It’s been an intense week. First, the election, loaded not only nationally but locally, due to a corruption scandal. Then, ANOTHER mass shooting, also close to home given my history with country western dance bars and mental disorders. And to top it all off, the weather, after being mild and steady for months, suddenly went kerflui in a very extreme way. For days. Still is, in fact.
My motivation level is barely registering on the meter. OTOH, confusion is high, as I ponder for the umptee-millionth time where the line is between necessary downtime, and a slide into depression to which I should be responding in some remedial way. I was thinking my depression management plan isn’t effective enough, and researching things I could add. Then I was thinking I already had good tools, but wasn’t using them, so maybe adding more tools wasn’t the solution. I was thinking how I have longed to be living in the country for the past 30 years, and yet, I’m not.
In the midst of all of this, I found myself conducting “where are they now” web searches about people I used to know, which is something I do from time to time. This morning, they led me to the years-old blog of someone I had never met, who was the partner of someone with whom I was once (or rather, twice) close friends. She was having a transformational year, and as she blogged, it was transformational to me, too. Transformation isn’t something you can convey descriptively. It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it. Continue reading
I’ve never liked the concept of leadership, since leaders necessitate followers, and followers are what’s wrong with this planet. Not that we can’t all learn from one another. We not only can, we’d better. But the “one another” part of that is crucial. True role modeling is an all-way process, lubricated by the understanding that everyone has something to teach and something to learn.
I had a conversation with a stranger about this once. I don’t recall how it came up, but the example under discussion was deciding what to do in a dangerous situation. She said in a situation like that, she’d be glad of someone to tell her where to go. “Even if it’s the wrong way?” I asked. She didn’t know how to answer this. As an opinionated person, I know perfectly well that force of belief is no measure of correctitude (it is too a word), but in her mind, authoritativeness and knowledgeableness were so inextricably linked that she couldn’t conceive of one without the other. Now that’s really dangerous.
I’m working my way through the list of Clifton strengths alphabetically, a few strengths at a time. That way I can thoroughly process them before I move on to the next group (like the HSP introvert I am!).
sensitive type 