Improve Your Communication Skills

1. Listen carefully when others are speaking. Keep your mouth shut – and focus totally on them.

2. Never, ever talk over other people. This is disrespectful – and a real turn off.

3. Even if the person leaves an hour between each word, resist the temptation to complete their sentence for them.

TJ

10 Traits That Lead To Success

1. Independence
2. Self-confidence
3. Persistence
4. Creative thinking
5. Being thick skinned
6. Knowing who you are and what you want from life
7. Setting clear goals – and going after them
8. Staying focused
9. Optimism
10. Passion and a zest for life.

TJ

10 Qualities that can make your personality attractive

 
Someone with an attractive personality:
1. Is warm and friendly towards others
2. Is open and real
3. Knows their own strengths and weaknesses - and neither boasts nor puts themselves down
4. Looks for the good in every situation, and is generally positive and optimistic
5. Doesn’t gossip or pass on others’ secrets
6. Doesn’t gloat when things go wrong for others
7. Is secure and has a healthy self–esteem; is not self-centered and narcissistic
8. Is not highly critical or argumentative
9. Is not possessive and jealous in relationships
10. Makes time for the people they care about
TJ

Click-Bait - Beware what you re-post

One bit of advice. I realize it is worth what you pay for it, but here it goes,

Beware as you re-post items on Facebook and Twitter. Just because the referenced article or site might have conservative, liberal, or progressive does not make it legitimate.

Most posts that appear to come from reputable sources just do not. 

They are more often than not trying to get you to do something and are nonsensical at best, and purposefully misleading at worst. (Click-Bait) 

Bottom line - research BEFORE posting.

Knee-jerking is for reflexive testing when performed by a qualified physician.

I'M OFF THE SOAPBOX NOW.

TJ

Leadership (vs Management) Part 1

Leading and managing are not necessarily synonyms. Some leaders can manage, but the converse is not as common. This is part 1 of a series on leading and managing.
This is a set of competencies identified by Boyatzis (1982). through critical incident research.

Efficiency orientation

Focusing on objectives, tasks and achievements. Setting challenging goals and supporting appropriate planning. Facilitating overcoming of obstacles. Encouraging people to act in this way.

Concern with impact

Demonstrating a significant interest in power and its symbols. Use of power-oriented behavior such as using various methods of influence, seeking positions of power, etc.

Proactivity

Showing a strong belief in individual self-control and self-driven action. Acting without waiting for full agreement or authorization. Taking responsibility for actions. Acting to dissuade defensive and risk-averse behavior. 

Self-confidence

Showing belief in self, values and ideas. Able to talk decisively and take confident and decisive action. Communicating this self-confidence to others and hence instilling confidence in them.

Oral presentation skill

Able to speak well, using effective language, modes of speech and body language. Uses effective symbolism and metaphor in words and actions. Appropriate use of visual aids.

Conceptualization

Uses inductive reasoning to identify patterns and relationships. Able to create models and symbols to communicate these concepts. Uses synthetic and creative thinking to develop further ideas and solutions.

Diagnostic use of concepts

Able to use deductive reasoning to convert models and ideas into specific instances and possibilities. Concepts are turned into practical and useful tools.

Use of socialized power

Developing networks and hierarchies of people and mobilizing them to to achieve specific ends. Acts as a person in the middle to resolve conflicts and bring people together. 

Managing group processes

Building the identity of groups and people in them. Building common goals and objectives. Developing group roles. Creating ways of working together and facilitating teamwork.


Historia est vitae magistra 
History is the tutor of life

TJ

Thinking About What Is Not There (Creativity 101)

 

 

Think about what you are thinking about, and then think about what you are not thinking about.

When you are looking at something (or otherwise sensing), notice what is not there.

Watch people and notice what they do not do.

Make lists of things to remember that you normally forget.

In other words, deliberately and carefully think about what is not there.

 

An artist draws the spaces between things.

A market manager for a furniture wonders about product areas where customers have made no comment. She watches them using tables and notes that they leave the tables out when not using them. She invents a table that can be easily be folded and stored.

The psychology of thought is such that we are very good at seeing what is there, but not at all good at seeing what is not there. Thinking about what is not there compensates for this by deliberately forcing us to do what we do not naturally do.

 Ab amicis honesta petamus
"One should only ask from a friend what he is capable of." 

TJ

How to Live

Do not tell people how to live their lives.

Just tell them stories and they will figure out how those stories apply to them.

TJ

Normal Family?

“Normal” seems to be a moving target when discussing the family. Walsh claims that “normal” is not useable category when trying to describe the family and that family should be defined more in terms of markers present. 

