappy for something approaching most of us.

There is a terrible disconnect here. Every cultural message says exactly the opposite. We are supposed to be happy. We are commanded at all corners to be merry. We celebrate and smile, consume and contrive. We hide in the kitchen with our head in our hands and utter our favorite lie when someone asks what is wrong. “Nothing” we say. Nothing indeed.

We cannot admit we are part of the collection of human misery. We separate ourselves from “those unfortunate people” who need “help” this time of year. They are the other and we define ourselves in opposition.  They are sad, we are not.

And, if we are one of the “unfortunate” we collect our hampers and toys and winter boots and jackets, needful of the help and so often, also ashamed of our need. Yet we can’t voice that either because just as the “fortunate” must be happy, the “unfortunate” must be grateful.

What has gone wrong here?

Before this turns into a rant worthy of a Dickensonian character, I want to speculate about all the good intentions that got us into this place to begin with.

I believe this time of year has always been problematic for human beings in the northern hemisphere. It’s dark, it’s cold, nothing grows, nothing to harvest. It’s about acknowledging that the winter can kill us and the hope that it won’t. We hope we have made enough provisions and we pray for the potential of the new year. We formalize these hopes into ritual. We celebrate the return of the sun, the birth of the Son, the preservation of the light. There is the potential of sustaining magic in the variations of all traditions. Sharing bounty, shedding of old habits, embracing forgiveness, these are all positive and growth inducing.

Yet, somehow sharing bounty has mutated into excessive consumption. Giving, which used to ensure survival of all the members of the community, has become an orgy of expectation.  Worse still, if we resist the tide we feel ashamed of ourselves, Grinch-like, alone. 

Our family dynamics buckle and break under the expectation of harmony.  We deny our authentic sadnesses, losses, disappointments and desperately pretend to our own selves that we are a happy, “normal” family.  We are disappointed and shame envelops us once again.

In my line of work, shame is a sly and intractable emotion with tremendous power.  It can be staring the client and I right in the face, doing a little dance on the desk, swinging from the lamp, and we will not acknowledge it.  To acknowledge shame is to feel it and it is one of the most horrible feelings people ever invented for themselves.  It is worse than anger, sadness, fear or grief.  It hangs around making us miserable because we don’t want to name it for what it is.  The client won’t name it for their own sake and I often avoid naming it too.  My understanding of my own shame makes me very hesitant to invoke it in others. Yuck.

So, I’m going to give some of you a little gift this Time of Year.  You may not like it.  I sure don’t, but I’m tired of feeling ashamed of myself and being in a healing relationship with so many others who struggle similarly.

I feel shame that I can’t celebrate this Time of Year the way I perceive the rest of the world does.  I am ashamed that I do not exist in perfect blissful happiness at the appointed time.  I am ashamed that I do not like this Time of Year very much.  It often sucks.

And now the magic.  When I look at my shame or help my clients look at theirs, it is the first step to subduing it.  It is okay not to be happy or merry or “finished your x-mass shopping” or “going away for the holidays” or “having family over” or “spending it with your kids” or any number of other things suggested by the clerk at Best Buy that you should be doing at this Time of Year.

It’s okay to be divorced, childless, parentless, poor, alone, abandoned, miserable, trapped, depressed or driven insane by your mother.  These things are a normal part of the human condition.  One or another of them happen to us all at some point in living.  Do not dwell in the shame of it.  Care for yourself in the ways you can.  Grieve, cry, and be disappointed.  Then pick up and keep on living.  This Time of Year passes.  There is potential in every moment to grow and be, make amends and heal.  But none of that will happen if you are stuck longing for what you think you ought to have, or do, or say or be. 

I do not ever wish my clients a merry x-mass or a happy new year.  I tell them to take care of themselves.  It seems a more realistic option.

So if you are not a client and haven’t heard it from me yet. . .please take care of yourself this Time of Year.  Be good to the parts of you that are struggling and celebrate the resilient bits that each one of you can find if you look.  You are perfect as you are and as long as you remain on the journey of life, there is hope for better.

