Eine Lanze für die Langeweile brechen

http://mobil.derstandard.at/1350260936104/Kinder-muessen-sich-langweilen

Familientherapeut Jesper Juul erklärt, warum es für ihre Entwicklung wichtig ist, dass Kinder sich gelegentlich fadisieren

Eine Leserin fragt:
Unser Sohn ist vier Jahre alt. Meistens ist er glücklich, lebendig und hat immer etwas zu tun. In der Kinderbetreuung macht er bei allem mit, und es fällt ihm leicht, Freundschaften zu knüpfen. Wenn wir ihn abholen, fragt er oft: "Was tun wir, wenn wir zu Hause sind?" Zuerst dachten wir, das wäre wundervoll, aber mittlerweile fühlen wir uns wie Entertainer, die sich ständig neue Beschäftigungen ausdenken müssen. Wenn wir einmal nichts finden, beschwert er sich und sagt, dass ihm langweilig ist. Es kommt mir vor, als habe er die Fähigkeit verloren, sich etwas auszudenken oder alleine zu spielen. Was können wir tun?
Jesper Juul antwortet: 
Viele Institutionen, die Nachmittagsbetreuung, Sportcamps und auch die Medien sind voll von Animationsangeboten. Sie haben alle eines gemeinsam: Sie bieten Eltern Ideen und Strategien an, um Langeweile bei ihren Kindern zu vermeiden. Ich möchte eine Lanze für die Langeweile brechen.

Im Dezember bestreitet Jesper Juul mehrere Vorträge und Workshops in Österreich.

foto: family lab

Diese Serie entsteht in Kooperation mit Family Lab Österreich.

foto: family lab

Es geht mir nicht darum, Eltern zu kritisieren, die ihre Zeit mit ihren Kindern genießen, die Ferien und Wochenenden nutzen, um Museen zu besuchen, gemeinsam im Garten zu arbeiten, Fahrräder zu reparieren oder gemeinsam Sport zu treiben.

Ich wende mich an Eltern, die sich unter Druck gesetzt fühlen: diejenigen, die ständig darüber nachdenken, was sie mit den Kindern unternehmen könnten, und die sich schuldig fühlen, weil sie sich eigentlich lieber entspannen würden. Hier sind einige Ideen für diejenigen, die zusammenzucken, wenn sie ihre Kinder sagen hören: "Mir ist fad!"

Eltern und Kinder sind Konsumenten geworden. Das führt dazu, dass vielen Kindern langweilig wird, sobald die externe Stimulation fehlt. Es ist ihnen fad ohne Computerspiele, DVDs und Fernsehen. Auch Kindertagesstätten und Schulen setzen auf externe Stimulation. Wenn Kinder dem den ganzen Tag lang ausgesetzt sind, erhalten sie eine Überdosis davon.

Viele Eltern fühlen sich förmlich genötigt, diese inspirierenden Aktivitäten zu Hause fortzusetzen. Den Druck erzeugen dabei eigentlich die Kinder, denn sie wurden schlichtweg "stimulationssüchtig" gemacht. Ohne Anregung oder "Bespielung" haben sie regelrecht Entzugserscheinungen. Sie beschweren sich und fordern von den Eltern, unterhalten zu werden. Wenn die Eltern noch genügend Energie haben, werden sie mit den Kindern Dinge unternehmen. Diejenigen, die müde sind, geben den Kindern einen Stapel DVDs oder schicken sie auf ein Kindercamp, damit andere Menschen sie unterhalten.

Mein Vorschlag: Lassen Sie Ihre Kinder sich langweilen. Sie können das mit reinem Gewissen tun.

Die meisten Kinder erleben eine unangenehme innere Unruhe, wenn sie sich langweilen. Der Grund: Sie versuchen, eine Balance zu finden zwischen dem Konsumieren von externen Reizen und ihrer eigenen inneren Kreativität. Jüngere Kinder wissen, dass diese Unruhe oder Langeweile nicht einfach zu beruhigen ist.

Wenn Kinder sagen, dass ihnen langweilig ist, und Eltern dann sofort eine Idee anbieten, weisen die Kinder diese in den meisten Fällen umgehend zurück. Wenn Eltern einige wenige Minuten lang warten, werden sie aber feststellen, dass sich ihr Kind bereits in etwas vertieft hat.

Langeweile ist der Schlüssel zur inneren Balance - egal in welchem Alter. Diejenigen, die die Unruhe vorbeiziehen lassen, kommen in Kontakt mit ihrer Kreativität. Unsere Kreativität ist der Raum, in dem wir uns spüren, uns selbst kennenlernen, uns selbst ausdrücken und die Erfahrung von Selbstverwirklichung machen. Was sich noch vor einer Stunde wie eine unangenehme Stille anfühlte, erzeugt plötzlich inneren Frieden und wird zur emotionalen Aufladestation.

Für Kinder ist es wichtig, ihrer inneren Kreativität zu folgen. Es macht sie unabhängig von äußerer Anerkennung und Zustimmung. Kreativität ist zentral, um Selbstwert zu entwickeln. Kinder, die sich gelegentlich langweilen, werden eine größere innere Ruhe spüren, die ihre soziale Kompetenz fördert.

Wenn Ihr Kind zu Ihnen kommt und sagt: "Mir ist sooo langweilig", dann umarmen sie es und sagen: "Herzlichen Glückwunsch, mein Freund! Es interessiert mich, zu sehen, was du jetzt tust." Sie können das mit einem absolut reinen Gewissen sagen. Vielleicht ist Ihr Kind kurz irritiert, aber Sie geben ihm damit eine wertvolle Gelegenheit, mit seinen inneren Stimuli in Kontakt zu kommen, anstatt sich auf die äußeren zu verlassen.

Noch besser wäre es, wenn sie sich gemeinsam langweilen: Sie werden bemerken, dass Sie plötzlich über Dinge sprechen und sich gegenseitig erzählen, die nur auftauchen, wenn der "Unterhaltungsmodus" ausgeschaltet ist und Sie die innere Unruhe überwunden haben. Das ist der Punkt, an dem echte Nähe möglich wird. Sie können das auch mit Ihrem Partner ausprobieren.

Wir können uns aus unserer Konsumentenrolle nicht befreien. Aber wir können sie steuern und unseren Kindern dabei helfen herauszufinden, wie ihnen das selbst gelingt. (Jesper Juul, derStandard.at, 11.11.2012)

Jesper Juul, geboren 1948 in Dänemark, ist Lehrer, Gruppen- und Familientherapeut, Konfliktberater und Buchautor. Er studierte Geschichte, Religionspädagogik und europäische Geistesgeschichte. Statt die Lehrerlaufbahn einzuschlagen, nahm er eine Stelle als Heimerzieher und später als Sozialarbeiter an und ließ sich zum Familientherapeuten ausbilden. Er ist Begründer des Family Lab.

Mission Statement “One should always be drunk.”

http://laphamsquarterly.org/intoxication/mission-statement

One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing, the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite.

CONTRIBUTOR

Charles Baudelaire

“Get Drunk.” After his expulsion from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand for lack of discipline in 1839, Baudelaire in his late teens embarked upon a literary life in the Latin Quarter and soon contracted syphilis—most likely from a prostitute nicknamed Squint-Eyed Sarah, whom he immortalized in his early verse. In 1848 he began translating Edgar Allan Poe, whose life and works he found “stamped with an undeniable seal of melancholy,” and in 1860, he translated some of the opium writings of Thomas De Quincey. Baudelaire published The Flowers of Evil in 1857 and was promptly tried for public indecency.

Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk.

