I Can't Take It Any More
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
- Leo Buscaglia, American author, motivational speaker, "Dr. Love" (1924-1998)
When someone has the power to change lives, to make others feel as if their lives have been saved and are much improved, that person deserves attention.
To me, Leo Buscaglia was "the Hug Doctor." He hugged everyone. Even other men did not feel threatened as Leo's infectious smile convinced them that they wanted to be hugged by him. He made others want to hug each other.
My father introduced me to Leo Buscaglia through the latter's many PBS specials. It shocked me when my father first hugged me after seeing Dr. Buscaglia. As a young man who played competitive hockey in a violent league, my father was more apt to fight (even to need police protection because of it) than to hug. As a father he avoided hugging me as he preferred hugging a liquor bottle. My father didn't know how to hug, had no idea how important touch was to a child. A fatherless child himself, he didn't know much about parenting.He had given up alcohol at age 65. He started hugging after he saw Leo. My father came to like hugging. I came to believe that he was a pretty good guy after all. Before he retired he was just the man who came home for supper and naps. Not for hugging.
That sequence of events is important. From Leo I learned that everyone likes to be hugged. As I studied the subject more, I began to understand how important touch is to people. Strange as it may sound to those unfamiliar with the subject, loving touch (hugging is a prime example) is the way we measure love.
We may not know for sure what love is, though everyone wants it, and most of us don't know how to measure love or how to give it in such as way that the message of love will be accepted and understood. Now you do. Give it with a smile, by holding hands, by dancing, with flowers, any way you like. Just make sure you back up your message with loving touch.
It doesn't really matter what kind of touch so long as it's understood as loving by both people. As the Nike ads say, just do it. Something deep inside us tells us that the people who love us most touch us most.What does hugging have to do with worry, the core of the quote? Quite a bit, as you will see.
Worry has no positive side. It's all negative. Worry has never solved anything, but it has destroyed lives and relationships. What's more, people worry mostly about things that never happen. It's like an addiction. How can a person stop worrying if he or she is a worrying kind of person?
How about a hug? No one can give and receive a decent hug and worry at the same time. But hugs last only a few seconds, so how can a person stop themselves from resuming their ingrained habit of worrying?
One hug will not suffice for anyone. Eighteen a day will. Every day. (What? Is he joking?) If you can't imagine hugging someone you love 18 times every day, you need other forms of loving touch to substitute in for the hugs you can't perform.
You will find it extremely hard to worry when someone you love and who loves you hugs you or touches you in a loving way 18 times every day. Can't fit that in? Can't imagine someone who loves you finding time? That's like saying you can't find time to put gas into your car. You can find time if it matters. Love matters, at least if you want to keep it.Do you have trouble coping with your problems sometimes? Maybe most of the time? The biggest part of a coping deficit is confusion. The easiest way to alleviate confusion in your life is to have lots of love in it. How do you get that? Right, hugging and loving touch. (See? You have been paying attention.) Your mind will be better prepared to cope with problems in your life if it doesn't get bogged down in its search for love.
Your mind will be clear and your problems seem small if you don't feel a lack of love. And how will you know if you have enough love in your life? For one thing, you won't be worrying about your problems. For another, you will feel loved. Yes, it really is that simple.Leo Buscaglia was loved by everyone he knew. At least by everyone he hugged. And who hugged back. I have seen two documentaries that showed two women who lived alone, in different cities (they may both have been widows) who knew they needed hugs but could no longer get them in the way they formerly could. Each one went out onto a main street in their city and asked total strangers if they wanted a hug. In each case, more than half of the strangers said they did want a hug. They got one. None complained. Some came day after day for more helpings.Love, hugging, lack of worry and having the ability to cope with our problems all help our immune systems to function at their best. Studies have shown that immune systems are compromised by worry over problems and lack of love.
How do you get love if you don't have enough or someone to give you more hugs? Love has a secret. Just as hugging requires at least two people, love works best with two or more. However, while a hug usually requires equal participation by all parties, love does not. Give love and you will get back more than you gave. You may not get back more from everyone, but the extra from some will more than make up for it.
Who should you give your love to? Turn it around and ask yourself if you would refuse an offer of love from anyone. But...love? Sometimes love is shown simply by caring for others. Care for someone who has no one to care for them.
Care about others who need your help. They will perceive it as love. You will feel good.
Now go and practice what you have learned. Just do it. Prove to yourself that it works.Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and anyone who wants to learn the basics of what everyone should know about life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label problems. Show all posts
Monday, December 13, 2010
Monday, March 16, 2009
Where Do Bullying and Jealousy Come From?
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
- Lazarus Long, fictional character in Robert A Heinlein novels
"Neurotic" in this case may be taken to mean "emotionally excessive to the point of being harmful."
Insecurity breeds jealousy. The two are not irrevocably linked. Insecurity can also lead to bullying, to lack of an ability to commit to a relationship, to various emotional problems other than neuroses, to addictions, to violence and rage, to bad relationships and to divorce.
Consider how prevalent these are in our society.
They are so common that social scientists refer to them as social problems, meaning that so many people have these problems that the numbers alone create further problems in churches and clubs, in communities, in the workplace, in legislative assemblies of government, in countries, even at the United Nations.
People learn to feel secure during their maturation, as they grow from children, through adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. They key word in that last sentence is "learn." People learn to feel secure. It doesn't come as a matter of course. People learn insecurity as well.
If security or lack of it is learned, who teaches it? We all help in the process of teaching insecurity. Insecurity is another word for fear. People learn insecurity in their families, as children, in school (not intentionally in the classroom), in the playground, in various groups and unhealthy friendships. They learn it from television and newspapers that encourage us to fear each other, on the street, in offices, in elevators, in our homes. They learn it from clerks in stores who ignore them while helping other customers who came in later.
Where do people learn security? That which should be learned is usually taught by someone, isn't it?
No one teaches people how to be secure. No one teaches them that fear is not just harmful, but unnecessary. In the United States, the recently retired president, self-titled "the war president," taught the necessity of believing in a War On Terror (with what results?) and he personally controlled the status of alerts (Amber Alert, Red Alert).
Learning to avoid fear and how to feel secure can be taught. It's a matter of understanding certain facts and mastering some skills. If it can be taught and if it's so important and so damaging to us personally and to our communities and our countries, we should be teaching it.
The information needed and the skills to be learned are available. They are neither hidden nor secret. They simply are not taught.
Are you afraid of anything? Do you feel insecure? Lots of people do, but it's not a necessary consequence of modern society as ultra-conservatives would have us believe.We fear and we feel insecure because we have not learned how to avoid these harmful emotions.
Someone has something to gain by making us feel afraid and insecure in such massive numbers. Of that you may be certain. I won't point fingers because it will not take much thinking on your part to figure out who is responsible for your fear and insecurity.
The economy is bad, are you afraid to lose your job? Unless you die within the next two years, you will survive the recession and get another job. Plan now what you would do and how you would go about it if you were to lose your job. If you don't make a plan, maybe you have something to worry about. If you do, you won't need to worry because you will know exactly what you will do.
If your spouse died or unexpectedly announced his/her desire for a divorce, what would you do? With a plan, these events would bring unhappiness. But they would not necessarily destroy your life. Having a plan of what you would do in case of tragedy is not a self fulfilling prophesy. It's simply being ready.
There are two ways to avoid insecurity and fear. You learned them by reading this article.
It would be wise if this kind of information and these skills were taught to everyone. It could be taught in schools, if we wanted it.
It would cost almost nothing to prepare teachers to teach social and emotional skills. Just give each teacher a book about it and the authority to teach it.
Imagine a world without fear.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow secure and self confident children into adults who won't contribute to the social problems we endure today and who will lead emotionally and socially healthy lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Lazarus Long, fictional character in Robert A Heinlein novels
"Neurotic" in this case may be taken to mean "emotionally excessive to the point of being harmful."
Insecurity breeds jealousy. The two are not irrevocably linked. Insecurity can also lead to bullying, to lack of an ability to commit to a relationship, to various emotional problems other than neuroses, to addictions, to violence and rage, to bad relationships and to divorce.
Consider how prevalent these are in our society.
They are so common that social scientists refer to them as social problems, meaning that so many people have these problems that the numbers alone create further problems in churches and clubs, in communities, in the workplace, in legislative assemblies of government, in countries, even at the United Nations.
People learn to feel secure during their maturation, as they grow from children, through adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. They key word in that last sentence is "learn." People learn to feel secure. It doesn't come as a matter of course. People learn insecurity as well.
If security or lack of it is learned, who teaches it? We all help in the process of teaching insecurity. Insecurity is another word for fear. People learn insecurity in their families, as children, in school (not intentionally in the classroom), in the playground, in various groups and unhealthy friendships. They learn it from television and newspapers that encourage us to fear each other, on the street, in offices, in elevators, in our homes. They learn it from clerks in stores who ignore them while helping other customers who came in later.
Where do people learn security? That which should be learned is usually taught by someone, isn't it?
No one teaches people how to be secure. No one teaches them that fear is not just harmful, but unnecessary. In the United States, the recently retired president, self-titled "the war president," taught the necessity of believing in a War On Terror (with what results?) and he personally controlled the status of alerts (Amber Alert, Red Alert).
Learning to avoid fear and how to feel secure can be taught. It's a matter of understanding certain facts and mastering some skills. If it can be taught and if it's so important and so damaging to us personally and to our communities and our countries, we should be teaching it.
The information needed and the skills to be learned are available. They are neither hidden nor secret. They simply are not taught.
Are you afraid of anything? Do you feel insecure? Lots of people do, but it's not a necessary consequence of modern society as ultra-conservatives would have us believe.We fear and we feel insecure because we have not learned how to avoid these harmful emotions.
Someone has something to gain by making us feel afraid and insecure in such massive numbers. Of that you may be certain. I won't point fingers because it will not take much thinking on your part to figure out who is responsible for your fear and insecurity.
The economy is bad, are you afraid to lose your job? Unless you die within the next two years, you will survive the recession and get another job. Plan now what you would do and how you would go about it if you were to lose your job. If you don't make a plan, maybe you have something to worry about. If you do, you won't need to worry because you will know exactly what you will do.
If your spouse died or unexpectedly announced his/her desire for a divorce, what would you do? With a plan, these events would bring unhappiness. But they would not necessarily destroy your life. Having a plan of what you would do in case of tragedy is not a self fulfilling prophesy. It's simply being ready.
There are two ways to avoid insecurity and fear. You learned them by reading this article.
It would be wise if this kind of information and these skills were taught to everyone. It could be taught in schools, if we wanted it.
It would cost almost nothing to prepare teachers to teach social and emotional skills. Just give each teacher a book about it and the authority to teach it.
