Speaking Negatively About Others Quotes

See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

HOW CAN I TELL IF A MAN I’M SEEING WILL BECOME ABUSIVE? • He speaks disrespectfully about his former partners. • He is disrespectful toward you. • He does favors for you that you don’t want or puts on such a show of generosity that it makes you uncomfortable. • He is controlling. • He is possessive. • Nothing is ever his fault. • He is self-centered. • He abuses drugs or alcohol. • He pressures you for sex. • He gets serious too quickly about the relationship. • He intimidates you when he’s angry. • He has double standards. • He has negative attitudes toward women. • He treats you differently around other people. • He appears to be attracted to vulnerability. No single one of the warning signs above is a sure sign of an abusive man, with the exception of physical intimidation. Many nonabusive men may exhibit a umber of these behaviors to a limited degree. What, then, should a woman do to protect herself from having a relationship turn abusive? Although there is no foolproof solution, the best plan is: 1. Make it clear to him as soon as possible which behaviors or attitudes are unacceptable to you and that you cannot be in a relationship with him if they continue. 2. If it happens again, stop seeing him for a substantial period of time. Don’t keep seeing him with the warning that this time you “really mean it,” because he will probably interpret that to mean that you don’t. 3. If it happens a third time, or if he switches to other behaviors that are warning flags, chances are great that he has an abuse problem. If you give him too many chances, you are likely to regret it later. Finally, be aware that as an abuser begins his slide into abuse, he believes that you are the one who is changing. His perceptions work this way because he feels so justified in his actions that he can’t imagine the problem might be with him. All he notices is that you don’t seem to be living up to his image of the perfect, all-giving, deferential woman.

One of the things that I believe defines kindness is making others feel important. And one of my big pet peeves in life is speaking badly of other people. I’m a big proponent of—“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” If you want to start showing kindness, simply do not say anything negative about anyone.

The way you choose to think and speak about yourself (to yourself and others), IS A CHOICE! You may have spent your whole life talking about yourself in a negative way, but that doesn't mean you have to continue that path.

Writing about the spiritual life is like making prints from negatives...Often it is the dark forest that makes us speak about the open field. Frequently prison makes us think about freedom, hunger helps us to appreciate food, and war gives us words for peace. Not seldom are our vision of the future born out of the sufferings of the present and our hope for others out of our own despair. Only few "happy endings" make us happy but often someone's careful ad honest articulation of the ambiguities, uncertainties, and painful conditions of life gives us new hope. The paradox is indeed that new life is born out of the pains of the old.

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit." I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other.

But what was so great about marriage? I had been married and married. It had its good points, but it also had its bad. The virtues of marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead. Almost anything had to be an improvement on hustling for your own keep at some low-paid job and fighting off unattractive men in your spare time while desperately trying to ferret out the attractive ones. Though I've no doubt that being single is just as lonely for a man, it doesn't have the added extra wallop of being downright dangerous, and it doesn't automatically imply poverty and the unquestioned status of a social pariah. Would most women get married if they knew what it meant? I think of young women following their husbands wherever their husbands follow their jobs. I think of them suddenly finding themselves miles away from friends and family, I think of them living in places where they can't work, where they can't speak the language. I think of them making babies out of their loneliness and boredom and not knowing why. I think of their men always harried and exhausted from being on the make. I think of them seeing each other less after marriage than before. I think of them falling into bed too exhausted to screw. I think of them farther apart in the first year of marriage than they ever imagined two people could be when they were courting. And then I think of the fantasies starting. He is eyeing the fourteen-year-old postnymphets in bikinis. She covets the TV repairman. The baby gets sick and she makes it with the pediatrician. He is fucking his masochistic little secretary who reads Cosmopolitan and things herself a swinger. Not: when did it all go wrong? But: when was it ever right? ....... I know some good marriages. Second marriages mostly. Marriages where both people have outgrown the bullshit of me-Tarzan, you-Jane and are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other, doing the chores as they come up and not worrying too much about who does what. Some men reach that delightfully relaxed state of affairs about age forty or after a couple of divorces. Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.

List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.         ■

When you decide to reclaim your personal power you'll be talked about... told that you've changed, that you've somehow "lost the plot" or that you think you're better than others; but, that's just human nature. Your job is to realize that negative comments and "backhanded compliments" say more about the person speaking them, than about who you are. When people label you, they're seeking to define you... you're above all that.

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it’s obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking and drugs. My hope for humanity - and I think sensible science fiction has a beneficial influence in this direction - is that one day everyone born will be whole in body and brain, will live a long life free from physical and emotional pain, will participate in a fulfilling way in their contribution to existence, will enjoy true love and friendship, will pity us 20th century barbarians who lived and died in an atrocious, anachronistic atmosphere of arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity, murder, terrorism, war, smog, pollution, starvation and the other negative “norms” of our current civilization. I have devoted my life to amassing over a quarter million pieces of sf and fantasy as a present to posterity and I hope to be remembered as an altruist who would have been an accepted citizen of Utopia.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.

I was so struck by Flow’s negative implications for parents that I decided I wanted to speak to Csikszentmihalyi, just to make sure I wasn’t misreading him. And eventually I did, at a conference in Philadelphia where he was one of the marquee speakers. As we sat down to chat, the first thing I asked was why he talked so little about family life in Flow. He devotes only ten pages to it. “Let me tell you a couple of things that may be relevant to you,” he said. And then he told a personal story. When Csikszentmihalyi first developed the Experience Sampling Method, one of the first people he tried it out on was himself. “And at the end of the week,” he said, “I looked at my responses, and one thing that suddenly was very strange to me was that every time I was with my two sons, my moods were always very, very negative.” His sons weren’t toddlers at that point either. They were older. “And I said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense to me, because I’m very proud of them, and we have a good relationship.’ ” But then he started to look at what, specifically, he was doing with his sons that made his feelings so negative. “And what was I doing?” he asked. “I was saying, ‘It’s time to get up, or you will be late for school.’ Or, ‘You haven’t put away your cereal dish from breakfast.’ ” He was nagging, in other words, and nagging is not a flow activity. “I realized,” he said, “that being a parent consists, in large part, of correcting the growth pattern of a person who is not necessarily ready to live in a civilized society.” I asked if, in that same data set, he had any numbers about flow in family life. None were in his book. He said he did. “They were low. Family life is organized in a way that flow is very difficult to achieve, because we assume that family life is supposed to relax us and to make us happy. But instead of being happy, people get bored.” Or enervated, as he’d said before, when talking about disciplining his sons. And because children are constantly changing, the “rules” of handling them change too, which can further confound a family’s ability to flow. “And then we get into these spirals of conflict and so forth,” he continued. “That’s why I’m saying it’s easier to get into flow at work. Work is more structured. It’s structured more like a game. It has clear goals, you get feedback, you know what has to be done, there are limits.” He thought about this. “Partly, the lack of structure in family life, which seems to give people freedom, is actually a kind of an impediment.

Book Excerpt: "What about your family, Abu Huwa? Are you an orphan?” the little girl very innocently asked the Sphinx. “My father and your father are one and the same. However, I do have a brother who has stood as my mirror throughout time on the opposite horizon. It is I who faces east, but it is he who faces west. I am the recorder of yesterday and he holds the records of tomorrow. I am the positive, and he is my negative. I carry the right eye of the sun and he carries the left eye of the moon. He keeps his eye on the underworld and I keep an eye on the world over. Together we have joined the sky and earth, and split fire and water.” Seham stood on all toes to peek over the Sphinx's shoulder for a sign of his brother. “Where is he?” she asked, her eyes still searching the open horizon. “He has yet to be uncovered, but as I stand above the sands of time, he still sleeps below. Before the descent of Adam, we have both stood as loyal Protectors of the Two Halls of Truth.” The girl asked in astonishment, “I've never heard of these halls, Abu Huwa. Where are they?” “At the end of each of our tails is a passage that will reveal to you the secrets of Time. One hall reflects a thousand truths, and the other hall reflects all that is untrue. One will speak to your heart, and the other will speak to your mind. This is why you need to use both your heart and mind to understand which one is real, and which is a distorted illusion created to misguide those that have neglected their conscience. Both passageways connect you to the Great Hall of Records.” “What is the Hall of Records?” “The Great Pyramid, my child. It is as multidimensional in its shape as it is in its purpose. Every layer and every brick marks the coming of a prophet, the ascension of evil, or another cycle of man. It contains the entire history and future of mankind. And, as is above, so is below. Above ground, it serves as the most powerful energy source to harmonize and power the world! The shape of the pyramid above ground is also the same image mirrored beneath it. Underground, it serves as a powerful well and drain. This is really why Egypt is called the Land of Two Lands. There exists a huge world of its own underneath the plateau, a world within worlds. Large amounts of gold, copper and mercury were once housed here, including the secrets of Time, the 100th name of He Who Is All, and a gift from Truth that still awaits to be discovered. It sleeps with Time in the Great Pyramid, hidden away in a lower shaft that leads to the stars.” Dialogue from 'The Little Girl and the Sphinx' by Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (Dar-El Shams, 2010)

The social pressure to be happy therefore means that many people who aren’t happy or experience extreme low mood such as depression, are pressurised into not speaking about their negative emotions. It makes it hard for individuals to be honest with both themselves and others, and means that we would rather keep it all inside. Being expected to be happy all the time makes us feel like we’re failing when we’re feeling unhappy.

Before we move on to the stuffer who collects retaliation rocks, I want to address the issue of impossible people. We know that all things are possible with God. But all things are not possible with people who refuse to be led by the Holy Spirit. I’ve had to get really honest about certain people in my life. It isn’t productive or possible to confront them and expect anything good to come from it. If someone has told me over and over through their actions and reactions that they will make my life miserable if I confront them, at some point I have to back away. But I don’t want to stuff and allow bitterness toward them to poison me. So, how do I back away and not stuff? I acknowledge that I can control only myself. I can’t control how another person acts or reacts. Therefore, I shift my focus from trying to fix the other person and the situation to allowing God to reveal some tender truths to me. I typically pray something like this: God, I’m so tired of being hurt. I’m so tired of feeling distracted and discouraged by this situation. Pour Your lavish mercy on my heart and into this hard relationship. Help me to see the obvious hurt they must have in their life that makes them act this way. Help me to have compassion for their pain. Help me to see anything I’m doing or have done that has negatively affected this situation. And please help me to know how to separate myself graciously from this constant source of hurt in my life. It all feels impossible. Oh God, speak to me. Reveal clearly how I can best honor You, even in this. My job isn’t to fix the difficult people in my life or enable them to continue disrespectful or abusive behaviors. My job is to be obedient to God in the way I act and respond to those people.