(see, I am NOT as Grinchy as you thought)

The original link is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/things-you-really-need-to_b_788989.html

Guy Kawasaki once wrote an item describing “10 things you should learn this school year” in which readers were advised to learn how to write five sentence emails, create powerpoint slides, and survive boring meetings. It was, to my view, advice on how to be a business toady. My view is that people are worth more than that, that pleasing your boss should be the least of your concerns, and that genuine learning means something more than how to succeed in a business environment.

But what should you learn? Your school will try to teach you facts, which you’ll need to pass the test but which are otherwise useless. In passing you may learn some useful skills, like literacy, which you should cultivate. But Guy Kawasaki is right in at least this: schools won’t teach you the things you really need to learn in order to be successful, either in business (whether or not you choose to live life as a toady) or in life.

Here, then, is my list. This is, in my view, what you need to learn in order to be successful. Moreover, it is something you can start to learn this year, no matter what grade you’re in, no matter how old you are. I could obviously write much more on each of these topics. But take this as a starting point, follow the suggestions, and learn the rest for yourself. And to educators, I ask, if you are not teaching these things in your classes, why are you not?

1. How to predict consequences

The most common utterance at the scene of a disaster is, “I never thought…” The fact is, most people are very bad at predicting consequences, and schools never seem to think to teach them how to improve.

The prediction of consequences is part science, part mathematics, and part visualization. It is essentially the ability to create a mental model imaging the sequence of events that would follow, “what would likely happen if…?”

The danger in such situations is focusing on what you want to happen rather than what might happen instead. When preparing to jump across a gap, for example, you may visualize yourself landing on the other side. This is good; it leads to successful jumping. But you need also to visualize not landing on the other side. What would happen then? Have you even contemplated the likely outcome of a 40 meter fall?

This is where the math and science come in. You need to compare the current situation with your past experience and calculate the probabilities of different outcomes. If, for example, you are looking at a five meter gap, you should be asking, “How many times have I successfully jumped five meters? How many times have I failed?” If you don’t know, you should know enough to attempt a test jump over level ground.

People don’t think ahead. But while you are in school, you should always be taking the opportunity to ask yourself, “what will happen next?” Watch situations and interactions unfold in the environment around you and try to predict the outcome. Write down or blog your predictions. With practice, you will become expert at predicting consequences.

Even more interestingly, over time, you will begin to observe patterns and generalities, things that make consequences even easier to predict. Things fall, for example. Glass breaks. People get mad when you insult them. Hot things will be dropped. Dogs sometimes bite. The bus (or train) is sometimes late. These sorts of generalizations — often known as ‘common sense’ — will help you avoid unexpected, and sometimes damaging, consequences.

2. How to read

Oddly, by this I do not mean ‘literacy’ in the traditional sense, but rather, how to look at some text and to understand, in a deep way, what is being asserted (this also applies to audio and video, but grounding yourself in text will transfer relatively easily, if incompletely, to other domains).

The four major types of writing are: description, argument, explanation and definition. I have written about these elsewhere. You should learn to recognize these different types of writing by learning to watch for indicators or keywords.

Then, you should learn how sentences are joined together to form these types of writing. For example, an argument will have two major parts, a premise and a conclusion. The conclusion is the point the author is trying to make, and it should be identified with an indicator (such as the words ‘therefore’, ‘so’, or ‘consequently’, for example).

A lot of writing is fill — wasted words intended to make the author look good, to distract your attention, or to simply fill more space. Being able to cut through the crap and get straight to what is actually being said, without being distracted, is an important skill.

Though your school will never teach you this, find a basic book on informal logic (it will have a title like ‘critical thinking‘ or something like that). Look in the book for argument forms and indicator words (most of these books don’t cover the other three types of writing) and practice spotting these words in text and in what the teacher says in class. Every day, focus on a specific indicator word and watch how it is used in practice.

3. How to distinguish truth from fiction

I have written extensively on this elsewhere, nonetheless, this remains an area schools to a large degree ignore. Sometimes I suspect it is because teachers feel their students must absorb knowledge uncritically; if they are questioning everything the teacher says they’ll never learn!

The first thing to learn is to actually question what you are told, what you read, and what you see on television. Do not simply accept what you are told. Always ask, how can you know that this is true? What evidence would lead you to believe that it is false?

I have written several things to help you with this, including my Guide to the Logical Fallacies, and my article on How to Evaluate Websites. These principles are more widely applicable. For example, when your boss says something to you, apply the same test. You may be surprised at how much your boss says to you that is simply not true!

