by Jamesscotthenson | Aug 21, 2017 | Blog
We All Need Maps
People often ask me how I managed to make a change in my
life. This isn’t something I thought much about over the years. It just seemed
like something that happened. A change like this is frustrating for people who
are seeking it themselves because it doesn’t offer a plan. It would have been
frustrating for me when I needed to change. Being lost in the woods makes a map
seem most valuable.
So, because people started asking, I started thinking about
what it was that allowed me to change. I came up with a few different things.
The first thing that had to change was my narrative about
myself. It was thinking about this that got me started on narratives last week.
Hidden Narratives
I had a clear narrative about myself, that of being someone
who didn’t care, who just wanted to get drunk and high and all that nonsense. I
tried hard to seem like this was my real narrative even to myself, because I
thought it was cooler than my real narrative about myself. I wasn’t cut out for
it though. I cared about people and had a tremendous amount of anxiety and was
depressed a lot.
The real narrative I had about myself involved being a
loser, of not living up to my potential, of being worthless and unlikable. This
belief was the background music of my life. I didn’t even realize it was there,
but it set the mood and the tone for everything that happened.
Narratives About Ourselves
Changing this narrative was the most necessary part of
changing my life. A loser doesn’t win, someone who doesn’t live up to their
potential never does what they are capable of doing. An unlikable person
doesn’t get married and get along with co-workers and bosses. If the definition
is wrong, you have no chance of using the word correctly. Skewed blueprints
will never build a solid house.
Our narratives are our core beliefs. They tell us everything
about everything. If they are flawed, everything that emerges from them will be
as well.
What is your narrative about yourself, the story you tell
you about you?
Is it helpful? Is it oppressive? Is it accurate?
What could you do to change the narrative?
What kind of story would you like to be living in?
by Jamesscotthenson | Aug 20, 2017 | Blog
Welcome to the Sunday Pop-Up where I write about whatever
pops into my head. It’s hit or miss.
I’ve Already Won
I got to drive to Muleshoe to see Barbara wrestle last
night. Max has not been feeling well so we ended up having to drive right back.
I enjoy being out on the road though, and I love driving in West Texas. There
was a huge storm rolling in as we drove back into town. I’ve never been
anywhere that has storms like we have out here.
I look at my life and it’s pretty cool. I’m wearing a shirt
with my wife on it right now because she does cool stuff. I love my kids and my
work and the amount of freedom and autonomy I have in life. I’m a guy who
dropped out of high school, got booted out of college a few times, and made so,
so many mistakes along the way that there is no way I have any business with a
life and a wife and family like I’ve got. I don’t have much concern about
my projects failing or not moving forward a lot more if I don’t. All things
considered, I’ve already won.
Future Plans
Keeping the blog a daily thing was the clear winner in the
vote for what to do when the year is up. I think I will try to do this by
mixing new content with older posts that I am updating for better SEO. I have
quite a few things I want to get off the ground, but I am finding that time is
an issue. I don’t waste a lot of time, but I still need to figure out a way to
do a few more things. I want to move off of the Embracing Fate URL, I just need
to figure out a good way to do it. I do wish I had learned more about computers
earlier in life.
The End of the World
I have not figured out what the big deal about the eclipse
is but can admit it brings up this weird dread in me. I think that a little too
much time in apocalypse/rapture oriented parts of society has made these things
ominous in my mind. I do vaguely remember watching one through the curtains at
a motel with my mom but have discovered that many of our memories can be
completely misleading. I will have to ask her about it.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read. I hope
your week starts off and stays great.
by Jamesscotthenson | Aug 19, 2017 | Blog
Beliefs About People
What is your default belief about people?
Are they inherently good or bad?
Are they helpful or out to get you?
Do they have good intentions or harmful ones?
These are kinds of questions that point to our hidden
narrative about other humans, and this informs much of how we treat other
people, and ourselves (we are a person, after all). We develop our narrative
about people from being around people.
It’s simple, except that it’s not.
Limited Samples
Much of our narrative is handed to us by the religion or
ideology we are raised with, with the set of ideas that explains how the world
got here and why people are the way they are. Much of our narrative is
distorted by the people most immediate to us, and this is hardly a
representative sample. Much of our narrative about other people is determined
by how we see ourselves, and this is also rarely accurate.
We are also blinded from truly understanding other people’s
motives and reasons for doing what they do. We only see the results, and we
often interpret these through the lens of our own wants and needs and
expectations and beliefs. These all distort our assessment of why they do what
they do.
