People Know You Better Than You Think

People really do know you better than

 you think possible. 

The other day at work several of the

people I work for commented on the

fact that I was singing again. 

I hadn’t even realized that I had

stopped.


That was an eye-opener for me.

LABELS HAVE THEIR USES

2013 January 31 LABELS HAVE THEIR USES

As a general rule I’m not overly fond of labels, but they do have their uses. 

They’ve gotten a bad rap over the years because all too often nobody bothers to look past the label to the actual PERSON.  That, my friend, is just flat out all the way wrong.  Behind every label is a real live person who has thoughts, feelings, dreams, goals, challenges, and all the rest of it.  I’m a person.  You are a person.  Every single solitary one of us is a person in our own right. 

That said, labels exist for a reason and that reason is identification.  Not IDENTITY.  Identification is what we as individuals do every second of every day, every waking hour of our lives.  We identify everything around us all the time.  We paste labels on everything automatically.  If it’s a hundred degrees in the shade we label the day ‘hot’.  If we burn our fingers we identify the sensation as ‘pain’.  We use labels.  They’re useful.  Colors, sounds, smells, taste, touches are what we live by; they are our five senses and we register their input and plop an immediate label onto whatever it is. 

We experience ourselves and our world via our senses, labeled with the language that goes along with them, and most generally we each find it absolutely necessary to confirm with our own senses whether or not we want to use a certain label for a certain thing.  If someone tells us that something tastes nasty, we might possibly take their word for it, if they’ve proven reliable in the past.  More likely, we’ll have to confirm it for ourselves, taste the nasty stuff, and probably agree with them.  That’s just the way we are. 

Some labels can tell us things about ourselves.

Height, weight, eye color, hair color, gender, body shape are all labels. 

There are a plethora of physical tests to further refine the labels.  Someone may ‘have a bad heart’, or their BMI might be 17 or 20 or whatever, or they may be physically disabled in some way, say they have a bum leg.  The tests are innumerable; so are the labels. 

For the less physically apparent characteristics, tests have been developed and we are labeled according to how we score on the tests. 

IQ tests measure our native intelligence; we are labeled by our cognitive abilities in problem solving and how well we comprehend concepts.  Expectations based on these scores can impact us and everyone around us.  If someone scores a 90, for example, nobody expects them to perform to the same standards as someone who scores 140.

The MMPI is one test that can give us indications as to the health of our psyches, our minds (conscious and unconscious, or subconscious).  Performance results correspond to diagnostic possibilities and can be a guide for treatment plans.

MBTI testing is a way of labeling us according to our personality type.  It can identify how we focus attention and get our energy, how we perceive and take in information, our decision-making processes, and how we orient ourselves to the outside world.  The information regarding those four things is correlated and another label is plopped on us.  Me, I’m an INFJ so I don’t really expect anyone in the general population to be able to understand how I work or why I do what I do.  It’s useful that way.

Labels are required on just about every last thing we buy in our lives.  Some of us refer to them more than others when deciding what we want to buy, but they’re there. 

The world we live in is filled with labels of every description and we all use them every day.  All they do is aide our comprehension, give us definition, and help us identify things. 

In and of themselves labels do NOT constitute the be all and end all of any particular person or thing.  They can be used to indicate the make-up of what does constitute the contents of any package, be it animate or inanimate; they cannot BE those contents, only represent them.  A label does not create anything except perception in the person who interprets it.

That’s my point here. 

Labels exist because we could not exist without them.  They are to be used to help us to understand the world we live in and each other, not as a means by which we can figure out who to pick on next. 

A SIMPLE LITTLE SOMETHING FOR YOUR EVERYDAY PRETTIES

It's not fancy, but it's useful as all get-out.

 

 

 

 

For the things you want at your immediate fingertips when you're in a hurry to get out the door ... this is for your everyday needs, NOT for the stuff you want to keep vaulted. 

 

You can't tell it from these photos, but there's a ribbon tied to one of the rings for pierced earrings.

 

As I say, it's not fancy, but it's quite very handy for daily wear jewelry:  earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings (which hang on a hook of their own attached to the side).

 





DRIFTWOOD AND ROOTS

 

NATURALLY PROCESSED WOOD IS AMAZING

 

 

Some are driftwood, some roots, one is a chunk I was going to burn until I looked at it again...!

 

 

These are some of the pieces I've gotten sealed with poly semi-gloss.  They're displayed in a three foot square box, to give you an idea of their size.  I'll incorporate them into sculptures, most of them to be used for hanging jewelry on.  A couple of them will go into paintings.

 

 

And off to work on them I go!

 

Stepping Up To The Plate

'Stepping up to the plate' is an Americanism that comes from the game of baseball when a batter steps up to home plate. 

Its meaning has morphed into someone who, when necessary, is willing to 'go to bat' for a good cause. 

Now, you never know what might happen when you step up to that plate. 

A wild pitch might just hit you in the face at a hundred miles an hour and knock the life right out of you. 

You might strike out. 

You might walk. 

You might get a hit and then the next guys strike out and nothing comes of it. 

You might hit a single and the next guys will get hits and the team will score. 

You might get one whale of a good hit and the outfielder will catch it at the edge of the stands. 

You might zing off a foul ball. 

You might hit to the infield and get tagged out at first base, or to the outfield and get tagged out at any base. 

And you might hit a home run with bases loaded. 

You just never know. 

