I Wrote Some Stuff... I Created Some Stuff: 2013

Behavioral Change Project

Temper

I let my temper get the best of me in particular situations.
Currently, I am working on controlling my temper through deep breathing and making more time for myself.
My desire to give in to what other people want, which is a woman who will never say anything about how hard it is to be the head of the household in all aspects, the go-to-girl, and the listener; so basically my stubbornness.
It probably started subconsciously in my 2’s.
Relaxed and calm

Right now I am not as bad as I have been. I am starting to calm down with regard to being so pissed off all the time at home. Dale is trying very hard to keep his own temper in check too, because through our many various fights I have pointed out on several occasions that most of what we're going through is a by-product of the irresponsible choices he has made over his life and more so in the last 3 years that we have been together (in the context of our relationship alone).

My Data:

Week 1 of flying off my grid

Antecedent: Dale made the comment that I am not nice to him.

Behavior: I told him that I’m sorry that it is hard to be nice to him when his only thing is to pay the house bills and pay them on time but he waits until the last minute, sometimes beyond, and willingly puts my name and credit at risk.

Thoughts: This all while texting/screaming on the phone while I’m at my job on the work floor or held up in the bathroom because he decides to start this when I’m on my half-hour lunch break.

Consequence: A Fight

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Antecedent: Dale makes the comment that I do not do anything for him.

Behavior: Listing all the things I have done for him in the over 3 years we’ve been together, then telling him I don’t think he’s a man, listing why I don’t think he is one, listing what a real one is and telling him that I know this because I have had to become one since our son has been born.

Thoughts: This again all starts on my lunch break and continues while I’m on the work floor until he goes to bed. Only this time when I went to sleep when I got home I slept on my keys so that he couldn’t take my car the next day, because we only have one car since they took his away for too many points on his vehicle's plate and his 3 pending DUI’s. He flipped and I said, “I thought I didn’t do anything for you.”

Consequence: A Fight

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Antecedent: My dog pisses on my carpet and he is 13 years old and no it is not because he is too old, it is because he is a pain in my ass. He is a well taken care of a dog who goes out all day long and who gets fed plenty but when he isn’t getting the attention he feels he deserves, because I have a kid now, he acts out.

Behavior: Screaming at him that he is an asshole and why does he have to keep doing this.

Thoughts: I don’t want to get mad but am I supposed to just let him continue to piss on my house because he wants to be a brat. This is the definition of irony, pissing on what I have worked so hard to achieve because it’s all just what, material things right? Money means nothing; it too can just be pissed away.

Consequence: Screaming at the dog and cleaning up his mess.

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Antecedent: Guy I work with confides in me that he was having an affair with his wife for the past 5 months with a girl he really fell for since his wife refuses to do her wifely duties anymore and is only a mom. To which I listen for like the first few days to all the negative women bashing and life bashing he does because his wife found out when he was at a party with the other woman so he left the party and later found out so did the other woman only with another man.

Behavior: After listening to that much bitching and whining I said, “Seriously, you got what you deserved. If you can’t stand the heat don’t go into the f**king kitchen. All women are not whores, but you’re certainly not a man! You didn’t have to cheat, but you did, so suck it up and grow up.”

Thoughts: Why me?

Consequence: Me blowing up.

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Antecedent: My friend Michelle, who has a failed marriage as well, is in love with another married man, who takes advantage of her feelings for him but has made it clear he isn’t going to leave his wife and kids for her, keeps floundering back and forth on whether she should stop talking to him or not. Months of listening to this, because she is my son’s godmother, I get snippy and frank with her too.

Behavior: “As long as you give him the time of day you’re telling him that your still there whenever he wants or needs you despite how much you cry. Knock it off and quit or shut your damn mouth and stop blubbering about it.”

Thoughts: Why me?

Consequence: Me blowing up

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Antecedent: My pap claims I have no respect for my mother at Thanksgiving and that he would be surprised if I ever gave her any.

Behavior: “Seriously!?! I do and who do you think you are?” Then he came back with “What I’m not supposed to say what I think.” “Apparently I’m not,” I said in retort. To which he came back with “No, 'cause you’re a kid.”

Thoughts: This cant be my family, nor my life.

Consequence: With that, I left my uncle's place and did not spend Thanksgiving with my mom because that was uncalled for. Then a few days later I talk to my mom and she says how my pap is mad at me and I say “I don’t care” and she tells me to consider myself not having a grandfather anymore then I said, “whatever he hasn’t been around and still isn’t so that’s not that hard to do”. To which she goes back and forth with me and eventually concludes by saying “is this the way you’re going to raise my grandson”. I said, “yes, I will make sure he is never bullied in his life like I have been in mine and that he speaks his mind”. So she said that we should just go about my life without her in it too. (Later that same day we didn’t say we were sorry cause we each are not sorry at all but I told her she had mail at my house (her legal residence, yes is my house), and she said love you and I said yeah, love you too).

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Antecedent: I walk into a house full of smoke when I get home from work

Behavior: After turning off and unplugging the toaster oven, where the smoke was billowing from, I go into the living room and yell “Really!?! You’re aiming to burn the house down now?”

Thoughts: Why me!?!

Consequence: Dale gets up with an “Oh Shit”, smokes a cigarette, tries to tell me that I’m not perfect too, then goes back to sleep while I clean up the smoke-filled house and then stare at the ceiling deep breathing like a nut cause I can't fall asleep.

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My data:

Week 2 trying to

Antecedent: Michelle goes out drinking on her lunch with a co-worker and the co-worker drinks way too much and holds herself up in the bathroom cause Michelle to not get back to work. It becomes a big huge incident and she tells me about it and says not to say anything. However I was mad about the incident because it put Michelle in a shitty situation, so I made a bad judgment call and said something to one person and it got back to Michelle that I did and she got pissed at me.

Behavior: I calmly said I was sincerely sorry and I couldn’t say anything else except that and I hope she could forgive me. (Instead of instinctually yelling at her about the fact that she should have never went, to begin with.)

Thoughts: Why do I choose friends that don’t use their common sense? She let a wasted co-worker jeopardize her job and for what, nothing, because this co-worker wasn’t even a good friend to her.

Consequence: We hugged and made up.

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Antecedent: I ask my mother to come over and watch her grandson while I finish this school work

Behavior: I call her and ask her if she’s free and she does her usual “I don’t know, I’ll have to see how things go and how I feel, I’ll pencil you in.” then we say our pleasantries and hang up.