And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them the time; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, and the clock will all reply, “It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”

© 1947, New Directions Publishing Corporation. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Sfaturi de viata de la un pediatru celebru. Pentru a obtine un fruct bun, trebuie sa alimentezi niste radacini puternice.

http://centruldeparenting.ro/11-lucruri-pe-care-as-vrea-ca-toti-parintii-sa-le-stie-sfaturi-pentru-parinti-de-la-un-pediatru-celebru/

„11 lucruri pe care as vrea ca toti parintii sa le stie”. Sfaturi de viata de la un pediatru celebru

Dupa 25 de ani de practica in domeniul pediatriei si dupa o comunicare cu mii de copii, pediatrul american Stephen Cowan a observat ca anumite probleme in relatia dintre parinti si copii si care ii afecteaza pe adulti apar din nou si din nou.
El le-a rezumat si a prezentat 11 sfaturi pentru parinti, pe care le-a descris intr-un articol intitulat „11 lucruri pe care as vrea ca toti parintii sa le stie” , publicat pe MindBodyGreen.com.

Va prezentam cele 11 lucruri care nasc conflicte in relatiile parinti-copii, pentru ca, stiind de ele, sa le transformati in avantaje si sa le gestionati cu succes.

1. Cresterea si dezvoltarea copilului nu este o competitie

In aceasta perioada, cu totii ne grabim sa crestem mari. In lumea noastra post-industriala a vitezei si eficientei, am uitat ca viata este un proces asemanator cu coacerea unui fruct. Pentru a obtine un fruct bun, trebuie sa alimentezi niste radacini puternice. Acorda mai multa atentie pamantului, terenului care sustine viata copilului tau: fa o plimbare cu copilul, mananca impreuna cu el, jucati-va impreuna, povesteste-i o experienta din copilaria ta.

2. Traditiile de familie incurajeaza radacinile puternice si o viata sanatoasa

Este adevarat ca, pentru a crea traditii familiale, este nevoie de timp si de perseverenta. Dar rezultatul este pe masura. Traditiile personale sunt sacre deoarece ele creeaza mediul necesar comunicarii care intareste legaturile de iubire si intimitate in familie si construiesc acea incredere care iti va proteja copilul pe drumul sau prin viata.

3. Oamenii cresc in cicluri

Fiecare viata de copil are un ritm si un puls proprii – uneori rapid si intens, iar alteori lent si linistit. Si, la fel cum fiecare primavara ne aduce un sentiment reinnoit de apreciere a vietii, fiecare noua etapa a vietii copilului reprezinta o noua peioada de descoperiri si minuni. In definitiv, invatarea nu inseamna numai acumulare de informatii. Este totodata un proces de transformare a ideilor si, uneori, pentru acest lucru trebuie sa uiti anumite lucruri pentru a reusi sa vezi realitatea cu o privire proaspata. Unii copii vor face un pas inapoi inainte de a face un salt urias inainte.

A creste in cicluri inseamna si faptul ca nu avem doar o singura sansa de a invata ceva. Aceeasi lectie va aparea in fata noastra din nou si din nou pe masura ce trecem prin anotimpurile vietii noastre. Acest mod de a intelege copilaria implica o iertare profunda, care ii elibereaza pe parintii care vor „sa faca lucrurile bine” din prima incercare, spune pediatrul american.

4. Incurajarea nu acelasi lucru cu permisivitatea

Nu ne-am propus sa crestem mici regi si regine. De regula, regii nu o duc foarte bine in societatea noastra. Potrivit doctorului Cowan, studiile recente au aratat ca indulgenta, permisivitateaii slabesc de fapt fortele copilului care il ajuta sa supravietuiasca, diminuandu-i motivarea si sentimentul succesului.

Incurajarea inseamna sa-i insufli copilului curaj, si nu sa faci totul in locul lui. Creeaza un mediu in care sa se simta sustinut, fara sa se simta presat in vreun fel. Iubirea neconditionata este ceea ce-l incurajeaza pe copil sa-si asume riscuri, sa experimenteze si sa faca greseli stiind ca nu va fi judecat pentru ele. Uneori, sa fii o prezenta incurajatoare in viata copilului inseamna sa te dai un pic la o parte, fiind mereu gata sa-i dai o mana de ajutor atunci cand circumstantele o cer, dar avand mereu incredere in abilitatea sa innascuta de a se descurca.

Asta inseamna incurajarea. Pe de alta parte, permisivitatea limiteaza libertatea copilului, crescandu-i exagerat sentimentul de importanta a propriei persoane si scazandu- rabdarea de care are nevoie pentru a depasi obstacolele atunci cand lucrurile nu se desfasoara imediat asa cum isi doreste. Permisivitatea conduce la micimea gandurilor si a actiunilor.

5. Copiii sunt invatatorii nostri spirituali

Nu trebuie sa mergi undeva departe, cheltuind multi bani, daca vrei sa ajungi la iluminarea spirituala. Micul si inteleptul tau mentor este chiar aici in fata ta, oferindu-ti adevarata intelepciune pe gratis!

Cand sunt mici, copiii se uita la fiecare miscare a noastra, studiindu-ne inconsecventele in incercarea de a intelege aceasta lume nebuna. Si apoi vor face apel la acele inconsecvente. Tine minte, cand simti ca un copil iti forteaza limitele, sunt limitele tale, nu ale lui. Ofera-ti timp pentru a asculta si a intelege ce incearca sa te invete copilul. Unul dintre secretele parintilor de succes este ca ei sunt pregatiti si dornici de schimbare pentru copii, din dragoste pentru ei. Atunci cand esti dispus sa-ti vezi limitele si sa intelegi ce te enerveaza, deschizi o constiinta de sine mai profunda, care te transforma si pe tine, si pe copil.

6. Un simptom este modul in care corpul ne spune ca trebuie sa schimbam ceva

Un doctor bun, se intreaba ce urmareste de fapt acest simptom?, mai degraba decat pur si simplu sa incerce sa-l suprime. Corpul nostru are propria sa inteligenta. Insa numeroase reclame la produse farmaceutice incearca sa ne convinga ca este ceva gresit sa ai niste simptome. Doctorul Stephen Cowan spune ca o mare parte din educatia sa medicala a fost axata pe modalitatile de a elimina simptomele ca si cum acestea ar fi de fapt problema (este ca si cum i-ai cere organismului sa taca, si la fel de nepoliticos). Noi nu avem incredere in inteligenta corpului nostru. Noi gandim prea mult si avem tendinta sa ne fie frica de senzatiile din corpul nostru.

„Dar copiii m-au invatat ca un simptom precum febra nu este o problema. Orice o provoaca ar putea fi o problema, dar febra ese doar modul in care organismul incearca sa faca fata cu ceea ce se intampla”, scrie specialistul citat.

Sa luam drept exemplu un copil cu febra. Ce alte simptome mai are? Daca este jucaus, nu trebuie sa scazi febra. Asta inseamna ca organismul incearca sa creeze o caldura suplimentara prin metabolism pentru a mobiliza sistemul imunitar. Pentru a-l ajuta, ii poti da copilului lichide calde (nu reci) pentru a evita deshidratarea si mancare nutritiva, precum supele, pentru a sustine aceasta lupta.

7. Fii pregatit

Aceasta este o stare de pregatire care poate fi alimentata de incredere sau de frica. In aceasta perioada, pediatrul american spune ca practica „medicina de pregatire”, mai degraba decat de preventie, astfel incat imbolnavirea nu este privita ca un esec. Sa fii sanatos asta nu inseamna sa nu te imbolnavesti niciodata. Viata este o calatorie cu suisuri si coborasuri si un copil in crestere traieste intr-o stare constanta de flux.

Pentru a deveni puternic, sistemul imunitar al copilului trebuie sa invete cum sa se imbolnaveasca si cum sa se insanatoseasca. Protejarea exagerata a copiilor in fata bolilor ii priveaza de informatia care ii pregatesc pe deplin pentru a se putea insanatosi.

In loc sa traiesti cu o frica constanta de boli, trebuie sa stii ca sunt remedii naturale care sa sustina insanatosirea copilului rapid si eficient: o buna alimentatie, hidratarea, probiotice, odihna adecvata si exercitii. Si, cel mai important, in loc sa te concentrezi pe cat de des se imbolnaveste copilul, sarbatoreste cat de des se insanatoseste.