Imagine a world without fear.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow secure and self confident children into adults who won't contribute to the social problems we endure today and who will lead emotionally and socially healthy lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Get Out! I Can't Stand The Sight Of You
Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.
- John C. Maxwell (Think on These Things, Beacon Hill Press, 1979), American leadership coach (b.1947 )
Don't think you are alone in believing that life is mysterious, that reality is impossible to understand. Anyone who doesn't think that has allowed his brain to settle with what he has been told to believe and to understand.
As you read this sentence, there are nearly seven billion versions of reality among us humans. What's more, by the time you finish reading this article, many of those realities will have changed. Some people will think differently, thus they perceive the reality of that moment differently than they did before.
Can you remember what you thought about the world ten years ago? It's not the same as it is now, is it? In fact, it wouldn't have been the same for you five years ago, one year ago, even a few days ago. Everything you experience alters your sense of what is real.
If you pay attention to (believe) what the media tell you, you will believe that the world is rapidly becoming a more terrible, even horrifying, place. It isn't, based on a huge survey of factors around the planet, but it serves the needs of the media for us to experience some fear about the way of the world, enough that we will tune in to their next broadcast or read their next newspaper or magazine.
If you believe those who criticize you--many do, even if you are not aware of it--then you will see yourself as a clearly inferior being among a much more superior group of fellow humans. They want you to feel that way. If you do, then they have changed your reality. If you do not believe them and act contrary to what they think of you, eventually you will change their reality by giving them a different impression about you.
Even the belief you have about the reality of the world--your world--this moment will be different from someone close to you, such as your spouse. What's more, your spouse's (friend's, mate's, mother's, sister's) sense of reality where it concerns you will differ significantly from your own sense of reality about yourself.
I am reminded of the chipmunks I see outside my window where I live. Chipmunks (known properly as the eastern chipmunk) are solitary squirrels that live in burrows they dig in the ground. They fight with every other chipmunk they meet, usually over food or burrow space, throughout the year (except when they are sleeping during winter). But when mating time comes, they are great romancers and lovers. Once the deed is done, with as many mates as they can find, they return to their solitary existence. When the females have tended to their young, they send them off to fend for themselves, as most rodents do, so they can be alone again.
Being more sociable creatures, we don't try to live alone for most of our lives except to mate. Yet mating is one of the few things we do that we all agree about. Many of us try to avoid procreating during the process, but we still want to have sex because it's fun, pleasurable, satisfying and most of us get a good feeling by helping our partners to enjoy themselves and to feel good.
Once the sex is over, we become relative strangers who cohabit, friends and roommates who live together for their mutual benefit. Until it's time to have sex again.
How can two people ever stay married under circumstances like that? Actually, it's not that hard. But the condition is that we must always consider and work toward the best interests of our partner (or immediate family). Sometimes (often) that means putting their best interests ahead of our own. When that doesn't happen--when one person's own best interests take precedence for themselves most of the time--a relationship is little more than a way to pass time between episodes of sex. Eventually, the relationship will fail.
For some people in a failing relationship, their reality is that their marriage is good and healthy, until the other person passes them the word that it isn't. We may call it betrayal or cheating, but it's simply a matter of two people having realities that are too different from each other's.
A good relationship is not a matter of compromise, as we are taught. Compromise is part of it, but only as a consequence of putting the best interests of the other person first. Compromise comes after, not first. Compromise only comes first in business relationships.
How can we put the best interests of our significant other first if we aren't sure what those best interests are? If you think that your other half's best interests are the same as yours most or all of the time, then you likely don't know what the other person's best interests are.
It has wisely been said that a good relationship is not a matter of staring lovingly into each other's eyes, but of looking outward in the same direction and seeing similar realities.
Just a little something for you to think about.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions to social problems that most people and governments consider realities of modern life, but that aren't. They can't see the solutions because they don't look in the right directions. The solutions are easy and cheap, but hard to find it we aren't looking for them in the right way.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- John C. Maxwell (Think on These Things, Beacon Hill Press, 1979), American leadership coach (b.1947 )
Don't think you are alone in believing that life is mysterious, that reality is impossible to understand. Anyone who doesn't think that has allowed his brain to settle with what he has been told to believe and to understand.
As you read this sentence, there are nearly seven billion versions of reality among us humans. What's more, by the time you finish reading this article, many of those realities will have changed. Some people will think differently, thus they perceive the reality of that moment differently than they did before.
Can you remember what you thought about the world ten years ago? It's not the same as it is now, is it? In fact, it wouldn't have been the same for you five years ago, one year ago, even a few days ago. Everything you experience alters your sense of what is real.
If you pay attention to (believe) what the media tell you, you will believe that the world is rapidly becoming a more terrible, even horrifying, place. It isn't, based on a huge survey of factors around the planet, but it serves the needs of the media for us to experience some fear about the way of the world, enough that we will tune in to their next broadcast or read their next newspaper or magazine.
If you believe those who criticize you--many do, even if you are not aware of it--then you will see yourself as a clearly inferior being among a much more superior group of fellow humans. They want you to feel that way. If you do, then they have changed your reality. If you do not believe them and act contrary to what they think of you, eventually you will change their reality by giving them a different impression about you.
Even the belief you have about the reality of the world--your world--this moment will be different from someone close to you, such as your spouse. What's more, your spouse's (friend's, mate's, mother's, sister's) sense of reality where it concerns you will differ significantly from your own sense of reality about yourself.
I am reminded of the chipmunks I see outside my window where I live. Chipmunks (known properly as the eastern chipmunk) are solitary squirrels that live in burrows they dig in the ground. They fight with every other chipmunk they meet, usually over food or burrow space, throughout the year (except when they are sleeping during winter). But when mating time comes, they are great romancers and lovers. Once the deed is done, with as many mates as they can find, they return to their solitary existence. When the females have tended to their young, they send them off to fend for themselves, as most rodents do, so they can be alone again.
Being more sociable creatures, we don't try to live alone for most of our lives except to mate. Yet mating is one of the few things we do that we all agree about. Many of us try to avoid procreating during the process, but we still want to have sex because it's fun, pleasurable, satisfying and most of us get a good feeling by helping our partners to enjoy themselves and to feel good.
Once the sex is over, we become relative strangers who cohabit, friends and roommates who live together for their mutual benefit. Until it's time to have sex again.
How can two people ever stay married under circumstances like that? Actually, it's not that hard. But the condition is that we must always consider and work toward the best interests of our partner (or immediate family). Sometimes (often) that means putting their best interests ahead of our own. When that doesn't happen--when one person's own best interests take precedence for themselves most of the time--a relationship is little more than a way to pass time between episodes of sex. Eventually, the relationship will fail.
For some people in a failing relationship, their reality is that their marriage is good and healthy, until the other person passes them the word that it isn't. We may call it betrayal or cheating, but it's simply a matter of two people having realities that are too different from each other's.
A good relationship is not a matter of compromise, as we are taught. Compromise is part of it, but only as a consequence of putting the best interests of the other person first. Compromise comes after, not first. Compromise only comes first in business relationships.
How can we put the best interests of our significant other first if we aren't sure what those best interests are? If you think that your other half's best interests are the same as yours most or all of the time, then you likely don't know what the other person's best interests are.
It has wisely been said that a good relationship is not a matter of staring lovingly into each other's eyes, but of looking outward in the same direction and seeing similar realities.
Just a little something for you to think about.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions to social problems that most people and governments consider realities of modern life, but that aren't. They can't see the solutions because they don't look in the right directions. The solutions are easy and cheap, but hard to find it we aren't looking for them in the right way.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, July 19, 2008
You Were Inevitable
"Life only starts to make sense when you realize that sometimes--often all the time--two completely contradictory ideas can be true.Everything that led up to you was wrong. Therefore, you should not have been born.But everything about you is right: You had to be born.You were inevitable."
- Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls, Viking (U.K.), 2007
Perhaps the most inspiring words I have ever read.
Jonathan Coe's multi-generational narrative takes the reader through decades of grievous family history, where everything including abandonment, emotional abuse and the beating of a child that blinded her points to a cold, dire, sometimes brutal existence for the recent descendants. Yet the blinded girl had to be born and grew up to be happy and fulfilled, according to the narrator of the story.
But, That's me, I thought. And it could be you.
Maybe the terrible family history and problems you had to face in your life prepared you for the total person you are today.
You are not the tragedies of the past in your life, nor the calamities that befell your family before you came along. You were the product of them, yes, but you came through them.
To the average person, the rock that will one day become a beautiful sculpture is nothing but a rough, crass chunk of space debris. To a sculptor, the rock is the protection that has surrounded the beauty he will soon reveal from within, for eons. Somehow or another, the rock clothing that surrounded you has been chipped and drilled away to reveal something beautiful. Something beautiful that is you.
If you identify yourself as being the product of a troubled past, you will act the role of the troubled person of the present waiting for something else to go wrong to destroy your life. If you see yourself as the beautiful creation you have become, you will be a different person.
You are not your past, nor the inheritor of the troubled history of your family. You are who you are. Not only are most of your ancestors not alive today, not even you can live in your own past. You are who you are today, no matter what happened in the past.
Your past is no more real today than the genocides of Hitler, the agonies of The Great War to End All Wars or Joan of Arc tied to the stake. Today is today. It can only be today. The past brought you to where you are today, but it does not force you to be its victim.
You were inevitable.
If you want to make yourself useful to the world, make it better for someone. The more people whose today you improve, the more likely they are to pay the favour forward.
The world improves not by those who destroy, but by those who create and improve in preparation for the future. Generally speaking, your life is better than the lives of any ancestor in your past. If it doesn't seem that way, then maybe you aren't looking at what is right and good.
When you see what is right and good in your life, pass it on. You don't know how much better the future can be for your descendants. But you can try to do what is right and good for them.
Teach right. Teach good. Teach peace. (What I call the Philosophy of T3)
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow into a better world that they will help to create. You can help to prepare them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls, Viking (U.K.), 2007
Perhaps the most inspiring words I have ever read.
Jonathan Coe's multi-generational narrative takes the reader through decades of grievous family history, where everything including abandonment, emotional abuse and the beating of a child that blinded her points to a cold, dire, sometimes brutal existence for the recent descendants. Yet the blinded girl had to be born and grew up to be happy and fulfilled, according to the narrator of the story.
But, That's me, I thought. And it could be you.
Maybe the terrible family history and problems you had to face in your life prepared you for the total person you are today.
You are not the tragedies of the past in your life, nor the calamities that befell your family before you came along. You were the product of them, yes, but you came through them.