Thoughts: I can’t win!

Consequence: A depressed/disappointed feeling as opposed to an enraged feeling.

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Antecedent: My boss improperly excesses me and my fellow co-workers to another operation while there are still clerk employees on my machine doing my mail handler job. All while his boss, who told him to do the excessing, was handling the mail himself.

Behavior: So I stopped working and stood there watching them. When I was asked what I was doing, I said, “watching you guys so I know what times to report on my grievance”.

Thoughts: If postal management would simply comply with rules and not be idiotic then I wouldn’t want to go postal.

Consequence: I was taken in the office where I properly vented and was granted union time to write up my grievance.

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11-14 and so on..

Antecedent: any other incident that may have occurred

Behavior: I quit! Instead of listening or reacting or caring, I honestly said “screw it!” to myself and put my headphones on at work and just buried my head in my pillow at home.

Thoughts: While I know it isn’t the most responsible or mature thing to do, avoidance, I decided for my own health it was best.

Consequence: I felt depressed and disappointed instead of enraged.

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Analysis of My Data:

Each of these incidents are examples of times when I have lost my temper with people who are involved in my life on a regular basis and who shower the world with negative energy to the point that after a while of listening to it I snap. My friend Ed, who is no better than the ones listed above in the negative energy area, joked with me that since I have been in my relationship with Dale my tolerance for assholes has completely ceased. He said that before I used to just let stuff roll off me and not pay it much mind but now I just rip people a new one because I can’t stand all the bitching and crying and complaining. All of the negative energy has turned me into one of them because I consciously hear myself doing the same thing and so after discussing it at length with my therapist my avenues of change are too deep breath as much as I can even if I feel ridiculous and to take time out of my day to enjoy something, like my Starbucks.

My data definitely does show that I have a temper issue. Although it also shows that I have a less than desirable support system, which makes me want to cry, but I don’t, I exhale and move on. It also shows that I can get results from just breathing instead of blowing up, of course, I knew that already, I just blew up the case a person can only listen to so much crap before “going postal” occurs. It’s a good thing I can joke about all this in my retellings to people, at least then I can make people laugh with the series of unfortunate events that are my life.

What is Causing My Behavior: In Short Form...

When I was 7 my gram died and my mother watched her mother/best friend die before her eyes over a long battle with cancer and I watched my mother die inside. All the while my father started drinking heavily and beating on my mom and so we left only for my mom to get hooked up with another guy real quick cause my mom can’t be alone. We moved to a new school district, my dad was a drunken alcoholic drug addict and I had to go with it all. I got mixed up with the wrong kids who turned into my bullies, then my mom got onto the internet and met different guys and everyone was cheating on everyone and I was still going to school. The story continues but it’s a moot point, the idea has been established.

I haven’t had a support system, I don’t know what one is like, and due to my stubborn independent nature from taking care of myself for so long, I probably would run away from support if it was offered because again I wouldn’t know how to react. I at least know all of this through extensive self-reflection and analysis. (Which is more than I can say for most people.) I accept who I am and that because I have been running down the Rd. less traveled for most of my life I accept that the choices I make are no one's fault but my own now because along the way I could have done something different but I didn’t.

So what causes me to have a bad temper is my inability to deal with everyone else’s crap anymore because that is all I deal with and it is so exhausting, because it is all negative crap instead of happy crap. Who has happy crap anymore? My life is a sitcom that hasn’t been produced yet and that is why I act the way I do.

A healthy dose of blunt with an animated sarcastic punch is what I am now.

My behavioral implemented change is immersing myself in my sons love, try really hard to deep breath as much as possible, tune out what I can by walking away, reading when I get a split second, going to therapy every Monday, keeping my bucket list in front of me, dancing to my iPod if I can, and drinking my chai tea when I can afford it. While I know it is ultimately up to me to do what I need to in my life to make it all that it can be, I honestly can only do so much, and I do really think that I am. However, the other people in my life are not all people I can just throw out and ignore (no matter who much my mother's side of the family has perfected that technique and/or spread out throughout the country like my father's side has done in hopes that a yearly reunion will cover the “there for you” aspect) they are people that are vital parts of my life because I just can't pursue alone right now. (I’m strong but not that strong and I’m simply not ready for alone yet.) So it is my choice to keep them a vital part.

(I know this is long, but I am a wordy person. I’m sorry. Also, I know this is not in the format of the example you posted, but this is how I keep a diary. Temper is the only thing I can think that I want to change and am currently working on, and to me, it doesn’t fit into a grid format or with charts. So at the risk of a docked grade, I see no data that I could chart for you. I’m honest and I try and that’s all I can do right now, and I am ok with that.)

The Whole "Unlimited Power" Book Personal Question Analysis

Chapter 4: The Birth of Excellence: Belief
Assignment: Go through each of the five origins of beliefs. Give an example of where each of these origins has let to a personal belief.

1. Environment- I am a product of a middle-class upbringing and that has shaped me into being a middle-class adult. I was raised with a sense of pride in myself and the work that I do no matter what it is. I was raised to believe that hard work pays off. I was raised to believe that you can in fact run away from your problems but if you should return they will be waiting for you. Also that no matter where you go if you don’t have a good sense of self you’ll create the same problems wherever you are. I am not racist, I believe in equality, so if I don’t like someone it’s based on their personality. I was raised to know that money is the root of all evil and that it is the structure on which our society is based so I could decide what that meant for me. I was raised, independent. I was raised around fighting, so I am a fighter to the bitter end.

2. Events- My Grams death has instilled/imprinted on my every fiber of being that one person has the ability to impact a whole ocean of people. Since I was 7 years old I have watched the slow and painful destruction of an entire family as if the glue that bonded it evaporated and disappeared. So it is absolutely true that one person does make a difference and one person can change anything and everything.

3. Knowledge- I was raised on sitcoms, the school mandated reading, and a vast diversity of music. These have instilled in me a wide range of perspectives for the world around me and have helped me gain a powerful ability to cope through sarcastic witticisms and humor, for it is better to laugh than to drown in hopelessness. These have taught me about the diversity in the world around me so that I do not walk blindly through my life but knowing that all people are equal yet we are all uniquely different in thought and soul. These have given me insight into the power of the well thought out plan, the power of organization, power of timing, and the power of the spoken word even though much can be conveyed without saying or doing anything at all.