I believe that cultural shifting probably plays some role in what most people consider a normal family. The basic Christian belief that all humans are created in the image of God, and therefore equally valuable before God, should be the mantra that equalizes the differences between. 

 However, societal/cultural shifting concerning the value and dignity of human life has contributed to the diminishing role of this Christian belief. Culture has shifted to more of a comparative view of people, and when we compare ourselves to each other we soon find that no family is “normal.”

The thought process behind comparing, whether we understand it or not, views people more in terms of worthiness, honor, success, and just about any other attribute we might inject into the comparison.

I’m off the soap-box now.

Assessing normality seems to be a very arduous task. Do we base our evaluation of a family on sociological, psychological, or biological factors? What I have learned is that to properly evaluate a family one must include all of the above to varying degrees. From a secular point of view, families need to be groups that provide for the basic needs of the members of the group such as food, money, shelter, psychological support, and problem solving. 

However, I might offer a few thoughts about what constitutes a “normal” family. I would suggest the idea that normal families can have some minor problems and even major problems although these should be few. “Normal” families can have communication problems, and they often will. The reason, I suggest, is that although God created everything and called it “Good.” Man (and woman) fell into sin, and therefore no matter how perfect a family may seem, there will never be a perfect family situation. We are not capable of normal. 

So, how do I define “normal?” “Normal” is the family that a midst all of life’s struggles, including social, psychological, and biological, strive to maintain God’s original design for the family (one man / one woman / and wherever that leads). It also includes Christ-like behavior toward those within the family group, and to those outside the family group.

Assuming you subscribe to the traditional model, with changing ideas about what a traditional family looks like how would you help a client understand the value of the traditional model? 

Do you think that many have just given up trying to maintain a traditional family? 

If so, why?

TJ

Unpacking the Boxes

You tell the world who you are
in a million different ways.
Some are subtle, some are not.

But it doesn't seem to matter:
this world has already got you pegged.

When you were born they put you in a little box,
and slapped a label on it.
So they could keep things organized,
and not have to think about what’s inside.

Over time you learn to make yourself comfortable
packaging your identity in different combinations
until you feel like you belong,
and can wear your labels proudly.

But there’s a part of you that never really found a home
rattling around in categories that couldn’t do you justice.

You look around at other people,
trying to judge how loosely they fit in their own lives
sensing a knot of confusion hidden beneath a name tag.

And you realize we’re still only strangers,
who assume we already know what the other is going to say,
as if the only thing left to talk about is
who belongs in what category
and which labels are offensive.

You have to wonder if these boxes are falling apart.
If we should be writing our identities by hand,
speaking only for ourselves, in our own words,
taking our chances out in the open
and meet each other as we are,
asking: “What is it like being you?”

—and be brave enough to admit
that we don’t already know the answer.

Maybe it’ll mean that we’ve finally arrived,
just “unpacking the boxes”
making ourselves at home.

And maybe we’ll look back and wonder
how we managed to live in the same house for so long,
and never stop to introduce ourselves.

TJ

Questioning Your First Assumptions

Your life is a story. The days flip past, too quickly to absorb, a mess of seemingly random events. So you look back and highlight certain moments as important, as turning points in the main plot. You trace each thread back to its origin, finding omens and ironies scattered along the way, until it all feels inevitable, and your life makes sense. You know how this story is going to end, but you’re still eager to skip ahead, dying to know what happens next.

But there are times when you look up and realize that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. You thought you were following the arc of the story, but you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand. Either everything seems important or nothing does. It’s a tangled mess of moments that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre, that keeping changing depending on what you choose to highlight.

What kind of story is this? Just another coming-of-age tale, the same one your parents told, with the names switched around? Is your everyday life part of the origin story of something truly epic? Are you unwittingly getting by on other people’s charity, mistaking your own luck for your own success? Are you a character in a romance, a tragedy, a travelogue, or just another cautionary tale?

As you thumb through the years, you may never know where this all is going. The only thing you know is that there’s more to the story. That soon enough you’ll flip back to this day looking for clues of what was to come, rereading all the chapters you skimmed through to get to the good parts—only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

TJ

Seen from this point forward

You were born on a moving train.
And even though it feels like you're standing still,
time is sweeping past you, right where you sit.
But once in a while you look up,
and actually feel the inertia,
and watch as the present turns into a memory
—as if some future you is already looking back on it. 

 One day you’ll remember this moment,
and it’ll mean something very different.
Maybe you’ll cringe and laugh,
or brim with pride, aching to return.
or notice some detail hidden in the scene,
a future landmark making its first appearance
or discreetly taking its final bow.