Every day, subject at least one piece of information (a newspaper column, a blog post, a classroom lecture) to thorough scrutiny. Analyze each sentence, analyze every word, and ask yourself what you are expected to believe and how you are expected to feel. Then ask whether you have sufficient reason to believe and feel this way, or whether you are being manipulated.

4. How to empathize

Most people live in their own world, and for the most part, that’s OK. But it is important to at least recognize that there are other people, and that they live in their own world as well. This will save you from the error of assuming that everyone else is like you. And even more importantly, this will allow other people to become a surprising source of new knowledge and insight.

Part of this process involves seeing things through someone else’s eyes. A person may be, quite literally, in a different place. They might not see what you see, and may have seen things you didn’t see. Being able to understand how this change in perspective may change what they believe is important.

But even more significantly, you need to be able to imagine how other people feel. This means that you have to create a mental model of the other person’s thoughts and feelings in your own mind, and to place yourself in that model. This is best done by imagining that you are the other person, and then placing yourself into a situation.

Probably the best way to learn how to do this is to study drama (by that I don’t mean studying Shakespeare, I mean learning how to act in plays). Sadly, schools don’t include this as part of the core curriculum. So instead, you will need to study subjects like religion and psychology. Schools don’t really include these either. So make sure you spend at least some time in different role-playing games (RPGs) every day and practice being someone else, with different beliefs and motivations.

When you are empathetic you will begin to seek out and understand ways that help bridge the gap between you and other people. Being polite and considerate, for example, will become more important to you. You will be able to feel someone’s hurt if you are rude to them. In the same way, it will become more important to be honest, because you will begin to see how transparent your lies are, and how offensive it feels to be thought of as someone who is that easily fooled.

Empathy isn’t some sort of bargain. It isn’t the application of the Golden Rule. It is a genuine feeling in yourself that operates in synch with the other person, a way of accessing their inner mental states through the sympathetic operation of your own mental states. You are polite because you feel bad when you are rude; you are honest because you feel offended when you lie.

You need to learn how to have this feeling, but once you have it, you will understand how empty your life was before you had it.

5. How to be creative

Everybody can be creative, and if you look at your own life you will discover that you are already creative in numerous ways. Humans have a natural capacity to be creative — that’s how our minds work — and with practice can become very good at it.

The trick is to understand how creativity works. Sometimes people think that creative ideas spring out of nothing (like the proverbial ‘blank page’ staring back at the writer) but creativity is in fact the result of using and manipulating your knowledge in certain ways.

Genuine creativity is almost always a response to something. This article, for example, was written in response to an article on the same subject that I thought was not well thought out. Creativity also arises in response to a specific problem: how to rescue a cat, how to cross a gap, how to hang laundry. So, in order to be creative, the first thing to do is to learn to look for problems to solve, things that merit a response, needs that need to be filled. This takes practice (try writing it down, or blogging it, every time you see a problem or need).

In addition, creativity involves a transfer of knowledge from one domain to another domain, and sometimes a manipulation of that knowledge. When you see a gap in real life, how did you cross a similar gap in an online game? Or, if you need to clean up battery acid, how did you get rid of excess acid in your stomach?

Creativity, in other words, often operates by metaphor, which means you need to learn how to find things in common between the current situation and other things you know. This is what is typically meant by ‘thinking outside the box’ — you want to go to outside the domain of the current problem. And the particular skill involved is pattern recognition. This skill is hard to learn, and requires a lot of practice, which is why creativity is hard.

But pattern recognition can be learned — it’s what you are doing when you say one song is similar to another, or when you are taking photographs of, say, flowers or fishing boats. The arts very often involve finding patterns in things, which is why, this year, you should devote some time every day to an art — music, photography, video, drawing, painting or poetry.

6. How to communicate clearly

Communicating clearly is most of all a matter of knowing what you want to say, and then employing some simple tools in order to say it. Probably the hardest part of this is knowing what you want to say. But it is better to spend time being sure you understand what you mean than to write a bunch of stuff trying to make it more or less clear.

Knowing what to say is often a matter of structure. Professional writers employ a small set of fairly standard structures. For example, some writers prefer articles (or even whole books!) consisting of a list of points, like this article. Another structure, often called ‘pyramid style’, is employed by journalists — the entire story is told in the first paragraph, and each paragraph thereafter offers less and less important details.