8. Vindecarea necesita timp

„Cea mai mare parte din medicina alternativa pe care o practic in aceasta perioada are nevoie de timp. Ca societate, suntem dependenti de vindecarile rapide din cauza ca nu mai avem timp pentru a ne imbolnavi. Ca medic, a fost invatat sa fiu un fel de pompier glorios, care cauta sa sa rezolve urgentele rapid si eficient”, scrie medicul.

In cazul urgentelor, sunt deseori necesare medicamente puternice pentru a salva vieti, dar majoritatea problemelor de sanatate ale copiilor nu sunt urgente. In aceste cazuri, pentru vindecare este nevoie de mai mult decat medicamente puternice. Este nevoie de timp. „Imi dau seama ca sa-ti iei o zi libera in plus de la serviciu deoarece copilul a fost trimis acasa de la scoala cu o raceala poate adauga un stres in plus la viata deja destul de stresata. Dar copiii m-au invatat ca vindecarea este un fel de proces de dezvoltare care are propriile sale etape”, se arata in articol.

Atunci cand nu-i dam organismului copilului suficient timp pentru a-si reveni dintr-o boala, il privam pe copil de etapele necesare din care trebuie sa invete cum sa-si dezvolte o sanatate puternica. In schimb, atunci cand ne dam timp suficient pentru a ne recupera, boala devine o calatorie de descoperire, nu doar o destinatie, incepem sa vedem boala si insanatosirea ca pe doua fete ale aceleiasi monede.
9. Secretul vietii este sa lasi lucrurile sa treaca

Viata este un proces constant de a face loc lucrurilor sa mearga in directia lor. Lucrurile frumoase care s-au consumat la timpul lor se transforma in altceva. La fel cum primavara ii cedeaza locul verii, asa este fiecare etapa a dezvoltarii, un proces de a lasa sa treaca. Mersul de-a busilea face loc mersului in picioare. Ganguritul face loc vorbirii. Copilaria este inlocuita cu adolescenta. Odata ce inspiri, urmeaza sa expiri.

Fiecare anotimp, fiecare etapa, fiecare mic ritm din viata noastra este o chestiune de a-i da drumul sa plece. Acest lucru ne permite sa scapam de ceea ce nu avem nevoie sa faca parte din viata noastra cu noi informatii si noi experiente. A da drumul sa plece nu este un lucru mereu usor si fiecare copil are propriul sau timp si stil de adaptare. Natura favorizeaza diversitatea. Poate cea mai importanta modalitate prin care copiii invata cum sa lase lucrurile sa plece este modul in care se joaca. Jocul inseamna sa-ti lasi inhibitiile sa plece si sa nu te iei prea in serios.

10. Ai incredere in tine. Iti cunosti copilul mai bine decat oricine altcineva

Unul dintre cele mai importante lucruri pe care doctorul Cowan ii invata pe tinerii parinti este cum sa aiba incredere in ei insisi. Nicicand acest lucru nu face mai mult rau ca atunci cand apare un bebelus. Ne asteptam sa stim totul si totusi ne simtim ca si cum am sti nimic. Dar aceasta stare ca nu stii nimic poate fi o oportunitate de a ne dezvolta intuitia.

Un parinte constient incepe prin a asculta cu inima deschisa ce se intampla in viata copilului, fara teama sau panica. Studiile au aratat ca intuitia materna este mai puternica decat orice teste de l

Jurnal al multumirii si recunostintei

http://m.gandul.info/reportaj

Întrebată despre cea mai simplă metodă de a fi fericit, Mălina oferă soluţia:”Păstrează un jurnal al recunoştinţei sau al momentelor fericite de pe parcursul zilei. Poţi să faci amele lucruri sau să faci fiecare dintre ele, depinde de foarte mult de ce îşi doreşte fiecare om în parte. Sunt studii foarte multe care arată că făcând acest exerciţiu deosebit de simplu în care notezi cu liniuţă seara trei lucruri bune sau trei lucruri pentru care eşti recunoscător în ziua în care a trecut, în aproximativ 21 de zile, creşte foarte mult nivelul de fericire. Creşterea este atât de impresionantă, încât exerciţiul a început să fie folosit pe persoane care aveau depresii”.

Mihaela Miroiu: „Trăim într-o cultură a văicărelii”

Profesorul în ştiinţe politice are şi o explicaţie a motivului  pentru care România se află în fruntea clasamentului celor mai neferite ţări. ”Trăim într-o cultură a văicărelii, începând cu cele două balade fundaţionale, Mioriţa, povestea pasivităţii fatale, Mănăstirea Argeşului, povestea autosacrificiului criminal, cu valenţe de salvare prin capodoperă. Niciun român care are mai mult de 8 clase nu a scăpat de mesajele lor fără de preţ în consolidarea defetismului şi suferinţei”.

Un alt motiv este că ne place să ne plângem de milă. ”Credem că suferinţa înnobilează şi, nu-i aşa, nu vrem să fim plebei. Ştiind asta, toate ne dau apă la moară : o religie cu ritmuri de lamentaţie permanentă,  televiziunile defetiste, site-urile de ştiri cu titluri din aresenale catastrofiste, facebookul, vecinii, colegii, familia. Parcă văd cum se repede o serie vigilentă de comentatori care o să spună că mă înşel total, cauzele sunt altele: politicienii (eventual ceilalţi), politica (internă, a UE, a NATO, proximitatea ruşilor), istoria (imperiile care ne-au stors de putirinţă). Da, toţi ne-au stors şi sunt de vină, numai fiecare dintre noi e inocent şi victimă. Iadul sunt ceilalţi”, mai spus Mihaela Miroiu.

Aceasta consideră că plasarea ţării nostre la coada clasamentului în topul celor mai fericite ţări nu s-a produs doar pentru că românii sunt nefericiţi la nivel declarativ. ”Nu cred că e o modă nouă. E de ajuns să recitim literatura şi filosofia produse în spaţiul nostru cultural ca să vedem că nefericirea este o constantă gravitaţională. Accidentele optimiste sunt rare. Alminteri e greu de explicat cum ceea ce am reuşit să exportăm cu success internaţional e nihilismul pesimist, via Cioran, absurdul, via Ionesco, dadaismul, viaTzara sau mitul veşnicului început, via Brâncuşi sau Eliade. Inclusiv amuzamentul ironic pe care îl stârnesc filmele americane românilor cu morgă culturală e un sindrom al unei culturi care nu găseşte nicio profunzime în optimism, mulţumire, realizare, gratitudine, admiraţie, empatie”, punctează Miroiu.

Cum putem dobândi fericirea? Câteva exemple

Odată înţelească cauza nefericirii noastre naţionale, ne întoarcem la întrebarea de la care am plecat: cum devenim mai fericiţi? Mălina Chirea, de la Institutul pentru Fericire, subliniază că fericirea nu ţine de confort. ”Fericirea ţine de a fi în siguranţă. Fericirea înseamnă să ne simţim în siguranţă în mediul în care trăim. Dacă avem suficienţi bani să ne cumpărăm nişte haine şi mâncare, este suficient pentru a fi fericiţi. Fericirea nu ţine de resursele finaciare, ci din nou modul în care alegem să gândim. Fericirea ţine de lucrurile pe care alegem să le facem în fiecare zi”, mai spune co-fondatorul Institutului pentru Fericire.

Întrebată despre cea mai simplă metodă de a fi fericit, Mălina oferă soluţia:”Păstrează un jurnal al recunoştinţei sau al momentelor fericite de pe parcursul zilei. Poţi să faci amele lucruri sau să faci fiecare dintre ele, depinde de foarte mult de ce îşi doreşte fiecare om în parte. Sunt studii foarte multe care arată că făcând acest exerciţiu deosebit de simplu în care notezi cu liniuţă seara trei lucruri bune sau trei lucruri pentru care eşti recunoscător în ziua în care a trecut, în aproximativ 21 de zile, creşte foarte mult nivelul de fericire. Creşterea este atât de impresionantă, încât exerciţiul a început să fie folosit pe persoane care aveau depresii”.

