The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

SNICKERED

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Y         U         M        S
A simple SNICKERS Candy Bar
in the supermarket
is worth about $0.50 on sale.          .          .
The same bottle in a bar costs $1 in a vending machine
In an airport gift shop  or hotel it can be worth up to $3 or maybe even more.          .          .
The SNICKERS bar is the same, the only thing that changes is the
P       L       A       C      E  
Each place gives a different value to the same product.
When you feel like you are worth nothing
and everyone around you belittles you,
CHANGE  PLACES
DO  NOT
stay there.          .          .
Have the courage to change places
and go to a place
where you are given
the value you deserve.           .          .
Surround yourself
with people who really appreciate
YOUR WORTH.            .            .
Don’t settle for less!
and ABRACADABRA
You will find
YOUR MORE
will add to Some One Else’s
L    E    S    S.          .          .
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.          .           .
SNICKER
SNICKER

EMPATHY IT UP

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DOES IT REALLY MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE.          .          .          ?
The problem with being
A CARING CATALYST
isn’t getting an educational degree
on how it’s done as simply as
JUST CHOOSING TO BE
ONE.          .          .

Empathy Is The Most Important

Leadership Skill According To Research

Tracy Brower

Tracy Brower

Contributor

Careers
She writes about happiness, work-life fulfillment and the future of work.

Empathy has always been a critical skill for leaders, but it is taking on a new level of meaning and priority. Far from a soft approach it can drive significant business results.

You always knew demonstrating empathy is positive for people, but new research demonstrates its importance for everything from innovation to retention. Great leadership requires a fine mix of all kinds of skills to create the conditions for engagement, happiness and performance, and empathy tops the list of what leaders must get right.

The Effects of Stress

The reason empathy is so necessary is that people are experiencing multiple kinds of stress, and data suggests it is affected by the pandemic—and the ways our lives and our work have been turned upside down.

 

  • Mental Health. A global study by Qualtrics found 42% of people have experienced a decline in mental health. Specifically, 67% of people are experiencing increases in stress while 57% have increased anxiety, and 54% are emotionally exhausted. 53% of people are sad, 50% are irritable, 28% are having trouble concentrating, 20% are taking longer to finish tasks, 15% are having trouble thinking and 12% are challenged to juggle their responsibilities.
  • Personal Lives. A study in Occupational Health Sciencefound our sleep is compromised when we feel stressed at work. Research at the University of Illinois found when employees receive rude emails at work, they tend to experience negativity and spillover into their personal lives and particularly with their partners. In addition, a study at Carleton University found when people experience incivility at work, they tend to feel less capable in their parenting.
  • Performance, Turnover and Customer Experience. A study published in the Academy of Management Journal found when people are on the receiving end of rudeness at work, their performance suffers and they are less likely to help others. And a new study at Georgetown University found workplace incivility is rising and the effects are extensive, including reduced performance and collaboration, deteriorating customer experiences and increased turnover.

Empathy Contributes to Positive Outcomes

But as we go through tough times, struggle with burnout or find it challenging to find happiness at work, empathy can be a powerful antidote and contribute to positive experiences for individuals and teams. A new study of 889 employees by Catalyst found empathy has some significant constructive effects:

 

  • Innovation. When people reported their leaders were empathetic, they were more likely to report they were able to be innovative—61% of employees compared to only 13% of employees with less empathetic leaders.
  • Engagement. 76% of people who experienced empathy from their leaders reported they were engaged compared with only 32% who experienced less empathy.
  • Retention. 57% of white women and 62% of women of color said they were unlikely to think of leaving their companies when they felt their life circumstances were respected and valued by their companies. However, when they didn’t feel that level of value or respect for their life circumstances, only 14% and 30% of white women and women of color respectively said they were unlikely to consider leaving.
  • Inclusivity. 50% of people with empathetic leaders reported their workplace was inclusive, compared with only 17% of those with less empathetic leadership.
  • Work-Life. When people felt their leaders were more empathetic, 86% reported they are able to navigate the demands of their work and life—successfully juggling their personal, family and work obligations. This is compared with 60% of those who perceived less empathy.