If you’re anxious and agreeable, you may find yourself over-committing to things because you overestimate the potential negative consequences of saying no. More generally, you may hold back from saying things you want to say because of anxiety about how you’ll be perceived. The skills you’ll learn in this book will help you balance your goal of being well liked with other priorities—like managing your schedule and speaking your mind.

Think about what you want to be, do, and have. Think about it often until you are very clear about this. Then, when you are very clear, think about nothing else. Imagine no other possibilities. Throw all negative thoughts out of your mental constructions. Lose all pessimism. Release all doubts. Reject all fears. Discipline your mind to hold fast to the original creative thought. When your thoughts are clear and steadfast, begin to speak them as truths. Say them out loud. Use the great command that calls forth creative power: I am. Make I-am statements to others. “I am” is the strongest creative statement in the universe. Whatever you think, whatever you say, after the words “I am” sets into motion those experiences, calls them forth, brings them to you. There is no other way the universe knows how to work. There is no other route it knows to take. The universe responds to “I am” as would a genie in a bottle.

Now keep looking at this unpleasant situation or person until you realize that it isn’t they that are causing the negative emotions. They are just going their way, being themselves, doing their thing whether right or wrong, good or bad. It is your computer that, thanks to your programming, insists on your reacting with negative emotions. You will see this better if you realize that someone with a different programming when faced with this same situation or person or event would react quite calmly, even happily. Don’t stop till you have grasped this truth: The only reason why you too are not reacting calmly and happily is your computer that is stubbornly insisting that reality be reshaped to conform to its programming. Observe all of this from the outside so to speak and see the marvelous change that comes about in you. Once you have understood this truth and thereby stopped your computer from generating negative emotions you may take any action you deem fit. You may avoid the situation or the person; or you may try to change them; or you may insist on your rights or the rights of others being respected; you may even resort to the use of force. But only after you have got rid of your emotional upsets, for then your action will spring from peace and love, not from the neurotic desire to appease your computer or to conform to its programming or to get rid of the negative emotions it generates. Then you will understand how profound is the wisdom of the words: “If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go with him two.” For it will have become evident to you that real oppression comes, not from people who fight you in court or from authority that subjects you to slave labor, but from your computer whose programming destroys your peace of mind the moment outside circumstances fail to conform to its demands. People have been known to be happy even in the oppressive atmosphere of a concentration camp! It is from the oppression of your programming that you need to be liberated.

WATCH YOUR WORDS DILIGENTLY. Words have such great power to bless or to wound. When you speak carelessly or negatively, you damage others as well as yourself. This ability to verbalize is an awesome privilege, granted only to those I created in My image. You need help in wielding this mighty power responsibly. Though the world applauds quick-witted retorts, My instructions about communication are quite different: Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Ask My Spirit to help you whenever you speak.

However, when your emotional state isn’t optimal—whether you’re experiencing stress, fear, worry, regret, resentment, or any other unpleasant emotion—you’re not thinking about what’s possible. You’re not fine-tuning your plans or brainstorming creative solutions to your problems. You’re not filled with energy. No, you’re dwelling on your negative emotions. You’re licking your wounds, so to speak. Meanwhile, the possibilities are passing you by because there’s no space in your brain for anything more than those negative emotions.

In the last few years we had learnt more of the people round us, and the way they felt. What had seemed, five or six years ago, a kind of rather disquieting game had grown grimmer as we understood more about it. Essentially, it had not changed. Still our whole consideration if we were to survive must be to keep our true selves hidden; to walk, talk, and live indistinguishably from other people. We had a gift, a sense which, Michael complained bitterly, should have been a blessing, but was little better than a curse. The stupidest norm was happier; he could feel that he belonged. We did not, and because we did not, we had no positive — we were condemned to negatives, to not revealing ourselves, to not speaking when we would, to not using what we knew, to not being found out — to a life of perpetual deception, concealment, and lying. The prospect of continued negativeness stretching out ahead chafed him more than it did the rest of us. His imagination took him further, giving him a clearer vision of what such frustrations were going to mean, but it was no better at suggesting an alternative than ours were.

He strums his guitar while he speaks, looking out over the crowd. They’re quiet, listening. “I don’t know if you know this about me,” he says. “But I have a beautiful daughter. Her name is Rachel, and she’s the bravest person I know.” I gasp. “Oh!” Aurora says, taking my hand. Jake squeezes my other one. “She is, naturally, a genius,” he says, and the crowd laughs. “Recently she said something so clever and true that I couldn’t let it go. So I wrote this song for her. I’m going to call it ‘Double Negative.’ It’s a song that asks for her patience. I figure by the time she turns thirty I might figure out this fatherhood thing.” He closes his eyes and begins slapping out a bluesy rhythm line on his guitar. I can’t not love you, And I can’t not care I won’t take no for an answer, And I won’t bow to despair. I don’t stop hoping, But I won’t forget to say That you’re not wrong in anger, And I can’t wish that away. You don’t believe that I am true It took far too long for me to come through. But I am your double negative Where everything wrong turns right. You might say that I am trite But don’t fight me, girl, on this tonight. I am your double negative Where everything wrong turns right.

In airplane crashes and chemical industry accidents, in the infrequent but serious nuclear plant accidents, in the NASA Challenger and Columbia disasters, and in the British Petroleum gulf spill, a common finding is that lower-ranking employees had information that would have prevented or lessened the consequences of the accident, but either it was not passed up to higher levels, or it was ignored, or it was overridden. When I talk to senior managers, they always assure me that they are open, that they want to hear from their subordinates, and that they take the information seriously. However, when I talk to the subordinates in those same organizations, they tell me either they do not feel safe bringing bad news to their bosses or they’ve tried but never got any response or even acknowledgment, so they concluded that their input wasn’t welcome and gave up. Shockingly often, they settled for risky alternatives rather than upset their bosses with potentially bad news. When I look at what goes on in hospitals, in operating rooms, and in the health care system generally, I find the same problems of communication exist and that patients frequently pay the price. Nurses and technicians do not feel safe bringing negative information to doctors or correcting a doctor who is about to make a mistake. Doctors will argue that if the others were “professionals” they would speak up, but in many a hospital the nurses will tell you that doctors feel free to yell at nurses in a punishing way, which creates a climate where nurses will certainly not speak up. Doctors engage patients in one-way conversations in which they ask only enough questions to make a diagnosis and sometimes make misdiagnoses because they don’t ask enough questions before they begin to tell patients what they should do.

Nurture parent-teacher relationships. When students feel that parents are talking negatively about their teacher, it undermines that critical relationship, akin to the acrimonious divorce of parents, notes Suniya Luthar. Students learn best from teachers they feel close to, and teachers play an essential role in buffering against achievement stress. Show respect and appreciation when you speak about or interact with their teachers. Actively build a partnership with educators so that a child can be best supported. “Replace” yourself. Consider creating your own council of parents. Value and appreciate the adults in your children’s lives. Guard that time so that they can enjoy a wider safety net of support. You might even make it formal, as some parents I interviewed did, by creating a master sheet of phone numbers and meeting together as a group. Encourage gratitude. Help children to get into the habit of telling others explicitly why they matter. You might adopt a regular gratitude practice at home, like “the one thing I love about the birthday person.” Teach kids how to think gratefully. Point out when someone goes out of their way to find a present for them, or when they do something kind that makes your child’s life better. Researchers find gratitude is the glue that binds relationships together.

In other words, if you're always more concerned about how someone will react to you, and if you're worried someone will react negatively, then you're less likely to say anything at all. And in such a situation, you're the one who ends up hurting the most. I better understand, it's not about being careless in the words you say, but it's about being clear, and then just letting it be. I should be able to ask for whatever I need; conversely, she should be able to ask for whatever she needs. Recognizing, speaking to, and honoring our truths is the correct path to fostering love and intimacy; that such communication is difficult only underscores the impact of this positive and open connection.

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. I tried to locate it when I was writing this column so I could cite it properly and quote it directly, but I had no luck. That’s fine because what I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it’s devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child You are a worthless piece of shit than it was for a parent to say Your mother/ father is a worthless piece of shit.

■​Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. ■​The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. ■​Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. ■​Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. ■​List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. ■​Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God’s voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith. We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves.

Easing Your Mind’s Responses to Anxiety When you are in social situations, your mind might race with negative thoughts about yourself, expectations about what is going to happen, or fears about what others are thinking. Often, these thoughts develop into a vicious cycle: Because you believe you don’t have anything worthwhile to express, you expect to have difficulty speaking. When you have difficulty speaking, you believe that people think you’re stupid. Because you believe people think you are stupid, you have even more difficulties with conversation. With your mind in such a tizzy, it is difficult to relax and be yourself. Your imagination is a very powerful tool to help combat negative self-talk and reduce stress, tension, and anxiety. This section will help you learn to think your way out of this mental trap.

Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that "it'll only make things worse" or "it's not gonna change anything", except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality.