Alt lucru pe care putem să îl facem este să ne creăm o practică de meditaţie şi de timp petrecut cu noi înşine. ”Cu cât punem mai multă ordine în viaţa noastră, cu atât ordinea aceea o să se vadă şi în gândurile noatre. Să învăţăm să ne trezim la o oră anume, să învăţăm  înainte de a fugi pe uşă să ne bucurăm de un mic dejun, să învăţăm să ne bucurăm de mersul până la birou chiar dacă uneori durează un pic mai mult. Să învăţăm să ne bucurăm practic de momentele zilnice şi să învăţăm să punem ordine în ele, dar să le reperăm. Să fim atenţi şi la ele. Avem tendinţa să fim atenţi la ce nu este funcţional şi asta nu ne ajută, cu siguranţă”, mai spune Mălina Chirea.

O altă metodă de a fi mai fericiţi este să zâmbim mai mult. ”Dacă nu avem o stare foarte bună şi zâmbim mai mult de 20 de secunde, creierul începe să producă serotonină, unul dintre neurotransmiţătorii fericirii. Ne poate ajuta lucrul ăsta. Nu este o soluţie pe termen lung. Uneori lucrurile care ne enervează e bine să le tratăm ca să nu se mai întâmple. Fericirea nu este un fel de var care este dat peste un perete negru şi să ne facem că totul este în regulă, e doar o formă de a aborda diferit situaţiile. Dar, zâmbetul e foarte bun”, menţionează reprezentanta Institutului pentru Fericire.

http://m.gandul.info/reportaj/tineri-corporatisti-care-aparent-au-totul-bat-la-usa-unui-apartament-din-bucuresti-cautand-fericirea-le-deschide-malina-13795805?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=li395_mi101293&utm_content=articol&utm_campaign=Tineri+corporatisti+care%2C+aparent%2C+au+totul+bat+la+usa+unui+apartament+din+Bucuresti%2C+cautand+FERICIREA.+Le+deschide+Malina&utm_term=li395_mi101293_s174371

Teaching English online

http://www.britishcouncil.org/blog/how-get-started-as-online-teacher-english?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bc-teachingenglish

When I first started teaching ten years ago, I was extremely sceptical about the effectiveness of online teaching, but since then I have accumulated a lot of experience. I'd like to share with you a few things I've learned along the way.

Getting started

Contrary to popular opinion, I recommend starting your online teaching career by working for an established company. If your teaching experience is limited and you're not an internet wiz, working for a company can act as an excellent type of 'internship'. Admittedly, the money can be low and the hours unreliable, but you'll receive on-the-job training and technical and pedagogical support. I started out working for one of the well-known English learning centres. I gained valuable skills, experience and the confidence, which later enabled me to go it alone.

Creating a blog

In the last two years, I've created more of my own materials, usually on the back of envelopes, in notebooks, word files and on scraps of paper. I often use authentic materials such as news articles, TED talks and YouTube clips, and create lesson plans around them. Last year, while looking for inspiration, I came across an English teaching blog for the first time and so discovered the possibility to create and save lesson plans on such a platform, which can then be easily accessed anywhere. I was so impressed that I immediately got to work learning how to create my own blog. I chose BloggerOpens in a new tab or window., as it seemed very easy to use. My blogOpens in a new tab or window. was born in November 2013 and marked the beginning of an incredible journey of self-development.

Becoming part of a network of teachers

The most important discovery I've made since starting my blog is undoubtedly the British Council's Teaching English Facebook pageOpens in a new tab or window.. If only I had discovered it earlier! Through this page, I have connected with an amazing community of teachers (teaching online can at times be a little lonely) and to a vast quantity of excellent materials and resources. My blog has been visited by thousands of new people, which has led me to working on a very interesting new project.

I live in Israel and would never have dreamed of being able to enter a classroom in Iran. But a few months ago, a course co-ordinator in a college in Iran approached me about teaching three groups of Iranian men. I accepted the offer, and now I'm beamed into their classroom via Google HangoutsOpens in a new tab or window., which is projected onto a screen. I upload a document containing a list of weekly topics connected to their course materials, and each student gives a presentation on these topics. I coach and correct the students and send detailed feedback to each one after the lesson. These classes demonstrate the incredible power online teaching has to break through cultural and geographical barriers, offering endless possibilities to both teachers and students alike.

Choosing a platform to communicate with your students

SkypeOpens in a new tab or window. is a very useful platform for online teaching. You can have free video or audio conversations with your students, as long as they have a Skype account. You can send files, type corrections and new vocabulary in the message box, and also share a view of your screenOpens in a new tab or window..

Google Hangouts, as we've seen, allows you to create a virtual classroom. You and your students need to have a Google+ account to be able to use this platform. You can invite up to ten people to a Hangout. You can open any document that you previously saved to Google DriveOpens in a new tab or window., and add notes or a Google sketchpad, which acts like a whiteboard. You can also add YouTube videos and even use sound effects like clapping or a drum roll. I recommend having a trial lesson with your students to help them get used to using Hangouts. Tell them to sign in and enter a Hangout before the lesson. When you first enter, you are prompted to upload the Google talk plug-in, which may take a few minutes.

WizIQOpens in a new tab or window. is something I'm quite new to, and I've discovered that it offers a free online teaching platform for private teachers. You can set up a course for up to ten students, upload materials in advance and invite students to attend the course and then set time and date by email. When you set up your course you can also add the cost of the course, which the student will pay for through PayPalOpens in a new tab or window.. WizIQ's virtual classroom looks very professional and seems to be the most interactive of the free virtual classrooms available. It enables you to upload documents, embed videos and share your screen. You also have a white board and a chat box, the contents of which can be saved. Once you sign up, you can participate in the free training courses that WizIQ offer. Your students will need to sign up to WizIQ to enter the class. If you upgrade, you can also promote your courses in their marketplace. WizIQ has a free course starting this week called Teachers Teaching OnlineOpens in a new tab or window..

Google HelpoutsOpens in a new tab or window. is going to be the next big thing for online teachers, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it's currently only available in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, U.K., New Zealand and Australia. Helpouts is a new way of sharing knowledge and expertise through live video. You connect with your students in a one-on-one video call. You begin by creating a listing for your lessons, with information about you, the expertise that you're sharing and price details. You add your availability, the lessons are given via Google Hangouts and payment is made using Google WalletOpens in a new tab or window.. When it becomes available worldwide, it will connect teachers with a huge international market of students, free of charge.

Managing your time effectively

The most difficult aspect of being a self-employed teacher is learning to manage your time. To be honest, I'm still not very good at limiting my research and preparation time. I hope, in the long run, that having my lesson plans on a blog will help, but creating these materials is time-consuming. I would like to recommend two webpages I've discovered, which I'm sure will help teachers manage their time effectively.

EducanonOpens in a new tab or window. is free and works on all major internet browsers. It enables you to create interactive video lessons using any YouTube, Vimeo, TeacherTubeOpens in a new tab or window., Khan AcademyOpens in a new tab or window. or TEDOpens in a new tab or window. video, and allows you to embed time-linked interactive activities, in the form of questions, to the video. Students participate in these activities as they watch the video. They can stop and rewind the video at any point, but cannot progress until they have completed each activity. When you've finished creating your interactive video lesson, it can be shared or you can embed it on your website or blog. I think it's a fantastic idea and extremely useful for online teaching and flipped classrooms.

Off2ClassOpens in a new tab or window. is a website that offers ready-made course materials in the form of a set of slides. It is currently in beta stage and is free. The site offers a library of ESL (English as a Second Language) lesson plans and new lessons are added weekly -- they're really good too. As the teacher, you have the ability to invite a student to join you on the website in order to view the lesson materials together. When you leave the lesson, the student is no longer able to access the materials. It's a great website and a real time-saver.

Summing up

The internet is a window of opportunity for teachers. It enables us to develop, create, share and teach independently, wherever and however we choose. Happy teaching!

 

Fran Lebowitz quotes

http://thoughtcatalog.com/rachel-hodin/2014/02/30-of-the-funniest-most-empowering-fran-lebowitz-quotes/

My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than on might wish.