Inside this overall structure, writers provide arguments, explanations, descriptions or definitions, sometimes in combination. Each of these has a distinctive structure. An argument, for example, will have a conclusion, a point the writer wants you to believe. The conclusion will be supported by a set of premises. Linking the premises and the conclusion will be a set of indicators. The word ‘therefore’, for example, points to the conclusion.

Learning to write clearly is a matter of learning about the tools, and then practice in their application. Probably the best way to learn how to structure your writing is to learn how to give speeches without notes. This will force you to employ a clear structure (one you can remember!) and to keep it straightforward. I have written more on this, and also, check out Keith Spicer’s book, Winging It.

Additionally, master the tools the professionals use. Learn the structure of arguments, explanations, descriptions and definitions. Learn the indicator words used to help readers navigate those structures. Master basic grammar, so your sentences are unambiguous. Information on all of these can be found online.

Then practice your writing every day. A good way to practice is to join a student or volunteer newspaper – writing with a team, for an audience, against a deadline. It will force you to work more quickly, which is useful, because it is faster to write clearly than to write poorly. If no newspaper exists, create one, or start up a news blog.

7. How to Learn

Your brain consists of billions of neural cells that are connected to each other. To learn is essentially to form sets of those connections. Your brain is always learning, whether you are studying mathematics or staring at the sky, because these connections are always forming. The difference in what you learn lies in how you learn.

When you learn, you are trying to create patterns of connectivity in your brain. You are trying to connect neurons together, and to strengthen that connection. This is accomplished by repeating sets of behaviors or experiences. Learning is a matter of practice and repetition.

Thus, when learning anything — from ’2+2=4′ to the principles of quantum mechanics — you need to repeat it over and over, in order to grow this neural connection. Sometimes people learn by repeating the words aloud — this form of rote learning was popular not so long ago. Taking notes when someone talks is also good, because you hear it once, and then repeat it when you write it down.

Think about learning how to throw a baseball. Someone can explain everything about it, and you can understand all of that, but you still have to throw the ball several thousand times before you get good at it. You have to grow your neural connections in just the same way you grow your muscles.

Some people think of learning as remembering sets of facts. It can be that, sometimes, but learning is more like recognition than remembering. Because you are trying to build networks of neural cells, it is better to learn a connected whole rather than unconnected parts, where the connected whole you are learning in one domain has the same pattern as a connected whole you already know in another domain. Learning in one domain, then, becomes a matter of recognizing that pattern.

Sometimes the patterns we use are very artificial, as in ‘every good boy deserves fudge‘ (the sentence helps us remember musical notes). In other cases, and more usefully, the pattern is related to the laws of nature, logical or mathematical principles, the flow of history, how something works as a whole, or something like that. Drawing pictures often helps people find patterns (which is why mind-maps and concept maps are popular).

Indeed, you should view the study of mathematics, history, science and mechanics as the study of archetypes, basic patterns that you will recognize over and over. But this means that, when you study these disciplines, you should be asking, “what is the pattern” (and not merely “what are the facts”). And asking this question will actually make these disciplines easier to learn.

Learning to learn is the same as learning anything else. It takes practice. You should try to learn something every day — a random word in the dictionary, or a random Wikipedia entry. When learning this item, do not simply learn it in isolation, but look for patterns — does it fit into a pattern you already know? Is it a type of thing you have seen before? Embed this word or concept into your existing knowledge by using it in some way — write a blog post containing it, or draw a picture explaining it.

Think, always, about how you are learning and what you are learning at any given moment. Remember, you are always learning — which means you need to ask, what are you learning when you are watching television, going shopping, driving the car, playing baseball? What sorts of patterns are being created? What sorts of patterns are being reinforced? How can you take control of this process?

8. How to stay healthy

As a matter of practical consideration, the maintenance of your health involves two major components: minimizing exposure to disease or toxins, and maintenance of the physical body.

Minimizing exposure to disease and toxins is mostly a matter of cleanliness and order. Simple things — like keeping the wood alcohol in the garage, and not the kitchen cupboard — minimize the risk of accidental poisoning. Cleaning cooking surfaces and cooking food completely reduces the risk of bacterial contamination. Washing your hands regularly prevents transmission of human borne viruses and diseases.