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre felt later, that in a choice between Terror and Slavery one chooses Terror, 'not for its own sake, but because, in this era of flux, it upholds the exigencies proper to the aesthetics of Art.' The fictions of modernist literature were revolutionary, new, though affirming a relation of complementarity with the past. These fictions were, I think it is clear, related to others, which helped to shape the disastrous history of our time. Fictions, notably the fiction of apocalypse, turn easily into myths; people will live by that which was designed only to know by. Lawrence would be the writer to discuss here, if there were time; apocalypse works in Woman in Love, and perhaps even in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but not n Apocalypse, which is failed myth. It is hard to restore the fictive status of what has become mythical; that, I take it, is what Mr. Saul Bellow is talking about in his assaults on wastelandism, the cant of alienation. In speaking of the great men of early modernism we have to make very subtle distinctions between the work itself, in which the fictions are properly employed, and obiter dicta in which they are not, being either myths or dangerous pragmatic assertions. When the fictions are thus transformed there is not only danger but a leak, as it were, of reality; and what we feel about. all these men at times is perhaps that they retreated inso some paradigm, into a timeless and unreal vacuum from which all reality had been pumped. Joyce, who was a realist, was admired by Eliot because he modernized myth, and attacked by Lewis because he concerned himself with mess, the disorders of common perception. But Ulysses ,alone of these great works studies and develops the tension between paradigm and reality, asserts the resistance of fact to fiction, human freedom and unpredictability against plot. Joyce chooses a Day; it is a crisis ironically treated. The day is full of randomness. There are coincidences, meetings that have point, and coincidences which do not. We might ask whether one of the merits of the book is not its lack of mythologizing; compare Joyce on coincidence with the Jungians and their solemn concordmyth, the Principle of Synchronicity. From Joyce you cannot even extract a myth of Negative Concord; he shows us fiction fitting where it touches. And Joyce, who probably knew more about it than any of the others, was not at tracted by the intellectual opportunities or the formal elegance of fascism.

The great French diarist Jules Renard (1864-1910) had small interest in non-literary art forms. When Ravel approached him wanting to set five of his Histoires naturelles, Renard couldn’t see the point; he didn’t forbid it, but declined to go to the premiere. He sat through Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and found it a ‘sombre bore’, its plot ‘puerile’. His attitude to painting was a little more responsive: he admired (and knew) Lautrec, and approved of Renoir; but he found Cézanne barbarous and Monet’s waterlilies ‘girly’. This was less philistinism than a robust admission of his own areas of non-response. And he did write one wonderful thing about painting, on 8 January 1908: ‘When I am in front of a picture, it speaks better than I do.’ It is a chastening remark, because most of us, when in front of a picture, do not give the picture time enough to speak. We talk at it, about it, of it, to it; we want to forcibly understand it, get its measure, colonise it, ‘friend’ it. We compare it to other pictures it reminds us of; we read the label on the wall, confirm that it is, say, pastel on monotype, and check which gallery or plutocrat owns it. But unless we are highly trained, we don’t know enough to recognise more than roughly how the picture relates to the history of painting (because it always does, even if negatively). Instead, we hose it with words and move on.

Speaking of gendered differences in reaction and action—you’ve talked of a certain “bullying reception” to your book here in New Zealand by a certain set of older male critics. The omniscient narrator, the idea that you “had to be everywhere,” seems to have affronted some male readers, as has the length of the book. Have you experienced this reaction in the UK, too, or in Canada? Has it been a peculiarly New Zealand response, perhaps because of the necessarily small pool of literary competition here? This is a point that has been perhaps overstated. There’s been a lot written about what I said, and in fact the way I think and feel about the reviewing culture we have in New Zealand has changed a lot through reading the responses and objections of others. Initially I used the word “bullying” only to remark that, as we all learn at school, more often than not someone’s objections are more to do with their own shortcomings or failures than with yours, and that’s something that you have to remember when you’re seeing your artistic efforts devalued or dismissed in print. I don’t feel bullied when I receive a negative review, but I do think that some of the early reviewers refused to engage with the book on its own terms, and that refusal seemed to me to have a lot to do with my gender and my age. To even things out, I called attention to the gender and age of those reviewers, which at the time seemed only fair. I feel that it’s very important to say that sexism is a hegemonic problem, written in to all kinds of cultural attitudes that are held by men and women alike. As a culture we are much more comfortable with the idea of the male thinker than the female thinker, simply because there are so many more examples, throughout history, of male thinkers; as an image and as an idea, the male thinker is familiar to us, and acts in most cases as a default. Consequently female thinkers are often unacknowledged and discouraged, sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly, sometimes by men, and sometimes by women. I am lucky, following the Man Booker announcement, that my work is now being read very seriously indeed; but that is a privilege conferred for the most part by the status of the prize, and I know that I am the exception rather than the rule. I’d like to see a paradigm shift, and I’m confident that one is on the way, but the first thing that needs to happen is a collective acknowledgment that reviewing culture is gendered—that everything is gendered—and that until each of us makes a conscious effort to address inequality, we will each remain a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution. Protesting the fact of inequality is like protesting global warming or evolution: it’s a conservative blindness, born out of cowardice and hostility.

When I Have to Confess Something to My Husband Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. JAMES 5:16 THERE ARE TIMES in every wife’s life when she needs to confess something to her husband that will be hard for him to hear. For example, if she has dented the car, or spent too much money, or overdrawn the bank account, or accidentally given away his favorite football shirt—or something even worse—and she knows his reaction to what she has to tell him will not be good, she needs help from above. If this happens to you, the thing to do is pray before you speak. If you have something to tell your husband you know he will not approve of, ask God to help you break it to him in the best way possible. Don’t just blurt it out. Ask God to prepare your husband’s heart to hear hard things without having a bad reaction to them. Ask the Lord to give you the right words to say and the right time to say it. There may be occasions when your husband needs to confess something to you, and you will want to set a good example of calm and patience for him to want to emulate. If you feel your husband overreacts to things, pray that God will give him a compassionate and understanding heart and an even temper. Ask God to plant in him the desire to pray for you instead of criticize or lecture. After you seek your husband’s forgiveness, tell him how effective it would be to pray together about this so that it never happens again. My Prayer to God LORD, help me to speak to my husband about what I know I need to confess to him. Give me the words to say. Open his heart to receive what I need to tell him with a good and godly attitude. If it is something I know I did wrong, help me to not do it again. Give me the wisdom and discernment I need to avoid that in the future. Where it is something I did that I feel was not wrong, but I know he will not be happy about it, help us to talk calmly and peacefully about this issue. Enable us to come to an agreement regarding what should be done in the future. Give my husband and me compassionate attitudes that don’t resort to anger. Help us to talk peacefully and come to a mutual understanding so that we always exhibit respect for each other. Teach us to believe for the best in each other. When I have to confess something that is hard for him to hear, reign in both of our hearts so that our words glorify You. Where there are things that should be confessed to each other but have been hidden because of not wanting to stir up anything negative, I pray You would help us to get these things out in the open honestly. Your Word says that confessing our trespasses—both to You and to each other—can be a prelude to healing, not only of body and soul but also of our relationship and marriage. Enable us to freely confess and freely pray for each other so that we may find the healing we need. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Dear PrettyKitty29, Hi, my name is Liam Brody. From the looks of your charming website, you've heard of me. Believe it or not, I've heard of you too. I was recently tipped off about your little gossip community. I probably shouldn't call it little. You are one of the busiest gossip communities on the Internet. Congratulations. I'm always impressed with people who manage to stay indoors so much. You must have a sufficient amount of Vitamin D. I noticed that you seem to have an odd and probably unwarranted agenda against me. Almost every bitter post about me is put up by lovely you. I also noticed that your hatred has spread successfully among your users. Wow. What an influence you have on gossip hungry teens and housewives. Again, congratulations. I apologize for dating models, PrettyKitty29. I just think they're more attractive than other people. Some people steal, some people do drugs, some people sell them. I date models. It could probably be worse. I could be someone who makes bribes. Speaking of those, I was emailing you to let you know that despite the sarcasm throughout this email, I find your strangely influential website interesting and am willing to make a substantial payment to you if you stop posting negative stories and put a few nice ones instead. I don't know what a gossip community moderator gets paid, but I'm sure that regardless, you could use a few extra bucks. It would pay for food delivery, movies On Demand, and other indoor pleasures that I'm sure you partake in. Please let me know. Best, Liam Brody.

Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. ■​The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. ■​Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. ■​Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. ■​List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. ■​Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics

On the one hand, the creeds do not speak of “the Jews” as responsible for the death of Jesus; he “suffered under” and “was crucified under” Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, the creeds do not mention Jesus’s Judaism at all. With the stress in some churches on Jesus’s divine sonship, the cross, the resurrection, and the redemptory role of saving humanity from sin and death, his historical connection to Judaism gets lost along with his very Jewish message of the kingdom of heaven. The problem is more than one of silence. In the popular Christian imagination, Jesus still remains defined, incorrectly and unfortunately, as “against” the Law, or at least against how it was understood at the time; as “against” the Temple as an institution and not simply against its first-century leadership; as “against” the people Israel but in favor of the Gentiles. Jesus becomes the rebel who, unlike every other Jew, practices social justice. He is the only one to speak with women; he is the only one who teaches nonviolent responses to oppression; he is the only one who cares about the “poor and the marginalized” (that phrase has become a litany in some Christian circles). Judaism becomes in such discourse a negative foil: whatever Jesus stands for, Judaism isn’t it; whatever Jesus is against, Judaism epitomizes the category. No wonder even today Jesus somehow looks “different” from “the Jews”: in the movies and artistic renderings, he’s blond and they are swarthy; he is cute and buff and they need rhinoplasty and Pilates. Jesus and his followers such as Peter and Mary Magdalene become identified as (proto-) Christian; only those who chose not to follow him remain “Jews.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.

The young lady then placed her hands on Kode’s shoulder, letting her cheek rest on top of the pile. The smile on her face was more than a victory smile. It was a happy sign of contentment. Eena wondered. “When do you suppose those two will get married?” She whispered the question to Kira who still had a firm grip on her arm. “Kode get married?” The incredulity on Kira’s face matched her brother’s strong outburst. “Who the hell says I’m gettin’ hitched?” Niki pushed herself away from her boyfriend’s shoulder; her upper lip curled into a resentful scowl at the negative way he had voiced his query. Eena had never meant for them to overhear. She stumbled over a justification for the question. “It’s just that you’ve been together for a while, you know, like a couple. Close. I mean, you’re always together so…I just figured…” she let the notion trail off. Kode looked queasy. “We’re always together ‘cause she bloody follows me around everywhere I go like I’m some freakin’ tour guide!” “Fine!” Niki exclaimed, holding her palms like a defensive wall in front of her. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want. I don’t need you! There’s plenty of other guys who’d love to get their lips on me!” With that outburst, the pretty Mishmorat twirled her body around, setting off on foot with both fists seared into her hips. Kode let her take about four steps before he darted over and dragged her back. She didn’t put up much of a fight, but her beautiful burgundy eyes refused to look at him. “Ungrateful woman,” he murmured. “No one asked you to leave.” Niki continued to glare up at the cloudy sky. Kode sighed a long, perturbed sound. His next words were mumbled like they were torturous to have to speak out loud. “Come on, Niki, you know I don’t want you to go. Who the hell’s gonna keep me in line if you’re gone?” That made the pretty Mishmorat smile. She breathed in deeply and then dropped her gaze onto her man. His face was a goofy grimace, hers a smug grin of satisfaction. Kode threw an arm roughly around his girlfriend and pulled her close to him. He then turned to Eena, shrugging one shoulder. “She’ll probably break down and marry me this summer,” he said. “That’s what I’m thinkin’ anyway.” Niki’s head went back to rest on Kode’s shoulder, right where it had started.

A phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, situation or place. Phobias are quite common and often take root in childhood for no apparent reason. Other times they spring from traumatic events or develop from an attempt to make sense of unexpected and intense feelings of anxiety or panic. Simple phobias are fears of specific things such as insects, infections, or even flying. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in places where one feels trapped or unable to get help, such as in crowds, on a bus or in a car, or standing in a line. It is basically an anxiety that ignites from being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing). A social phobia is a marked fear of social or performance situations. When the phobic person actually encounters, or even anticipates, being in the presence of the feared object or situation, immediate anxiety can be triggered. The physical symptoms of anxiety may include shortness of breath, sweating, a racing heart, chest or abdominal discomfort, trembling, and similar reactions. The emotional component involves an intense fear and may include feelings of losing control, embarrassing oneself, or passing out. Most people who experience phobias try to escape or avoid the feared situation wherever possible. This may be fairly easy if the feared object is rarely encountered (such as snakes) and avoidance will not greatly restrict the person’s life. At other times, avoiding the feared situation (in the case of agoraphobia, social phobia) is not easily done. After all, we live in a world filled with people and places. Having a fear of such things can limit anyone’s life significantly, and trying to escape or avoid a feared object or situation because of feelings of fear about that object or situation can escalate and make the feelings of dread and terror even more pronounced. In some situations of phobias, the person may have specific thoughts that contribute some threat to the feared situation. This is particularly true for social phobia, in which there is often a fear of being negatively evaluated by others, and for agoraphobia, in which there may be a fear of passing out or dying with no one around to help, and of having a panic attack where one fears making a fool of oneself in the presence of other people. Upon recognizing their problem for what it is, men should take heart in knowing that eighty percent of people who seek help can experience improvement of symptoms or, in male-speak, the illness can be “fixed.

Hypnotherapy You may have seen scenes on television in which hypnotists make people act like chickens or take off their clothes. In reality, hypnotherapy is nothing like that. You actually might experience a hypnotic state many times every week, or possibly every day. It is essentially no different than being engrossed in a book or movie, or being in the meditative state you may reach while exercising. During hypnosis you are highly focused and are not distracted by random thoughts. At the same time, you are aware of outside events, such as the telephone ringing or a door slamming. When you see a hypnotherapist, he or she is simply a guide helping you reach a deeply relaxed state. The therapist may begin by having you picture a pleasant and safe environment. Or, he or she might ask you to focus on an object in your line of vision until your eyes become heavy. Once you are in the hypnotized state, it is easier to focus on your anxiety. You can talk about past experiences, can work on your self-esteem, and can prepare for upcoming social events. You won’t have distracting thoughts or be monitoring everything you say. You may remember events you had forgotten, or may come up with new ways to help yourself cope with the symptoms of anxiety. Adriana was really nervous when her therapist suggested they use hypnosis to work on her fear of meeting new people, but she decided to try it. First, the therapist asked her to visualize a quiet place where she felt completely relaxed and comfortable. When Adriana’s body felt heavy and warm, the therapist asked her to describe how she feels when she speaks with strangers. Adriana discussed how she feels embarrassed and worried, how her face gets red and hot, and how her mind is distracted by negative thoughts. Next, the therapist asked Adriana to visualize being introduced to a stranger. She imagined herself feeling calm and relaxed and looking the person in the eyes. She rehearsed what she would say about herself and said it over and over, sounding more confident each time. The therapist then asked her to think of three things that could help her in those situations. Adriana decided to try relaxing, making sure she is breathing properly, and focusing on the other person instead of on her negative thoughts. Later that week, she dined with a friend and his cousin, whom she had never met before. She was able to take deep breaths and remain relaxed. Once initial introductions went well, Adriana felt more confident and was able to maintain conversations for the entire evening.

It will be seen how there can be the idea of a special science, the *critique of pure reason* as it may be called. For reason is the faculty which supplies the *principles* of *a priori* knowledge. Pure reason therefore is that which contains the principles of knowing something entirely *a priori*. An *organon* of pure reason would be the sum total of the principles by which all pure *a priori* knowledge can be acquired and actually established. Exhaustive application of such an organon would give us a system of pure reason. But as this would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether indeed an expansion of our knowledge is possible here at all, we may regard a science that merely judges pure reason, its sources and limits, as the *propaedeutic* to the system of pure reason. In general, it would have to be called only a *critique*, not a *doctrine* of pure reason. Its utility, in regard to speculation, would only be negative, for it would serve only to purge rather than to expand our reason, and, which after all is a considerable gain, would guard reason against errors. I call all knowledge *transcendental* which deals not so much with objects as with our manner of knowing objects insofar as this manner is to be possible *a priori*. A system of such concepts would be called *transcendental philosophy*. But this is still, as a beginning, too great an undertaking. For since such a science must contain completely both analytic and synthetic *a priori* knowledge, it is, as far as our present purpose is concerned, much too comprehensive. We will be satisfied to carry the analysis only so far as is indispensably necessary in order to understand in their whole range the principles of *a priori* synthesis, with which alone we are concerned. This investigation, which properly speaking should be called only a transcendental critique but not a doctrine, is all we are dealing with at present. It is not meant to expand our knowledge but only to correct it, and to become the touchstone of the value, or lack of value, of all *a priori* knowledge. Such a critique is therefore the preparation, as far as possible, for a new organon, or, if this should turn out not to be possible, for a canon at least, according to which, thereafter, the complete system of a philosophy of pure reason, whether it serve as an expansion or merely as a limitation of its knowledge, may be carried out both analytically and synthetically. That such a system is possible, indeed that it need not be so comprehensive as to cut us off from the hope of completing it, may already be gathered from the fact that it would have to deal not with the nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but with the understanding which makes judgments about the nature of things, and with this understanding again only as far as its *a priori* knowledge is concerned. The supply of this *a priori* knowledge cannot be hidden from us, as we need not look for it outside the understanding, and we may suppose this supply to prove sufficiently small for us to record completely, judge as to its value or lack of value and appraise correctly. Still less ought we to expect here a critique of books and systems of pure reason, but only the critique of the faculty of pure reason itself. Only once we are in possession of this critique do we have a reliable touchstone for estimating the philosophical value of old and new works on this subject. Otherwise, an unqualified historian and judge does nothing but pass judgments upon the groundless assertions of others by means of his own, which are equally groundless.

It usually takes just a few negative comments to kill a person’s dream. Don’t speak these negative comments to others and don’t listen to those who do. Don’t let people interrupt you and tell you that you can’t do something. If you have a dream that you’re passionate about, you must follow it. When others can’t do something themselves, they’re going to tell you that you can’t do it either. Rubbish! These people are simply speaking from within the boundaries of their own limitations. Don’t let weak minds convince you that you aren’t strong enough and smart enough. You are. Surround yourself with people who help strengthen you…those who see greatness in you, even when you don’t see it in yourself.

Lord, forgive me for demonstrating the spirit of Cain, the spirit of murder, in my life. I admit that I have been wrong in my attitude toward others, and I repent of all the negative words I have spoken about them. I commit to You today that with Your help I will change the words I speak from words of cursing to words of blessing. Thank You for giving me the gift of speech that allows me to bless those in my life. Lord, with Your help I will strive to be a blessing to my family, my church, those in authority over me, and all the others You have placed in my life. Amen.

January 28 Wise Words A wise person gets known for insight; gracious words add to one’s reputation. . .They make a lot of sense, these wise folks; whenever they speak, their reputation increases.—Proverbs 16:21, 23 (MSG) Every time I talk with my friend Gloria I wonder, why can’t I say wise things like she does? Gloria is not a real talker, but when she speaks it is certainly worth listening to. Many times I am guilty of being in such a rush to have myself heard that I speak first, and then think. Often I have unfortunate results. How many times have I said, “Why did I make that statement?” My friend Gloria has great insight. She makes a lot of sense. She speaks with wisdom that she has gained from studying God’s Word. People listen when Gloria speaks. And yes, as today’s Scripture says, her reputation increases. We should all seek to encourage those who cross our paths. We should measure our words carefully. We should speak wisely, not impulsively. Our words should bring healing and comfort to a world that needs both. Our words should be pleasing to God and helpful to others. Our words and our actions both should demonstrate what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. Recently I did a study in God’s Word about communicating with others. Here are some questions to ask before jumping too quickly into conversations: Are my words positive or negative? Am I listening to what others say? Do I talk too much? Am I meddling or gossiping? Is my timing right? Am I speaking encouragingly? Do I have lying lips? Am I bragging or nagging? Do I admit wrongs? Do I sometimes need to bridle my tongue? Think on these statements so that your words will be more like God desires them to be. Ask God to give you His words and his wisdom.

Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that "it'll only make things worse" or "it's not gonna change anything", except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality.