4:15 p.m.—I get up feeling curiously unrefreshed. I open the refrigerator. I decide against the half a lemon and jar of Gulden’s mustard and on the spur of the moment choose instead to have breakfast out. I guess that’s just the kind of girl I am—whimsical.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try.

All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.

When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

It is not that I am totally indifferent to the joys of athletic effort—it is simply that my idea of what constitutes sport does not coincide with popularly held notions on the subject. There are a number of reasons for this, chief among them being that to me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get form your apartment into a taxicab.

I must take issue with the term ‘a mere child,’ for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult.

Children make the most desirable opponents in Scrabble as they are both easy to beat and fun to cheat.

True, there are those laws which endeavor to shield the public from financial disaster. Truer still, financial disaster occurs anyway. And truest of all, the public is not a particularly interesting group.

For some, this sort of agitation would lead to industrious results, scholarly pursuits, inventions that save the world. I am gifted only in how far I’ll stretch to scratch an itch I can never reach.

I can see my glass is half full…but, of course, I did order a double.

When Sadie was two and Huxley near one, I was due my next personal crisis. I can’t risk skipping one of those. (I still take great pride in having been, some 20 years ago, the first on my block to get anorexic.)

It wouldn’t be fair to say my husband, Frank, ignored me. He’d wave now and then through the window as he walked to the kitchen to get another beer (so that’d be six waved on a weeknight and 12 on a weekend, which is more friendly than some marriages). Then, one evening, who knows why – maybe because my mitten had caught fire – Frank stepped outside and saw that I had been crying. ‘Are you say?’ he asked. He’s sensitive like that.

We fly up the front of the plane. We give each kid a lot more than the recommended dose of cough syrup. I display it with a wink-wink, nod-nod to the other passengers so they’ll know we have their comfort in mind. The meds have the desired effect on Huxley. In fact, they work so beautifully that any time we see his eyes flutter – probably just REMing but who wanted to take chances – I scream, ‘Dose him!’

I close my eyes and ardently wish I could offload the kids and take a two-day nap. That might bring colour to my world. I hear a plop on the floor. It is the sound my sweat makes when it finishes hanging around my jaw.

I ask Sadie if she’d like to go out and feed the koi fish…some of these cough drops I found in my pocket. Huxley is wailing for his milk. I tell him, ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’ll be in that pool in a few hours. Until then, you just cry your little heart out.’

It is the first day that Frank has to leave us and go into work. The kids are still not settled into the time zone and, therefore, no one is. Huxley’s doing a lot of screaming – a lot of screaming. Therefore, we all are, though some of us put it to words. I guess we’re just a family sharing a wavelength.

Now it is Monday. And I am Frank-less. And I am in Singapore. By 10 am I have the kids bathed and fed in their respective containers. Huxley is velcroed in his bouncy seat with a bottle and Sadie is in a high chair. She’s a little old to be in one, but she likes it…I tell myself.

There are streaks of brown sludge all over the white marble floor. It stinks in there. Huxley’s feet are encased in the same shit. And, shit it is. Sadie, who I had taken out of the high chair, had been running around bottomless because we’re in toilet training. Apparently we’re not there yet. She’s taken a dump on the floor. Huxley is joyfully riding his walker back and forth, zigging and zagging it all over the place. We have miles of poo trails leading us through the living room.

I wouldn’t say that I dislike the young. I’m simply not a fan of naiveté. I mean, unless you have an erotic interest in them, what other interest could you have? What are they going to possibly say that’s of interest? People ask me, Aren’t you interested in what they’re thinking? What could they be thinking? This is not a middle-aged curmudgeonly attitude; I didn’t like people that age even when I was that age.

If I had to, I would rather have dinner with James Thurber, than, say James Joyce. I’m not the biggest James Joyce fanatic and I would rather have dinner with someone who was funny.

There are some great writers who are great talkers, but there are more great writers who are not great talkers. People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world.

I’m such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don’t need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.

[Male writers] have this sneaking suspicion that writing is not the most masculine profession. This is why you have so much idiotic behavior among male writers. There are more male writers who own guns than any other profession except police officers.

I have a real aversion to machines. I write with a pen. Then I read it to someone who writes it onto a computer. What are those computer letters made of anyway? Light? Too insubstantial. Paper, you can feel it. a pen. There’s a connection.

I’ve never once been edited. I’ve never let anyone edit me, even when I was a kid. When I started publishing, I was writing for this small magazine, deservedly small, called Changes, which was what was then called an underground magazine. I wouldn’t let that editor edit me…My first book was not edited…So I’ve never had the experience of being edited and never will.

I suppose some writers actually like to write with editors. They feel that an editor isn’t an enemy but actually a helper. There is nothing more mine than my writing, nothing I’m more proprietary about. If someone were to say to me that something was wrong, some fact not true, I suppose I would be able to deal with that. But never in a matter of style.

Sulking is a big effort. So is not writing. I only realized that hewn I did start writing. When I started getting real work done, I realized how much easier it is to write then not to write.

She may just be the wittiest woman in modern America. Whether she's dishing on literature or fine dining, writer Fran Lebowitz always has us in stitches. A roundup of our favorite quips from the proud New Yorker...

1. "Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine."

2. "You're only as good as your last haircut."

3. "In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra."

4. "Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications."

5. "I believe in cashmere."

6. "When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough."

7. "I prefer dead writers because you don't run into them at parties."

8. "To me the outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab."

9. "I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once."

10. "Think before you speak. Read before you think."

Did we forget your favorite Fran Lebowitz quote? Leave it in the comments below!

(photo via Fanscoop)

CULTURE > TOP 10 FRAN LEBOWITZ QUOTES

Intellectual Elegance

Iconic Designer Massimo Vignelli on Intellectual Elegance, Education, and Love

by Maria Popova

“Intellectual elegance [is] a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity.”

Besides the iconic New York City subway map, for which he remains best-known, the great Massimo Vignelli has worked on some of the twentieth century’s most memorable packaging, identity, and public signage for clients like IBM, American Airlines, and Bloomingdale’s, and has earned some of the creative industry’s most prestigious awards, including the AIGA Gold Medal (1983), the New York State Governor’s Award for Excellence (1993), the National Arts Club Gold Medal for Design (2004), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (2005). But nowhere do Vignelli’s eloquence, wisdom, earnestness, and sensitivity shine more brilliantly than in How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (public library) — the same fantastic anthology of Debbie Millman‘s interviews with creative icons that gave usPaula Scher’s slot machine metaphor for creativity.

A champion of “intellectual elegance,” Vignelli explains his lifelong crusade against vulgarity:

MV: When I talk about elegance, I mean intellectual elegance. Elegance of the mind.

DM: How would you define elegance of the mind?

MV: I would define intellectual elegance as a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity. We all know vulgarity very well. Elegance is the opposite.

DM: I have to ask: What would you consider to be vulgar?

MV: Vulgarity is something underneath culture and education. Anything that is not refined.

[…]

DM: Why do you think people are fascinated by vulgarity?

MV: Because it is easier to absorb. Elegance is about education and refinement, and it is a by-product of a continual search for the best and for the sublime. And it is a continuous refusal of indulging in anything that is vulgar. It’s a job.

He offers an articulate definition of what design is really about:

It is to decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world. It is to make the world a better place to be. But everything is relative. There is a certain amount of latitude between what is good, what is elegant, and what is refined that can take many, many manifestations. It doesn’t have to be one style. We’re not talking about style, we’re talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about creating for everything that surrounds us a level of quality.

Like Steve Jobs famously did, Vignelli has profound disdain for focus groups and, like Millman herself, advocates for not letting limited imagination shrink the boundaries of the possible:

I don’t believe in market research. I don’t believe in marketing the way it’s done in America. The American way of marketing is to answer to the wants of the customer instead of answering to the needs of the customer. The purpose of marketing should be to find needs — not to find wants.

People do not know what they want. They barely know what they need, but they definitely do not know what they want. They’re conditioned by the limited imagination of what is possible. … Most of the time, focus groups are built on the pressure of ignorance.