To the average person, the rock that will one day become a beautiful sculpture is nothing but a rough, crass chunk of space debris. To a sculptor, the rock is the protection that has surrounded the beauty he will soon reveal from within, for eons. Somehow or another, the rock clothing that surrounded you has been chipped and drilled away to reveal something beautiful. Something beautiful that is you.
If you identify yourself as being the product of a troubled past, you will act the role of the troubled person of the present waiting for something else to go wrong to destroy your life. If you see yourself as the beautiful creation you have become, you will be a different person.
You are not your past, nor the inheritor of the troubled history of your family. You are who you are. Not only are most of your ancestors not alive today, not even you can live in your own past. You are who you are today, no matter what happened in the past.
Your past is no more real today than the genocides of Hitler, the agonies of The Great War to End All Wars or Joan of Arc tied to the stake. Today is today. It can only be today. The past brought you to where you are today, but it does not force you to be its victim.
You were inevitable.
If you want to make yourself useful to the world, make it better for someone. The more people whose today you improve, the more likely they are to pay the favour forward.
The world improves not by those who destroy, but by those who create and improve in preparation for the future. Generally speaking, your life is better than the lives of any ancestor in your past. If it doesn't seem that way, then maybe you aren't looking at what is right and good.
When you see what is right and good in your life, pass it on. You don't know how much better the future can be for your descendants. But you can try to do what is right and good for them.
Teach right. Teach good. Teach peace. (What I call the Philosophy of T3)
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow into a better world that they will help to create. You can help to prepare them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
How We Learn To Love An Unhealthy Lifestyle
As I write this I am experiencing a high level of anxiety brought about by stress from many different sources over a period of several weeks, my present purpose being to convey not my feelings but the effects that stress over a long period of time has on my thinking and decision making. The effects of stress on one person can affect another person similarly, if not identically, thus my experience can be a learning situation for you.
I have experienced depression and its effects in the past, though that was cleared entirely by my taking vitamin D supplements to compensate for the lack of sufficient direct sunlight on my skin to allow my body to create vitamin D on its own. The effects of depression bear striking similarities to the effects of stress/anxiety over a long period of time.
With depression I found that triggers would set off a bout of anger for a period of several minutes (up to an hour), then the emotional energy would dissipate and turn into what most of us would call depression. With stress, the anger comes to stay, varying in degree enough that it could often be called intolerance of the behaviour of others, inability to understand the life situations of others (lack of empathy) or a strong desire to get away from the company of specific people, rather than it being labelled easily as anxiety.
My present anxiety caused by long term stress has not resulted in any thoughts of suicide, which depression has done in the past. While I seek relief from the effects of my anxiety, I do not want to resort to easy solutions such as medication, addictive behaviour or the ultimate easy way out, suicide.
Why should you care? One or more people you know (perhaps many) may exhibit the some similar behaviours as I do right now, for the same causes. You may know nothing about the causes of the people you know or my own because we don't talk about them. We only talk about the effects, the bad behaviour, sometimes our own but usually of others who we think act weird or permanently irritable.
Stress has caused me to lose sleep--a considerable amount over a period of weeks--and this could easily compromise my immune system as well as causing me to exhibit symptoms of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation alone could cause irritability, inability to get along with others and a short fuse on the temper. Coupled with long term anxiety it could result in amplified instances of anger, intolerance, not paying attention to the needs of loved ones, not taking proper care of loved ones due to an egocentric attitude, even a desire to generate conditions which could destroy a close relationship just to have something "happen" to give a person the feeling that he or she is in control of something.
Stress can cause loss of sleep, but the sleep loss effects add to the effects of long term anxiety, rather than simply overlapping them. One doubles up with the other, so to speak.
Now we have causes which could result in such well known behaviours as road rage, office rage, marital arguments, marital incompatibility (real or imagined), disconnects in relationships with a person's own children, lack of interest in sex (at least of the softer, gentler, more loving kind), erectile dysfunction, inability to cope with other personal problems, even turning to addictive behaviours or substances for some form of relief.
Enter drugs, prescribed and otherwise. Prozac is the most prescribed drug in North America. Legal and illegal sales of Viagra and Cialis flourish. As many as 25 percent of people in many communities may have used marijuana or one of its derivatives in the past year.
The rates of divorce in most countries of the West hover around or above 50 percent. Examples of physical and emotional abuse surface frequently. Police must deal with family problems on about one-quarter of their calls in many communities. I don't have statistics to show what effect martial problems could have on other socially unacceptable behaviours, such as fights in bars or even theft from employers.
Where do people who suffer from these problems turn to find socially acceptable help to solve their problems? A family doctor will likely prescribe drugs, which solve nothing, merely cover up symptoms. Some--the lucky ones--get referred to counsellors who specialize in helping people who suffer from anxiety symptoms caused by high stress. Unfortunately, that part of the health care community is so fixed on a steady source of income that treatment may not be the best because it's in the financial best interests of the practitioner to have the professional help last as long as possible.
The whole ethic of teaching children about what they must do to "succeed" in the working world prepares them to face and accept stress and long term anxiety, though not how to cope with them.
We teach kids to not just enter the rat race, but to believe that this is the way life is and should be, and that they should learn to "enjoy it" by making as much money as possible and finding as many "interesting" ways of spending it as they can.
This article cannot present instant cures for complex problems. It can only point to the way that those with a concern for solving those problems should turn.
Treat broken adults one by one and we continue with our present kinds of problems. Teach children how to cope with the lives they will live in the future, as adults, and we change the path of the future for our descendants.
Change is possible if we know what we want to achieve and where to begin that change process.
Teach the children.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can cope with their lives as adults better than today's adults can.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
I have experienced depression and its effects in the past, though that was cleared entirely by my taking vitamin D supplements to compensate for the lack of sufficient direct sunlight on my skin to allow my body to create vitamin D on its own. The effects of depression bear striking similarities to the effects of stress/anxiety over a long period of time.
With depression I found that triggers would set off a bout of anger for a period of several minutes (up to an hour), then the emotional energy would dissipate and turn into what most of us would call depression. With stress, the anger comes to stay, varying in degree enough that it could often be called intolerance of the behaviour of others, inability to understand the life situations of others (lack of empathy) or a strong desire to get away from the company of specific people, rather than it being labelled easily as anxiety.
My present anxiety caused by long term stress has not resulted in any thoughts of suicide, which depression has done in the past. While I seek relief from the effects of my anxiety, I do not want to resort to easy solutions such as medication, addictive behaviour or the ultimate easy way out, suicide.
Why should you care? One or more people you know (perhaps many) may exhibit the some similar behaviours as I do right now, for the same causes. You may know nothing about the causes of the people you know or my own because we don't talk about them. We only talk about the effects, the bad behaviour, sometimes our own but usually of others who we think act weird or permanently irritable.
Stress has caused me to lose sleep--a considerable amount over a period of weeks--and this could easily compromise my immune system as well as causing me to exhibit symptoms of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation alone could cause irritability, inability to get along with others and a short fuse on the temper. Coupled with long term anxiety it could result in amplified instances of anger, intolerance, not paying attention to the needs of loved ones, not taking proper care of loved ones due to an egocentric attitude, even a desire to generate conditions which could destroy a close relationship just to have something "happen" to give a person the feeling that he or she is in control of something.
Stress can cause loss of sleep, but the sleep loss effects add to the effects of long term anxiety, rather than simply overlapping them. One doubles up with the other, so to speak.
Now we have causes which could result in such well known behaviours as road rage, office rage, marital arguments, marital incompatibility (real or imagined), disconnects in relationships with a person's own children, lack of interest in sex (at least of the softer, gentler, more loving kind), erectile dysfunction, inability to cope with other personal problems, even turning to addictive behaviours or substances for some form of relief.
Enter drugs, prescribed and otherwise. Prozac is the most prescribed drug in North America. Legal and illegal sales of Viagra and Cialis flourish. As many as 25 percent of people in many communities may have used marijuana or one of its derivatives in the past year.
The rates of divorce in most countries of the West hover around or above 50 percent. Examples of physical and emotional abuse surface frequently. Police must deal with family problems on about one-quarter of their calls in many communities. I don't have statistics to show what effect martial problems could have on other socially unacceptable behaviours, such as fights in bars or even theft from employers.
Where do people who suffer from these problems turn to find socially acceptable help to solve their problems? A family doctor will likely prescribe drugs, which solve nothing, merely cover up symptoms. Some--the lucky ones--get referred to counsellors who specialize in helping people who suffer from anxiety symptoms caused by high stress. Unfortunately, that part of the health care community is so fixed on a steady source of income that treatment may not be the best because it's in the financial best interests of the practitioner to have the professional help last as long as possible.
The whole ethic of teaching children about what they must do to "succeed" in the working world prepares them to face and accept stress and long term anxiety, though not how to cope with them.
We teach kids to not just enter the rat race, but to believe that this is the way life is and should be, and that they should learn to "enjoy it" by making as much money as possible and finding as many "interesting" ways of spending it as they can.
This article cannot present instant cures for complex problems. It can only point to the way that those with a concern for solving those problems should turn.
Treat broken adults one by one and we continue with our present kinds of problems. Teach children how to cope with the lives they will live in the future, as adults, and we change the path of the future for our descendants.
Change is possible if we know what we want to achieve and where to begin that change process.
Teach the children.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can cope with their lives as adults better than today's adults can.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The World's Worst Problems Can Be Solved
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Stop Bitching
We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.
- Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)
We get out of life what we want, what we put effort into creating for ourselves.
As a Canadian, I am quite familiar with the favourite topic of Canadians meeting strangers or casual friends in a setting such as in an elevator or in line at a supermarket checkout. We talk about the weather or some level of government.
The weather is always too hot, too cold (Canada ranks as the coldest country in the world), too wet, too dry, too much snow, always too something. Governments always get raked over for something they have done wrong or something that they have done that is expected to have tragic results in the future.
Though we may have something good to say about the weather or a government in an extended conversation with a friend, those shorter casual meetings always deal with what's wrong. We complain as a matter of course. It's part of our culture.
Have you noticed how annoying someone who works nearby you is? Why can't your spouse do those few things that are important to you the way you want, at least once in a while? Kids clothes are absurdly expensive, they don't appreciate the clothes when you buy them without them on hand to try them on and give their blessing, and they make the most atrocious choices when given the opportunity to pick their own because they want to dress like their friends.
Why don't auto makers build cars to last, the way they do with trucks? Why do television newscasts always deal with bad stuff, isn't anything good happening in the world? Why do emergencies happen at the worst times so they mess up your day? Murphy was right with his law.
Get the idea? Life's a bitch, then you die, as the saying goes. Live your life focussing on the negatives and complaining about everything that catches your attention and life sucks.