4. Past Results- I have made numerous amounts of mistakes in my life and I have learned to reflect, but try not to dwell, in an effort to never repeat the same mistake twice. Despite the fact that I keep making school of hard knocks choices instead of switching up my style of mistakes.

5. Creating in your mind the experience you desire in the future as if it were now by creating the world you want and stepping into it- I have dreams and visions all the time and some make huge imprints on my self. Those ones that do are essentially my desires and they do come to fruition. Such as when I bought my house, had my son, and re-enrolled back in school (again).

Chapter 5: The Seven Lies of Success
Assignment: Go through the seven "lies" and give examples of how you use them in your life.

1. Everything Happens for a Reason- On a very short-sighted materialistic level, when I am shopping and I see something that I like I buy it (that is, if I can afford to). I do not think whether I can use it right now or not I just buy it because I know that at some point I will find a use for it or a place for it. Days, weeks, months, even years later a situation may arise and I will remember oh yeah, I don’t need to buy anything for this purpose I already have it. Why, because everything happens for a reason in its own good time. In life, I have been able to transfer that simple piece of knowledge to comfort me in knowing that when I meet someone and I get a good feeling about them I may not have a clue why they are supposed to be in my life but at some point, they will be essential to my life. (Those who I do not get a good feeling about I avoid like a plague and again for what I eventually find out, 99% of the time, was for good reason.) Other examples would be that when I buy a car, I have found out, it's so my dad can have a car to drive later on down the road when I upgrade and when I bought my house, it was so that when my mom and stepdad split she had a residence and so my ex had a safe place to recover after he got out of rehab, and currently a safe/stable home for my current boyfriend and my son to call home. What I do is for a reason that will always come to light.

2. There is No Such Thing as Failure- To fail is to not get up in the morning. I get up every morning, therefore I do not fail.

3. Whatever Happens, Take Responsibility- I choose to be friends with and date the underdog, therefore my life has been a struggle of catastrophe to triumph. I didn’t feel challenged enough at school, and let bullies push me around so I hid in the corner behind my 6 ft tall boyfriend at the time till school was over and therefore graduated with a 2.3 GPA. I let people chime in my ear about what I should do with my life therefore I changed my major twice and I work for the United States Post Office. I let my boyfriends tell me when I should start my family life so instead of starting it when I wanted, I started it when I got fed up. All of these are NO ONE's FAULT BUT MY OWN for allowing other people to direct me, while I sat around lazy complaining and bitching about how much I don’t like my life. Now I get fed up and jump without regard to whether there is a net under me because I’m tired of doing what other people want me to do. This I take responsibility for to, I take responsibility for waking up just like it would be my fault if I choose not to.

4. It’s Not Necessary to Understand Everything to be Able to Use Everything- I know a little of everything so that I can sound like I know a lot. I watched the movie Born Yesterday with Melanie Griffith, a great movie, explains this point perfectly.

5. People are the Greatest Resource- Everyone has a specialty, a knack for something, a refined skill, and it is important to utilize people for what they are good at. When I need something done, even on a simple day to day scale, I ask who I know will tell me how I can get the job done right. If I need help about my plants I call my dad, if I need something cooked I call my boyfriend, if I need to know something about baking I call my mom, if I need to know about my car I call my friend Ed, if I need medical advice I call my friend Michelle, and so on...

6. Work is Play- I don’t know this one all that well except to say that anything I have ever done artistically, academically or helpfully (helping a friend through a hard time) were things I did because I loved doing them and time didn’t exist when I did them and it was great.

7. There is No Abiding Success Without Commitment- I will never get to where I want to be unless I am committed to getting there!

Chapter 6 & 7: Mastering Your Mind: How to Run Your Brain & The Syntax of Success
Assignment: What is your primary modality when you are happy? What is your primary modality when you are stressed?

This is not an attempt to dodge the question or be over/mello dramatic it’s the honest to god truth, I am not sure I have really ever been happy to where I could give a primary modality. I can say that my son makes me happy and I have smiled and laughed many times in my life but smiling and laughing aren’t the absolute definition of happiness. When it comes to my son there isn’t one specific visual/auditory/kinesthetic thing that flips that happy switch on for me because no matter what he does, even when he’s bad, I’m happy inside and out that I have this wonderful little man in my life. Everything else is just superficial.

In terms of stress, I suffer from anxiety/tension disorder that essentially keeps me on edge all the time. I am always stressed and even when I’m deep breathing my muscles are tense and I’m waiting for the “knife to go thru my back”. While I understand that Mr. Robbins believes this is all in my head and to a large extent I agree, I’m not sure how to turn it off and I have tried just telling myself and it doesn’t work that way. (P.s. Of all the chapters in this book chap 7 didn’t make much sense to me, so hopefully I at least partially answered this question.)

Assignment: Try the Swish technique. Report on the effect of it on you.

This is a simple mind switching technique and while I grasp the concept, to me this is ridiculous. It is absolutely silly to me that there are people out there (and I know there are) that need this and it works for them.

I simply tell myself to do whatever needs to be done and I can do it. I don’t need to re-represent something in an effort to reprogram my thinking, I just need to tell myself it needs to be done and while it may take a minute to get done cause I get sidetracked and distracted, whatever it is eventually gets done whether I like doing it or not.

Chapter 8: How to Elicit Someone's Strategy

Assignment: Determine the primary modality of a person you know. Justify your belief.

For convenience, I choose to figure out my boyfriend’s primary modality and it’s kinesthetic.

I can make my points and stress my thoughts to him best through him feeling what I mean. Plain words or visual stimuli do not click with him, he has to feel what I am feeling in order to understand it. Also when he is displaying what he thinks, he chooses to display it through his feelings, he gets very emotional and he is very hands-on with everything he can be.

Chapter 11: Limitation Disengage: What Do You Want?

Assignment: Pick a goal you have and state it in terms of the five principles of goal setting.

Goal: To eventually be an artist/art therapist living very close to a beach.

1. My outcome will be to be walking on the beach with my kids and my husband while we walk our family dog, all happy to be together. All of this following a day full of artistic ventures and school-related activities and helpful endeavors for our community, like helping at the local library or counseling parents and children to communicate better with each other. This will be accompanied by a feeling of financial stability and security that the people I have in my life are there and not running away.