The Ledger
Putting check marks on the “People are Ok” side of the
ledger is important. It can help shift our perspective on others and allows the
world to be a friendlier place.
Think of how many people you pass by on a given day. This
can be at the mall, at school, at work, on the roads, everywhere. So many
people, a vast majority of whom are strangers.
How many times have you been assaulted, beaten or robbed?
How many times have you been insulted, or verbally attacked?
How many times have you been scammed or ripped off?
Even if these numbers are high, how do they compare to the
number of times these things have not happened to you? Numerically speaking,
have you found most that most people behave terribly to everyone, or do they
mind their business and move on?
How many times have you seen strangers help each other, or
exchange a kind word for no reasons other than they are in the same space? How
many times have you done something kind for someone for no reason?
The idea that people are inherently bad or evil doesn’t hold
water when we test it against the larger population and our experience of
living in a complex society where we are often surrounded by strangers. We
wouldn’t have made it this long as a species if it were true, and things like
driving and shopping and having schools for our kids would be impossible.
What is your narrative about people?
Does it hold up to investigation?
by Jamesscotthenson | Aug 18, 2017 | Blog
Beliefs About the World
What are your deepest held beliefs about the world?
Is it a good place?
A bad place?
Do things generally go well or poorly?
Why is this?
Your answers to these questions point to what your narrative
about the world is. We develop these narratives in all sorts of ways. How we
are treated when we are young, how people treat us in general, the religion or
ideology we have placed on us as children, the general culture we live in, our
thoughts, and things like mental illness.
We do have some say in all of this though. We can test our
assumptions and assertions against reality and make note of what sticks and
what does not.
Our Ledger
When we are operating under the narrative that the world
sucks, we are constantly placing check marks on the “World Sucks” side of the
ledger without even realizing it.
My car has a flat. Of course it does.
My friend canceled our plans. Of course they did.
My house is a mess. Of course it is.
I hate my job. Of course I do.
Each of these statements carries its own opposite though,
and cataloging this can help change our default side of the ledger.
I have a car.
I have friends.
I have a house.
I am able to work and have a job.
What Goes Right?
There is another simple way to do this. If the mind has an
automatic tendency toward noticing what is wrong, we can intentionally notice
what went right. More things go right in the first 30 seconds of the day for
most of than go wrong in the entire rest of the day.
This starts just by opening our eyes. We have another day to
live. We have eyes to open. For most of us, we are opening them in a structure
that protects us from the elements and creatures. For most of us, our body is
able to move, to get us out of bed and, no matter how groggily, to move us
around to start our day.
This continues throughout the day if we pay attention.
It’s all about which side of the ledger we are focused on.
by Jamesscotthenson | Aug 17, 2017 | Blog
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they
happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says,
“Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and
then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,
“What the hell is water?”
From David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon
College
Narratives Matter
The idea that there is division in our country is a given.
It has always been this way. It is this way in every country. That is it
currently peaking and manifesting in some very troubling ways also seems like a
given. If we look at what everyone is fighting for, we see that it isn’t over
land or rights or equal access to something as it has been in the past, it’s
over who gets to control the narrative.
This might seem like a silly or small thing to fight over,
but it’s been the fight for a long, long time, and it has always mattered
greatly. Caesar very actively sought to the control narrative in everything he
did and was able to do masterfully. Gandhi shifted the narrative in a way that
brought his country freedom while allowing the British to depart with their
heads up. Hitler got people to believe he could change the narrative for his
country, as did Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I am not implying there is a
connection or similarity between any of these people apart from their deep
understanding of the importance of narrative.
Personal Narratives
We have narratives in our lives as well, things we believe
about life and about ourselves. These are deep-seated beliefs that guide what
we think, how we behave and how we treat ourselves and others. Narratives are
the essence of hiding-in-plain-sight and missing the forest for the trees. They
are so ingrained in us that we don’t even think they are there at all.
They are water to a fish.
This is all well and good if the water is pure and clean,
but becomes a serious problem when it is dirty and polluted. Most of our water
is dirty because we are humans who were raised by other human and who live with
other humans and who believe what other humans have told us about how life and
the universe works and about ourselves. Humans are messy. This doesn’t make for
clean water.
We’ll look at narratives over the next few days. In the
meantime, ask yourself what kind of water you’re swimming in. Just like a fish,
you can probably tell by how you are feeling. You can tell by how you feel
about yourself and others. You can tell by how you perceive the world and the
people in it. It might be hard to see because it is masquerading as the Truth
or common sense or how-things-are.
Narratives always do.
That’s why they are so important.
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