Some local initiatives try to get people to avoid complaining. They exist around the world, but receive little media attention because the media does what we want them to do, report what is bad. You may not have heard of any of them. Here's an idea.
Live a complaint-free life.
Most of us have no idea how often we complain. What we know too well is how often others close to us complain, especially when they complain about us. How about trying to cut all complaining out of your life?
Here's how it works. It's best to begin with two or more people who are close to each other (house mates, co-workers) so that they can point out to the other(s) when they complain.
Select an elastic band that fits loosely over your wrist. Each time you catch yourself complaining (or are caught by the other), either snap the elastic on your wrist or transfer it to the other wrist. If you snap the elastic, don't do it hard enough to hurt yourself, just hard enough to help you remember. Both methods are used and both have their supporters.
There doesn't have to be a prize for the "winner" because everyone wins this game. It's really a lifestyle change. What you will try to do is to beat your own record for complaint-free days. It's not a competition because competitions end.
Be aware that it won't be easy. When you begin you will find yourself not being able to get through one day without a complaint of some kind. When you do get through one day, then two and more, the reward is double. First there is the success of setting your own record.
The second reward, which you will find becoming greater as you achieve longer periods of success at having complaint-free days, is that your life will be better. You will feel better about the world and about yourself.
Along with that goes the relief from stress, which many of us don't realize we experience every day. That results in better health. And better sleep.
You don't have to get a big raise, divorce your spouse or give your kids to Rumplestiltskin to feel better and live better. You have to stop punishing yourself, which is what you do by complaining.
Complaints, especially frequent ones, are like a prison you build around yourself. You don't realize what you have done until someone points it out to you. Of course you wouldn't have built a door in your prison cell because you didn't even have a plan to build it. It just happened.
Now you can build a new landscape for yourself. You can build real and positive structures in your landscape because it's entirely within your control. You aren't in control of anything so long as you live your life from complaint to complaint.
Remove the negatives that hold you down--stop complaining--and you will have built a different life for yourself.
Your culture may be filled with complainers, but that doesn't mean you have to be part of those who suffer by beating themselves up by complaining.
At first you may seem a bit odd to others because you have changed, for those you meet who knew you as your old personality. Then they will realize how you have changed. They will want to know how you accomplished it. Tell them. Explain how you did it, by eliminating one complaint from your life at a time.
Your life will never be totally free of complaints. You might not even want that because you do need some causes to make your life worthwhile.
There are always ways to say something in a positive manner that you used to say as a complaint. It's called constructive criticism. That doesn't mean that you criticize to help someone. It means that you point out a path for someone to follow that will bring benefit to that person (as well as to you, maybe).
Criticism that stops with a complaint is destructive. Criticism that continues by providing a path that will make someone's life better--especially if you point this out at the time--benefits the other person, you and the whole world as your kindness and caring spreads.
Yeah, kind of like what I just did. I told you that you complain too much, then gave you a path to follow to make your life better and healthier. You likely didn't even think of it as criticism because it showed you a way to improve your life.
That's constructive. Go find your elastic now.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers so that they have the tools to help children grow into healthy, confident, competent, complaint-free adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)
We get out of life what we want, what we put effort into creating for ourselves.
As a Canadian, I am quite familiar with the favourite topic of Canadians meeting strangers or casual friends in a setting such as in an elevator or in line at a supermarket checkout. We talk about the weather or some level of government.
The weather is always too hot, too cold (Canada ranks as the coldest country in the world), too wet, too dry, too much snow, always too something. Governments always get raked over for something they have done wrong or something that they have done that is expected to have tragic results in the future.
Though we may have something good to say about the weather or a government in an extended conversation with a friend, those shorter casual meetings always deal with what's wrong. We complain as a matter of course. It's part of our culture.
Have you noticed how annoying someone who works nearby you is? Why can't your spouse do those few things that are important to you the way you want, at least once in a while? Kids clothes are absurdly expensive, they don't appreciate the clothes when you buy them without them on hand to try them on and give their blessing, and they make the most atrocious choices when given the opportunity to pick their own because they want to dress like their friends.
Why don't auto makers build cars to last, the way they do with trucks? Why do television newscasts always deal with bad stuff, isn't anything good happening in the world? Why do emergencies happen at the worst times so they mess up your day? Murphy was right with his law.
Get the idea? Life's a bitch, then you die, as the saying goes. Live your life focussing on the negatives and complaining about everything that catches your attention and life sucks.
Some local initiatives try to get people to avoid complaining. They exist around the world, but receive little media attention because the media does what we want them to do, report what is bad. You may not have heard of any of them. Here's an idea.
Live a complaint-free life.
Most of us have no idea how often we complain. What we know too well is how often others close to us complain, especially when they complain about us. How about trying to cut all complaining out of your life?
Here's how it works. It's best to begin with two or more people who are close to each other (house mates, co-workers) so that they can point out to the other(s) when they complain.
Select an elastic band that fits loosely over your wrist. Each time you catch yourself complaining (or are caught by the other), either snap the elastic on your wrist or transfer it to the other wrist. If you snap the elastic, don't do it hard enough to hurt yourself, just hard enough to help you remember. Both methods are used and both have their supporters.
There doesn't have to be a prize for the "winner" because everyone wins this game. It's really a lifestyle change. What you will try to do is to beat your own record for complaint-free days. It's not a competition because competitions end.
Be aware that it won't be easy. When you begin you will find yourself not being able to get through one day without a complaint of some kind. When you do get through one day, then two and more, the reward is double. First there is the success of setting your own record.
The second reward, which you will find becoming greater as you achieve longer periods of success at having complaint-free days, is that your life will be better. You will feel better about the world and about yourself.
Along with that goes the relief from stress, which many of us don't realize we experience every day. That results in better health. And better sleep.
You don't have to get a big raise, divorce your spouse or give your kids to Rumplestiltskin to feel better and live better. You have to stop punishing yourself, which is what you do by complaining.
Complaints, especially frequent ones, are like a prison you build around yourself. You don't realize what you have done until someone points it out to you. Of course you wouldn't have built a door in your prison cell because you didn't even have a plan to build it. It just happened.
Now you can build a new landscape for yourself. You can build real and positive structures in your landscape because it's entirely within your control. You aren't in control of anything so long as you live your life from complaint to complaint.
Remove the negatives that hold you down--stop complaining--and you will have built a different life for yourself.
Your culture may be filled with complainers, but that doesn't mean you have to be part of those who suffer by beating themselves up by complaining.
At first you may seem a bit odd to others because you have changed, for those you meet who knew you as your old personality. Then they will realize how you have changed. They will want to know how you accomplished it. Tell them. Explain how you did it, by eliminating one complaint from your life at a time.
Your life will never be totally free of complaints. You might not even want that because you do need some causes to make your life worthwhile.
There are always ways to say something in a positive manner that you used to say as a complaint. It's called constructive criticism. That doesn't mean that you criticize to help someone. It means that you point out a path for someone to follow that will bring benefit to that person (as well as to you, maybe).
Criticism that stops with a complaint is destructive. Criticism that continues by providing a path that will make someone's life better--especially if you point this out at the time--benefits the other person, you and the whole world as your kindness and caring spreads.
Yeah, kind of like what I just did. I told you that you complain too much, then gave you a path to follow to make your life better and healthier. You likely didn't even think of it as criticism because it showed you a way to improve your life.
That's constructive. Go find your elastic now.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers so that they have the tools to help children grow into healthy, confident, competent, complaint-free adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Can You save A Life?
"In life you can never be too kind or too fair; everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. When you go through your day expressing kindness and courtesy to all you meet, you leave behind a feeling of warmth and good cheer, and you help alleviate the burdens everyone is struggling with."
- Brian Tracy
Some will always think you a sucker for being so nice. They may even criticize you and try to take advantage of you.
Too bad. Jealousy will do that to people.
They hate to see others who do good works, who do charitable acts without expectation of reward, who try to help others, because it doesn't conform to their miserable and depressing viewpoint of humanity.
They are so focussed on themselves and the dirty tricks and misfortunes fate has played on them that they can't look at the world from anyone else's point of view.
If you can't think what life must be like inside someone else's skin, you can't appreciate the hardships that others endure. Those who can and do look at life from another's point of view usually (in my experience, always) find that they wouldn't trade their life and their troubles for those of anyone else.
That's a strange phenomenon. When we only look at our own problems and consider how hard life is on us, we seem to have the worst problems in the world. When we seriously think about the problems that others must endure--really learn what they are and how other people struggle to cope with them--we never want to trade ours for theirs.
Think of any famous person you know, especially someone whose life you may have studied to some extent. Not just the good stuff, but the bumps, potholes and sinkholes of that person's life as well. The more you learn about the real life--the inside story that the public doesn't usually learn--the more likely you will be to be thankful you don't have that person's problems.
Look at the people you meet every day, the people closest to you, with the same eyes. Every one of them struggles with problems and almost every one will hide them so that you learn nothing. Everyone wants you to think they are fearless, until proven otherwise. Everyone wants you to believe they never make mistakes, until they are caught.
Everyone wants you to believe that they can make it on their own, no matter what their problems and no matter how little help they have with them, until they break down.
Sometimes that breakdown is emotional. Sometimes it shows up as an addiction. Often it appears as unusual or antisocial behaviour, though this is usually done away from the eyes of others these people know. Sometimes we learn about that person's problems as a result of suicide or murder, or both.
If you are only thinking about your own problems and not those of others around you, when they go over the edge you may not be prepared. You may not be able to help.
You may miss the signs and live to regret it for years afterward.
Other people have it worse than you. If you dig deep enough, you may find that everyone else does. Be gentle. Cut them some slack. Forgive. Offer a shoulder, or some time to listen.
You may save a life. You will certainly enrich your own in the process.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to teach others, especially children, how to cope with life's problems and how to help them understand the vulnerability of others they know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Brian Tracy
Some will always think you a sucker for being so nice. They may even criticize you and try to take advantage of you.
Too bad. Jealousy will do that to people.
They hate to see others who do good works, who do charitable acts without expectation of reward, who try to help others, because it doesn't conform to their miserable and depressing viewpoint of humanity.
They are so focussed on themselves and the dirty tricks and misfortunes fate has played on them that they can't look at the world from anyone else's point of view.
If you can't think what life must be like inside someone else's skin, you can't appreciate the hardships that others endure. Those who can and do look at life from another's point of view usually (in my experience, always) find that they wouldn't trade their life and their troubles for those of anyone else.
That's a strange phenomenon. When we only look at our own problems and consider how hard life is on us, we seem to have the worst problems in the world. When we seriously think about the problems that others must endure--really learn what they are and how other people struggle to cope with them--we never want to trade ours for theirs.