If you never step up to the plate you'll never find out. 

A LITTLE DBT COMES IN HANDY NOW AND THEN

2013 January 16 DIALECTICAL BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) combines cognitive and behavioral therapy, incorporating methodologies from various practices including Eastern mindfulness techniques.

Below are some good reminders of skills we can all put to good use on a regular basis. 

Step back from a troublesome situation.  Believe me, it won't go anywhere without you.  Use some of the below tools.  Find your center and your balance and hang on tight because troublesome situations are demanding.

WHAT and HOW will ground us as we are reminded to pay attention to exactly what bothers us and how we are approaching it.  This is Mindfulness.  In other words use your mind.  It’s more powerful than you may think. 

Distress Tolerance keeps anxiety at bay.  ACCEPTS can put a crisis into perspective.  IMPROVE reminds us that things have not always been and will not always be the way they are at this moment.  Using all five of our SENSES can get us into THIS moment, completely within our own selves and blocking disturbances for only just a moment, to give us back the knowledge that we ARE our own selves and NOT the immediate ‘situation’.  A swift PRO/CON will help us evaluate and probably adjust our actions/reactions.  We need to be WILLING to use these things, to be able to TURN our minds from what ‘comes naturally’, and to be ready to ACCEPT that it’s okay.

Regulating EMOTIONS is not impossible.  We can reduce our vulnerability with PLEASE.  We can Build on a foundation of positive experiences and become the masters of our own choices.  We can be aware of our own emotions and act in direct opposition to what they seem to be telling us (i.e. when they tell us we’re angry and to lash out, we can choose to be calm instead).

INTERPERSONAL issues can be effectively dealt with.  DEAR MAN can help us to remain objective.  GIVE is a good way to cope with relationships of all kinds.  FAST has to do with your own self-respect, which is crucial to being able to implement everything else.

The above is a nutshell review of the below. 

Each skill can be practiced individually but they all work together.  Some of us will use some of the skills more than others, but there are plenty for everyone; we can use the ones that work best for us and pick up others as needed.

The bottom line:  To Thy Own Self Be True

Overview of DBT skills   MINDFULNESS The What Skills: ·  Observe ·  Describe ·  Participate The How Skills:   ·  Non-judgmental   ·  One-mindful   ·  Effective   DISTRESS TOLERANCE Crisis Survival: Distraction with Accepts ·  A Activities ·  C Contributing ·  C Comparisons ·  E Emotions - use opposite ·  P Pushing Away ·  T Thoughts ·  S Sensations Self Soothe with five senses: ·  Taste ·  Smell ·  See ·  Hear ·  Touch Improve the moment: ·  I Imagery ·  M Meaning ·  P Prayer ·  R Relaxation ·  O One thing at a time ·  V Vacation ·  E Encouragement Pros and Cons Accepting Reality: Willingness Turning your mind Radical Acceptance   EMOTION REGULATION       Reduce Vulnerability: (Please) ·  P & L Treat Physical Illness ·  E eating ·  A Altering Drugs (no drugs unless it is medication to be taken as prescribed by your doctor) ·  S Sleep ·  E Exercise Build Mastery Build Positive experiences Be mindful of current emotion Opposite to emotion action   INTERPERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS Objectiveness effectiveness: (Dear Man) ·  D Describe ·  E Express ·  A Assert ·  R Reinforce ·  M Mindful ·  A Appear Confident ·  N Negotiate Relationship Effectiveness: (Give) ·  G Gentle ·  I Interested ·  V Validate ·  E Easy Manner Self-respect effectiveness: (Fast) ·  F Fair ·  A Apologies (no Apologies) ·  S Stick to value ·  T Truthful

 

Antique Cooking

One of my goals for this winter is to use the antique cookstove that's in my antique kitchen for COOKING. 

I want to see if I can learn at least the basics of putting together a meal without using modern appliances. 

Since I only fire up the wood stove when it's cold enough to warrant it (usually not unless it's below zero out there) AND when I happen to have a day off from work - which two criteria haven't seemed to match up very well so far *sigh* - I haven't had a lot of chance for experimentation.

The photo above is today's experiment:  au gratin potatoes with bacon. 

Baked in the deep cast iron skillet (as opposed to the ones of normal depth) without the cover, they turned out tastier than I had any right to expect. 

Then I made biscuits too. 

Not being sure of myself, and not wanting to ruin ALL the biscuits, I did half of them in the electric oven in the new kitchen and half of them in the old kitchen. 

Until I remember to bring the oven temp gauge over from my sister's, I have to kind of guess at whether or not the oven is at the right temperature. 

For the potatoes it didn't really matter that much, but for the biscuits I wanted to see how close I could get by guessing. 

When I put the biscuits in to cook, the gauge thingy on the front of the oven read about one and a half.  It goes up to nine but I've never gotten my stove hot enough to get that high.  I had kind of wanted to go with two, but ... the two sets of biscuits went into their separate ovens at the same time and the old one was at one and a half so I just went with it. 

The result was better than I could have anticipated; the finished biscuits were indistinguishable from each other! 

The only difference was that I SHOULD have waited until the wood stove got up to two - the set of bicuits in that stove took a couple of minutes longer to get done.

So I have learned something today.  

Bake biscuits at two on the dial. 

Another thing I've learned today:  I CAN do it! 

At least, so far I can. 

I'm not ready to try a cake yet. 

Or bread. 

But I'll get there!