Cooperation is also a factor. According to a study published in Evolutionary Biology, when empathy was introduced into decision making, it increased cooperation and even caused people to be more empathetic. Empathy fostered more empathy.

Mental health. The study by Qualtrics found when leaders were perceived as more empathetic, people reported greater levels of mental health.

Wired for Empathy

In addition, empathy seems to be inborn. In a study by Lund University, children as young as two demonstrated an appreciation that others hold different perspectives than their own. And research at the University of Virginia found when people saw their friends experiencing threats, they experienced activity in the same part of their brain which was affected when they were personally threatened. People felt for their friends and teammates as deeply as they felt for themselves. All of this makes empathy an important part of our human condition—at work and in our personal lives.

Leading with Empathy

Leaders can demonstrate empathy in two ways. First, they can consider someone else’s thoughts through cognitive empathy (“If I were in his/her position, what would I be thinking right now?”). Leaders can also focus on a person’s feelings using emotional empathy (“Being in his/her position would make me feel ___”). But leaders will be most successful not just when they personally consider others, but when they express their concerns and inquire about challenges directly, and then listen to employees’ responses.

Leaders don’t have to be experts in mental health in order to demonstrate they care and are paying attention. It’s enough to check in, ask questions and take cues from the employee about how much they want to share. Leaders can also be educated about the company’s supports for mental health so they can provide information about resources to additional help.

Great leadership also requires action. One leader likes to say, “You’re behaving so loudly, I can hardly hear what you’re saying.” People will trust leaders and feel a greater sense of engagement and commitment when there is alignment between what the leader says and does. All that understanding of someone else’s situation should turn into compassion and action. Empathy in action is understanding an employee’s struggles and offering to help. It is appreciating a person’s point of view and engaging in a healthy debate that builds to a better solution. It is considering a team member’s perspectives and making a new recommendation that helps achieve greater success. As the popular saying goes, people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel.

In  Sum

Empathy contributes to positive relationships and organizational cultures and it also drives results. Empathy may not be a brand new skill, but it has a new level of importance and the fresh research makes it especially clear how empathy is the leadership competency to develop and demonstrate now and in the future of work.

Q U E S T I O N:

How is it
W  H  Y
is that we
KNOW
KNOW THAT WE KNOW
BET OUR LIVES THAT WE KNOW
BUT FOR THE LIFE OF US
NEVER ACT LIKE WE KNOW
That EMPATHY
MAKES A DIFFERENCE.          .          .

IT REALLY IS THIS SIMPLE

CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR

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Is he asking for Change,
or is he asking for
CHANGE.          .          .          ?

I love how this film by Sharon Write follows a man as he affects multiple peoples’ lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn’t take much to be the change in someone’s life. I’ve shown this film in Bible Study groups as well as blogging on it here several years ago for THE CARING CATALYST.  Much credit once again as it was Written and directed by Sharon Wright www.imdb.me/sharonwright www.shesalwayswright.com

IT
 brings up a really important question:

IS  WHAT  JINGLES  IN  YOUR  POCKET
THE  CHANGE  YOU  SEEK.          .          .          ?

POOH’D ON

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It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There.

No more; no less.

(A.A. Milne, E.H. Shepard)

This is National Suicide Prevention Month and it could be the most important piece of information I have ever posted in the past 7 years of THE CARING CATALYST:


If you are in crisis, call the toll-free National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The service is available to anyone. All calls are confidential. http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org 

SUICIDE
Should never a month of it’s own
especially since every year there are more people who die
from suicide

General Statistics (USA)

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US for all ages. (CDC)

Every day, approximately 130 Americans die by suicide. (CDC)

There is one death by suicide in the US every 11 minutes. (CDC)

Depression affects 20-25% of Americans ages 18+ in a given year. (CDC)

Suicide takes the lives of over 48,500 Americans every year. (CDC)

The highest suicide rates in the US are among Whites, American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Only half of all Americans experiencing an episode of major depression receive treatment. (NAMI)

80% -90% of people that seek treatment for depression are treated successfully using therapy and/or medication. (TADS study)

An estimated 285,000 each year become suicide survivors (AAS).