In a similar manner, some of the hot-button issues in education today are essentially issues about how to warn against exposure to diseases and toxins. In a nutshell: if you have physical intercourse with another person you are facilitating the transmission of disease, so wear protection. Activities such as drinking, eating fatty foods, smoking, and taking drugs are essentially the introduction of toxins into your system, so do it in moderation, and where the toxins are significant, don’t do it at all.

Personal maintenance is probably even more important, as the major threats to health are generally those related to physical deterioration. The subjects of proper nutrition and proper exercise should be learned and practiced. Even if you do not become a health freak (and who does?). it is nonetheless useful to know what foods and types of actions are beneficial, and to create a habit of eating good foods and practicing beneficial actions.

Every day, seek to be active in some way — cycle to work or school, walk a mile, play a sport, or exercise. In addition, every day, seek to eat at least one meal that is ‘good for you’, that consists of protein and minerals (like meat and vegetables, or soy and fruit). If your school is not facilitating proper exercise and nutrition, demand them! You can’t learn anything if you’re sick and hungry! Otherwise, seek to establish an alternative program of your own, to be employed at noon hours.

Finally, remember: you never have to justify protecting your own life and health. If you do not want to do something because you think it is unsafe, then it is your absolute right to refuse to do it. The consequences — any consequences — are better than giving in on this.

9. How to value yourself

It is perhaps cynical to say that society is a giant conspiracy to get you to feel badly about yourself, but it wouldn’t be completely inaccurate either. Advertisers make you feel badly so you’ll buy their product, politicians make you feel incapable so you’ll depend on their policies and programs, even your friends and acquaintances may seek to make you doubt yourself in order to seek an edge in a competition.

You can have all the knowledge and skills in the world, but they are meaningless if you do not feel personally empowered to use them; it’s like owning a Lamborghini and not having a driver’s license. It looks shiny in the driveway, but you’re not really getting any value out of it unless you take it out for a spin.

Valuing yourself is partially a matter of personal development, and partially a matter of choice. In order to value yourself, you need to feel you are worth valuing. In fact, you are worth valuing, but it often helps to prove it to yourself by attaining some objective, learning some skill, or earning some distinction. And in order to value yourself, you have to say “I am valuable.”

This is an important point. How we think about ourselves is as much a matter of learning as anything else. If somebody tells you that you are worthless over and over, and if you do nothing to counteract that, then you will come to believe you are worthless, because that’s how your neural connections will form. But if you repeat, and believe, and behave in such a way as to say to yourself over and over, I am valuable, then that’s what you will come to believe.

What is it to value yourself? It’s actually many things. For example, it’s the belief that you are good enough to have an opinion, have a voice, and have a say, that your contributions do matter. It’s the belief that you are capable, that you can learn to do new things and to be creative. It is your ability to be independent, and to not rely on some particular person or institution for personal well-being, and autonomous, capable of making your own decisions and living your live in your own way.

All of these things are yours by right. But they will never be given to you. You have to take them, by actually believing in yourself (no matter what anyone says) and by actually being autonomous.

Your school doesn’t have a class in this (and may even be actively trying to undermine your autonomy and self-esteem; watch out for this). So you have to take charge of your own sense of self-worth.

Do it every day. Tell yourself that you are smart, you are cool, you are strong, you are good, and whatever else you want to be. Say it out loud, in the morning — hidden in the noise of the shower, if need be, but say it. Then, practice these attributes. Be smart by (say) solving a crossword puzzle. Be cool by making your own fashion statement. Be strong by doing something you said to yourself you were going to do. Be good by doing a good deed. And every time you do it, remind yourself that you have, in fact, done it.

10. How to live meaningfully

This is probably the hardest thing of all to learn, and the least taught.

Living meaningfully is actually a combination of several things. It is, in one sense, your dedication to some purpose or goal. But it is also your sense of appreciation and dedication to the here and now. And finally, it is the realization that your place in the world, your meaningfulness, is something you must create for yourself.

Too many people live for no reason at all. They seek to make more and more money, or they seek to make themselves famous, or to become powerful, and whether or not they attain these objectives, they find their lives empty and meaningless. This is because they have confused means and ends — money, fame and power are things people seek in order to do what is worth doing.