Vignelli adds to history’s most beautiful definitions of love:

MV: Love is a cake that comes in layers. The top layer is the most appealing one. This is the one you see first. Then you cut into it and you see many different layers. They’re all beautiful, but some are sweeter than others.

How do I define love? I define it as a very intense passion on the one hand, and a very steady level on the other. The first layer, the one of passion, is the most troublesome. God, it’s a pain.

DM: Why?

MV: Because the more you love, the more jealous you get. You become jealous of everything, the air around the person, the people, a look, even the way they look at something. Then there is the extreme pleasure of writing about love, as well. This is fascinating to me. The layer of correspondence — and the anxiety to receive answers. That is great.

Finally you come to the physical layer. The emotion of receiving and conveying pleasure is sensational. It’s unbelievable how your entire body becomes a messenger. Your fingers, lips, eyes, smells. Your whole body becomes involved.

Then there is the layer of suffering. Distance, remoteness, no presence, horror. The suffering of not seeing who you want to see, and not being with whom you love. This is another painful aspect of love. We are talking about pain. All these layers define love. I think that is why it’s so great and so extremely complex.

Like other great creators, including Paula Scher, William Gibson, and Henry Miller, Vignelli recognizes the combinatorial quality of creative work as a sum-total of one’s lived experience:

One of the great advantages of being so concentrated on your work is that it is all there is. Everything I do comes into this and enriches me. Everything, even every book I read, enriches me.

On the life of purpose:

DM: Do you think that there’s a common denominator to people who can make a great contribution? Do you think that there’s something that–

MV: Unites them? Yes. What in Greek is called sympathy, the synchronization of pathos. You feel this incredible level of connection with these people. To a certain extent, it is equally comparable to love.

On the poetics of New York, echoing Anaïs Nin:

New York is a fabulous city. It’s like a magnet. I can’t leave anymore. There is nothing that can compare to New York. And it is not even beautiful. There are hundreds, thousands of other cities that are much more beautiful. But there is only one New York.

On design vs. art:

DM: How do you generally start a project?

MV: By listening as much as I can. I am convinced the solution is always in the problem. You could do a design that you like, but it doesn’t solve the problem. Design must solve a problem. Then, the design is exciting. But I find it extremely difficult. This is why I respect artists. Without a problem, I don’t exist. Artists are lucky; they can work by themselves. They don’t need a problem

Die Pflege von Jing,Qi und Shen fuer ein friedvolles Leben

"Das grosse Handbuch der Chinesischen Ernaehrungslehre", Manuela Heider de Jahnsen, S. 302

Stoics - 8 Guidelines

http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201311/8-ancient-rules-life-we-should-still-follow

I found Evans’ book to be thoughtful and a pleasure to read; even the appendices are not to be missed. Evans, an author and journalist, is policy director at the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London, and helps run the London Philosophy Club. Consider the following guidelines, reproduced here in Evans’ own words:

1) It’s not events that cause us suffering, but ouropinion about events.

The Stoics thought we could transform emotions by understanding how they’re connected to our beliefs and attitudes. Often what causes us suffering is not a particular adverse event, but our opinion about it. We can make a difficult situation much worse by the attitude we bring to it. This doesn’t mean relentlessly "thinking positively"—it simply means being more mindful of how our attitudes and beliefs create our emotional reality.

2) Our opinions are often unconscious, but we can bring them to consciousness by asking ourselves questions.

Socrates said we sleepwalk through life, unaware of how we live and never asking ourselves if our opinions about life are correct or wise. The way to bring unconscious beliefs into consciousness is simply to ask yourself questions: Why am I feeling this strong emotional reaction? What interpretation or belief is leading to it? Is that belief definitely true? Where is the evidence for it? The Stoics used journals to keep track of their automatic responses and to examine them. 

3) We can’t control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we react.

Epictetus, the slave-philosopher, divided all human experience into two domains—things we control, and things we don’t. We don’t control other people, the weather, the economy, our bodies and health, our reputation, or things in the past and future. The only thing we have complete control over is our beliefs—if we choose to exercise this control. But we often try to exert complete control over something external, and then feel insecure and angry when we fail. Or we fail to take responsibility for our own thoughts and beliefs, and use the outside world as an alibi. Focusing on what you control is a powerful way to reduce anxiety and assert autonomy in chaotic situations. The Serenity Prayer is a nice encapsulation of this idea.

4) Choose your perspective wisely.

Every moment of the day, we can choose the perspective we take on life, like a film-director choosing the angle of a shot. One of the exercises the Stoics practiced was called the View From Above: If you’re feeling stressed by some niggling annoyances, project your imagination into space and imagine the vastness of the universe. From that cosmic perspective, the annoyance doesn’t seem that important anymore—you’ve made a molehill out of a mountain.

Another technique the Stoics used (along with Buddhists and Epicureans) was bringing their attention back to the present moment if they felt they were worrying too much about the future or ruminating over the past. Seneca told a friend: “What’s the point of dragging up sufferings that are over, of being miserable now because you were miserable then?”

5) Habits are powerful.

One thing the Stoics got, which a lot of modern philosophy (and religious studies) misses with its focus on theory, is the importance of practice, training, repetition and, in a word, habits. Because we’re such forgetful creatures, we need to repeat ideas over and over until they become ingrained habits. It might be useful to talk about the Stoic technique of the maxim, how they’d encapsulate their ideas into brief memorizable phrases or proverbs—“Everything in moderation” or “The best revenge is not to be like that”—which they would repeat to themselves when needed. Stoics also carried around little handbooks with some of their favorite maxims.

6) Fieldwork is vital.

Another thing the Stoics got, which modern philosophy often misses, is the idea of fieldwork. One of my favorite quotes from Epictetus is: “We might be fluent in the classroom but drag us out into practice and we’re miserably shipwrecked.” If you’re trying to improve your temper, practice not losing it. If you’re trying to rely less on comfort eating, practice eating less junk food. Seneca said: “The Stoic sees all adversity as training.” Imagine if philosophy also gave us street homework, tailor-made for the habits we’re trying to weaken or strengthen, like practicing asking a girl out, or practicing not gossiping about friends, or practicing being kind to someone every day. Imagine if people didn’t think philosophy was “just talking.”

7) Virtue is sufficient for happiness.

Stoicism wasn’t just a feel-good therapy; it was anethics, with a specific definition of the good life: The aim of life for Stoics was living in accordance with virtue. They believed if you found the good life not in externals like wealth or power but in doing the right thing, then you’d always be happy, because doing the right thing is always in your power and never subject to the whims of fortune. A demanding philosophy, and yet also in some ways true: Doing the right thing is always in our power.

8) We have ethical obligations to our community.

The Stoics pioneered the theory of cosmopolitanism—the idea that we have ethical obligations not just to our friends and family, but to our wider community, and even the community of humanity. Sometimes our obligations might clash—between our friends and our country, or between our government and our conscience. (For example, would we resist the Nazis if we grew up in 1930s Germany?) Do we really have moral obligations to people on the other side of the world? What about other species, or future generations? 

Most of the foregoing was adapted from Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, used with permission of New World Library. Jules Evans blogs about practical philosophy on his website.

From HBR, 2 articles, about goals and motivation

https://hbr.org/2014/12/align-your-time-management-with-your-goals
At the end of a busy day, sometimes it’s hard to figure out where the time went. The following excerpt from the book Getting Work Done provides a simple process for you to prioritize your work and understand how you’re actually using your time.

What goals are you aiming for in your work? Does the way that you are spending your time actually correlate to those goals? Without answers to these questions, you won’t know how the many tasks on your list should be prioritized, organized, and ultimately accomplished.

List your goals

Ideally, you and your manager should meet at the start of each year to formulate a set of performance goals. From your discussion, you should understand how those goals tie into the company’s aims and mission. You likely also have your own personal career goals. Together, these may look something like, “Improve people-management skills. Manage six new products. Handle contracts for all of the department’s new products. Develop vendor-management skills.”