There is one suicide for every estimated 25 suicide attempts. (CDC)

There is one suicide for every estimated 4 suicide attempts in the elderly. (CDC)

 

Global Statistics

For more information on suicide stats by region and country visit the World Health Statistics Data Visualizations Dashboard.

Nearly 800,000 people die by suicide in the world each year, which is roughly one death every 40 seconds.

Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death in the world for those aged 15-24 years.

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

Gender Disparities

Suicide among males is 4x’s higher than among females. Male deaths represent 79% of all US suicides. (CDC)

Rates 1999 -2017  (CDC/nchs)

Firearms are the most commonly used method of suicide among males (51%). (CDC)

Females are more likely than males to have had suicidal thoughts. (CDC)

 

Females experience depression at roughly 2x’s the rate of men.(SMH)

Females attempt suicide 3x’s as often as males. (CDC)

Poisoning is the most common method of suicide for females. (CDC)

 

Age Disparities

1 in 100,000 children ages 10 to 14 die by suicide each year. (NIMH)

7 in 100,000 youth ages 15 to 19 die by suicide each year. (NIMH)

12.7 in 100,000 young adults ages 20-24 die by suicide each year. (NIMH)

The prevalence of suicidal thoughts, suicidal planning and suicide attempts is significantly higher among adults aged 18-29 than among adults aged 30+. (CDC)

Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year old Americans. (CDC)

Suicide is the 4th leading cause of death for adults ages 18-65. (CDC)

The highest increase in suicide is in males 50+ (30 per 100,000). (CDC)

Suicide rates for females are highest among those aged 45-54 (9 per 100,000). (CDC)

Suicide rates for males are highest among those aged 75+ (36 per 100,000). (CDC)

Suicide rates among the elderly are highest for those who are divorced or widowed. (SMH)

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual kids are 3x more likely than straight kids to attempt suicide at some point in their lives.

Medically serious attempts at suicide are 4x more likely among LGBTQ youth than other young people.

African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian Americanpeople who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual attempt suicide at especially high rates.

41% of trans adults said they had attempted suicide, in one study. The same study found that 61% of trans people who were victims of physical assault had attempted suicide.

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people who come from families that reject or do not accept them are over 8x more likely to attempt suicide than those whose families accept them.

Each time an LGBTQ person is a victim of physical or verbal harassment or abuse, they become 2.5x more likely to hurt themselves.

It’s time to
POOH ON
and simply remember:

If you are in crisis, call the toll-free National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The service is available to anyone. All calls are confidential. http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org 

#mentalhealth #Friends #Friendship

WITH A LITTLE HELP

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What would you think if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends

What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you’re on your own?)
No I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need anybody?)
I need somebody to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love

(Would you believe in a love at first sight?)
Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time
(What do you see when you turn out the light?)
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Oh I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need anybody?)
I just need someone to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Oh I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends

This song by the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon is a classic and on several of my personal playlists, not just because I love the tune, not just because I love the lyrics or even the message, so much as the truth that I’m better for having OTHERS in my life.          .          .
uhhhhhhhh, WE ALL DO

To get through life, we all need to ask for

help — here’s how NOT to do it

istock

Social psychologist Heidi Grant shares 4 common ways that we inadvertently make things weird for other people when we request their assistance. Read this before your next ask.

Asking for help isn’t just about what you say and do; it’s also about what you don’t say and do. In her research, she found there are specific things you can say that can really backfire on you. Heidi shares here are 4 of the most common ways that well-intentioned people screw up and make things weird for their helper when they’re asking for help.

Wrong way #1: Emphasizing how much the other person will enjoy helping

“You’re going to love it! It will be so much fun!” One of my collaborators has a friend who has a habit of phrasing requests this way. “Any chance you could help me repaint the living room? We can totally drink beers and catch up! Girl time!” she might say.

Or, “Hey, could you pick me up at the auto mechanic? I haven’t seen you in ages! Road trip!” It’s a testament to the strength of their friendship that it survives this kind of request.