2. This outcome looks like something out of a movie with sand between our toes and warm salty ocean air blowing through our hair. With clothes on that came from old navy and are clothes that we wear not cherish or iron. It is the picture of my kids running along with the dog throwing Frisbees and balls and the dog chasing them and bringing them back and maybe a random beach find. It is a picture of my husband and me walking arm in arm reveling in the moment that is then and the happiness that we are the proud parents and best friends to our kids. The sky is painted with an array of colors and the clouds are puffy and white. The air tastes like salt mixed with cold cut sandwich meats and cheeses from dinner on the deck. It sounds like a choir of seagulls going crazy for food and children screaming with happiness at how much fun they’re having and tiny whispers of love and talk of what life has brought and will bring.

3. I will look like an aged woman but with smile lines instead of wrinkles and I will look like a woman who is a mom and not teenager or twenty-some kid chasing down the dawn. I will look like a happy woman who is in love with her life, her job, her family, and who has told those who don’t matter to go away and cherished those who are important. I will look like a woman who makes time to do yoga, the charter school my kids, work from home and a community office, cook dinner, walk on the beach, watch a sitcom or 2, and read before falling asleep in a bed that’s warm.

4. I need to start taking care of my body better before I can start making great strives and headway on my goals. Currently, I suffer from too little of the right sleep and too little of the right food and too little of the right kind of time needed to attain anything. Once I can figure out a good schedule I’ll be on my way, currently, I’m still in the trial and error phase of it.

5. While I am aware that anything and everything can always go wrong, as long as I stay focused that the beach will be a great place for me and my family, eventually we will get there. I just need to not project so much, know my goal, and take each day a day at a time. It’s pointless to live in the future not here yet and miss the present that is right here now and therefore miss the goal I want so bad because I didn’t really see it when it came.

Chapter 12: The Power of Precision
Assignment: With the goal that you set up in the last chapter, think of asking a specific person to help you. Go through the five principles of asking with that person in mind and write what you discovered.

While I understand what this chapter is saying, I do not believe that I can really ask anyone specifically to “get me to the beach”. Not in an effort to dodge the question but I do not have a very great support system in my life at all. They love me and they go along with what I want but mostly because they have no means to stop me and they need to reap whatever I may sow as opposed to support me. Meaning I cannot just ask my family or friends for a loan or to watch my son while I go chase my dreams or even babysit while I go do what I need to do without hops and flames of irritating proportions first. That gets old. So I do not ask for anything ever unless I absolutely need it and I always brace myself that I will get a resounding “sorry, but I can’t help”. So I do what I need to and can when I can and how I can.

However, in relation to this chapter, I did ask someone to help pay for the rest of my tuition for my bachelor's degree. I asked my stepfather, who is the only person that I know that loves me and could afford to long term loan me the money to finish and he already knew how important school has been to me and my struggles with it so I did ask specifically, and I did ask the only person who was in any position to even maybe help me. I didn’t need to create value to it or be focused beyond just asking “would you be so kind as to pay for the rest of my tuition since I have run out of aid”, and I didn’t need to continue to ask he gave me an answer right then. He said yes because he knew how much getting a degree meant to me, how much I have gone through so far in relation to school, that my parents weren’t willing to help, and he was my only option. He does believe in me, and he loves me like I was his own daughter now and he wants to see me accomplish this and be done with it (and personally I think he does feel a little guilty that he didn’t help me 13 years ago). Grad school is on me to figure out.

Chapter 13: The Magic of Rapport
Assignment: Observe two people interacting for a couple of minutes. How did they match and mirror each other? Do you think they felt close or distant?

Dale and I mirror each other in our attitudes and demeanor so much it’s unnerving. As we do not bring out the best in each other and we consequently become distant from each other frequently in the heat of the moment and then close as we each reflect on the fact that we would have each reacted in the exact same way had we been in each other's shoes.

Frequently I have stood looking at him and I and I know what I’m seeing and it’s surreal.

As for watching, say, other people, I work with, I haven’t really noticed a lot of matching or mirroring on an individual level only on a group level of when one person gets pissed at a managers decision others will follow suit and work slower or get irritated but where I work isn’t a lot of individual interactions its warehouse of mass mail moving groups trying to get through a lot of mail in a continual 24 hr clock of 8-12 hr shifts.

Otherwise, I don’t go out much, like to people watch at the mall. I go to work and come home. I’m in a one-car family and I work nights and he works days.

Chapter 14: Distinctions of Excellence: Metaprograms
Assignment: For each of the metaprograms, choose which one you are and explain why you chose that one. Toward vs. Away, External vs. Internal, Sorting by Self vs. Sorting by Others, Matcher vs. Mismatcher, Possibility vs. Necessity, Independent vs. Proximity vs. Cooperative working style.

1. Toward vs. Away- It depends upon the situation. It doesn’t seem fair to just classify myself as one or the other all the time. While it doesn’t always appear that I am moving toward anything because of my stellar ability to procrastinate like a champ, I am in fact always striving for my aspirations. I just have to take things a day at a time and do what I can, when I can, however I can. This can make it appear that I might be moving away instead because I don’t live off peanut butter and jelly and pound that pavement every waking minute I’m not working and forsaking sleep for financial gain (I’m not Mark Cuban). On the other hand, I do move away from things that I do fear, though I can honestly admit that with age I fearless. I used to move away from anything the jeopardized my job with the USPS, now I do not fear that because that is not what defines me. I used to fear being with someone who would essentially take me under but since being with Dale I do not fear that anymore because I know I will resurface. You can only fight with someone so much before you realize they have nothing to say and a new day will follow and life will go on. I do still have a healthy fear of weirdo’s and I do still move as far away from them as possible and I do fear losing my child to the dark underbelly of drugs so I read to him regularly. (Dead serious!)