Revisiting them now, write these goals down—on paper or in a note-taking app if you prefer. You will use these goals in two ways: first, to prioritize your daily work; and second, to gauge your progress (in other words, to benchmark what you’re accomplishing and whether the changes you make as a result of this book are effective for you). By referring back to this list regularly, you’ll be able to identify which tasks are most important for you to tackle so you can plan accordingly.

Track your time

Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to examine how you’re currently spending your time. Are you working on the things you should be doing—the things that will allow you to reach those goals—or are you getting bogged down by unrelated tasks or unexpected crises?

In order to truly understand where you are spending your time and to identify whether you should adjust your workload, track your work for two weeks by completing the following exercise. You may discover that your results don’t align with your goals. The point is to uncover where that misalignment occurs so you can correct it.

First, write down your activities. Consider this a brain dump, and leave no stone unturned. List all of the tasks you perform, meetings you attend, and even the time you spend socializing or procrastinating at work. It can help to look back over your calendar for the last week or two to get a sense of your range of activities. Once you have a full list, break it down into broad categories so you can track the amount of time you spend doing tasks in each category. Some categories to consider include:

Core responsibilities: day-to-day tasks that make up the crux of your job.Personal growth: activities and projects that you find meaningful and valuable, but may not be part of your everyday responsibilities.Managing people: your work with others, including direct reports, colleagues, and even your superiors.Crises and fires: interruptions and urgent matters that arise occasionally and unexpectedly.Free time: lunch breaks and time spent writing personal e-mails, browsing the web, or checking social media.Administrative tasks: necessary tasks that you perform each day, such as approving time sheets or invoices, or putting together expense reports.

Seeing your work broken into categories like this will help you visualize how you’re really spending your time, and you may already be getting a sense of whether this lines up with the goals you identified.

rresponding categories.

At this point, you may be thinking, I’m busy; I don’t have time to log everything I do. It’s true: This system does require an up-front investment of time and effort.

But logging your tasks and how long it takes to complete them will let you clearly see where you’re spending too much time and where you need to begin to reallocate time to achieve your goals. If you want to improve your people management skills, for example, you may realize that devoting 10 hours a week is not enough; perhaps you need to offload some administrative tasks so you have the additional time you need for that goal. By making small, deliberate shifts in how you spend your day, you’ll ensure that you’re investing the right amount of time on the tasks that matter most, making you more efficient at achieving your goals.

This post is adapted from the Harvard Business Review Press book 20-Minute Manager: Getting Work Done.

https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-maslows-hierarchy-wont-tell-you-about-motivation
Autonomy is people’s need to perceive that they have choices, that what they are doing is of their own volition, and that they are the source of their own actions. The way leaders frame information and situations either promotes the likelihood that a person will perceive autonomy or undermines it. To promote autonomy:

Frame goals and timelines as essential information to assure a person’s success, rather than as dictates or ways to hold people accountable.Refrain from incentivizing people through competitions and games. Few people have learned the skill of shifting the reason why they’re competing from an external one (winning a prize or gaining status) to a higher-quality one (an opportunity to fulfill a meaningful goal).Don’t apply pressure to perform. Sustained peak performance is a result of people acting because they choose to — not because they feel they haveto.

Relatedness is people’s need to care about and be cared about by others, to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives, and to feel that they are contributing to something greater than themselves. Leaders have a great opportunity to help people derive meaning from their work. To deepen relatedness:

Validate the exploration of feelings in the workplace. Be willing to ask people how they feel about an assigned project or goal and listen to their response. All behavior may not be acceptable, but all feelings are worth exploring.Take time to facilitate the development of people’s values at work — then help them align those values with their goals. It is impossible to link work to values if individuals don’t know what their values are.Connect people’s work to a noble purpose.

Competence is people’s need to feel effective at meeting every-day challenges and opportunities, demonstrating skill over time, and feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Leaders can rekindle people’s desire to grow and learn. To develop people’s competence:

Make resources available for learning. What message does it send about values for learning and developing competence when training budgets are the first casualty of economic cutbacks?Set learning goals — not just the traditional results-oriented and outcome goals.At the end of each day, instead of asking, “What did you achieve today?” ask “What did you learn today? How did you grow today in ways that will help you and others tomorrow?”

Unlike Maslow’s needs, these three basic needs are not hierarchical or sequential. They are foundational to all human beings and our ability to flourish.

The exciting message to leaders is that when the three basic psychological needs are satisfied in the workplace, people experience the day-to-day high-quality motivation that fuels employee work passion — and all the inherent benefits that come from actively engaged individuals at work. To take advantage of the science requires shifting your leadership focus from, “What can I give people to motivate them?” to “How can I facilitate people’s satisfaction of autonomy, relatedness, and competence?”

Leaders have opportunities every day to integrate these motivational practices. For example, a leader I coach was about to launch a company-wide message to announce mandatory training on green solutions compliance. Ironically, his well-intentioned message dictated people’s actions — undermining people’s sense of autonomy and probably guaranteeing their defiance rather than compliance. His message didn’t provide a values-based rationale or ask individuals to consider how their own values might be aligned to the initiative. After reconsidering his approach, he created this message embedded with ways for people to experience autonomy, relatedness, and competence:

autonomy, relatedness, competence

https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-maslows-hierarchy-wont-tell-you-about-motivation

Despite the popularity of Maslow’s Hierarchy, there is not much recent data to support it. Contemporary science — specifically Dr. Edward Deci, hundreds ofSelf-Determination Theory researchers, andthousands of studies — instead points to three universal psychological needs. If you really want to advantage of this new science – rather than focusing on a pyramid of needs – you should focus on:autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

Autonomy is people’s need to perceive that they have choices, that what they are doing is of their own volition, and that they are the source of their own actions. The way leaders frame information and situations either promotes the likelihood that a person will perceive autonomy or undermines it. To promote autonomy:

Frame goals and timelines as essential information to assure a person’s success, rather than as dictates or ways to hold people accountable.Refrain from incentivizing people through competitions and games. Few people have learned the skill of shifting the reason why they’re competing from an external one (winning a prize or gaining status) to a higher-quality one (an opportunity to fulfill a meaningful goal).Don’t apply pressure to perform. Sustained peak performance is a result of people acting because they choose to — not because they feel they haveto.

Relatedness is people’s need to care about and be cared about by others, to feel connected to others without concerns about ulterior motives, and to feel that they are contributing to something greater than themselves. Leaders have a great opportunity to help people derive meaning from their work. To deepen relatedness:

Validate the exploration of feelings in the workplace. Be willing to ask people how they feel about an assigned project or goal and listen to their response. All behavior may not be acceptable, but all feelings are worth exploring.Take time to facilitate the development of people’s values at work — then help them align those values with their goals. It is impossible to link work to values if individuals don’t know what their values are.Connect people’s work to a noble purpose.

Competence is people’s need to feel effective at meeting every-day challenges and opportunities, demonstrating skill over time, and feeling a sense of growth and flourishing. Leaders can rekindle people’s desire to grow and learn. To develop people’s competence:

Make resources available for learning. What message does it send about values for learning and developing competence when training budgets are the first casualty of economic cutbacks?Set learning goals — not just the traditional results-oriented and outcome goals.At the end of each day, instead of asking, “What did you achieve today?” ask “What did you learn today? How did you grow today in ways that will help you and others tomorrow?”

Unlike Maslow’s needs, these three basic needs are not hierarchical or sequential. They are foundational to all human beings and our ability to flourish.

The exciting message to leaders is that when the three basic psychological needs are satisfied in the workplace, people experience the day-to-day high-quality motivation that fuels employee work passion — and all the inherent benefits that come from actively engaged individuals at work. To take advantage of the science requires shifting your leadership focus from, “What can I give people to motivate them?” to “How can I facilitate people’s satisfaction of autonomy, relatedness, and competence?”