Don’t ever try to explicitly convince someone that they’ll find helping you rewarding. While it’s true helping makes people happy, reminding them generally drains their joy out of helping. First, it reeks of control, undermining their autonomy. Second, it’s presumptive as hell. Don’t tell them how they’re going to feel — that’s for them to decide.

It’s OK for you to point out the benefits of helping if you can be subtle. But you must be careful not to pile it on and mix egotistic reasons with altruistic reasons, because this makes your manipulation noticeable.

In one study, just under 1,000 alumni who had never donated to their college were contacted by fund-raisers via email. They received one of three versions of the appeal: (1) egotistic: “Alumni report that giving makes them feel good”; (2) altruistic: “Giving is your chance to make a difference in the lives of students, faculty, and staff,” and (3) a combined appeal. Researchers found both the egotistic and altruistic appeals were equally effective, but the combined appeal? It saw donation rates cut in half.

Wrong way # 2: Portraying the help you need as a tiny, insignificant favor

One common tactic is to portray the help we need as a piddling, negligible, barely there favor. So, we might emphasize the lack of inconvenience, as in, “Could you drop these contracts off at the client’s? It’s practically on your way home.” Or, we might stress how little time it will take: “Would you add these updates to the database? It won’t take you more than five minutes.”

The thing is, by minimizing our request, we also minimize the other person’s help — and minimize any warm feelings helping might have generated in them. There’s also the risk that we’ve miscalculated the size of our favor, especially if the person does work we don’t fully understand. For instance, Heidi’s book editor occasionally gets an email from an old friend asking her to take a look at his writing. It’s usually phrased as a small request, such as, “I think it’s pretty clean; maybe just give it a quick proofread? It shouldn’t take you very long!” Then, when she opens the attachment, the item is invariably a 6,000-word academic article. Oh, except for the time it was an entire book.

If you’ve been guilty of making this kind of ask, I don’t think it’s because you’re selfish. You’re just clueless. You have no idea of the hours of work you’re asking. But what you’re inadvertently doing is conveying that you think the work the other person does is easy, quick, trivial and not very taxing. And that’s not a great way to enlist help.

Chances are, you work every day with people whose duties you don’t understand that all, whether it’s IT, HR, compliance, sales or marketing. If you don’t quite get what goes into another person’s job, do not presume it won’t take them very long the next time you ask them for help.

Wrong way # 3: Reminding people that they owe you

“Remember when I took over that really tough client of yours?”

“Remember the time I babysat your screaming child?”

“Remember how you always used to forget your house key, and I always had to come home and let you in?”

Because asking for help makes us feel icky, we might be tempted to remind the potential helper how we’ve assisted them in the past. This, too, is fraught with awkwardness. For example, when Heidi’s book editor received that book in her inbox, she wanted to say no. But, for all the reasons that saying “no” is painful, she felt she couldn’t do that — not completely.

So, she wrote back, explained politely that he was asking her to do about 40 hours of work, and asked if there was one chapter he was particularly worried about. When he replied, he reminded her that he’d edited her writing back when she was a columnist. In theory, this might make sense. He had done her a favor and they were old friends, so she should do him one in return, right?  Hmmmmmmmmmm. . .

While reciprocity does make people more likely to say “yes” to an ask, it also makes us feel controlled, which takes all the fun out of helping. Reciprocity works best when the acts of help are roughly equal. In this case, editing a few 500-word columns and editing a 50,000-word historical treatise are not equivalent. In addition, they should also be proximate in time — unless someone has done you a truly massive favor such as saving your life, they won’t feel they owe you anything 10 years down the line.

When you’re calling in a favor, you should try to tap into one of the specific types of reciprocity that psychologists have identified: personal, relational or collective. For example, Heidi’s editor is glad to edit for her neighbor, a carpenter who writes how-to articles for magazines, because they’ve helped her with house projects on numerous occasions. That’s an example of personal reciprocity; the exchange is a fairly clear trade. She’s also happy to edit her husband’s essays on fly-fishing (relational reciprocity) and proofread the grad-school application of her cousin’s boyfriend even though she doesn’t know him well (collective reciprocity).