There will always be someone willing to hurt you, put you down, gossip about you, belittle your accomplishments, and judge your soul. It is a fact that we all must face. However, if you realize that God is a best friend that stands beside you when others cast stones you will never be afraid, never feel worthless, and never feel alone. —SHANNON L. ALDER

When I visit schools, I explain that modern Indians dress like everybody else and speak English. That our tribal regalia, the buckskin and feathers, are not everyday garb but are reserved for special events. I say that we are proud of our beautiful, colorful clothing, which is important in our traditions, but it is only a part of being Indian. The part that they can’t see, our beliefs, our values, make us Indian even though we no longer wear buckskins, beads, and feathers and don’t live in teepees. As an adult I can handle the stereotypes, and as an author I try to correct the misconceptions and tell the truth about American Indians. Unfortunately, Indian children can have negative feelings about themselves because they don’t fit this false image. Educators have found that the way children view themselves is important to their success in school and how they relate to others. But an unrealistic idea of what and who Indians are supposed to be confuses a child when he or she compares those images to his or her parents and other relatives. Some

Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart, divides the human race into “positive” and “negative” people: The positive people work miracles, accounting for the evolution of human performance. I add another division, productive and nonproductive people: those who can do things and those who only talk about things (especially talk about why they can’t do things). As far back as I can remember, I was determined to contribute something, to be productive, and I’ve always questioned those who—though they may know much—go through life without making a mental contribution to the species: “If I live, I ought to speak my mind.” Productive people have a love affair with time, with all of love’s ups and downs. They get more from time than others, seem to know how to use time much better than nonproductive people—so much so that they can waste immense quantities of time and still be enormously creative and productive. One of my favorite examples is John Peabody Harrington, the great anthropologist of the American Southwest. At the time of his death, Harrington’s field notes filled a basement of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and several rented warehouses in the Washington suburbs were needed for the overflow. Yet Carobeth Laird, his wife and Harrington’s biographer, called him one of the greatest wasters of time she’d ever known—and said he felt the same way about himself.

Within chapter 26 Job affirms the three-tiered universe of waters of the Abyss below him (v. 5) and under that Sheol (v. 6), with pillars holding up the heavens (v. 11). Later in the same book, God himself speaks about the earth laid on foundations (38:4), sinking its bases and cornerstone like a building (38:5-6). Ancient peoples believed the earth was on top of some other object like the back of a turtle, and that it was too heavy to float on the waters. So in context, Job 26 appears to be saying that the earth is over the waters of the abyss and Sheol, on its foundations, but there is nothing under those pillars but God himself holding it all up. This is not the suggestion of a planet hanging in space, but rather the negative claim of an earth that is not on top of an ancient object.

List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.

When we speak about enlightenment and the path leading to it, we are naturally speaking about a quality, or state, of mind. In the final analysis, enlightenment is nothing other than a perfected state of mind. Enlightenment should not be understood as some kind of physical location or rank or status that is conferred upon us. It is the state of mind where all negativities and limitations have been purified, and all potentials of positive qualities fully perfected and realized. Since the ultimate objective is a state of mind, the methods and paths by which it is attained must also be states of mind. Enlightenment cannot be attained by external means, only through an internal process. As we develop and improve our states of mind, our knowledge, wisdom and realization gradually increase, culminating in our attainment of enlightenment.

They don’t set and hold good boundaries to protect themselves. They don’t set limits on what is and what is not acceptable for other people to do to them. And, if and when they do set limits, they back down and allow the behavior to continue. They don’t ask for what they want. Because they believe they don’t deserve good things or a better life, they don’t ask for them. They berate themselves. They beat themselves up more than anyone else because they feel as though they have failed in some way, even if it was a simple, honest mistake. And they stay quiet about it for fear of being wrong or sounding stupid. They seek perfection in themselves and/or others. When they can’t be perfect, they give themselves a hard time instead of accepting what is. Or, they look for other people’s faults to make them feel better rather than looking at themselves, which is only a temporary fix. They focus on the negatives. They believe that everyone else’s life is better or more important than theirs. Instead of looking at all the good things they have, they compare their lives to those of others. One tiny negative comment can linger forever in their memory while all the compliments and praise go unnoticed. They tend to stay quiet and suffer. At times it makes sense to speak up and say what is wanted, but they hold back because they see themselves as not worthy or deserving. They don’t acknowledge the beauty and gifts they bring to the world. Instead, they dismiss as negligible or immaterial that which they offer to the world.

Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don’t know what you are doing. Applying negative mental labels to people, either to their face or more commonly when you speak about them to others or even just think about them, is often part of this pattern. Name

Power tools • Speak up when your insights can make a difference. If others make disparaging remarks, the results you bring to the table will ultimately override their negative comments. If the negativity continues, you may need to look for other opportunities. • Do a spot-check inventory throughout the day. Be aware of how you are feeling and thinking. If you are experiencing mad mind-chatter based on unfounded biases, question these thoughts. • Find a stretch goal you are passionate about and consider what you need to do to achieve it. Get a few supporters in place and start taking action, one step at a time. 2

PUT THESE FIVE PROCEDURES TO WORK FOR YOU 1. Action cures fear. Isolate your fear and then take constructive action. Inaction—doing nothing about a situation—strengthens fear and destroys confidence. 2. Make a supreme effort to put only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Don’t let negative, self-deprecatory thoughts grow into mental monsters. Simply refuse to recall unpleasant events or situations. 3. Put people in proper perspective. Remember, people are more alike, much more alike, than they are different. Get a balanced view of the other fellow. He is just another human being. And develop an understanding attitude. Many people will bark, but it’s a rare one who bites. 4. Practice doing what your conscience tells you is right. This prevents a poisonous guilt complex from developing. Doing what’s right is a very practical rule for success. 5. Make everything about you say, “I’m confident, really confident.” Practice these little techniques in your day-to-day activities: Be a front seater. Make eye contact. Walk 25 percent faster. Speak up. Smile big.

Notice how your voice tone affects the voice tone of the person you speak to. Change your voice tone and see how it changes the voice tone of the other person (you may have to demonstrate the change a few times before the other person matches you). When your level of negative emotional arousal is low, notice how much you love your partner, notice your commitment to your relationship, and notice the things you both want from your relationship, such as companionship, friendship, support, and understanding. Notice that you are in the same boat together: you sail or sink together. Every day remind yourself about how you are connected to your partner: “Your happiness is my happiness, and your unhappiness is my unhappiness. When I take care of your needs, I am also taking care of my own. When I treat you with love and kindness, I am taking care of myself also.” Notice how your mood affects others around you, and vice versa. Before saying something to your partner, even in an easy, nonconflictual situation, ask yourself, “Is this going to make things better or worse?” or, if you prefer, “Is this going to get me what I really want in the long term?” Practice this one as much as possible, even several times per day. Notice how empowering it is to be able to choose how you

It would be logical for any group whose only sense of identity is the negative one of wickedness and oppression to dilute its wickedness by mixing with more virtuous groups. This is, upon reflection, exactly what celebrating diversity implies. James Carignan, a city councilor in Lewiston, Maine, encouraged the city to welcome refugees from the West African country of Togo, writing, “We are too homogeneous at present. We desperately need diversity.” He said the Togolese—of whom it was not known whether they were literate, spoke English, or were employable—“will bring us the diversity that is essential to our quest for excellence.” Likewise in Maine, long-serving state’s attorney James Tierney wrote of racial diversity in the state: “This is not a burden. This is essential.” An overly white population is a handicap. Gwynne Dyer, a London-based Canadian journalist, also believes whites must be leavened with non-whites in a process he calls “ethnic diversification.” He noted, however, that when Canada and Australia opened their borders to non-white immigration, they had to “do good by stealth” and not explain openly that the process would reduce whites to a minority: “Let the magic do its work, but don’t talk about it in front of the children. They’ll just get cross and spoil it all.” Mr. Dyer looked forward to the day when politicians could be more open about their intentions of thinning out whites. President Bill Clinton was open about it. In his 2000 State of the Union speech, he welcomed predictions that whites would become a minority by mid-century, saying, “this diversity can be our greatest strength.” In 2009, before a gathering of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he again brought up forecasts that whites will become a minority, adding that “this is a very positive thing.” [...] Harvard University professor Robert Putnam says immigrants should not assimilate. “What we shouldn’t do is to say that they should be more like us,” he says. “We should construct a new us.” When Marty Markowitz became the new Brooklyn borough president in 2002, he took down the portrait of George Washington that had hung in the president’s office for many years. He said he would hang a picture of a black or a woman because Washington was an “old white man.” [...] In 2000, John Sharp, a former Texas comptroller and senator told the state Democratic Hispanic Caucus that whites must step aside and let Hispanics govern, “and if that means that some of us gringos are going to have to give up some life-long dreams, then we’ve got to do that.” When Robert Dornan of California was still in Congress, he welcomed the changing demographics of his Orange County district. “I want to see America stay a nation of immigrants,” he said. “And if we lose our Northern European stock—your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair—tough!” Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, appears happy to become a minority. He wrote this about Sonya Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings: “[T]his particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better [judicial] conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past.” It is impossible to imagine people of any other race speaking of themselves this way.

Before we turn to the Tractarian treatment of logical propositions, it is worth pausing to consider what becomes in that book of the philo- sophical idea that what makes some set of statements true (be they log- ical or empirical) is that they “reflect” a structure intrinsic to a domain of things. If one misunderstands the Tractarian comparison of a picture with a proposition, then one may think its very point is to encourage such an idea. Some commentators tell us that the crucial idea here is that there are two isomorphic “structures”—there is a structure in the world and a structure in language (or thought)—and in order to say (or think) what is true, one of the two structures must “reflect” the other. This is hopeless both as a reading of the Tractatus and as a conception of truth. As a reading of the book, it is hopeless, since the Tractatus says that it is the proposition that is a logical picture—where, on the conception of the proposition here at issue, it is essential that it be true or that it be false; hence, being true cannot itself be a matter of mere depiction. As soon as we focus on the question of what it is that I am right “about” if I affirm a true negative statement (e.g., “There are no elephants in this room”), it should become clear that the proposed conception is equally hopeless as an account of truth. For if the difference between true and false propositions were simply a matter of “reflecting” or “mirroring” what is the case, then the idea of speaking truth by affirming a negative statement would seem to require something very mysterious: a peculiar “negative” region of reality to which the truth of a negative statement may correspond. It is no small part of the point of the Tractarian deployment of the elucidatory comparison of a proposition with a picture to bring out the hopelessness of any such conception of truth—any one, that is, that tries to explicate the difference between true and false thoughts by appealing to the idea that the true ones “reflect” what is the case and the false ones do not.

