Wood, Willpower, and Warmth

I'm listening to a fantastic book, "the willpower instinct" by Kelly McGonigal. She's a Stanford university professor and collects a lot of useful research about willpower, much of which I hadn't encountered elsewhere, and packages it in an easy to read and implement way. Highly recommended if you are interested in having more willpower. (And who wouldn't like that?)

The weather really feels like fall now, though it's still getting warm by the afternoon.

There is SO MUCH to do. The surfaces of the house are getting covered in more and more clutter, a visual representation of not having the time to do basic maintenance activities. Normal grad school, I suppose.

I'm convinced that just 'doing it faster' is not the solution to having too much to do. I think more likely it is a mixture of doing less stuff, prioritizing important stuff, and doing stuff with more focus. Maybe also time-limiting stuff to make sure I'm doing it efficiently. However, the maintained focus and awareness need for changing how I do things is also another energy (and somewhat time) input, so it's the catch 22 of needing to put in MORE time and energy to fix the problem of not having enough time and energy.

The cats are getting cuddly again, muddying the waters of if they really love us or just find us convenient sources of warmth.

It's wood gathering season. Suzannah has her eyes on some fallen tree wood for our wood burning fireplace, and may enlist me to help cut it up with the promise of getting to use a chainsaw.

OK, time to get back to work. Hope you are all well and sending my love.

-Isaac

Groundhogs, pink tips, and internships

Back home, hitting the ground running fast. First SSE class (teaching children good values) starts this weekend, Master's classes in full swing with the uncompletable amounts of readings, and a need to start reaching out to counseling centers ASAP to find a good internship location and supervisor. Weekly review, house upkeep tasks, etc. I'd forgotten the feeling of having so much more to do than could possibly be completed. Summer was just having a lot more that I wanted to do than I could ever complete. I wonder how much of a difference that really is?

Anyhoo, it's busy. Also we have a groundhog in our backyard, digging up the ground under our shed. The weather is nice and cool. I had a dream with one of our cats in it. The hydrangeas are starting to go pink at the tops of the flower balls. I'm just spouting off random things because I want to finish this quickly and still give you some idea of what my life is like. The weekend trip was also super busy, but really rewarding. Great to get to see fellow SSE teachers and students current, past, and future. Lots of really great and good people.

OK! The end for now. Good night, and good luck out there!

-Isaac

Fantasy, Florida, Four AM

 School has started, I'm prepping for an event I'm helping to run over the weekend, for which I'm flying out to Orlando Florida on Saturday. At 7 am. Which either means getting up at 4 am, or driving up the night before and getting a hotel and getting up at 5:30 am. I'm not sure it's worth the hotel and extra hassle just to save an hour and a half of sleep, so I'm thinking it will just be an early morning.

There are a lot of moving parts, but I'm getting them done. But then there are classes, which have just started up again. Getting into the swing of that. And more importantly, internship placement. It is very much time to start asking around and find where I'm going to be spending a year doing my internship. I'd like it to be a good fit, so that's an important task.

The weather is great right now, it's really starting to feel like fall. hot during the afternoon and cool at night. I also finally got my tooth fixed so I don't need to floss after every meal because of stuck food. And got my vision checked so I can get new prescription lenses for my sunglasses. And a haircut. A very busy week. We are full on back into the swing of things.

And I'm enjoying listening to good fantasy books while I do chores. Right now it's The Wheel of Time series.

OK, that's my quick update, back to work (though at this point in the evening, more like time to get ready for bed.)

Hope you all are well,

Isaac

Sick Day

I'm sick! And tired. Stayed in bed resting most of the day to try and get it done with before my trip. which is in two days. Sore throat and fatigue. Bit of a runny nose, that's it. Probably a mix of the previous airport travel, being exposed to everyone else, and then some late nights, maybe some sugar.

In any case, trying to get rested and get packed and take care of loose ends, before I've got to get on the road again. Not a great way to go into a vacation, but ah well. I should probably wear a mask everywhere as a courtesy to everyone else.

Dew licking, Hydrangea sniffing, Internship searching

 Just a Quicky:

I've got a squirrel at my sit spot that likes to lick the morning dew off one specific pot. It's very cute, and I just saw him doing it for the second time today.

Also, the Hydrangeas are blooming now and it's so pretty, they are so full, it's almost like poofy clouds. I imagine a bed made out of them, soft and fluffy and smelling of flowers.

I'm leaving so soon for my next trip, after just getting back from my last one. Plus all the stuff I've got to work on, preparing for school starting up again, for the event I'm helping to run on labor day weekend (another trip after this upcoming one), and searching for an internship site.

That's all for today. I'll be seeing some of you soon in Delaware (I think it's Delaware?)

- I Out

Probably Some Zen Monk

Thematically related to previous post: I had a conversation with myself, where I was talking about how frustrating it was that another person wasn't doing something. Then I realized I wasn't doing that thing. So I started doing that. And let go of trying to control the other person. Now I'm happier and in a better place to support that other person. There's a quote about that, probably from a Zen monk or something. It sounds Zen. It's, "Attend your own lectures."

It's very often true. If you find yourself giving advice in your head to someone, double check if that advice isn't better delivered to yourself. Usually it is. Even if it would be useful for someone else, you have no control over what they do with it, but you have supreme control over what YOU do with it.

Also useful for keeping oneself humble. If it's such good advice, or so simple to follow, you do it first.

If someone else is stressed out, and it's stressing you out, and you want them to stop being stressed out so you feel better, you should probably figure out how to deal with our own stuff first. Once you actually have, the other person being stressed out is a moot point, and again, you're in a better position to be of actual help to them.

Leading a Sad Horse to Happy Water

 Moar poasts!

I'm sad. I'm sad because Suzannah is sad. It's interesting how one's happiness an be tied up in another. And then you want to control the other person and make them be happy. But it doesn't work like that. You can't "do" happiness for someone else, it's an internal phenomenon, and trying to force it on someone else is not only ineffective, but generally counter productive, because telling someone you don't like them being unhappy can make them more unhappy. Generally, hard feelings need to be acknowledged, accepted, heard, received, to then release on their own.

And though there are definite actions one can take, to improve one's well being, trying to make someone else take those actions is also often counter productive. Psychological reactance dictates that when you try and force someone to do something, even if they kind of wanted to do it to start with, they will then switch to not wanting to do it, as a reaction to that attempt to coerce, force, control.

This is one of the reasons I'm so interested in Motivational Interviewing, it's about how to talk to people about change, without making it harder for them to change. To in fact make it easier.

There's this concept they call "the righting reflex" where we try and tell people what they should do, or get them to do what we think they should do, that MI specifically says it's best to avoid. It's got a name because it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction most of us have, to other people struggling. Maybe that's what I'm dealing with.

But I know I dislike it when I'm on the receiving end of that righting reflex, so I want to do things a better way. Still figuring out what that looks like though.

I'll leave this post there, as there are plenty more to write to catch up on my backlog.

Oh, I suppose I should take the other side for a bit though, and say sometimes advice is great and useful. But usually best to ask if it's wanted, before giving it. And good to remember there's often a better approach.