The bottom line on reciprocity is this: If you have to remind someone they owe you one, chances are they don’t feel that they do. Reminding them that they owe you a favor makes the other person feel as if you’re trying to control them — which, let’s be honest, you are. It’s not particularly generous, and it doesn’t create good feeling. It’s like going out for pizza with a friend, only to be told you should pay more since you ate two extra slices. It makes the other person feel as if you’re keeping a scorecard, and scorekeeping is fundamentally bad for relationships.

Wrong way # 4: Talking about how much their help will benefit you

We all know we need to express gratitude and appreciation for other people’s help. Yet many of us often make a critical mistake when doing this: We focus on how we feel — how happy we are, how we have benefited from the help — rather than focusing on the benefactor.

Researchers Sara Algoe, Laura Kurtz and Nicole Hilaire at the University of North Carolina distinguished between two types of gratitude expressions: “other-praising,” acknowledging and validating the character or abilities of the giver (i.e., their positive identity), and “self-benefit,” describing how the receiver is better off for having been given help.

In one study, they observed couples expressing gratitude to one another for something their partner had recently done for them. Their expressions were coded as other-praising or self-benefit. Examples of expressions included:

Other-praising

“You’re so responsible …”

“You go out of your way …”

“I feel like you’re really good at that.”

Self-benefit

“It let me relax.”

“It gave me bragging rights at work.”

“It makes me happy.”

The benefactors rated how responsive they felt the gratitude giver had been, how happy they felt, and how loving they felt toward their partner. The researchers found that other-praising gratitude was strongly related to perceptions of responsiveness, positive emotions, and loving; self-benefit gratitude was not.

This is worth thinking about, because most of us get gratitude wrong. Human beings are, more often than not, egocentric by nature. We have a tendency to talk about ourselves, even when we should be thinking and talking about others. Naturally, when we get high-quality support, we want to talk about how it made us feel. And we assume it’s what the helper wants to hear, that they were helping to make us happy so they want to hear how happy we are. Well, this assumption isn’t quite right.

Yes, your helper wants you to be happy, but the motivation to be helpful is intimately tied to your helper’s identity and self-esteem. We help because we want to be good people — to live up to our goals and values and to be admired. Helpers want to see themselves positively, which can be difficult for them to do when you won’t stop talking about you. You’re making it all about you, and it should be about them.

(Excerpted with permission from the book Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You by Heidi Grant. Published by Harvard Business Review Press. Copyright © 2018 by Heidi Grant.)

I have a very hard time
G  E  T  T  I  N  G
R  E  C  E  I  V  I  N  G
ASKING FOR HELP
but
I am at my best
my most blessed
when I am severely benefitted
c  o  m  p  l  i  m  e  n  t  e  d
by ANOTHER
who can do for me
what I can’t or won’t do
for myself
which lets me know
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Oh I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends.          .          .

Let me hand it to you,
F  R  I  E  N  D

ALL IN THE MIND

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Do you see the beauty in life, or do you just exist? Be careful to just exist – that’s dangerous’. – Elrieda Pillmann

IS   IT   WORTH   IT.          .           .

Sometimes, at a Celebration of Life Service, I will ask THAT QUESTION.  Is it worth it?  I pose the scene that if we had a magical door to go through, and all we had to do to make sure that the hurt would stop; that there would be no grief or hard grieving; no tears; no sense of loss or hurt and all we had to do was walk through the MAGICAL DOOR, of course, with one small caveat, it would simply mean that you would have ever known, ever loved the one you are grieving, the one who gave you this special gift of GRIEF that’ll last the rest of your life.  Would you?  Would you walk through that MAGICAL DOOR.          .            .           ?

I don’t believe the title of this beautiful little film.  It’s not ALL IN THE MIND, it’s in the HEART and there’s no piece of earth, no cemetery plot that can ever hold what your heart always will and never won’t.

Don’t open up the cage of your grief.          .          .
TAKE THE DOOR OFF
and never let it be latched again.          .        .
anything else
just might be the worst kind of
e        x        i        s        t        i        n        g
.     .     .the least kind of living

THE HUMAN LIBRARY

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In Denmark, there are libraries where you can borrow a person instead of a book to listen to their life story for 30 minutes.  The aim is to fight against prejudices.  Each person has a title – “unemployed”, “refugee”, “bipolar”, etc.  – but by listening to their story, you realize how much you shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”.  This innovative and brilliant project is active in more than 50 countries.  It’s called “The Human Library”.