The bad dialectic begins almost with the dialectic, and there is no good dialectic but that which criticizes itself and surpasses itself as a separate statement; the only good dialectic is the hyperdialectic...The bad dialectic is that which thinks it recomposes being by a thetic thought, by an assemblage of statements, by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; the good dialectic is that which is conscious of the fact that every thesis is an idealization, that Being is not made up of idealizations or of things said, as the old logic believed, but of bound wholes where signification never is except in tendency, where the inertia of the content never permits the defining of one term as positive, another term as negative, and still less a third term as absolute suppression of the negative by itself. The point to be noted is this: that the dialectic without synthesis of which we speak is not therefore scepticism, vulgar relativism, or the reign of the ineffable. What we reject or deny is not the idea of a surpassing that reassembles, it is the idea that it results in a new positive, a new position. In thought and in history as in life the only surpassings we know are concrete, partial, encumbered with survivals, saddled with deficits...In other words, what we exclude from the dialectic is the idea of the pure negative, what we seek is a dialectical definition of being that can be neither the being for itself nor the being in itself...nor the In-Itself-for-itself which is the height of ambivalence, a definition that must rediscover the being that lies before the cleavage operated by reflection, about it, on its horizon, not outside of us and not in us, but there where the two movements cross, there where "there is" something.

What I believe about myself, others, or God, whether true or not, remains “true” to me and I will think, speak, and act out of what I perceive to be true.

Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

A second form of manipulation is making guilt-inducing statements like: “After all I’ve done for you, how could you do this (or fail to do this) for me?” “If you really love me, you would . . .” “If you don’t quit doing that, you’ll drive me crazy, (make me commit suicide, etc.).” “God won’t love you if . . .” A third method of manipulation involves emphasizing details that place the other person in an unfavorable light. For example, a husband who wants his wife to change her behavior can rattle off a list of things she does inadequately, without noting any of the positive things she does. His manipulation is often effective because his wife may feel so negative about herself that she thinks she must give in to his demand, since she is apparently performing inadequately in so many other areas. A fourth form of manipulation is whining—used skillfully by children and adults alike. People will often give in to the whiner because they want to be free of the noise the whiner makes. Because it works, some people continue this method throughout life. In all forms of manipulation the manipulator, like the aggressive person, operates from an “I count me, I don’t count you” position.4

Anxiety becomes negative when you start to avoid the situation that causes it. For example, if I were to stop making public appearances because I didn’t like the physical manifestations of my stress response, or even to make the appearances but allow myself to be distracted by my cold hands or other symptoms--perhaps thinking, “Can they tell my hands are clammy?” “Am I making sense?”--that would be counterproductive. It’s important to me to make these appearances, so I channel my gearing-up anxiety into positive energy. Anxiety does not exist to control you. You exist to control it. It is, as I said, a simple fact of life that can be managed. In fact, used properly, it can actually give you an extra boost by heightening your energy and awareness. If you have social anxiety about such things as giving a presentation, speaking up at a meeting, attending a social gathering, initiating plans, developing intimacy in friendships and dating, then learning to manage your anxiety will help. This book will teach you how to channel your anxiety--not how to eliminate it.

Sustain a positive outlook. Cultivate a can-do spirit, and you will be an inspiration to employees. And, when that's a tall order, fake it until you make it! • Be known as a fair person. Employees want to be treated fairly, and you must take the necessary steps to make sure they feel that is the case. • Keep an eye on morale. Morale at the workplace can be affected positively or negatively by an incident that, although it might seem insignificant to you, might be very important to your employees. A contented group of employees will do more and better work than an unhappy group. • Set an example. If you want your employees to work hard and succeed, then set an example by doing so yourself. Be a spectacular role model! • Take responsibility for your actions. If something goes wrong and it's your fault, step up to the plate and acknowledge whatever it is that went wrong and why. • Maintain your sense of humor. Don't take yourself too seriously, and don't be in such a hurry that you haven't got time to tell or listen to a positive (tasteful) story. Studies suggest laughter and good humor go a long way in helping employees function well in the workplace. • Acknowledge good work through praise. Everyone wants to hear “well done” now and then, so make sure you acknowledge good work. Say it privately and say it within earshot of others, too. • Give credit for ideas. If one of your employees comes up with a great idea, by all means give that person the credit he or she deserves. Don't allow anyone to take an employee's idea and pass it off as his own. (Managers are sometimes accused of stealing an employee's idea; be scrupulous about avoiding even a hint of such a thing.) Beyond the basic guidelines listed above, a good manager must possess other positive qualities: • Understanding: Conventional wisdom dictates that you walk in someone else's shoes before you judge her. Keep that in mind when dealing with people in the workplace. • Good communication skills: Keep your communication skills in good working order. You might want to join speaking organizations to learn how to be a better public speaker. But don't stop there. You communicate when you send a memo, write e-mail, and lead a meeting. There's no such thing as being a “perfect” communicator. An excellent manager will view the pursuit of this art as a work in progress. • Strong listening skills: When was the last time you really listened to someone when he was talking to you? Did you give him your full, undivided attention, or was your mind thinking about five other different things? And when you are listening, do you really know what it is people are trying to tell you? (You might have to ask probing questions in order to get the message.) • Leadership: Employees need good leaders to help guide them, so make sure your leadership skills are enviable and on-duty. • Common sense: You'll need more than your fair share if you expect to be a good manager of people. Some managers toss common sense out the window and then foolishly wonder what happened when things go wrong. • Honesty: Be honest and ethical in all of your business dealings — period! • A desire to encourage: Encouragement is different than praise. Encouragement helps someone who hasn't yet achieved the goal. Employees need your input and encouragement from time to time in order to be successful, so be prepared to fill that role.

One of these norms says that Christians must not talk negatively to other people about those who are not in the group. Instead, they are instructed to speak privately about their differences to these individuals themselves. Matthew 18:15-17 is quite clear on the point.33

List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

BERNARDINE QUINN: We’re calling marriage equality ‘equality’ as if the day that there’s a bill stamped saying lesbian and gay people can get married that we’ll have full equality. Yet in Meath, there isn’t one single support service for a young lesbian or gay person to attend; there isn’t one qualified full-time youth worker to work with young LGBT people; there is absolutely zero trans services, where the trans services in Dublin are mediocre at best. There’s something about ‘marriage equality’ – that we’ll all be equal when marriage comes in, when a kid in west Kerry doesn’t even have a telephone number of a helpline that he can ring for support. This was raised by our young people to Mairead McGuinness and to Mary Lou McDonald when they were here, just to say, thinking that your work around marriage equality – that that’s not all. The allocation of finances to LGBT work in this country is tiny compared to what is given to most other services. There’s something about calling it ‘equality’. It’s another step on the ladder and it’s a hugely important step … But it isn’t all. There’s another battle after that, and that is to get services to west Donegal, to Mayo, into the Midlands, to get real, solid support in these areas so that a young LGBT person has something in every county, trained qualified people to talk to. In some areas where those services aren’t available, where there isn’t training for schools, where there’s nobody that a kid can talk to, to say that they think they’re transgender – I don’t want to sound negative – I think marriage equality is going to be fantastic for a lot of lesbian and gay people. I think if you were 14 and coming out today, your story is going to be so much more different than when I was 14. The prospects of you considering yourself what every other young person considers themselves of 14 when you think about your future and what you’re going to do: you’re going to meet the person that you love, you’re going to get married, going to have kids, going to have the house and the picket fence. That will be an option for a kid. When I came out, those dreams were put very firmly away. I was never going to get married, I was never going to have children, I was never going to make my family proud, my dad was never going to walk me up the aisle. All of those kinds of things were not even an option when I came out. As a matter of fact, there was a better chance that I was going to have to go to London, I was going to bring huge shame on my family, I probably would end up not speaking to half my siblings and my parents, having to go away and fend for myself. That was my option. I think that option has dramatically changed. People can live in their home towns easier now … Anything that makes a young person’s life easier, and gives them more opportunities, is fantastic. I think that a young person, 14, 15, only starting to discover themselves, they’ve got a whole other suite of options. They can talk about, ‘I’ll eventually marry my partner.’ I think I’m only after saying that for the first time in my life, that there will be an option to marry my partner.

agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. ■​Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. ■​Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. ■​List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. ■​Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

11.Speak well of others; don’t criticize I’ll say it again: Speak well of what is good, and maintain a neutral position about the bad. One must seriously commit to avoiding criticisms or negative judgments in conversation.

It’s so nice when, during a dinner or a gathering of friends, someone holds back a criticism or halts a negative conversation about others. Speaking ill of others creates a toxic emotional state in our bodies—full of cortisol!†—and we know the risks that that brings.

The 26th Gift celebrates your ego, without self-judgement and in full awareness. When this Gift awakens, you realise that there is absolutely nothing wrong with pride. Pride is simply a low frequency word for the same energy that can be called Artfulness. When you learn how to use pride creatively, it becomes something powerful and even beautiful. The 26th Gift loves attention. It is designed to draw attention. This Gift is about the love of selling something to someone — whether a product, yourself, or a truth. The 26th Gift represents the love of marketing — of dressing something up so that others will buy into it. In order to sell a product or a truth, you have to put yourself in the limelight. You have to embrace the energy of pride and ego that lies within all humans and use it in the service of your higher purpose. The 26th Gift includes natural-born shrewdness. Through this Gift, you can use the power of your ego to deliver your message. To do so, you must fully embrace it. We have seen that ego has a negative connotation in many spiritual circles, where it is often seen as something to be conquered and transcended. Actually, nothing can be transcended through conquest. Only through absorption, acceptance and even enjoyment can the ego be transcended. This is the gift of enjoying your ego. Through the Gift of Artfulness, your ego actually becomes an art form. Out of this Gift emerges the ability to manipulate racial memory — in other words, you instinctively know how to speak the exact language of the person before you. This ability to manipulate your audience can be devastating at the lower frequencies, since it is rooted in fear and sells itself through fear. But at a higher frequency, freed from fear, the 26th Gift sells itself through love. This is heart marketing.