2. External vs. Internal- Internal because it does not matter to me in the least what someone thinks about me or my life anymore. While I do appreciate someone complimenting me on stuff, I have heard it so little that I have learned to compliment myself. While I have always heard compliments on how I look, which is so trivial, and about the fact that I’m smart, I get more remarks about my crass nature, living situations, and life choices that I have developed a thick skin. So when someone, like the teachers, bosses, and family members of mine speak about their opinions on me and what’s mine I look inside and revalidate all my choices. (If I was external I would have drowned myself in a tub with a toaster by now, so Lifetime Original Movie, therefore I revalidate. I’m my own best cheerleader and worst enemy, go figure)

3. Sorting by Self vs. Sorting by Others- By self, because if I sorted by others I’d become overwhelmed. I prefer to help those who pose as a project to me therefore a way of rewarding myself when they are doing well in life. So I guess I don’t do anything for anyone that I don’t see a reward for. (Yes I am delusional; I’m working on this in therapy)

4. Matcher vs. Mismatcher- Matcher, because if I could afford to be an Obsessive Compulsive neat freak I would. Unfortunately, I let messy projects (human and inanimate) get the best of me but in my head its all neatly organized and subcategorized. Also when I look for a project they all fall along the same lines, I don’t like the unfamiliar because it takes me too long to become comfortably familiar even though I can decode the situation almost instantly. To further illustrate, most everyone in my life is of the same backgrounds which are like my background, and they look fairly similar in as many ways as I can feel comfortable with. The things in my house all flow along the same lines. My likes and dislikes all mirror each other. I like conformity as long as it’s not to be a meek unvocal individual and the people/things in my life are a reflection of that.

5. Possibility vs. Necessity- Well, I can see the possibility of a necessity. I went to work for the post office, 1. because my dad told me to, and 2. because I saw the possibility of making good money and where that could take me in life with the direction being away from the post office. Generally speaking though, I do things mostly out of necessity and with the hopes for the possibility to emerge that it will allow me to sally forge my way to greater things.

6. Independent vs. Proximity vs. Cooperative Working Styles- Proximity when I’m at work and independent in life. I get more accomplished when I don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking or feeling or complaining about. If I know what other people want or in general what needs to be done then just let me do my thing and it will get done. Though at the post office, I like having people around because the job is so mundane and repetitive, having people around lets me know that another day has passed and that Groundhog Day isn’t occurring. Also when going up against idiots, strength in numbers does help. Otherwise, no one would get there package, like ever.

Chapter 18: Value Hierarchies: The Ultimate Judgment of Success
Assignment: What are your values and how are you living your life congruently with your values?

Belonging
Common Sense
Creativity
Respectful
Intelligence
Project Oriented
Attractiveness
Patience’s l DOMESTICATION l
Loyalty
Cleanliness l WORK l
Open-Mindedness
Hard Working l SCHOOL l
Humor
Adventurous
Organization
Drive
Compassion
Assertiveness
Animatedness
Classical
Motherhood

To illustrate: (Not in corresponding order):

Belonging I am in a relationship with a man who will not leave me, literally, no matter what we fight about, ever.
Creativity, I have a blog with all my art and writing on it that I do whenever I can.
Intelligence, I’m in school and have been there on and off for 13 years and I plan on going to grad school.
Attractiveness, Dales hot, I’m hot, and our kids cute as can be.
Loyalty, I have a small estate (very small) people mooch off me and I don’t have to leave them homeless
Open-Mindedness, I say whatever I think when I think it.
Humor, I keep practicing my skit for Saturday Night Live in my head for my future YouTube audition.
Organization, when I have the money I buy Tupperware to separate my life into compartments (no joke)
Compassion, I have human projects, including myself
Animatedness, you would be cracking up if I was reading this to you aloud and when I read to my son I do all the goofy voices and we get goofy all the time. (It keeps me sane), also I dance at work like I’m on soul train when I have my headphones on.
Common Sense, they need to have a class for this, I’d pass, and most people wouldn’t.
Respectful, I only adhere to this if someone shows me respect; most don’t so in good conscious I can’t respect the disrespectful.
Project Oriented, I have about 18 going on at one time. 1/18 may get done, depends on how much time life allows me to work on any given one.
Patience’s, 1/18 is a good ratio to me.
Cleanliness, I live in messy disarray, not filth.
Hard-working, well it took hard work to get where I am, despite that it was along the Hard Knocks Road.
Adventurous, Hard Knocks Rd can be a wild Rd.
Drive, This is how I will get to the beach someday. (<- no joke) (joke->) Cause its how I’ve gotten there before (I hope you don’t dock my grade, I’m only making light of the impossibility it is for me to answer things simply, so this is turning into a long assignment, I apologize.)
Assertiveness, I don’t like people who can’t say what they mean to say, and I tend to steer clear of them and I myself always am blunt and to the point so there is little confusion as to what I’m saying, thinking, wanting, needing and/or feeling.
Classical, I like Turner Classic Movies.
Motherhood, domestication, work, and school are my core. I do these without thought daily. I take care of my son's needs and wants, I do my daily household chores and run it as head of it, I go to my job, and I do my school work to the best of my ability always!

Content: A Hunger Project Interpretation

My life, as I have said, has been one that has traveled down the Hard Knocks Rd. and I choose that rd. I choose that rd. a long time ago and I did so knowing full well, even at a young age just what that meant. I have seen and understood death from age 7 and I have been ok with it ever since I met it. It comes, to everything, animated and inanimate so there is no reason to fear it; it is the only true inevitability. Life is not inevitability, it is a choice that most don’t make, or cherish, or even realize what it is to live. I have seen the destruction of selves that weren’t even selves because they put the stalk in people/things other than themselves and I learned then that my self is too important to let someone else have. I have seen exactly what an ego is and just what it can do to anyone and it is as close to the definition of a devil as a definition can get; so I sought to meet mine and sit it in a chair at my meeting circle in my mind. I like to keep close tabs on my ego, give that girl an inch and she’ll run forever. I have seen people believe heavily in scarce love and time, and in the inevitability of all things, and filling up on no solutions like they were a pair of shoes that would get worn out and go out of style within a week. I am surrounded by a “pea soup” of negativity and I’m patiently waiting for my idea’s time to come marching around. The idea that I am god, and we all are god, and we all don’t need to look any further then the mirror to answer any problem, others will never know us like we can know ourselves if we take the time to introduce ourselves to our selves.

Before I even read the paragraph in Werner Erhard's document about the Hunger Project, I said “I am a body of context that is full of content”. Some of my content conflicts with some of my other content, they go to wars with each other at times but the essence stays the same. I am as much god as god is god.

So to evaluate my life based on his document that he created to drum up notification of his ego, the Hunger Project, (I have an ego too, she’s my blog, so I know an ego when I see it/read it) is actually interesting in a superficial way but insulting in a, really!?! But I’ve done that already in my own content.

While it may be hard to believe, people I talk to have a hard time wrapping their brains around my philosophies, I already knew that nothing is scarce it's only not practiced or utilized correctly due to conditioning done by societal impositions. Long, long ago fears generated by the unknown created religions, economics, and politics and with those 3 came the unconnected way of life we live today that allows the few smart people out there to laugh at the Pixar movie Wall-E.