So you try to sense it ahead of time, looking for clues,
as if you’re walking through the memory while it’s still happening,
feeling for all the world like a time traveler.

The world around you is secretly strange:
some details are charming and dated,
others precious and irretrievable,
but all fade into the quaint texture of the day.

You try to read the faces around you,
each fretting about the day’s concerns,
not yet realizing that this world is already out of their hands.
That it doesn’t have to be this way, it just sort of happened,
and everything will soon be completely different.

Because you really are a time traveler,
leaping into the future in little tentative steps.
Just a kid stuck in a strange land without a map,
With nothing to do but soak in the moment
and take one last look before moving on.

But another part of you is already an old man,
looking back on things.
Waiting at the door for his granddaughter,
who’s trying to make her way home for a visit.
You are two people still separated by an ocean of time,
Part of you bursting to talk about what you saw,
Part of you longing to tell you what it means.

TJ

Impact of Technology on the Family

 
One of the first things that come to mind when discussing technology and its affect on families would have to be the lack of personal interaction involved. Now some who read this are probably shouting “we are connected more than ever before,” and they would be correct. However, this connectedness seems to be mostly illusion. Follow the argument for a minute or two before writing it off. Most people under a certain age, that we will not determine here but are more than likely under the age of 40 years old, spend vast amounts of time texting. Texting has almost become the primary way many families communicate on a daily basis. The interaction problems that texting introduces begins with no eye contact. If a child is texting a parent it is often very easy for the child to omit important details (inherent in texting) that could very well influence an important parental decision. For example, if child A tells a parent, via text, that a teacher has wronged them in some way, how would the parent judge the veracity of the claim before stomping into the school to confront the teacher? Does the parent take everything the child tells them as the absolute truth? If they do, they are probably not living in reality. Can a parent discern if their child is being truthful by observing eye contact when having a face to face conversation about that same teacher? Most often the answer should be yes they can. What about Facebook? If my wife and I are having a disagreement about a family issue, and one of us vents our frustration in a Facebook post, will it have a positive or negative effect on the outcome of the disagreement? The answer should be obvious. With the introduction of the World Wide Web everyone seemed to jump on the ideas that the world would be soon be one big family. However, due to the individualistic nature of the new technological means of communication, people do not physically interact like they used to. Example two, picture a mother in the kitchen texting a child in the next room to remind them to do their homework. Sounds absurd, but this type of communication happens every day. I believe this contributes to the further disconnection between family members, and ultimately the breakdown of important family relations.

There are many aspects of technology that really introduce more questions than answers. If I were to say that I believe technology has negatively affected living in the moment, would you agree or disagree? Think about standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon (only for short time because you are on a tour), and you hold your phone and enter a Facebook message about where you are, but you do not fully engage yourself in the true beauty and magnificence of the moment. Did you really enjoy the experience? Did you learn anything while standing there? Was there a life-lesson you missed because technology had your attention? Who knows the answers? Hang on though, it is not all doom and gloom when we discuss technology. These are negative scenarios about the impact of technology, but technology can also serve as a way to convey images and thoughts to family members that are not close.

Living in the most mobile society the world has ever seen has presented us with challenges that many of prior generations did not face. Families are often spread out due to jobs, military service, school, marriage, and many other reasons. Technology has provided a way to send photographs virtually the very second a baby is born from parents to grandparents who may live thousands of miles away. So in this respect, technology can help families stay closer than they otherwise would.

Managing Stress

My family of origin, and handling stress probably should not be discussed within the same writing. Growing up, stress was often handled in strange ways. At least they seemed strange to me at the time. We always used the bottle-it-up, bottle-it-up, bottle-it-up, and then explode method for handling stress. It was just this plain and simple. There were no real complex dynamics at play. We just all kept our focus on the tasks at hand, and prayed nobody blew a fuse. The lasting affects have proven to be quite a source of consternation as time has gone by. Stress creeps in most often during transitions in life, structure changes within the family and on the job, and many times from trying too much to conform or trying too much to be unique as a person or family. I tend to bottle up stress and work it out through isolating myself, and then either doing physical work or just vegging’ out while watching mind numbing television programs. I know both are inferior ways to handle stress, and since embarking on the psychology journey I had endeavored to rectify the situation by handling stressors as they arise. 

 

TJ

To Be, or Not To Be

To be a Christian means to be counter-cultural, to stand out from the crowd, to not conform to the world around us. To be outside the “norm” is often frowned upon. As a matter of fact, most people will do almost anything to fit in. Remember Milgram’s experiment? Sometimes it is easy to see when someone is trying to conform, and sometimes it is not. 