What is worth doing? That is up to you to decide. I have chosen to dedicate my life to helping people obtain an education. Others seek to cure diseases, to explore space, to worship God, to raise a family, to design cars, or to attain enlightenment.

If you don’t decide what is worth doing, someone will decide for you, and at some point in your life you will realize that you haven’t done what is worth doing at all. So spend some time, today, thinking about what is worth doing. You can change your mind tomorrow. But begin, at least, to guide yourself somewhere.

The second thing is sometimes thought of as ‘living in the moment’. It is essentially an understanding that you control your thoughts. Your thoughts have no power over you; the only thing that matters at all is this present moment. If you think about something — some hope, some failure, some fear — that thought cannot hurt you, and you choose how much or how little to trust that thought.

Another aspect of this is the following: what you are doing right now is the thing that you most want to do. Now you may be thinking, “No way! I’d rather be on Malibu Beach!” But if you really wanted to be on Malibu Beach, you’d be there. The reason you are not is because you have chosen other priorities in your life — to your family, to your job, to your country.

When you realize you have the power to choose what you are doing, you realize you have the power to choose the consequences. Which means that consequences — even bad consequences — are for the most part a matter of choice.

That said, this understanding is very liberating. Think about it, as a reader — what it means is that what I most wanted to do with my time right now is to write this article so that you — yes, you — would read it. And even more amazingly, I know, as a writer, that the thing you most want to do right now, even more than you want to be in Malibu, is to read my words. It makes me want to write something meaningful — and it gives me a way to put meaning into my life.

Follow Stephen Downes on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Downes

First, I must confess, I am a suburban girl.  I grew up in the utopia of Don Mills, a suburb in North York (now Toronto).  It was a neighbourhood of quiet cul de sacs, crescents and boulevards where families lived and played.  The nearest bus was a 20 minute walk from my house and came by every 50 minutes or so.  We shopped at the Mall.  We drove everywhere. 

We were incredibly lucky because in spite of all that, we were more or less happy as a family.  Sure, I was a nerd so I was bullied at school until the nerd quotient of High School afforded me protection.  My dad and my brother had the whole competitive thing going on where my brother tried not to care what my dad thought and my dad tried desperately to make him care.  On the other hand, my parents loved each other and showed it.  Dad groping my mom while she cooked was the norm.  She liked it. 

In my 20′s and 30′s, I didn’t live in suburbia.  I was a midtown girl.  I thrived on the eclectic atmosphere, the old buildings, the transit.

Now, in my 40′s I have returned to an area full of fresh suburban development and all the promise of new lives begun.  Except this time, I’m in a position to know what goes on inside lives other than my own, behind those shiny new doors and the blinds from Home Depot.

I can best describe it as an ennui, a weariness with the tedium of the every day.  Those who are trapped by this are often surprised at it, feel guilty they feel it, or avoid the truth of it.  It manifests as depression, anxiety and anger, each and every one of those states a code word for distress. 

There was some kind of common theme that ran through this for me so I formulated a theory.  Milton is a wonderful community.  It has everything a young family could want;  Schools, Community Centres, Shopping, Arenas, Churches, Mosques, Parks and acres and acres of Beautiful New Homes.

But, when we buy that Beautiful New Home, what are we really getting?  A house.  That’s it.  Nothing more. 

We will not find included a happy marriage, complete with welcome bum groping in the kitchen.  We will not find included perfect children with no assembly required.  We will not find spiritual fulfillment, a good body, an endless supply of gourmet meals or a well-behaved dog.  These are the things we each have the responsibility to actively create.  We have outgrown the days where paint by numbers results in something we can hang in the open concept living room.

I want you to notice I’m using the pronoun “we”.  That’s because I’m not exempt from the experience.  In fact, it isn’t unique to a Mattamay development.  80-year-old homes in midtown Toronto don’t come with any cool extras either.  Neither am I trying to sit here and proclaim, “Doom!”  Nope.  Rather, I’m inviting you to hope.  I’m inviting you to live an examined life, to actively create, to abandon the numbered paint set and engage with the canvas of your world.