In relation to me personally, I give love to whomever for whatever reason I feel it/they deserve to be given it because it is not scarce just like dislike is not scarce for things/people that I don’t feel fit into my nice little world. My “heart” does not stop feeling because I’m afraid I’ll run out of love if I give it all to one person; there’s always plenty. As well as with my time, I do not honestly think I don’t have enough time, yes it will suck if I drop dead tonight, but I only can blame my own mismanagement of it if I don’t make a “deadline”. This is one of the reasons I have patience and am ok with the fact that when I achieve my goals then I have achieved them. When my ideas, dreams, aspirations, come to fruition then it is their time. At that time then, like the author says “whatever I do will work and I will do what works”.

I am also extremely conscious of the fact that there is no such thing as inevitability only choices we make and the choices others make to our choices. Again societal conditioning has given birth to the perceived notion of inevitability because we see one person react a certain way to a particular situation and we assume (always making an ass out of ourselves) that is the way we should all react and if someone should step outside of the proverbial box we condemn them to hell. As if such a place really exists like it’s a place in South Jersey. In my life when I try something new or something at all I do not think “oh this will inevitably happen” if it does great, cause things do happen for a reason, but just because I could do something at one point in time doesn’t mean someone else will be able to for whatever reason.

My “pea soup” is that of my friends, family, and co-workers and it is a “pea soup” because much like a Hollywood C listers, everyone needs to know my business, talk about my business, have an idea about my business, and suggest ways to change my business as if they need to be in my business. I wouldn’t mind so much if they knew what it was that they were making their business but much like the game ‘telephone’ nothing ever comes back the same way it went out. So they again tend to make assumptions that lend to wasted air. This is why I have thick skin.

In terms of the context I see myself generating for myself in the next 5 years, which is yet to be determined exactly. I have my goals in mind and I am taking steps to achieve my goals financially and scholastically. In the next 5 years, I would like my context to become full of more uplifting content. I would like to generate more uplifting content by putting myself and my family in a more peaceful environment. While I know I am talking about my family and friends when I say this, I would love to cut out the dead weight so that I can move forward with a little less baggage in my content and more ease to move around in my own skin/context. I am absolutely aware of the fact that I have consciously made the choice to have these people in my life and I do not regret those choices, even with my parents cause I could have said screw you both, I’m taking care of me, but they are my parents and while they weigh on me like I have more children I love them because they are who they are. I cannot change any of my “projects” I can only hope to help them better their thinking so that they will be able to not need me and I will be able to say ok.

"Blink" Book Review

I would give the book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell a four-star rating. This is a book about how powerful first impressions are. That within seconds of meeting someone or just overhearing someone’s conversation we are able to perform “thin-slicing”, a term that encompasses being able to make instant unconscious rapid assessments of people and situations based on information surrounding the situation to the extent of your own knowledge. Within 254 pages we are taken through many wonderful snippet stories of people's lives all illustrating perfectly just how we are able to “thin slice” people and situations. Also how sometimes we become “mind blind”, which is when we become temporarily autistic and can not match up the situation or personal protocol and lose the ability to read someone’s mind as to what they are thinking so we know how to respond and/or react. “Mindblindness” creates countless needless reactions that can cause anything from an argument to a tragic death due to someone’s heightened adrenaline and loss of ability to do the right thing; such things as stereotypes or misinterpreted information cloud otherwise intelligent judgment causing mistakes of varying degrees.

In section one entitled The Theory of Thin Slices: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way, we are introduced to John Gottman who wrote The Mathematics of Divorce and the creator of “thin-slicing” in an effort to be able to just hear the smallest amount of information and be able to tell whether the marriage will last or not. Further explaining how we all can hear or see the smallest amount of information and make a judgment call about what is going on.
In section two entitled The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Judgments, we learn about how we tap into the locked door of our unconscious when we make snap decisions about people and situations that are snap judgments about how we proceed, respond and react.
In section three entitled The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall for Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men we learn just how wrong we can be when we make snap judgments at times, especially when we allow stereotypes, prejudices, and emotions get involved. When those issues become involved we can become clouded with visions of grandeur and falsely allow ourselves to be taken advantage of or deceived and/or make mistakes regarding innocent people.
In section four entitled Paul Van Riper’s Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaneity we are introduced to the concept that we should never bow down to what may be ‘better’ when tried and true can win just the same if not ‘better’. That sometimes the best decisions can be made in the blink of an eye because overthinking and over-analysis doesn’t always win the war, because while some are thinking others are doing.
In section five entitled Kenna’s Dilemma: The Right- and Wrong Way to Ask People What They Want we are faced with the realization that it’s not always easy to know what people want. It’s not always cut and dry, black and white, and as simple as sampling the population with blind tests or snippets of sound clips because most times people don’t even know what they really want until they just say what they really want in that blink moment.
In the last section six entitled Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind Reading, we are presented with the idea that we all can mind read each other, with the exception of those with autism and mental disabilities who can not associate with emotions. Otherwise, we all have the capabilities to mind read each other and know what the other is thinking, feeling, and how they’re going to react simply by paying attention to our surroundings and them. We all wear our emotions and thoughts written on our faces, it’s just a matter of finding those people willing to take that extra millisecond to pay attention, which makes all the difference in the world.

I enjoyed this book so much because it was extremely well written. It didn’t drag on about the same thing and it used descriptive stories to illustrate its points well so that I understood and could follow along with its message easily; a message that I completely agree with. I definitely see myself “thin-slicing” now when I enter into a new situation and can recognize when I have become “mind blind” in the past when I’ve gotten irate in arguments with my boyfriend. So I also realize in retrospect that with practice in certain situations I have become better able to read people, especially the people closest to me, and know what they are thinking and how they are going to react so that I may be able to change my approach or know what to expect out of their reaction. Which not having deeply thought about it before, I just did it cause it naturally evolved that way but now having it brought to my attention I do see what I was/am doing, and it's weird that it is an unconscious mind reading. For example, if I am arguing with my boyfriend I know exactly what each of his facial expressions mean now and each different tonality in his voice, I know what he is thinking behind those expressions and know how to react to each perceived thought he has; he is very predictable. I have essentially “thin-sliced” him to the point that I know what is going on within milliseconds and am able to direct my own reactions in certain ways to end the fight more quickly and less painfully.