Think of any famous person you know, especially someone whose life you may have studied to some extent. Not just the good stuff, but the bumps, potholes and sinkholes of that person's life as well. The more you learn about the real life--the inside story that the public doesn't usually learn--the more likely you will be to be thankful you don't have that person's problems.
Look at the people you meet every day, the people closest to you, with the same eyes. Every one of them struggles with problems and almost every one will hide them so that you learn nothing. Everyone wants you to think they are fearless, until proven otherwise. Everyone wants you to believe they never make mistakes, until they are caught.
Everyone wants you to believe that they can make it on their own, no matter what their problems and no matter how little help they have with them, until they break down.
Sometimes that breakdown is emotional. Sometimes it shows up as an addiction. Often it appears as unusual or antisocial behaviour, though this is usually done away from the eyes of others these people know. Sometimes we learn about that person's problems as a result of suicide or murder, or both.
If you are only thinking about your own problems and not those of others around you, when they go over the edge you may not be prepared. You may not be able to help.
You may miss the signs and live to regret it for years afterward.
Other people have it worse than you. If you dig deep enough, you may find that everyone else does. Be gentle. Cut them some slack. Forgive. Offer a shoulder, or some time to listen.
You may save a life. You will certainly enrich your own in the process.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to teach others, especially children, how to cope with life's problems and how to help them understand the vulnerability of others they know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, March 02, 2008
What Would You Do?
"He only did what he had to do," a line from Waylon and Willie's Poncho and Lefty, stands out from among the others as my earworm of the day plays over and over in my head.
I don't know who Poncho and Lefty were, but Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings immortalized them with their country classic. They did whatever bandito work they "had to do" in Mexico for years before the Federales killed Poncho and Lefty fled to Ohio. According to the lyrics, it was Lefty who did what he had to do, which was banditoing. Poncho was dead by that point of the song.
I keep asking myself Why? Why did these two and many others since them turn to a life of law-breaking?
I have never known or heard of a young child who aspired to be a bandito or a law breaker of any kind. Kids fundamentally want to be good. They may misbehave, act ornery and make their mother's life hell for a few years, but they do that for a reason.
They can't understand or cope with life as it presents itself to them.
Human children take two decades of upbringing before they get a good grasp of what life is about. Even then, many don't get it. As little kids, they grasp concepts easily, but hypocrisy and lack of attention to their needs confuses them. They don't have the words to convey their feelings to their parents. So they tend to act out, misbehave or withdraw into themselves.
In adolescence many "rebel" by wearing black, bleaching their hair, getting tattoos, listening to music their parents' generation hates (but which usually expresses their personal angst) and dressing either like hookers or alcoholic drug addicts who live under bridge overpasses. They still can't express what they feel is so wrong about themselves or the world around them. All they know is to show their disapproval of it.
We call it teenage rebellion, but it's not universal. It only occurs in societies with certain social conditions.
The worst of the adolescent objectors lack social skills or self confidence--even if some seem to be able to easily attract a following--and virtually all lack emotional skills and knowledge. They are developmentally immature or maldeveloped. We know it, schools and the courts see it every day, the situation is getting worse, but we do nothing about it.
Most kids grow out of it and learn to compromise with the society around them. Some, however, hit crises they do not have the skills to cope with or the support of others they can turn to in times of trouble. Their parents claim they were right behind their kids all the way. But they weren't. The kids knew it. The parents had no idea what to do, even if they tried their best to be good parents. Which virtually every parents does, given their unique set of circumstances.
When that special crisis arrives unexpectedly on their doorstep, some will turn to the people who are most ready to support them, at least to some degree. Criminals and other unsavory people are always the easiest ones to make friends with. They aren't good friends, but they're there when teens and young adults need them, at least to lend some relief from the pain of the crisis. Maybe that includes drugs, for example.
The free drugs last only so long, then the user must pay for them. That requires the young people to find ways to get money, ways that are immediately or soon thereafter illegal.
How serious is it? The USA now has a record number of people incarcerated. One out of every 100 US citizens is in prison or jail, not only a record for the US but a world record for percentage of citizens behind bars for any nation. When you discount children and adults who are beyond the age when most would commit crimes--in other words, look at people in the most productive years of life--the number in prison is well over ten percent. That's one adult in ten behind bars.
Governments and education systems don't want to tell children about the horrid things that happen to frequent drug users--they want to keep the children "innocent" for as long as possible.
So the young people only hear about the good effects of drugs from the suppliers. Heck, the thrill or feeling of bliss is worth a little pain later.
They don't explain to children why law breaking is very hard on society and give them the ways and means (knowledge, skills and support people) to cope with their problems as they get older. Some turn to crooks for temporary help in solving their problems. The bad guys are always around to "help." Especially around schools.
That temporary help becomes permanent, but the young people don't know that at the time. We don't tell them that early enough. Or the damage they will do to themselves or their families. A judge or fellow prisoner may be the first to break that news to them.
Maybe most of them just did what they "had to do" to get past their problems. They didn't know any other way to solve them. We weren't there to help, that's for sure.
But, not to worry, we can still build more prisons and courts. Apparently that's easier than teaching children what we have a moral and natural obligation to teach them, how to cope with and work within the constraints of adult life.
And we have drugs to fix them when they break. Most do at some point, to varying degrees, even if they cover it well.
Innocent children become ignorant adults. It's inevitable. Yet we continue to do it as if it's the right thing to do, as if it's the only thing we know how to do.
Who, I ask myself, stands to gain by keeping so many children so ignorant about life that they turn to illegal substances and crime to cope with their problems?
And why do we persist on doing nothing about it?
Especially when we know how to avoid the problems. At least you do. You read this article. And you have likely read other articles by me and visited my web site. So you know what you can do. What are you doing now that you know?
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, your handbook for how to solve these problems. It includes special guides for teachers, parents and grandparents of young children.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
I don't know who Poncho and Lefty were, but Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings immortalized them with their country classic. They did whatever bandito work they "had to do" in Mexico for years before the Federales killed Poncho and Lefty fled to Ohio. According to the lyrics, it was Lefty who did what he had to do, which was banditoing. Poncho was dead by that point of the song.
I keep asking myself Why? Why did these two and many others since them turn to a life of law-breaking?
I have never known or heard of a young child who aspired to be a bandito or a law breaker of any kind. Kids fundamentally want to be good. They may misbehave, act ornery and make their mother's life hell for a few years, but they do that for a reason.
They can't understand or cope with life as it presents itself to them.
Human children take two decades of upbringing before they get a good grasp of what life is about. Even then, many don't get it. As little kids, they grasp concepts easily, but hypocrisy and lack of attention to their needs confuses them. They don't have the words to convey their feelings to their parents. So they tend to act out, misbehave or withdraw into themselves.
In adolescence many "rebel" by wearing black, bleaching their hair, getting tattoos, listening to music their parents' generation hates (but which usually expresses their personal angst) and dressing either like hookers or alcoholic drug addicts who live under bridge overpasses. They still can't express what they feel is so wrong about themselves or the world around them. All they know is to show their disapproval of it.
We call it teenage rebellion, but it's not universal. It only occurs in societies with certain social conditions.
The worst of the adolescent objectors lack social skills or self confidence--even if some seem to be able to easily attract a following--and virtually all lack emotional skills and knowledge. They are developmentally immature or maldeveloped. We know it, schools and the courts see it every day, the situation is getting worse, but we do nothing about it.
Most kids grow out of it and learn to compromise with the society around them. Some, however, hit crises they do not have the skills to cope with or the support of others they can turn to in times of trouble. Their parents claim they were right behind their kids all the way. But they weren't. The kids knew it. The parents had no idea what to do, even if they tried their best to be good parents. Which virtually every parents does, given their unique set of circumstances.
When that special crisis arrives unexpectedly on their doorstep, some will turn to the people who are most ready to support them, at least to some degree. Criminals and other unsavory people are always the easiest ones to make friends with. They aren't good friends, but they're there when teens and young adults need them, at least to lend some relief from the pain of the crisis. Maybe that includes drugs, for example.
The free drugs last only so long, then the user must pay for them. That requires the young people to find ways to get money, ways that are immediately or soon thereafter illegal.
How serious is it? The USA now has a record number of people incarcerated. One out of every 100 US citizens is in prison or jail, not only a record for the US but a world record for percentage of citizens behind bars for any nation. When you discount children and adults who are beyond the age when most would commit crimes--in other words, look at people in the most productive years of life--the number in prison is well over ten percent. That's one adult in ten behind bars.
Governments and education systems don't want to tell children about the horrid things that happen to frequent drug users--they want to keep the children "innocent" for as long as possible.
So the young people only hear about the good effects of drugs from the suppliers. Heck, the thrill or feeling of bliss is worth a little pain later.
They don't explain to children why law breaking is very hard on society and give them the ways and means (knowledge, skills and support people) to cope with their problems as they get older. Some turn to crooks for temporary help in solving their problems. The bad guys are always around to "help." Especially around schools.
That temporary help becomes permanent, but the young people don't know that at the time. We don't tell them that early enough. Or the damage they will do to themselves or their families. A judge or fellow prisoner may be the first to break that news to them.
Maybe most of them just did what they "had to do" to get past their problems. They didn't know any other way to solve them. We weren't there to help, that's for sure.
But, not to worry, we can still build more prisons and courts. Apparently that's easier than teaching children what we have a moral and natural obligation to teach them, how to cope with and work within the constraints of adult life.
And we have drugs to fix them when they break. Most do at some point, to varying degrees, even if they cover it well.
Innocent children become ignorant adults. It's inevitable. Yet we continue to do it as if it's the right thing to do, as if it's the only thing we know how to do.
Who, I ask myself, stands to gain by keeping so many children so ignorant about life that they turn to illegal substances and crime to cope with their problems?
And why do we persist on doing nothing about it?
Especially when we know how to avoid the problems. At least you do. You read this article. And you have likely read other articles by me and visited my web site. So you know what you can do. What are you doing now that you know?
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, your handbook for how to solve these problems. It includes special guides for teachers, parents and grandparents of young children.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 28, 2008
You Can Be Free
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman emperor, stoic philosopher (121 - 180 CE)
As emperor for about two decades of the greatest empire until modern times, Marcus Aurelius knew what it would be like to allow external problems to prey on his mind. Though he was known as one of the five great emperors of Rome, there was always a lineup of powerful men who wanted the job and had the swords and henchmen needed to cause him to lose his life.
Any empire has problems and a great emperor has great problems that prey on his mind day and night. He had the wisdom to separate the operations and vicissitudes of his position from the conducting of his life. Not an easy task, surely.