Fantastic lives are authentic lives.  They are lives where you take a risk, or two, or three.  They are lives where you love, in spite of fear.  They are lives that are not about settling for what you have, but rather making the most of what you have.  Go on, plant a riotous garden on your itty bitty front lawn.  Paint your front door purple and have a neighbourhood open house.  Tell your wife you love her and. . .well, kitchen bum groping is kinda personal, but you never know. . .until you try.

There is a vast difference between the “subjective” and the “objective” as it relates to work in psychotherapy.  And yet, many folks haven’t really considered what the differences are and why we need to pay attention.

Let me first define my understanding of these terms as I use them here. 

Objectivity or taking an objective position on something, means you are saying you can step outside yourself and know something to be true.  That’s the way it is out there in the real world.  It’s helpful to think of things objectively.  That way, everyone can be clear about what we are observing and everyone has the same information on which to make judgements.

When you ask a friend to give you an objective opinion.  You are asking for an opinion that is outside your experience and, hopefully, outside your friend’s experience too.

But, like many things in life, it ‘aint always that simple.  Objectivity is something we like to agree exists.  When we are all in agreement, we can maintain that sense.

However, certainly when it comes to relationships and relational experience, objectivity becomes harder and harder to get a hold of.  In fact, I like to assume it doesn’t exist when it comes to therapy.  But if there’s no objectivity, what are we working with?

The simple answer is subjectivity, a sense of experience formed from within the parameters, limitations, givens etc. of the observer. 

Hmmm, that’s not really simple sounding is it.

Another way of looking at it is to declare and accept that we can’t truly understand something beyond our own experience of it, our subjective experience.  That experience is informed by our position as we look upon the thing or event, our history, education, interest, politics. . .everything that makes up what and who and where we are.  Through that lens, we create a picture.

Why is this important in counselling?

First of all, it encourages humility in the counsellor.  If I remember that I am not the objective observer, I am more inclined to listen to the client’s story with an open mind to that client’s experience.  That gives the client a chance to be heard in a more authentic way. 

It prevents me from jumping to judgement and, even if I do judge, I am aware that my need to do that comes from my own experience.  I can then ask myself, well, what’s triggering judgement here?  I will turn to the client to help me understand and almost every time, I find out new things that help me make sense of what’s going on.

It helps me help clients to reconcile that which makes no sense to them.  When a client experiences a betrayal from someone who is close in relationship.  That client so often assumes the fault lies in either a dreadful flaw in the other or some nasty quality the client inhabits.  Usually, neither of these are true.  The problem most often lies in two different subjective views colliding without knowing or understanding each other.

An example:

Mother asks child to clean up room.  Child is doing homework.  Child doesn’t tell mother about homework or how long it will take to complete it.  Child makes choice to complete homework before cleaning room.  Mother thinks child is ignoring her and gets angry at child.  Child thinks mother is crazy because she is bugging child to clean room when homework is more important.  Child calls mother crazy.  Mother calls child disrespectful and ungrateful. ..etc.

That example is a bit simplistic but it makes the point.  Both people were operating from different assumptions.  Both thought the other was in touch with those assumptions.  That example also starts to demonstrate how the misalignment in subjectivity can lead to nastier problems as the conflict continues (mom is crazy, child is disrespectful).

A more complicated example might involve a parent whose child has revealed a non-normative sexual orientation.  I have heard parents obsess for hours about the “objective truth” that having a same gendered partner is so difficult and painful and therefore, the wrong choice for that child.  Often, those parents are having trouble understanding that their “objective truth” is a subjective understanding of the world.  It may not include all of the child’s understandings, desires, dreams and sense of self.  Given all those things, the choice to pursue same gendered relationship might make complete sense, in spite of the potential for pain.

This conflict has arisen regarding family structures and the roles of parents and step parents.  When a parent has a fixed view of what a step parent should be or is entitled to, the potential for conflict is enormous.  Instead, everyone needs to work on understanding the expectations of the other and how they intersect, how subjectivities intersect.

That leads me to my final and admittedly theoretically dense point.  Our reality can be seen as a constantly evolving experience of the intersection of subjectivities.  That sounds complicated and scary.  But really, it just means we have to be careful to inquire about how other people see and experience a thing.  We don’t always have to agree that experience or view it the same as our own, but it does give us good information about why others might behave as they do. 

Knowledge is power, after all.