"The Power of Now" Book Review

I would give the book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle a three-star rating. Much like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, I do not agree with the book's presentation. This book is about spiritual enlightenment that can be gained through simply living in the present moment, the “now”, as opposed to the past or future. It explains very well how people, in general, tend to constantly live in the past or the future not paying clear due attention to the present moment, not seeing the beauty that is present in front of us because our minds are elsewhere in thought. It explains perfectly just how much we are living in a fog were calling life, where because our senses are not clear we are missing true life, and that experiencing life through clarity of senses is the key to enlightenment.

To explain all of this Eckhart Tolle presents seemingly frequently asked questions he apparently collected and then answers for the general reader in as best way as he can, though he states many times that the reader's mind cannot understand his explanations of the present unless it experiences the present. For most people I am thinking that this was probably a very logical and effective presentation of this type of information, however for me personally it made the book extremely redundant and (for lack of a better term) elementary. For 229 pages Eckhart Tolle goes on and on rewording the same concept ‘be in the present’. He does so in 10 chapters entitled: You are you’re your mind, Consciousness – A way out of pain, Moving deeply into the now, Mind strategies for avoiding the now (these are the strategies your mind will do to keep you out of the now, he does not suggest you to not be in the now), The state of presence. The inner body, Portals into the un-manifested, Enlightened relationships, Beyond happiness and unhappiness there is peace, and The meaning of surrender where the author ends on the essential point: How will you know when you have surrendered; when you do not need to ask that question; which happens only when you become fully present in the now. There is simply not much else to this point, but he repeats it so much to drill it home in every way possible to those who will have so much trouble grasping the concept.

People, in general, have the hardest time being able to ‘let go’ or ‘live in the moment’ because the mind is so against giving up its ego. We use the past and future to feed our egos a relive, daydream, and project instead of simply living and our minds thus never shut up, off, or down they just keep dwelling on what can't be changed and what may or may not ever happen all in this package of time that we never feel there is enough of because we are bound to its constraints that people, in general, put on themselves. Time is irrelevant to the natural order of life and yet people bind themselves to it and are therefore are a slave to it and to what end, none, essentially dying without having experienced anything. Personally, I think the book could have been 226 pages of blank with 3 pages of boldface type explaining the point, and 3 pages is stretching it. It just doesn’t need much paper to explain that to experience life, live in the present day now. When you are in the present day now assess how you feel, anything hurt, anything wrong, if so fix it, if not then you have no problems move onto the next moment. In each moment use every sense and feel the world around you and the life around you. Thinking about something old or something not happening, stop, focus, use your senses and breathe. That’s it!

All of which I personally agree with. While I am aware that I too am a slave to my brain and the constraints of time more times than I like, and I am constantly feeling the incessant need to exercise my knowledge and brainpower, I can honestly say that I do live in the moment more than most people. I never really had terms for it but I never thought that it was weird to stop and smell the roses, and actually, until I read this book I thought that I didn’t do it enough in comparison to the rest of the world and here I do it more than most. I was always under the silly impression that people could shut off their brains unlike me, so from a young age I tried slowing my thoughts down and shutting them off cause I thought I was nuts for always thinking something. Now I know that I wasn’t alone, but that it was good that I thought that way because it has instilled in me, without even being taught, how to stop and enjoy life and see things in HD and hear things with surround sound and feel things with every fiber of my being and experience the vibrancy that is all around. I knew I was doing well too when about 8 years ago I started to dream in vivid HD quality. It was amazing. I started experiencing my senses in my dreams like I never had before and my dreams became a clear reflection of my days. What I was truly taking in, in all its texture and life, I was then seeing even after I shut my eyes.

"The Secret" Book Review

I would give the book, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne a three-star rating. This book aims to reveal the secret to life in a small coffee table book form. It addresses the basic points to life: money, relationships, health, the world, your self, and life in general. This book explains how we can achieve/gain the secret to life in each of these areas by basically positive thinking. If we think that it should be ours then it will be ours. If we think we are worthy of love, we shall receive love; if we think about money positively and the inflow of money, then the money will flow in instead of out. Ms. Byrne states, with the use of quotes provided for her book by an array of contributors, that it is essentially about the energy you give out in life. Positive energy will bring positive reactions, situations, outcomes, and people; while negative energy breeds negative thoughts that breed negative outcomes in life. That these come from the “laws of attraction”, basically stating that what you give to the world in terms of energy is what you will receive back. People attract the kind of energy that they exude. It is all about what we think in our minds if we think happy thoughts and treat people well and give our time and money without regard then we will reap the rewards of a fulfilled happy life, as smiles are contagious. However, the opposite is just as true with anger breeding anger. People cannot walk around feeling and acting like an Eeyore and expect to get all the breaks in the world, negative energy attracts negative energy which is why misery loves company, or so it thinks it does. The book says that if we simply ask for what we truly want and believe that we deserve to get it then we will receive it in its best form.

While I would like to say this book is a load of horse crap I actually cannot say the whole thing is. I am a firm believer in what it is essentially saying. In no way do I think that when I personally come off abrasive and blunt that I am not going to get those reactions back, I know this, and I except this because to me it is me being true to myself. I do not for one minute think that when I constantly bitch about how bad my job sucks that one day it will miraculously change and be the dream job. It will not, nor do I want it to be, if I were to exude an energy that I loved my job, despite its great pay, then I wouldn’t strive so hard to leave it. While it takes horrible amounts of negative energy (that is more taxing on me than happy energy) to hate my job, if I let myself love it I will not leave it and therefore I will be settling for something that I feel very strongly is not a place that allows me to grow as a person. When it comes to my relationships, I am not blind to the fact that I am in love with projects, men and women/ friends and lovers, and by bitching about them I keep myself at a safe distance from them so that I help them with what I can but don’t get too attached to them because if I should succeed then they will be a bird and fly away. I shield my heart from hurt. I know this about myself and I know exactly what energy to exude in what situation to breed the results I want. I know what it means to look someone in the eye when I talk to them and what it means when they don’t look me in the eye back and it takes every piece of who I am to give everything I can of myself to help a person understand what makes their life so unhappy. For this is get tired, for this I get few places fast, for this I learned patients, for this is what it is to feel alive. For most people energy makes no sense because ignorance is bliss but for some, like myself, conscious awareness is so exhausting that everything takes a lot longer to achieve but the pain assures life and the rewards are much greater, however, the price is sheltered self-induced loneliness. We give to get.