Considering the number of quotations attributed to him that pass around the internet nearly two millennia after his death, Marcus Aurelius distinguished admirably between himself and his people, his empire and its conquered people and occupied lands, even between himself and life itself.
Thus he knew well that to allow external influences to cause you pain and worry was to adopt the pain and worries of the world. He wouldn't do it. He respected himself too much.
Look back at your own life for a moment. Remember back ten years. What sorts of things troubled you then? Do they still trouble you now? Almost no one can say their problems of old still trouble them, unless one of their problems is lack of self confidence.
A decade ago my life seemed to be hanging by a thread due to financial problems. Sometimes I wished I could just die so that the pain would go away. Until one day I had coffee with a friend who is a chartered accountant. Just when I was thinking that my next meal might have to come from a soup kitchen, he said "You're a long way away from being bankrupt, or even from severe financial hardship."
When I stepped away from my self destructive thoughts after our casual meeting, I could see that by rearranging my finances I could pay all my bills and have a decent life. My fear of becoming poor kept me from doing what I could to improve myself. I had emotionally hog-tied myself and thrown myself into a downward spiral.
That all ended that same day. As Marcus Aurelius said, I used my power to revoke external influences that were ruining my life.
When I consider how far I have come in the past ten years, that very special life lesson that came at a time of great personal crisis in my life may have been one of the best things that has happened to me.
The amazing thing to me is not that life changed for me, because others long before me obviously knew that could happen. The amazing lesson for me was that I had the power to refuse to allow problems I had no control over to affect my life.
Since that time I have developed two different medical syndromes which impact every day and hour of my life. But I know how lucky I am that I don't have to let them bother me. I emphasize the positive in my life and ignore the negative, at least I refuse to give it any power over me. I am the positive part of me; the negative comes along, but no one cares about it, including me.
I enjoy freedom today that I never had before my great crisis (or previous ones) because I refuse to let problems I can't control affect me. And the ones I can control, I fix.
Try it. I give you the gift of freedom, if you choose to accept it.
Bill Allin
, a book that shows adults how making small changes in their own lives can improve them, the lives of their children and everyone else who knows them. It tells you what you need to know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman emperor, stoic philosopher (121 - 180 CE)
As emperor for about two decades of the greatest empire until modern times, Marcus Aurelius knew what it would be like to allow external problems to prey on his mind. Though he was known as one of the five great emperors of Rome, there was always a lineup of powerful men who wanted the job and had the swords and henchmen needed to cause him to lose his life.
Any empire has problems and a great emperor has great problems that prey on his mind day and night. He had the wisdom to separate the operations and vicissitudes of his position from the conducting of his life. Not an easy task, surely.
Considering the number of quotations attributed to him that pass around the internet nearly two millennia after his death, Marcus Aurelius distinguished admirably between himself and his people, his empire and its conquered people and occupied lands, even between himself and life itself.
Thus he knew well that to allow external influences to cause you pain and worry was to adopt the pain and worries of the world. He wouldn't do it. He respected himself too much.
Look back at your own life for a moment. Remember back ten years. What sorts of things troubled you then? Do they still trouble you now? Almost no one can say their problems of old still trouble them, unless one of their problems is lack of self confidence.
A decade ago my life seemed to be hanging by a thread due to financial problems. Sometimes I wished I could just die so that the pain would go away. Until one day I had coffee with a friend who is a chartered accountant. Just when I was thinking that my next meal might have to come from a soup kitchen, he said "You're a long way away from being bankrupt, or even from severe financial hardship."
When I stepped away from my self destructive thoughts after our casual meeting, I could see that by rearranging my finances I could pay all my bills and have a decent life. My fear of becoming poor kept me from doing what I could to improve myself. I had emotionally hog-tied myself and thrown myself into a downward spiral.
That all ended that same day. As Marcus Aurelius said, I used my power to revoke external influences that were ruining my life.
When I consider how far I have come in the past ten years, that very special life lesson that came at a time of great personal crisis in my life may have been one of the best things that has happened to me.
The amazing thing to me is not that life changed for me, because others long before me obviously knew that could happen. The amazing lesson for me was that I had the power to refuse to allow problems I had no control over to affect my life.
Since that time I have developed two different medical syndromes which impact every day and hour of my life. But I know how lucky I am that I don't have to let them bother me. I emphasize the positive in my life and ignore the negative, at least I refuse to give it any power over me. I am the positive part of me; the negative comes along, but no one cares about it, including me.
I enjoy freedom today that I never had before my great crisis (or previous ones) because I refuse to let problems I can't control affect me. And the ones I can control, I fix.
Try it. I give you the gift of freedom, if you choose to accept it.
Bill Allin
, a book that shows adults how making small changes in their own lives can improve them, the lives of their children and everyone else who knows them. It tells you what you need to know.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Fault Finding Hurts And Damages
Some people find fault like there is a reward for it.
- Zig Ziglar
Let's first off make a major distinction between finding fault and offering ways and means for correction and improvement. Finding fault is destructive, while offering constructive criticism should be seen as coming from someone who cares.
Some say that fault finders want to raise themselves up by bringing others down, that they want, in effect, to climb over the broken bodies of those they vanquished. I disagree with that analysis. Fault finders have very low opinions of themselves--perhaps hate themselves sometimes--and want to bring others low so that they feel they are not alone at the bottom of the social heap. They may not seem insecure, but they are. So are bullies, who fit as well into this analysis as fault finders.
Fault finders have something missing in their lives, something critical to their wellbeing. It could be described as a feeling of self worth. But lacking a feeling of self worth or self esteem makes it seem as if these people are responsible for their own problems. They are surely responsible for how they deal with their problems, but not how they found themselves in that position in the first place.
The origins of lacking self esteem or self worth lie in childhood. It's often attributed to a lack of love or a lack of time spent by at least one parent with the child. No child understands time not spent by parents on them. Their whole lives revolve around learning about their world. The foundation of that world is their parents. When parents don't spend enough time with their children, they leave the foundation of the lives of their children unsecured.
There is no such thing as "quality time." That's a euphemism, an excuse, an alibi for parents giving something else greater importance than their children. Kids have no concept of "quality time." To them, there's time spent and time not spent. They keep mental notes. Time not spent hurts.
As to the lack of love, that is quite subjective. Many people, especially those who live hectic lives in modern cities, do not have a clear concept of what love is. They may not have grown up with love in their lives, so they have no idea how to look for it in their mates and little concept of how to give it to their children. They try. In my long career as a sociologist and teacher I have rarely met a parent who has not tried to be a good parent, to the best of their abilities.
If they lack ability in parenting, it's because they were not given parenting information and taught parenting skills before they needed them.
The children may also have lacked touch by parents. Loving touch is only now being discovered to contribute to the wellbeing of children, including to their health. When kids lack touch by people who love them, they feel alienated from their world. They create strange worlds for themselves, worlds that often do not correspond well to the world their parents want them to live in.
When they reach adulthood, they continue to treat others with the same lack of love and touch, especially their own families, because they don't know what others need, never having learned the lessons themselves. They often lack self esteem, which they exhibit by criticizing others. Sometimes it takes the form of bullying.
Critics, of the destructive variety, lack love and touch in their lives, at least a sufficient amount of it to give them balance, peace and a healthy measure of self respect.
Those who offer help in the form of constructive criticism may be misunderstood by those who lack sufficient self esteem and self respect (self love) as being critics. That partly explains why so many well meaning people stop trying to help others, because they have been rejected, rebuffed and even attacked by those they tried to help in the past.
By the time someone misinterprets constructive criticism (help) from others as destructive criticism, they have already reached the point of being firmly in the position of lacking self respect and love themselves.
One common characteristic of people who lack love, who lack the ability to sympathize or empathize with others, who don't know how to achieve self respect, self love or self esteem is that they vehemently deny it. Very few people, other than the most humble, will admit that they don't know how to find love, to show love or to give love. Even love of themselves.
These are hard lessons to learn. Just as a person who was once addicted to something is always a recovering addict, someone who once lacked love, loving touch and self respect will always be in the state of recovering from it, even if they learn the skills.
If people don't learn these thing as children, they tend to live the rest of their lives in a state of recovery, even if they have learned and found what they needed. In other words, even the most secure person who has found these treasures as an adult will "fall off the wagon" once in a while, will succumb to self doubt and insecurity. They, too, will usually deny this. However, having once found what they needed, they usually recover.
The only real solution to this deficit in the lives of so many adults is to teach new parents what they should know to give their children what they need. Since so many of today's adults don't have that knowledge or those skills, the fastest way to get them into the right hands is to actively teach them in classes, such as at night school.
Just as Lamaze classes have become immensely popular because young adults want to know how to get through the birthing process properly, classes in parenting would be extremely popular with young adults because they want to be good parents.
They want to be good parents. They need the opportunity to learn.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for parents and teachers about what they need to learn to give children what they need, when they need it. It's a lifeline, a starter course in book form.
Learn more at http://billalliin.com
- Zig Ziglar
Let's first off make a major distinction between finding fault and offering ways and means for correction and improvement. Finding fault is destructive, while offering constructive criticism should be seen as coming from someone who cares.
Some say that fault finders want to raise themselves up by bringing others down, that they want, in effect, to climb over the broken bodies of those they vanquished. I disagree with that analysis. Fault finders have very low opinions of themselves--perhaps hate themselves sometimes--and want to bring others low so that they feel they are not alone at the bottom of the social heap. They may not seem insecure, but they are. So are bullies, who fit as well into this analysis as fault finders.
Fault finders have something missing in their lives, something critical to their wellbeing. It could be described as a feeling of self worth. But lacking a feeling of self worth or self esteem makes it seem as if these people are responsible for their own problems. They are surely responsible for how they deal with their problems, but not how they found themselves in that position in the first place.
The origins of lacking self esteem or self worth lie in childhood. It's often attributed to a lack of love or a lack of time spent by at least one parent with the child. No child understands time not spent by parents on them. Their whole lives revolve around learning about their world. The foundation of that world is their parents. When parents don't spend enough time with their children, they leave the foundation of the lives of their children unsecured.
There is no such thing as "quality time." That's a euphemism, an excuse, an alibi for parents giving something else greater importance than their children. Kids have no concept of "quality time." To them, there's time spent and time not spent. They keep mental notes. Time not spent hurts.
As to the lack of love, that is quite subjective. Many people, especially those who live hectic lives in modern cities, do not have a clear concept of what love is. They may not have grown up with love in their lives, so they have no idea how to look for it in their mates and little concept of how to give it to their children. They try. In my long career as a sociologist and teacher I have rarely met a parent who has not tried to be a good parent, to the best of their abilities.
If they lack ability in parenting, it's because they were not given parenting information and taught parenting skills before they needed them.