When I heard of THE HUMAN LIBRARY one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was, “I WANT TO GO THERE” quickly followed by “I WANT TO START ONE” and as I let those two thoughts dance wildly with each other, another tune began to play, a much slower, sweeter melody, familiar but still unheard:

WE LIVE DAILY IN
THE HUMAN LIBRARY

I can’t remember the last time I have lived a day without some kind of human interaction; as a hospice chaplain, a minister, a husband, a dad, a grandfather, a brother, an uncle, an in-law and as a frequent visitor to STARBUCKS, I have had countless encounters with so many people on any given day, and that’s just IN PERSON, not counting the texting, emailing, and messaging I do throughout the day; The question, isn’t WHEN HAVE I EVER BEEN TO THE HUMAN LIBRARY so much as WHEN HAVE I EVER BEEN ABSENT FROM THE HUMAN LIBRARY.          .          .

The  biggest questions are:
AM I MAKING USE OF IT.             .              .
AM I LITERALLY BORROWING AS WELL AS GIVING.          .          .
AM I DOING MORE LISTENING/LEARNING.          .           .
AM I DOING MORE TALKING/TEACHING.          .          .
AM I DRIVING IDLY PAST THE HUMAN LIBRARY.          .          .
AM I PULLING INTO THE PARKING LOT OFTEN
(EARLY AND STAYING LATE).     .     .

THE HUMAN LIBRARY
.            .          .now that’s a Levy we can all get behind and vote
.            .           .S  U  P  P  O  R  T
WILL YOU
.          .         .This is one Library
where you don’t have to be
Q  U  I  E  T
JOIN ME

The Certainty of UNCERTAINTY

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QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
They abound
and there’s no more fertile soil for
U N C E R T A I N T Y
than not always coming up
with the
R  I  G  H  T
Answers.            .            .
Sometimes life feels like a ginormous
Multiple Choice Test
but maybe the
Certainty
in the
Uncertainty
is that there really are
NO WRONG
answers
or.          .          .
simply discovering:

One Upside to the Feeling of Uncertainty

A new study finds that feeling uncertain may lead us to savor the small things in life.     .     .

Kira M Newman is the managing editor of Greater Good and she helps us take a different look and maybe even a new perspective on how we actually view UNCERTAINTY.  Her work has been published in outlets including the Washington Post, Mindfulmagazine, Social Media Monthly, and Tech.co, and she is the co-editor of The Gratitude Project. Follow her on Twitter!

Ever since it began, the pandemic has been a crash course in uncertainty. Safe behaviors, school openings, vaccination timelines, the job market, new variants—these have all seemed to change on a weekly basis, threatening our sense of security and stability.

Uncertainty is stressful and perhaps even harmful to our health, research suggests, and it can drive us to cling to our social groups to the exclusion of others. But a new study has uncovered a surprising upside to feeling uncertain: It might drive us to appreciate the little things in life.

Smell the roses

In one experiment, researchers stationed on a sidewalk handed out flyers that said one of two things: “Life is unpredictable: Stop and smell the roses” or “Life is constant: Stop and smell the roses.” A short distance away was a table with a dozen red roses on it and a sign matching the flyer they’d just received.

Research assistants hid behind a bush to see who stopped and who didn’t—and it was the people who read that life is unpredictable who buried their noses in the fragrant flowers, 2.5 times more often than the others.

Why? Savoring and appreciating the small things in life may be a coping response that our minds activate when we feel overwhelmed by the ambiguity of it all. Savoring pulls us out of fears and worries about a fuzzy future and into the clear, pleasurable sensations of right now.

“If the world is uncertain, it makes sense to take advantage of what you have now because it may not exist shortly,” explains Andrew L. Gregory, the lead author of the study.

The researchers found similar results in another experiment, where, instead of handing out flyers, they recruited nearly 400 people to watch videos. Some saw a video purportedly describing the conclusions from a scientific conference about how unpredictable and random our lives are, accompanied by chaotic graphs and rolling dice. Others saw a similar video, but with the opposite message, about life’s underlying order and structure. A final group saw a video about the history of trains.