There is a felt need to conform. It manifests itself in many forms, and is usually a result of a person’s desire to get along with others. People want to be accepted, and conformity is usually the quickest route. The Bible teaches that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. It does not matter in the context of this paper whether we believe they were real people or representations in Hebrew poetry. Although I do believe in the more literal version, for this discussion they are an image that helps us to understand the origins of why people conform. If we are all inter-related as the Bible teaches, then the desire to go along in order to be accepted is an action based in our need to belong. 

Belonging also fulfills our need for consistency of behavior by saying, in essence, we are following the same rules as everyone else, and we are not a threat to the group. When we conform we help others by being more predictable in our behavior. Usually the overall outcome of conformity is an increase in our self-esteem because by conforming we have been accepted, and therefore we feel better about ourselves.

In church this can become a mind numbing experience. I have seen members who take conformity to a dangerous level.

When members of the group (those who have conformed) obtain their identity from the group it becomes easy to overlook their own shortcomings. They find their self-worth from within the group, and with so much good going on with the group they will often relax their own standards and obtain a faulty self-image by live vicariously though others. The social impact theory tells us that people obtaining a faulty self-image, and making decisions they would not normally make is increased greatly with church size. The more people the more sheep-like they become. How important the group is to them only makes decision making worse, and a sense of belonging in a religious community is a strong motivator of behavior. However, there is a more insidious element to conforming to the extreme.

Group-think is probably the most dangerous trend we face as Christians, the church, and a nation. When conformity leads to a style of thinking where the maintenance of the group’s cohesion becomes the highest priority, dangerous thinking will usually result. Conformity that leads to unanimity as an overriding principle and motivation that acts as a filter through which everything the group does is passed thru can lead to disastrous outcomes. This is why we often see people from the church, and the political world, acting as if they are invincible, rationalizing what they do, believe they are correct in the face of facts to contrary, get upset when others point out their errors, and pressure others to conform to their beliefs.

Over-conformists tend to be dogmatic (past convictions to insanity); they justify irrational behaviors, see themselves as morally superior to others, and will stereotype or vilify outsiders. Most of the time over conformity stems from pluralistic ignorance. That is when people adopt the norms of others even when they run in opposition to their own beliefs. For the sake of remaining within the allotted space, remember that to be a Christian does not mean we have to check our brains at the door. We are to love God with our heart, soul, and mind.

"It is not death that a man should fear, he should fear never beginning to live."
Marcus Aurelius

 

tj 

Hope

In Romans 5 we confront an issue unlike the issues in the first 4 chapters. The topic up to this point is our sin before God. The point is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul's statement is that those who hear those words will be defensive. 

He overcomes every argument that is raised and uses the word of God in the Old Testament to make clear that there are no exceptions. Romans 5 speaks to human misery. Death has power in our lives, and because death reigns we are not just guilty, but we are miserable too. We live in anguish and fear.

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,

and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,

because all sinned-- ¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world,

but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death

reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned

in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the transgression.

For if by the transgression of the one the many died,

much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man,

Jesus Christ, abound to the many.¹⁶ The gift is not like that which came

through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from

one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand

the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification.

¹⁷ For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned

through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of

the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men,

even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification

of life to all men.¹⁹ For as through the one man's disobedience

the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of

the One the many will be made righteous. ²⁰ The Law came in so that the transgression

would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

²¹ so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through

righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 5:12-21 (NASB)

The reign of death, properly understood, in the Bible represents more than just taking your last breath. Death includes having no purpose in our daily existence, walking aimlessly, and breathing without really functioning, existing with no excitement, hope, joy, beauty or love. It is a kind of emptiness in which there is not anything to look forward to, and there is a pain that is carried everywhere. This is the death Paul is relating to us. Additionally, the Scriptures talk about the reign of death as something that produces bad behavior in us. Hebrews 2 confirms that it is because people are so afraid of death that they are a slave to the devil their entire lives. There are people every day who are imprisoned by uncontrollable, harmful, devastating behavior in which they hurt themselves and others and can't seem to stop; they make the same mistakes over and over again.

The tacit question contained in these verses is this: Is the fact of Jesus' death and resurrection good enough to remove my sin, and leave me in right standing before God, and can it heal my heartache as well? Also, Can it resolve the pain of sadness and isolation that I feel? Can it actually make me right with God?  