After speaking with Rachel, I spoke with Rachel’s mom, Leah, about how her mind-set changed in response to Rachel’s addiction, and about what she tells other parents experiencing similar struggles.12 Leah tells parents that she learned a key lesson the first time she was in Beit T’Shuvah director Harriet Rossetto’s office with her husband seated beside her: Rossetto, a formidable presence behind her vast desk, asked Leah and her husband what was most important to them, and Leah replied, “I just want Rachel to be happy.” Turning her deep, probing eyes on Leah, Rossetto laid into her with advice Leah now passes on to other parents: “Saying you just want your kid to be happy puts enormous pressure on the child. They feel if they’re not happy, they’re failing. Periods of unhappiness are okay and our kids need to know that; it’s the struggle that makes you who you are.” Rossetto advises that the goal of a kid’s happiness is actually a dual burden, negatively affecting both child and parent. “The whole family system has to change,” says Rossetto. “The child is addicted to pleasure seeking. The parent is addicted to controlling a child’s choices and behaviors and creating a perfect human being, so their emotions are a mess. If the child is having a good day, Mommy and Daddy are happy, and if he’s not having a good day Mommy and Daddy are in despair. Severing that umbilicus is what our family program does. A parent’s well-being can’t be dependent on whether or not the kid is having a good day.” In addition to counseling other parents, Leah puts Rossetto’s wisdom into daily practice with her two youngest children, who still live at home. She says, “At times we make life too easy for kids by not letting them experience things we think of as traumas but that are, in reality, not all that bad, and we solve problems for them instead of letting them stew over some things. When my kids are storming about the house, it’s tempting to feel ‘My kid is angry at me’ and to want to do something about it. Now, I can accept that they can be unhappy or angry, and I don’t need to soothe their feelings; it’s okay.

Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.

Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.

Asa’s brows knitted together. “I tell you I love you all the time.” “Yeah, but you tell me you love Swiss Cake Rolls with the same level of fervor,” Zane reminded him. “Duh, because I do. A man can love more than one thing. It doesn’t negate the other.” Zane leveled a flat stare at him. “Okay, like, if I had to choose between you and a box of Little Debbie’s, I’d definitely choose you. But you both hit just right,” he said with a grin, giving Zane a deep kiss. Zane slapped his shoulder. “Come on, Asa. Be serious. I know psychopaths can’t love. Is what we have enough to keep you happy forever?” Asa sighed. “Are you asking if I feel that weird goopy feeling when I look at you that people talk about in romance novels? If so, the answer is no. I don’t have the ability to feel that. But whenever you walk into a room, I feel grateful you’re mine. I feel calmer knowing you’re there, where I can see you, protect you…” He kissed Zane’s lips softly. “Do dirty, dirty things to you whenever I want.” Zane opened his mouth to speak, but Asa pinched his lips shut. “I know people who’d give anything to have what we have. I’ve killed for you. I would die for you. I will put your wants and needs above mine forever because I want you to be happy. Is that love? Because when you’re not around, I feel like there’s…a splinter under my ribcage, and it only goes away when I see your face. That’s enough for me. Is it enough for you?” Zane swallowed hard, tears rolling down his cheeks. “That’s enough.

I think paranoia is an unavoidable moment in the discovery of truth for a variety of reasons. First, you could say that paranoia is the structure of 'knowledge' as a chain of signifiers: S1 --> S2 --> S3, etc. That is, just as knowledge works by perpetually adding new signifiers, so paranoia is characterised by the endless work of adding new connections. In McCarthyism, we discover that x is friends with y who has a business in z which has been the recipient of Soviet bloc investment. Or that a is a supporter of the Palestinian cause which often also gets the support of b who is friendly with c who has said antisemitic things. That's the logic of paranoia. And it's why you might find it difficult to argue with conspiracy theorists however absurd their claims are because, as soon as you knock down one part of their argument, they can invoke dozens of other supports which don't have to hang coherently together. Second, perhaps you could say that paranoia is a moment in the discovery of truth in the Cartesian/Augustinian sense: to arrive at certainty, you have to suppose that everything you perceive is the result of deception by an evil demon (of which the contemporary equivalent is the Matrix, or better yet the Truman Show). Or, at a stretch, in the sense Hegel discusses in the Phenomology: there is a moment when the object appears to have a deeper 'essence' that is not accessible in its appearance. In a manner of speaking, you feel the object is deceiving you, until you press forward and discover the the indecipherable 'essence' is actually in the form of the object's appearance. But this suggests that the "labour of the negative", as Hegel calls it, necessitates a moment of solipsistic despair, panic, the sense of being at the centre of an entirely simulated reality that is motivated by some nefarious Other's bad libido. [...] So, [in society today] paranoia might be unavoidable. But obviously it's a very, very bad place to get stuck. Politically, the logic is most often turned against the Left by its opponents, and within the Left usually appears as a disintegrative moment, when it starts operating as a circular firing-squad, and you get practices of snitch-jacketing or ill-founded 'calling out'. But more fundamentally, it's bad hermeneutics. Being stuck in paranoia means fortifying oneself against doubt, so that all evidence essentially becomes evidence for a delusional structure of certitude. It means that we lose the capacity for critical thinking, for the labour of the negative through which any lucid totalisation might be possible. The reparative moment comes when we stop making 'connections', and instead introduce the cut, the disconnect. That's when we say, "look, this argument might often be used for bad purposes, or it might be wrong in its current articulation, but there are ways to think with it to make a better argument." Or, "x might be friends with y, but that doesn't mean x approves of or was complicit in anything wicked that y has done, and actually everything we know about x makes such complicity racingly unlikely." And so on. The cut is reparative because it militates against the tendency toward social decomposition. The cut is the starting point for a critical procedure that takes all of the reasons for paranoia into account, fully acknowledges their force, but then integrates them into a strategy for repairing the social link.

FREEDOM FROM UNHAPPINESS Do you resent doing what you are doing? It may be your job, or you may have agreed to do something and are doing it, but part of you resents and resists it. Are you carrying unspoken resentment toward a person close to you? Do you realize that the energy you thus emanate is so harmful in its effects that you are in fact contaminating yourself as well as those around you? Have a good look inside. Is there even the slightest trace of resentment, unwillingness? If there is, observe it on both the mental and the emotional levels. What thoughts is your mind creating around this situation? Then look at the emotion, which is the body’s reaction to those thoughts. Feel the emotion. Does it feel pleasant or unpleasant? Is it an energy that you would actually choose to have inside you? Do you have a choice? Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is. You are making the present moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and the outer. Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space. Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognizing its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune — that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.

If we observe Buddha’s teaching, he has addressed this problem in a superb way. If you have to speak always ask yourself ✓Is it true? ✓Is it necessary? ✓Is it kind? First and foremost, avoid talking about others when they are not with you. By doing this we will stop 90% of gossiping. Second, when another person comes to us telling us about a third person then ask them the same 3 questions ✓Is it 100% true? ✓Is it necessary? ✓Is it good or bad? This method is also referred to as triple filter technique. If we pushed these questions to the other person then he/she will not continue the discussion. But one warning is that if we follow this method in the beginning people might not like your way and they may even stop talking to you temporarily and you may become hot topic for discussion. “Once they stop talking to you, they start talking about you”. Let others talk about us; let’s not involve our self in talking negatively about others. Great minds discuss ideas, average mind discuss events and small mind discuss people. At the same time we will start thinking of our great ideas and goals and take action to achieve them.

Ever notice how seldom children complain about the weather? They take hot weather in stride until the negative news corps educate them to be conscious of unpleasant temperatures. Make it a habit always to speak favorably about the weather regardless of what the weather actually is. Complaining about the weather makes you more miserable and it spreads misery to others.

Environment The biochemical and genetic explanations for social anxiety are fairly straightforward. However, they don’t explain why one person fears all social situations while another fears speaking in public and yet another is afraid only of talking on the phone. The environment is generally considered the final factor that determines social anxiety. In other words, when a person has a biochemical and genetic predisposition to anxiety, the form that anxiety takes may depend on the circumstances of his or her life. Your environment includes where you live, the people you live with, your school, and your friends. This environment can have a negative or positive effect on how you feel about yourself and the character traits you develop. There are many factors that can contribute to the degree and form of your social anxiety.

Your Behavioral Responses to Anxiety The ways in which people react to social situations are often a result of physical and mental responses. Feeling anxious is a clue from your body that you are in danger and need to take action. However, because the danger is exaggerated, your actions often do not fit the situation and do not help you. Two typical behaviors are freezing and avoidance. When people freeze in a situation, they cannot react. Movement, speech, and memory are all affected. You may have experienced freezing when a teacher called on you in class. When attention like that was placed upon you, you probably felt the physical responses of blushing, shortness of breath, and rapid heart rate, among others. You probably had negative thoughts running through your head, such as “I’m such an idiot. I look stupid.” As a result of the strong physical and mental reactions, you froze and were unable to remember the answer; perhaps you could not speak at all. Because feelings of anxiety are unpleasant, some people try to avoid stressful situations altogether. If you are nervous around crowds of people, you may avoid going to parties or dances. If you are afraid of speaking in public, you probably avoid classes or situations in which you would be asked to speak or make a presentation. There are also other, subtler forms of avoidance. If you are nervous in crowds, you may not avoid parties entirely, but you might leave early or latch onto one person the entire time. Or, you may distract yourself by daydreaming or flipping through CDs instead of talking with people. Because of her social anxiety, Ruby hadn’t participated in any extracurricular activities during high school. At the beginning of her senior year, her guidance counselor told her she would have a better chance of getting into her top-choice college if she would join activities, so she joined the Spanish club. The group was led by the Spanish teacher and met once a week before school. When Ruby joined, they were beginning to plan the annual fiesta, and there were many decisions to make. At first, the other students tried to include her and would ask her opinion about decorations or games, but Ruby was so anxious that she couldn’t respond. Soon, they stopped asking and left her alone. Ruby thought she was being a part of the group simply by showing up, but she never volunteered for any of the planning committees and never offered suggestions. When it was time to fill out college applications, Ruby asked the Spanish teacher to write her a recommendation. The teacher said she couldn’t because she didn’t know Ruby well enough. Patterns of avoidance may be so deeply ingrained in your lifestyle that you are not even aware that you are exhibiting them. Think carefully about your reactions to various situations. When you receive an invitation, do you instantly think of reasons why you can’t accept? When you are with a group of people, do you use escape mechanisms, such as reading a magazine, hiding in the restroom, or daydreaming? Avoidance may help lessen your anxiety in the moment, but in the long run, it usually makes things worse. Life is very unsatisfying when you avoid so many situations, and such behavior hurts self-esteem and self-confidence.