Compared to the other two groups, those who watched the chaos video reported more intentions to savor life. They said that they should enjoy the present and appreciate simple things, and would linger on good feelings if something wonderful happened to them or a friend.

Savoring in real life

A final set of findings suggests that this effect does translate to everyday life, even if you don’t happen to come across a video or flyer about uncertainty. Here, researchers recruited over 6,000 people and pinged them up to a dozen times a day, asking how chaotic and unpredictable the world felt in that moment and whether they were savoring the present.

It turned out that when the world felt messy, people were more likely to be savoring their lives a few hours later, at the next ping.

Of course, the relentless uncertainty of the pandemic doesn’t lend itself to feeling mindful and appreciative all the time. But Gregory suspects that this pattern still holds.

Indeed, many people reported feeling grateful early on in the pandemic. One of our Thnx4 members, for example, journaled about missing out on her daily socializing at the neighborhood cafe and instead making small talk with strangers on her morning walk. “It reminded me not only to appreciate but to seek positive experience,” she wrote.

While savoring may happen naturally, it’s also something we can practice deliberately when life feels unsettling. For example, you might share your good news or gratitude with others, or tune into the enjoyable sights, sounds, and smells around you. When you work on controlling your attention this way, Gregory says, you may feel like you have more control over your life in general.

The flyers and videos in these experiments are a good reminder that our sense of uncertainty is changeable. Based on that, it makes sense that reading political news or social media posts from our friends could influence how stable or chaotic our lives feel. Being selective about the media we consume could help. Or, says Gregory, when we’re feeling adrift, we could try reflecting on times in our life when we felt secure and certain.

Savoring isn’t the only potential upside to feeling uncertain. For people who are less well off, confronting a chaotic environment can actually drive them to prioritize community. In these ways and perhaps others, our brains try to protect us from the unpleasant but unavoidable uncertainty of life.

JUST HOW UNCERTAIN
Are you
of your
CERTAINITIES.          .          .
Go ahead.            .            .
Take a
DEEP BREATH
and
S  A  V  O  R
your doubts
until they become
the sweetest
TREATS
of your
L  I  F  E

9/11

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HOW OFTE DO WE SAY:
“Wow, it just seems like yesterday?”
How about:
239 months ago
How about:
1044 weeks ago
How about
7307 days ago
from
RIGHT NOW.            .            .
hardly some kind of
y e s t e r d a y

Maybe the greatest way to remember one day, one month, one year, or TWENTY, isn’t to look back but ahead and just live better. Just LIVE better.  It most likely won’t change the world; it most likely won’t even be remembered, but for now, one person at a time ,one compassionate act at a time.     .     .
JUST LIVE BETTER.          .           .
not unless,
not except,
not if,
not but,
not or,
not until, |
just live better
and then maybe we’ll find
THE GREATEST WAY TO REMEMBER
IS JUST NOT TO FORGET

MAYBE YESTERDAY
is a lot closer
than we ever knew
and now know
for an ever

 

BATTERY POWERED

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What does it take.          .          .
Seriously
what does it take
to reach another person
so they can trust you enough
that you’re able to not just be with them
but more importantly
help them.            .            .

I’m quickly coming up on my 27th anniversary of doing hospice work and now I’ve already passed the 41 years of ordination; so it would be easy for me to say, “Well,  here are the lessons that I’ve learned and here are the takeaways and more importantly this is what you need to know.”  
Really, this is none of those things; it’s just some insights, maybe some self revelations/realizations that I’ve learned and often, had to re-learn over and over again.
The Biggest: As much as we are the same, we are so individually different; and how I reach one person may not be how I reach another person, no matter what their age, no matter what their sexual orientation or their theological understandings or their socio-economic situation, no matter what their gender or their profession; Everybody is different and yet in so many ways, the same, in this one thing:
WE ALL WANT TO BE HEARD;
UNDERSTOOD;
ACKNOWLEDGED;
COMPANIONED;
L O V E D
Here’s where it gets tricky; sometimes how we are known or what we are called, identified, makes it almost impossible for us to do any of that for another person.
Case in point. I am a minister. I am a hospice chaplain. As soon as you identify yourself with those terms to anybody who asks you what do you, not only do you negate me, but in many ways, people fear me or they may seek me out to do what it is they think that I do or don’t do.          .          .
It doesn’t matter if it’s at the mall or the grocery store or after church on Sunday, at a restaurant or a playground;  it doesn’t matter where you happen to be at any time. If you get identified as a ordained minister or a chaplain, you are going to be viewed in a different way and everything that you say or do after that, is going to be viewed in that manner; good and bad.