Life Purpose; a selection of 4 texts

http://www.raptitude.com/2013/03/how-to-find-the-way/

Asyou move north:

Personal criticisms seem less relevant to you and you’re less likely to react to them emotionally.It becomes easier and more appealing to relinquish control over external events, particularly over what other people do.You naturally put a greater proportion of your attention on the physical world around you, which leaves less attention for following your internal dialogue. Inner dialogue becomes less persistent.Ordinary details of the physical world become more beautiful, and feel like they somehow make more sense, and you feel less inclined to tell others this. Private experiences of beauty make up a greater proportion of your day.You evaluate external events more in terms of their overall good in the world — how much joy they bring or suffering they relieve — than in terms of your own interests.You come closer to being able to accept undesirable events in real-time. You lose interest in talking about how the situation ought to be.Other human beings (and, farther north, animals) appear more individualized. They seem more delicate, interesting, and worthy of care and attention. Walking among them begins to feel more like walking in a china shop.Self-consciousness fades. You feel an increased willingness to let things be. Farther north, you cease experiencing yourself as an opaque object moving in the world and instead feel like a transparent subject through which the world moves. You may feel like you are watching the world without being there at all.

***

I don’t know if there’s a specific quality the spectrum reflects. It’s not important. The best barometer for your current position on the spectrum is probably how much peace and ease you feel during in-between moments. By in-between moments I mean moments in which you’re not getting what you want and not getting what you don’t want, which is most moments.

We move north and south along the spectrum throughout our lives. A swing can happen within a day, especially as a reaction to the arrival of exceptionally desirable or undesirable circumstances: major setbacks, major insights, major gains or major losses. You may be in one place one day and quite another a few days later.

It tends to shift in wide arcs though, like the tension in a storyline does. You may spend an arc of a year or two quite farther north than normal for you, if you’re doing something that serves your deepest values, or something that requires exceptional levels of attention or effort from you. You might have an arc in the other direction corresponding with a rough period, like a divorce or an illness.

But generally, if you have a persistent interest in personal growth, you’ll find yourself gradually moving northward over the years.

You move north by doing the things that seem to result, for you, in the “northward” qualities above. You only get a firsthand look at your own inner states, so it’s necessarily a solo practice. Spiritual golf.

For me, what has helped most has been practicing mindfulness informally, reading, simplifying my life in terms of possessions and commitments, confronting long-running fears, and writing.

You find your own best practices by trying things. If you never try anything new you never find them.

“Follow your bliss” is how Joseph Campbell put it. He always knew what he was talking about, but I have trouble with the word bliss because it’s been hijacked by Duncan Hines and other gratification-peddlers. Someone’s “bliss” may be heroin, after all. But if you get a good sense of where north is from the list above, then a personal practice of self-education can’t help but move you gradually northward.

I suppose it’s possible some people have done well a

http://markmanson.net/life-purpose

...Everything involves sacrifice. Everything includes some sort of cost. Nothing is pleasurable or uplifting all of the time. So the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days.

If you want to be a brilliant tech entrepreneur, but you can’t handle failure, then you’re not going to make it far. If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the 80-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you. ...

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

... Here’s what to do:

Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge. ...

www.LearningStrategies.com/EffortlessSuccess/Home.asp

Health Sparks

What's your life purpose? To inspire others to reach their goals? To promote a greener world? To help others heal with Qigong?

Whatever it is, a purpose-driven life could mean a longer life.

A group of researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago has been tracking nearly 1000 people with an average age of 80 for seven years, assessing physical, psychological, and cognitive wellbeing. At the beginning of the study, participants were scored on their sense of purpose using statements like, "Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them," and, "I sometimes feel as if I have done all there is to do in life."

Participants who scored a higher sense of purpose were 2.4 times less likely to develop Alzheimer's than their lower scoring peers – even if their brains showed physical signs of the disease.

"Even for people developing plaques and tangles in their brains, having purpose in life allows you to tolerate them and still maintain your cognition," says neuropsychologist Patricia Boyle, an author of the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The perks of purpose don't stop there. Purposeful people also had a 30 percent lower rate of cognitive decline, a lower risk of diabetes, and were less likely to die.

A separate study from the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center followed over 1,200 participants with an average age of 78 over five years. Those who scored a higher purpose had nearly half the mortality rate as their less purposeful peers. Researchers controlled other factors that could increase wellbeing, including social relationships, depression, disability, and demographics. They determined that purpose stood alone as a major factor in increased life quality and expectancy.

People "want to make a contribution," says Boyle. "They want to feel part of something that extends beyond themselves...a sense of their role in the community and the broader world."

You can reap the benefits of knowing and living your life purpose at any age. "The clearer you are about your purpose and the more your emotions and beliefs are aligned with it, the more likely it is you will attract what you desire," says Jack Canfield, author of ourEffortless Success course. To clarify your life purpose, he recommends the following exercise:

Think of two personal qualities that others most appreciate about you (i.e., enthusiasm, joy, creativity).Consider the way you most enjoy expressing each of these two qualities. For example, you may enjoy singing, building things, or teaching.Visualize your perfect world. Envision how people close to you are interacting, and imagine how you feel living in such a world.Write a statement in the present tense describing this perfect world – how it looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes.Draw upon everything you thought, felt, and expressed in the first four steps. If you were to draw, paint, or sculpt an image of your life purpose, what would it look like?

You can repeat this exercise as often as you'd like. It is okay if you are not completely clear about your life purpose at this point. Once it is clear, revisit your life purpose daily to keep living it!

The Fruitfulness of the Moment - another perspective

In the same vein as the previous post there is David Cain's great post: It's okay to be here


http://www.raptitude.com/2014/05/okay-to-be-here

You can always be where you are (and indeed nothing else is possible.) The real issue is learning to consciously allow yourself to be exactly where you are, including any of the parts that you would prefer to be different.

This is a news flash to some: It’s okay to experience unpleasant feelings. It’s okay for things to happen that you don’t want to happen. It is possible to notice these things happening and consciously allow them to be there. And it makes a huge difference to how traumatic or not-so-bad the experience ends up being. It may still be unpreferable or unpleasant, but it stops being awful. All different kinds of pain can become manageable if you can let them be there while they’re there.

In the West at least, most of us receive zero training on the value (and even the possibility) of consciously allowing our current experience to be what it is. Just a little bit of regular mindfulness or meditation practice can make this fundamental skill into a habit.

Letting the moment simply be what it is is altogether different from wanting it to be that way, or refusing to do something about it, if there is indeed something you can do. This applies to so many everyday moments that can be awful if we don’t let them be what they are: waiting in line, not knowing whether you passed an exam, being in the presence of misbehaving kids.

The key to allowing yourself to be here is locating that aspect of the present moment that you most want to be different — which always seems to amount to a feeling of some kind. For example, it would feel perfectly okay to not know if you passed the exam if you didn’t feel any anxiety in response to that not-knowing. The unpleasant/unpreferable part is the anxiety, not the not-knowing.

The Fruitfulness of the Moment - H.Miller, V.Frankl

Henry Miller's "The Wisdom of the Heart"

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/09/the-wisdom-of-the-heart-henry-miller/

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender.

For the awakened individual, however, life begins now, at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.

An attempt, in short, to arrive at a total grasp of the universe, and thus keep man anchored in the moving stream of life, which embraces known and unknown. Any and every moment, from this viewpoint, is therefore good or right, the best for whoever it be, for on how one orients himself to the moment depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.

http://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/6-helpful-reminders-for-the-overwhelmed-person/

 ... Viktor Frankl’s great discovery — that nobody can take away your freedom to choose your way of relating to your circumstances. Wherever you are, you can do something to make the rest of the day better than it would otherwise be, and that means you are not helpless. No matter how small the action, once you see you are capable of improving your position, the feeling of helplessness cannot survive unless you want it to.

Bucurie si recunostinta in inimile noastre - Joy and Gratitude in Our Hearts

"Si fie ca noi sa avem mereu bucurie si recunostinta in inimile noastre pentru ca Marele Creator al tuturor lucrurilor, in Dragostea Sa pentru noi, a pus plantele pe campuri spre vindecarea noastra." Dr. Bach

"And may we ever have joy and gratitude in our hearts that the Great Creator of all things, in His love for us, has placed the herbs in the field for our healing." Dr. Bach

From "The Twelve Healers"
http://www.bachcentre.com/centre/download/healers.htm