The children may also have lacked touch by parents. Loving touch is only now being discovered to contribute to the wellbeing of children, including to their health. When kids lack touch by people who love them, they feel alienated from their world. They create strange worlds for themselves, worlds that often do not correspond well to the world their parents want them to live in.
When they reach adulthood, they continue to treat others with the same lack of love and touch, especially their own families, because they don't know what others need, never having learned the lessons themselves. They often lack self esteem, which they exhibit by criticizing others. Sometimes it takes the form of bullying.
Critics, of the destructive variety, lack love and touch in their lives, at least a sufficient amount of it to give them balance, peace and a healthy measure of self respect.
Those who offer help in the form of constructive criticism may be misunderstood by those who lack sufficient self esteem and self respect (self love) as being critics. That partly explains why so many well meaning people stop trying to help others, because they have been rejected, rebuffed and even attacked by those they tried to help in the past.
By the time someone misinterprets constructive criticism (help) from others as destructive criticism, they have already reached the point of being firmly in the position of lacking self respect and love themselves.
One common characteristic of people who lack love, who lack the ability to sympathize or empathize with others, who don't know how to achieve self respect, self love or self esteem is that they vehemently deny it. Very few people, other than the most humble, will admit that they don't know how to find love, to show love or to give love. Even love of themselves.
These are hard lessons to learn. Just as a person who was once addicted to something is always a recovering addict, someone who once lacked love, loving touch and self respect will always be in the state of recovering from it, even if they learn the skills.
If people don't learn these thing as children, they tend to live the rest of their lives in a state of recovery, even if they have learned and found what they needed. In other words, even the most secure person who has found these treasures as an adult will "fall off the wagon" once in a while, will succumb to self doubt and insecurity. They, too, will usually deny this. However, having once found what they needed, they usually recover.
The only real solution to this deficit in the lives of so many adults is to teach new parents what they should know to give their children what they need. Since so many of today's adults don't have that knowledge or those skills, the fastest way to get them into the right hands is to actively teach them in classes, such as at night school.
Just as Lamaze classes have become immensely popular because young adults want to know how to get through the birthing process properly, classes in parenting would be extremely popular with young adults because they want to be good parents.
They want to be good parents. They need the opportunity to learn.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for parents and teachers about what they need to learn to give children what they need, when they need it. It's a lifeline, a starter course in book form.
Learn more at http://billalliin.com
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Defeat Can Sometimes Be The Best Outcome
In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.
- Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)
A refusal to be defeated does not necessarily mean a refusal to admit making a mistake or losing a battle. It can mean working hard to point the blame toward someone else rather than to oneself.
Most of us have experienced contacting a customer service representative to explain that something has gone wrong with their product or service, only to be asked (in effect, if not in fact) "What did you do wrong?" Such a company, by its practice of pointing the blame to the victim, has no intention of improving its product or service. On the contrary, it will lose more customers than its advertising will ever bring in.
Only when we admit (at least to ourselves) that we have gone dreadfully wrong, made a bad mistake or clearly picked the wrong choice can we assess when the problem began and learn from it so that the problem will not happen again. No one can correct a problem if they deny the problem exists. Or if they lie to themselves by blaming someone else.
Defeat, in the sense that Halsey means, is an opportunity to learn, to improve, to climb the next rung of the ladder of life. Learning from one's mistakes has a very special name, one that is revered by most companies, most committees, most families. It's called experience.
Experience leads to wisdom, if enough of it is accumulated. Wisdom is a name we give to people who know a great deal, who can teach others how to avoid problems and take a faster, better or more efficient route to get where they want to go.
The wisest people have made the most mistakes. The wiser among them admit it.
Much of life is wasted by people who insist upon refusing to admit that they have made a mistake. They spend a huge amount of time, effort and money gathering evidence to show that they did not make a mistake. Later in their lives they often find themselves in a dead end.
It's a dead end they built for themselves. Many learn to be comfortable there, finding ways to blame others or bad luck on how their lives went. "Life sucks!" Sound familiar?
Defeat is not a bad thing if we use it as a stepping stone to gain experience and wisdom.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to smooth out the rough patches of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)
A refusal to be defeated does not necessarily mean a refusal to admit making a mistake or losing a battle. It can mean working hard to point the blame toward someone else rather than to oneself.
Most of us have experienced contacting a customer service representative to explain that something has gone wrong with their product or service, only to be asked (in effect, if not in fact) "What did you do wrong?" Such a company, by its practice of pointing the blame to the victim, has no intention of improving its product or service. On the contrary, it will lose more customers than its advertising will ever bring in.
Only when we admit (at least to ourselves) that we have gone dreadfully wrong, made a bad mistake or clearly picked the wrong choice can we assess when the problem began and learn from it so that the problem will not happen again. No one can correct a problem if they deny the problem exists. Or if they lie to themselves by blaming someone else.
Defeat, in the sense that Halsey means, is an opportunity to learn, to improve, to climb the next rung of the ladder of life. Learning from one's mistakes has a very special name, one that is revered by most companies, most committees, most families. It's called experience.
Experience leads to wisdom, if enough of it is accumulated. Wisdom is a name we give to people who know a great deal, who can teach others how to avoid problems and take a faster, better or more efficient route to get where they want to go.
The wisest people have made the most mistakes. The wiser among them admit it.
Much of life is wasted by people who insist upon refusing to admit that they have made a mistake. They spend a huge amount of time, effort and money gathering evidence to show that they did not make a mistake. Later in their lives they often find themselves in a dead end.
It's a dead end they built for themselves. Many learn to be comfortable there, finding ways to blame others or bad luck on how their lives went. "Life sucks!" Sound familiar?
Defeat is not a bad thing if we use it as a stepping stone to gain experience and wisdom.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to smooth out the rough patches of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Life IS Overcoming Problems
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
- Theodore Rubin
So, here's the problem (so to speak). Most of us tend to believe that having problems causes us to remain removed from a better life, one without problems. The problem is not our problems, but what we believe is a better life.
A life without problems is either death or the slippery slope on the way to it. Our bodies and our brains are both built to tackle problems, to face down challenges, to overcome difficulties on the road of life. We are built to struggle.
If we do not struggle with problems or some form of challenges, both physical and mental, on a regular basis, our abilities and our faculties atrophy and degrade until there isn't enough left of us to maintain our health.
Those who do not work all parts of their bodies regularly become achy, lame and weak in their old age or before. Those who do not exericse their brain regularly fall into senility. These are proven facts. For most of us, these failures of our physical and mental abilities in middle and old ages are preventable.
Our immune systems need a good workout, especially when we are young, to develop immunities against various diseases. Our immune systems are built t0 withstand many kinds of illness in childhood and early adulthood so that they will be strong as we get older. In other words, we are designed to get sick as children and adolescents. And to recover, building our immune system's defences as we do so.
Our emotional development is likewise designed for hurt as well as for joy. Those who do not experience much in the way of emotional hurt during their lives do not develop an equal scope for joy and happiness when it presents itself. Emotions are like a pendulum, they swing as far one way as the other. If development of emotions is hampered in one direction, it fails to develop much in the other. People who experience great tragedy and hurt also have the ability to experience joy far greater than those who have "sailed through life."
Don't curse your problems. They give you the opportunity to live life to the fullest, to experience happiness and fulfillment. Without them, your life would be relatively dull.
No one says you should enjoy your problems. That would be a psychological problem in itself. But you can face them with some degree of equanimity knowing that they will pass and happiness will be available to you in the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Theodore Rubin
So, here's the problem (so to speak). Most of us tend to believe that having problems causes us to remain removed from a better life, one without problems. The problem is not our problems, but what we believe is a better life.
A life without problems is either death or the slippery slope on the way to it. Our bodies and our brains are both built to tackle problems, to face down challenges, to overcome difficulties on the road of life. We are built to struggle.
If we do not struggle with problems or some form of challenges, both physical and mental, on a regular basis, our abilities and our faculties atrophy and degrade until there isn't enough left of us to maintain our health.
Those who do not work all parts of their bodies regularly become achy, lame and weak in their old age or before. Those who do not exericse their brain regularly fall into senility. These are proven facts. For most of us, these failures of our physical and mental abilities in middle and old ages are preventable.
Our immune systems need a good workout, especially when we are young, to develop immunities against various diseases. Our immune systems are built t0 withstand many kinds of illness in childhood and early adulthood so that they will be strong as we get older. In other words, we are designed to get sick as children and adolescents. And to recover, building our immune system's defences as we do so.
Our emotional development is likewise designed for hurt as well as for joy. Those who do not experience much in the way of emotional hurt during their lives do not develop an equal scope for joy and happiness when it presents itself. Emotions are like a pendulum, they swing as far one way as the other. If development of emotions is hampered in one direction, it fails to develop much in the other. People who experience great tragedy and hurt also have the ability to experience joy far greater than those who have "sailed through life."
Don't curse your problems. They give you the opportunity to live life to the fullest, to experience happiness and fulfillment. Without them, your life would be relatively dull.
No one says you should enjoy your problems. That would be a psychological problem in itself. But you can face them with some degree of equanimity knowing that they will pass and happiness will be available to you in the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 08, 2007
How To Make Big Problems Seem Small
"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Asking About Someone's Welfare Could Change Your Life
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
- Plato
But it doesn't seem like it, does it?
Yesterday I asked a friend how he was. He replied "Can't complain. No one would listen anyway." I responded that I would listen. His retort was "Yeah, but you won't care."
Was he telling me that I didn't care about his problems, that he didn't want to divulge them to me, that he was afraid of seeming vulnerable by telling me his problems, that he didn't want to take the time to explain his problems to me because I couldn't help him? Maybe simply that he was having a bad day?
Fortunately he knew from other occasions that I did care about him and his family. But that is not the point. Did he believe that everyone is fighting his own hard battle of life and that his was no worse than that of me or anyone else?
These questions cannot be answered by anyone but my friend. However, it's important for us to remember that the most obnoxious or irritable or annoying or sad or even happy person we meet is also suffering his own serious problems.
True, some problems are worse than others. But we raise our worst problem in our own mind to the level of a critical problem in many cases. That is, no matter how severe or mild a person's worst problem is, it seems very bad to him. That's important because some people can't cope with problems at the critical level sometimes.
How people conduct their interpersonal relations show how they are managing to cope with their problems of the day.
How a person responds to a question about their welfare can tell us a great deal about their state of mind.
Given the numbers of murders, of suicides, of people on mood altering drugs and of people who can't cope with their problems to the point where they are about to commit a crime, how we interpret their reply to our question could make a great difference to that person's future.
Maybe ours as well.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make you aware of potential problems that others have so that you know when intervention is needed.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Plato
But it doesn't seem like it, does it?