Do not see what others want from you and think about you which affect your thought process. It’s my life not their breathe. Always do stuff which are subject to your heart and soul, be alive and glad. Don’t let the expectations and thinking of others to grow what you need to beyond limit, if you let others talk about who you are, you are already above them, but it’s their reality - not yours. The life of pleasing people is not only negative but dead too. I don’t walk in others prescribed path, my path is clear even if there is no road on the way. I am an adventure trust me I am. I hear with curiosity. I speak with integrity, I act with loyalty. The greatest failure of communication is we don’t give ear to it. We hear it to reply. When we hear with curiosity we don’t listen with the intent to reply, we listen for what’s between the words.

While the difference here might appear minor, over the life of your child, negative and positive words have a cumulative effect, because such words shape a child’s outlook about self, others, and about life. Learn to speak life to your pretoddler by instructing in what you want him to do instead of what you do not want him to do.

A Piece of Advice « At all times and in all situations, examine your mindstream moment by moment: are thoughts positive or negative? When you recognize a thought to have negative content, be aware of its potential for harm and lay it aside. This is crucial. Otherwise, when craving or other negative thoughts start to take shape, if you let them take hold, who knows where you’ll wind up in the end? You may not care about becoming a great scholar, but at least do your best to generate goodwill toward others and steadfast devotion to the Three Jewels. Your future rebirths stretch out ahead much farther than this one life. The circumstances of those lifetimes will depend on your current aspirations, positive or negative. Don’t jeopardize your future lives by seeking fame and status in this life. The rest of this life will depend on how stable your virtuous aspirations are. See if you can transform your mindstream through the teachings. You have come to a fork in the road: one path goes up, the other down. If you wait till you’re on your deathbed to make your choice, you’ll be out of luck. Whether others have good or bad qualities is hard to know. Whether others applaud you or criticize you, you need to turn away from both craving praise and avoiding blame. Though you may not accomplish great acts of merit, at least avoid evil actions, great or small. Stop thinking badly of other beings. Don’t speak ill of anyone, because you never know when the person you malign might be a sublime being. In terms of food, clothes, and other material things, be content with what you’ve got and just stay put. Otherwise, one day you’ll end up a nuisance in everyone’s eyes, a show-off in robes who just rambles on from one valley to the next, sniffing around like a stray dog. Don’t do that! — Written by Patrul. May it bring virtue!

If you allow all of your negative emotions to be expressed behind an angry façade, you will never know yourself. You will never know your potential because it will be blocked by anger. Anger solves very little, but keeps in a lot. You strike out at others when you have been hit. Anger needs to be released if appropriate, but more importantly, it needs to be resolved. As a silent son, where do you stand today? Do you know what you stand for as a man? You will not know what you stand for until you can see yourself clearly. Nothing will block your vision more than anger. The healthy silent son sees more than a type. He sees more than anger. He sees his potential and all of his emotions. He sees himself and he likes what he sees. AFTERTHOUGHTS If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be no help. JOHN F. KENNEDY He was one of those men who possesses almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them. CHARLES KINGSLEY Fall seven times, stand up eight. JAPANESE PROVERB Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him. ALDOUS HUXLEY What matters is not the size of the dog in fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. COACH PAUL BRYANT

Without cultural change, we are hopeless to change existing results.5 Of all changes, cultural change is the most difficult. It is essentially changing the collective DNA of an entire group of people. To understand how to change culture, it is helpful to know how change works in general. Changing Church Culture Change is extremely difficult. One of the most vivid and striking examples of this painful reality is the inability of heart patients to change even when confronted with grim reality. Roughly six hundred thousand people have a heart bypass each year in the United States. These patients are told they must change. They must change their eating habits, must exercise, and quit smoking and drinking. If they do not, they will die. The case for change is so compelling that they are literally told, “Change or die.”6 Yet despite the clear instructions and painful reality, 90 percent of the patients do not change. Within two years of hearing such brutal facts, they remain the same. Change is that challenging for people. For the vast majority of patients, death is chosen over change. Yet leadership is often about change, about moving a group of people to a new future. Perhaps the most recognized leadership book on leading an organization to change is John Kotter’s Leading Change. And when ministry leaders speak or write about leadership, they often look to the wisdom found in the book of Nehemiah, as it chronicles Nehemiah’s leadership in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Nehemiah led wide-scale change. Nehemiah never read Kotter’s book, and he led well without it. The Lord well equipped Nehemiah for the task of leading God’s people. But it is fascinating to see how Nehemiah’s actions mirror much of what Kotter has observed in leaders who successfully lead change. With a leadership development culture in mind, here are the eight steps for leading change, according to Kotter, and how one can see them in Nehemiah’s leadership. 1. Establish a sense of urgency. Leaders must create dissatisfaction with an ineffective status quo. They must help others develop a sense of angst over the brokenness around them. Nehemiah heard a negative report from Jerusalem, and it crushed him to the point of weeping, fasting, and prayer (Neh. 1:3–4). Sadly, the horrible situation in Jerusalem had become the status quo. The disgrace did not bother the people in the same way that it frustrated Nehemiah. After he arrived in Jerusalem, he walked around and observed the destruction. Before he launched the vision of rebuilding the wall, Nehemiah pointed out to the people that they were in trouble and ruins. He started with urgency, not vision. Without urgency, plans for change do not work. If you assess your culture and find deviant behaviors that reveal some inaccurate theological beliefs, you must create urgency by pointing these out. If you assess your culture and find a lack of leadership development, a sense of urgency must be created. Leadership development is an urgent matter because the mission the Lord has given us is so great.

Say each phrase out loud, with emphasis, energy, and emotional intensity. Keep in mind that you may have repeated negative statements about your weaknesses thousands of times over the years. In order to create momentum for your mind to start focusing more on your strengths, it requires emotional intensity and frequent repetition. You can do this exercise while driving, brushing your teeth, and many other times throughout the day. You can even do it silently in your mind while in line at a store. When you are alone and comfortable, it is essential to say these things out loud. Doing so causes your mind to speak the phrases and hear them, which creates more of an impact on your subconscious.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Once upon a time our politicians did not tend to apologize for our country’s prior actions! Here’s a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our great country. These are quite good JFK’S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60’s when De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible. Rusk’s response: “Does that include those who are buried here?” De Gaulle did not respond. You could have heard a pin drop. When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush. He answered by saying, “Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.” You could have heard a pin drop. There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?” A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?” You could have heard a pin drop. A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Germany and France. At morning tea the Frenchman complained that the conference should be conducted in French since it was being held in Paris. The German replied that, so far as he could see, the reason that it was being held in English was as a mark of respect to the other attendees, since their troops had shed so much blood so that the Frenchman wouldn’t be speaking German.

Instead, there can be a strong tendency to avoid this level of direct confrontation. More often we simply do not say anything, and keep the uncomfortable feelings to ourselves. Or we might say, “Oh, it’s no big deal. Water under the bridge,” and then express our frustration in other ways, such as showing up late, breaking a commitment, or making a sarcastic joke about it. It is extremely common for people with social anxiety to have accompanying stomach and gastro-intestinal problems as well. Much of this comes from regularly suppressing anger and avoiding direct confrontation. If we do approach the conflict, it is often after many hours or days of rumination and planning. Our feelings come out with a fair amount of explaining or self-blame. We can say things like: “Yes, I’m upset, but it’s really because I’m too sensitive,” or “I know it’s no big deal, but I just had a hard time with it for some reason.” How often do you take the blame in order to avoid a conflict? Avoiding conflict can have a substantial negative effect on our lives. The reality is, every single relationship is going to have some sort of conflict or disagreement in it. When we try to go through life with no disagreement, without making any waves, we end up greatly limiting ourselves. In the second part of this book, you will learn how to identify what you truly think and feel about a situation. You will also learn how to speak up for yourself, and how to develop a level of assertiveness that will greatly increase your sense of well-being in your relationships. Before you can start to do this, however, there is one final area we must discuss about the problem of social anxiety. This is your relationship with yourself—the most significant relationship you have, and one that determines the quality of all of your other relationships. If you are regularly at odds with yourself, criticizing yourself, and disliking who you are, it makes connecting with others very difficult.

A: The unkind things these girls are saying about your friend Ashley are based on jealousy and have nothing to do with Ashley herself. I understand why you feel it might be right to tell Ashley about these attacks. Life Principle #1, “Do No Harm,” sometimes means that we have to get involved and prevent harm to others. In this situation, however, the right thing to do is to speak up when you hear these insults—and leave it at that. Here’s why. First, the reason many of us get away with doing or saying things we shouldn’t is because no one else tells us to stop. You may have heard the saying, “Silence is consent.” Even if you’re not actively joining in on the “fun” the other girls are having, remaining silent and not challenging them sends the message that what they’re doing is okay with you. But it’s not, and that’s why you should speak up. Second, Ashley almost certainly would not want to know that a few people are speaking ill of her, so telling her wouldn’t honor your duty to treat her with respect (Life Principle #3). In fact, repeating the slurs would hurt her feelings and thus violate Life Principle #1, “Do No Harm.” Of course, if Ashley has told you that she would like a full report whenever anyone talks trash about her, that’s one thing, but most people with any degree of self-respect have no interest in hearing the petty things that are said about them. So how should you handle the situation? It would be both self-defeating and a violation of Life Principle #1 to respond with the same kind of mean remarks you’re hearing or to post negative comments on your social networking site. As tempting as it might be to take the low road, you’re much better off taking the high road and leading by example. Saying something like, “Ashley is my friend, and I wish you wouldn’t say those things about her,” is a good way to stick up for your friend and not add to the nastiness. Dealing with the problem this way will show that you’re a person of integrity, and you’ll have every reason to feel good about that.