So every time I walk into a patient’s room for the first time or call them on phone, I try not to identify myself as the hospice chaplain, but a person who works with the hospice nurse or the social worker or the home health aide so they don’t get the wrong idea of why I’m visiting: TO SAVE THEM from eternal hell and let them know/accept MY JESUS or because they and their situation are so dire, they actually had to send the chaplain in because.        .        .

First and foremost, I see myself as a Companion.  Not a counselor, not as a minister, not as a father confessor, not as an observer, not as a healer, but just as a companion.
HE  was one of those people that fear the most when he heard the word chaplain and minister. Even though I tried to tell him I was not there to pound the pulpit or wave a Bible or to save him for all of eternity but just to be with him and to be of any kind of service that I could for him and his family. His mother was also one of our patients shortly after he became a hospice patient.  When she actually died before him, it had him spiraling into an abyss of withdrawal and mistrust.
 I never passed his room without at least sticking my head in and saying good morning and just asking a simple question of how you’re doing and is there anything I can get for you is there anything I can bring you. 
Sometimes, there wasn’t even an acknowledgment on his end or he would actually turn his head away from me as I would give him a passing, “ just wanted to make sure you are as OK as you could be and I’ll check in on you later.”
Simple, right?
I was shocked one morning when the nurse came and got me and said this particular patient wanted to speak to just me and when I went in I saw him sitting at his bedside table, he was putting together a puzzle and he said I was just the guy he wanted to see.  Even before I had the chance to ask him what he wanted, he was trying to hand me a $20 bill.
He reminded me how I was always asking if there’s anything I could do and now there was actually something.  He wanted me to buy him a battery for his calipers. I told him the money wasn’t necessary and that we may actually have a battery on site that would fit his Electronic calipers.
We didn’t have the proper battery at the front desk where we often keep batteries for hearing aids and other devices, so I decided that I would go out to the store and see if I could pick up the battery myself.
It seemed like it was a lost cause after hitting a couple of different stores, but when I came back from my journeying I actually talked with one of the maintenance people who said, “That’s the kind a battery that you need for calipers, the same kind we have, and we actually have a four pack.”
When I took it to the patient and we together put it in his calipers and saw that it worked, it was as if he just seen a man who had walked on water and calmed the seas;  moved mountains, all by just giving him one simple little battery.
That one simple act has forever changed the relationship that we now enjoy.
It’s kind of amazing all the things that we cannot do that others believe that we can and maybe that is our power.           .          .
If someone thinks you can help or heal them, and you think you can’t, choose their faith over your doubt.
Sometimes, all we need to do sometime is just notice what we recognize.  The simple things most often are what we know, what we know that we know, and actually bet our lives that we know that for the life of us we never ACT LIKE WE KNOW.     .     .
THIS SPECIAL POWER
we all possess:
To merely become what another needs us to be for them
at that moment
and at that time
and that absolutely
no one else could be for them.        .         .
The best part about it is
we don’t have to possess
those magical powers
in order to make sure
that could happen to another person
because of who it is that we are
or aren’t
at that particular moment.           .           .
The Take Away:
Be all things to all people, not that you may save them, but that you may be able to help and companion them when they need it the most and no one else in or out of this world can do that one thing except you at that very moment. 
There’s nothing more sacred or hallowed.      .     .
And better still:
NO BATTERIES REQUIRED
.           .           .The only question
(AND PLEASE FORGIVE THE OBVIOUS PUN)
Are You
PROVE IT
person by person
Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man