The answer to all of these questions is yes it can. Beginning in Romans 5:12 we can begin to understand why the answer is yes,

¹² Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world,

and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

This is not just an unwavering, reasoned argument Paul uses to prosecute the guilty. It's the loving answer of the minister who is concerned for the needs of people around him and who wants to let them know there is an answer to the problem of misery and anxiety. 

Verses 13-14 give a glimpse of hope:

¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world,

but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death

reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

So far Paul has said, "death reigned" in verse 14; it is repeated in verse 17 and again in verse 21 as well. The authority of death is the problem we face, and Paul is articulating some essential things to help us understand it.

In the opening chapters of Genesis sin enters the world when Adam rebelled against God. Genesis also reveals how man was made to have the knowledge of God, the intimacy with God, the opportunity to commune with God, and a life indwelt with God. He was placed in an abundant garden. God gave him one restriction to obey, and man rebelled against God with his eyes open, knowing exactly what he was doing. The result was that sin entered his experience, and because of that death reigned. Sin is the companion of death, and everywhere there is sin there is death. Now the particular thing that Paul is pointing out here is not only did Adam's sin affected Adam, but that because of Adam we are all equally culpable of sin. That doesn't necessarily mean that we all have knowingly sinned in our lives, but that we all sinned in Adam somehow, and from God's perspective we were present in Adam. Every one of his descendants was present with him and sinned when he sinned.

There are a few observations about the fact that we sinned in Adam that need to be made. The first observation would have to do with all the arguments that are brought into the world today through the lens of multi-culturalism, a dangerous worldview in which everybody advances their ethnicity, cause, or group, and the broad attempt to arrange people so that equal advantage is given to all groups. It seems that any attempt to do this is predictably going to result in smaller and smaller groups; as soon as some group defines itself versus the rest because it wants equality for itself, then shortly a subgroup within the prior group will define itself the same way and so on, because all of us have the same root problem of sin. The second observation would be the fact that sin pits people against each other. Adam and Eve's first two sons were born quarreling with each other, and Cain killed his brother. 

Another observation could be summed up in the cliché, "There but for the grace of God go I." There are certain people who intensely disgust you and from whom you are prone to withdraw, because their choices, associations, habits, and lifestyle occur to you as remarkably bad. What must be recognized is that they are the way they are because they are victimized by the reign of death and enslaved by the fear of death just like the rest of us. Apart from the grace of God in Christ we are all in Adam and we are who the Scriptures say we are, "Nevertheless, death reigned." Unless something happens to break the reign of death, we are no different from those who repel us.

Finally, Paul comments about the law in verses 13-14. He is trying to make clear to us that the reign of death does not take place because of any particular thing we do. Adam was given an exclusion, a rule to abide by, and he broke it by eating from the tree anyway. Paul writes that there is a long time between Adam and Moses, to whom the law was finally given on Mount Sinai so that we would have a clear direction as to what God said was absolutely right and absolutely wrong. It was not relevant that prior to Moses there was no law; death reigned anyway. It reigned not because people were doing specific acts of rebellion, but because they already had the disease when they were born. 

The law was given to help us see what we couldn't see previously. It's like looking into a mirror and noticing you have pores in your skin, only to discover when you use a magnifying mirror you discover you skin is nothing but a bunch of pores stuck together. Once we use the magnification of the law of God to examine the problem of our sin, we realize it's much worse than we ever thought it was. The law enlarges our understanding of sin. We live in a time that has more in common with the pre-law period than any other age in our nation's history. 

As each year goes by fewer people know what the Bible really says. Fewer people have any awareness that there is a personal God who is in control of our universe and He has made Himself known to us. We live like the people before Moses who didn't know God’s instruction relating to human behavior. People are absolutely ignorant; they are not intentionally disobeying God's law, but they are oblivious to the fact that God has spoken at all. And the fact remains that yet death still reigns. That is why we run into so many people with fundamentally good intentions who are making an awful mess of life. 

They want to be supportive, but in trying to help they are adding to the pain and damage. Very few people purpose to make life bad for everybody around them, but many unintentionally do just that.

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible^®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

TJ

Lessons I've Learned:

It is foolish to hope you will reach your dreams while you are hanging around people intent on pulling you down.

You can forgive incompetence. You can forgive lack of ability. But there is NO excuse for lack of discipline.

“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
Susan Cain,
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Some people think they can.
Some people think they can't.
They are probably both right.

It’s a lack of clarity that creates chaos and frustration.

Adversity presents us with numerous possibilities for success, if we are just willing to see them.

If you want to be successful in life, never let things happen to you. Go out and happen to things.

In general people are about as happy as they decide to be.

TJ