Yesterday I asked a friend how he was. He replied "Can't complain. No one would listen anyway." I responded that I would listen. His retort was "Yeah, but you won't care."
Was he telling me that I didn't care about his problems, that he didn't want to divulge them to me, that he was afraid of seeming vulnerable by telling me his problems, that he didn't want to take the time to explain his problems to me because I couldn't help him? Maybe simply that he was having a bad day?
Fortunately he knew from other occasions that I did care about him and his family. But that is not the point. Did he believe that everyone is fighting his own hard battle of life and that his was no worse than that of me or anyone else?
These questions cannot be answered by anyone but my friend. However, it's important for us to remember that the most obnoxious or irritable or annoying or sad or even happy person we meet is also suffering his own serious problems.
True, some problems are worse than others. But we raise our worst problem in our own mind to the level of a critical problem in many cases. That is, no matter how severe or mild a person's worst problem is, it seems very bad to him. That's important because some people can't cope with problems at the critical level sometimes.
How people conduct their interpersonal relations show how they are managing to cope with their problems of the day.
How a person responds to a question about their welfare can tell us a great deal about their state of mind.
Given the numbers of murders, of suicides, of people on mood altering drugs and of people who can't cope with their problems to the point where they are about to commit a crime, how we interpret their reply to our question could make a great difference to that person's future.
Maybe ours as well.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make you aware of potential problems that others have so that you know when intervention is needed.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Tomorrow Can Be A New Life
"Tomorrow is another day."
- King Valdemar of Denmark, 1340-1375. Valdemar has the nickname "'Nother-Day" (Atterdag) in Danish due to this famous and healthy attitude. Valdemar reestablished a kingdom that had been ripped to pieces under his predecessors.
Sometimes setting all the problems, grudges, disagreements and confusion aside is not just the best solution, but the only practical one.
Many people have said that taking a night to "sleep on a problem" has led to its solution. Often by the following day the solution seemed "so easy, so simple."
Our lives are neither easy nor simple. No matter what may be on our minds, many other matters impinge on us, needing to be attended to. These almost always add clutter to a brain that is trying to focus on one problem at a time.
The key to waking up with a solution seems to be to go to sleep thinking about its associated problem. At some point during the night, the brain selects out that problem and focuses on it. Not in a dream, but during a different period of sleep, usually after the REM and deep sleep that refreshes the brain. So it's a fresh brain that tackles one problem.
Many of us have a habit of making immediate problems seem important, giving them undue status. If they involve other people, those people sometimes do things that we didn't expect on following days, making the route through the mess to a solution much easier.
Tomorrow is also another day in a different sense, a more philosophical one. What happened yesterday to us is no different (in effect) than what happened 500 years ago in history. Events are cast in stone in terms of their times being past, but each is available for interpretation and remodeling as we see fit. Memory can be conveniently inaccurate.
Each morning brings not just a new day, but a new life. What we do with that life does not necessarily have to depend entirely on the life we remember from yesterday. We can forgive someone today, for example, where we might not have been willing to forgive yesteday.
We can look forward to each new life/day with anticipation because we can't be certain that it will turn out exactly as we had expected. Sometimes life simply looks different the next day.
Here's to a good day for your tomorrow.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you a better day tomorrow.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- King Valdemar of Denmark, 1340-1375. Valdemar has the nickname "'Nother-Day" (Atterdag) in Danish due to this famous and healthy attitude. Valdemar reestablished a kingdom that had been ripped to pieces under his predecessors.
Sometimes setting all the problems, grudges, disagreements and confusion aside is not just the best solution, but the only practical one.
Many people have said that taking a night to "sleep on a problem" has led to its solution. Often by the following day the solution seemed "so easy, so simple."
Our lives are neither easy nor simple. No matter what may be on our minds, many other matters impinge on us, needing to be attended to. These almost always add clutter to a brain that is trying to focus on one problem at a time.
The key to waking up with a solution seems to be to go to sleep thinking about its associated problem. At some point during the night, the brain selects out that problem and focuses on it. Not in a dream, but during a different period of sleep, usually after the REM and deep sleep that refreshes the brain. So it's a fresh brain that tackles one problem.
Many of us have a habit of making immediate problems seem important, giving them undue status. If they involve other people, those people sometimes do things that we didn't expect on following days, making the route through the mess to a solution much easier.
Tomorrow is also another day in a different sense, a more philosophical one. What happened yesterday to us is no different (in effect) than what happened 500 years ago in history. Events are cast in stone in terms of their times being past, but each is available for interpretation and remodeling as we see fit. Memory can be conveniently inaccurate.
Each morning brings not just a new day, but a new life. What we do with that life does not necessarily have to depend entirely on the life we remember from yesterday. We can forgive someone today, for example, where we might not have been willing to forgive yesteday.
We can look forward to each new life/day with anticipation because we can't be certain that it will turn out exactly as we had expected. Sometimes life simply looks different the next day.
Here's to a good day for your tomorrow.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you a better day tomorrow.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, January 15, 2007
Community Problems: Where Society Goes Wrong
"Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most [people's] minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide."
- Barbara Deming
This is such a difficult topic for me to discuss because I have mixed feelings about it.
Most of the problems that become the causes for possible vengeance were preventable in the first place. Not all, as we are fallible beings.
If children are taught from a very young age the tools they need to survive and thrive in their culture as adults, the kindesses and courtesies that should be accorded to others, the compassion that yields great benefits in terms of friendships rather than enmity and the emotional and social skills that will see them fit into a mutually beneficial community and nation, they will have no need to resort to the kinds of behaviours that cause others to want vengeance.
There is no need to resort to vengeance if the behaviours that precipitate it do not occur.
However, they do occur in our world. Rather than seeing them as signals or calls for help, as indicators that the "perpetrator" has needs that have not been filled and he or she cannot keep their life balance without some form of correction and addressing of needs on the part of those closest to that person, we choose instead to punish.
Punishing is so much easier and faster (if vastly less efficient in the long run) than tending to needs that should never have been ignored in the first place. Instead we let the fresh milk go sour, then blame the milk for being at fault.
Do people actually think of punishing a perpetrator as a form of victory? Absolutely, yes! Even a school principal who punishes a child for misdemeanors believes that he has done the right thing in defending his community against the ravages of evildoers (or those who will eventually become evildoers unless they are stopped young).
Parents do n0t usually consider themselves as heroes for disciplining their children following a mistake or commission of unapproved behaviour. They believe that "this hurts me more than it hurts you." Sometimes it does, in an emotional sense, because the parent knows intuitively that something has gone wrong but has no idea how to correct it.
The fact that I had to write that a parent "has no idea how to correct" the behaviour of his or her child is itself a condemnation of a society that does not teach parenting skills that it knows are required.
If we have the knowledge and skills to correct those who have "gone bad" through psychology, therapy or reprogramming, we have the knowledge and skills (the same ones) that should be taught to every young adult before they have children.
Every person who fails at life as an adult reflects back to a failed upbringing by parents. However, it's not the parents who are at fault because they didn't know what to do. Almost every new parent enters that awesome project of parenting as an amateur who knows too little about what a parent should know.
Some failing parents will blame the school and teacher for their problem children, some blame the community or peer friends, some blame television, some blame the other parent. No one wants to blame themselves because it would serve no purpose. They know they did the best they knew how.
No one puts the blame where it belongs, with a society that doesn't teach young adults what they need to know about growing and developing children.
If we want to think in terms of punishing anyone, we should punish politicians who will not authorize school boards to teach new parents and authorize teachers to teach what kids need to learn besides what is on the intellectual-stream curriculum.
Politicians are the only segment of society that reacts positively to punishment. They know what to do (at least some do) but do not make it happen. They do wrong by doing nothing.
Punish that and we will see how quickly education will change from job training to life preparation.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put the right information into the right hands, then encourage those hands to get to work with it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Barbara Deming
This is such a difficult topic for me to discuss because I have mixed feelings about it.
Most of the problems that become the causes for possible vengeance were preventable in the first place. Not all, as we are fallible beings.
If children are taught from a very young age the tools they need to survive and thrive in their culture as adults, the kindesses and courtesies that should be accorded to others, the compassion that yields great benefits in terms of friendships rather than enmity and the emotional and social skills that will see them fit into a mutually beneficial community and nation, they will have no need to resort to the kinds of behaviours that cause others to want vengeance.
There is no need to resort to vengeance if the behaviours that precipitate it do not occur.
However, they do occur in our world. Rather than seeing them as signals or calls for help, as indicators that the "perpetrator" has needs that have not been filled and he or she cannot keep their life balance without some form of correction and addressing of needs on the part of those closest to that person, we choose instead to punish.
Punishing is so much easier and faster (if vastly less efficient in the long run) than tending to needs that should never have been ignored in the first place. Instead we let the fresh milk go sour, then blame the milk for being at fault.
Do people actually think of punishing a perpetrator as a form of victory? Absolutely, yes! Even a school principal who punishes a child for misdemeanors believes that he has done the right thing in defending his community against the ravages of evildoers (or those who will eventually become evildoers unless they are stopped young).
Parents do n0t usually consider themselves as heroes for disciplining their children following a mistake or commission of unapproved behaviour. They believe that "this hurts me more than it hurts you." Sometimes it does, in an emotional sense, because the parent knows intuitively that something has gone wrong but has no idea how to correct it.
The fact that I had to write that a parent "has no idea how to correct" the behaviour of his or her child is itself a condemnation of a society that does not teach parenting skills that it knows are required.
If we have the knowledge and skills to correct those who have "gone bad" through psychology, therapy or reprogramming, we have the knowledge and skills (the same ones) that should be taught to every young adult before they have children.
Every person who fails at life as an adult reflects back to a failed upbringing by parents. However, it's not the parents who are at fault because they didn't know what to do. Almost every new parent enters that awesome project of parenting as an amateur who knows too little about what a parent should know.
Some failing parents will blame the school and teacher for their problem children, some blame the community or peer friends, some blame television, some blame the other parent. No one wants to blame themselves because it would serve no purpose. They know they did the best they knew how.
No one puts the blame where it belongs, with a society that doesn't teach young adults what they need to know about growing and developing children.
If we want to think in terms of punishing anyone, we should punish politicians who will not authorize school boards to teach new parents and authorize teachers to teach what kids need to learn besides what is on the intellectual-stream curriculum.
Politicians are the only segment of society that reacts positively to punishment. They know what to do (at least some do) but do not make it happen. They do wrong by doing nothing.
Punish that and we will see how quickly education will change from job training to life preparation.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put the right information into the right hands, then encourage those hands to get to work with it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, January 12, 2007
One Solution for Our Biggest Problem
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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