My three-star rating, however, comes from the presentation of the book. It is ridiculously cliché. Though I understand for the audience she is trying to reach many will respond well to her choice, as apparently they have since it was funded into a movie. Personally, it just doesn’t appeal to me and makes reading something like it seem like a joke. Along with the fact that what she is saying is no “secret” but again that’s a societal misconception. The truth is always the secret and the lie is always perceived true. The secret, to me, is that way too many people have way to much free time they think isn’t free time to turn dirty laundry into gold and throw out common sense.

Chapter 5 Self Summary

In chapter 5, the self, how we understand our “self” concept is discussed. We develop self-recognition around 18-24 months of age and when we become an adult it expands into our 4 components of the “self”, those being:

self-knowledge (beliefs, formulation, and organization about who we think we are),
self-control (our plans and how we execute them),
impression management (presentation of our self),
self-esteem (how we feel about our self).

Each of these four items is then broken down further to elaborate on how they each work. Such as:

self-knowledge is a composition of cultural differences (independent western views vs. interdependent eastern views)
gender differences (men, group memberships, vs. women, rationale close relationships, in interdependency)
introspection (rationalizing our actions and decisions based on the reasoning that may or may not be accurate)
self behavior observation (consisting of...

self-perception theory, when we don’t understand how we feel and we have to rely on our actions to fill in the ambiguity
over-justification effect, where extrinsic reasons rely on more than intrinsic reasons and
2-factor theory of emotion, arousal provoked then explanation for it is sought after), understanding our mindset abilities (fixed, leaving no room for growth in failure and growth, where we will fail but press on in determination),
social comparison theory (where we learn about ourselves through the eyes of other people and their thoughts about us).

Self-control is elaborated on through the explanation of expenditure of energy and how if we expend too much on one self-control we may lack enough energy to expend for another control we may be attempting at the same time. Impression management suggests that we are actors and actresses in the performances of our lives trying to convince our audiences of who we want them to think we are. 2 ways we go about doing that is through ingratiation, excessive ego-boosting and butt-kissing, and self-handicapping, where we can create our own roadblocks then gripe about them later like they were the real reason for our downfall. Self-esteem is one of the essentials to avoiding depression and helps us deal creatively (through terror management theory) with mortality, however, too much of a good thing is not a good thing anymore and can lead to a narcissistic personality where you lack empathy and just turn into a cold-hearted person who’s self-centered.

The whole world is definitely my stage. I am very extroverted while also being extremely introverted. I keep what is highly important to me out in the open and I keep shallow things close to my heart that way people think they are digging for a treasure that’s under lock and key, leaving what I love alone. I keep them digging for a false idol. I have always been honest with people, maybe to bluntly honest, but the funny thing about that is that people really do prefer to be lied to then hear the truth because they seldom believe the truth. In an essence, you could lay it all out there and as long as you do it with a giant smile and a pleasant tone in your voice they will more than likely not believe you, but if you come up with a juicy elaborate story and Gaga-esk flamboyancies then they will believe every word you utter and watch your every move to interrupt it the wrong way. To further my on-stage performance I self handicap myself so that I have a better platform on which to stand. I mean how many simple-problem free people do you know, and if you do, do they have anything to contribute to the working classes gossip column that people use to pass the time that they spend miserably working and missing out on life. Without a platform in which to stand and commiserate with these people, I would be even lonelier than I already am. So the post office is my stage, my actions are my terror management and life is my handicap, but I do have a plan so I am not in a fixed mindset but a long hard road of growth mindset, so I’m not completely doomed.

Personal Perception Questions and Answers

Can I think of examples from my own life in which my views of myself have been shaped by the views of my parents, friends, or teachers?

One of the biggest views that I have of myself stems from a view that my mother had of me. Independency. My mother looked at me as an independent child, an independent teenager, and as an independent adult. She allowed her own life events to shape her perception of how I should be to such a degree that she superimposed independency on me to what she will today say “is to a fault”. Meaning that her views of how I should be were so strong that I followed the path she encouraged me to take so hard and so well that I will not let myself be dependent on anyone for anything so much so that I have theoretically isolated myself from many aspects of life.

Or by way of community and culture in which I lived?

I do not really remember being affiliated with any sort of community and my culture is a white girl growing up in North America, more specifically Pittsburgh Pa during the 1980s and ’90s with a very broken home and broken extended family. My culture may have had traditions when I was younger but none that mattered enough to be followed throughout my life and I didn’t attach myself to any specific group in school or outside of school because nothing seemed to fit with how I thought, which was typically more profoundly than that of the company I did end up keeping (downward social comparison). And oddly, because apparently so many people do see the world racially or otherwise separated, I never saw groups or individuals as anything but people, despite that I knew what prejudice was, older people in my extended family were, but it never resonated with me. People just seemed different shades of sun-baked to me, because logically that’s all race is, the amount of sun your heritage got due to its original location. So there weren’t communities to join or cultures to really submerge myself into cause I looked at everything differently. I mean isn’t a culture really on a set of traditions that a family comes up with that becomes widespread as more people are born into or become part of a certain family line that started the tradition, to begin with.

Can I think of an example in which I influenced someone else’s self-views?

I put my ex through rehab because I influenced his thinking just enough that he looked at himself and admitted he had a problem and then wholeheartedly, for himself, looked for help to change what he realized he needed help for. He thanked me in the end for standing by him and influencing him to think better of himself and has been sober and clean for over 5 years now.

Can I think of a couple of ways to get a friend of mine, who needs it, a confidence boost?

Find them a hobby that interests them so that they can feel full-filled and accomplished. X-Box, the official hobby of postal employees, is not a hobby and I am trying to make them realize that.

Chapter 4 Social Perception

In chapter 4, Social Perceptions, the use of non-verbal cues, implicit personality theories, our determination of why people do stuff, and the cultural role of attribution formation are discussed. Non-verbal communication is broken down into the 6 universal emotional facial expressions of anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise; these being cross-cultural and non-species specific. Also, the affect blend that occurs when we are experiencing more than one emotion at a time. Other forms of non-verbal communication would be display rules, that are not cross-cultural but instead very culturally specific, and emblems that are also not cross-cultural, and should be carefully studied as to not offend others from other cultures. Implicit personality theories are us simply filling in the blanks when not enough verbal communication is present and we turn to our already premade schemas to fill in the missing information, whether our schemas are correct or not. Each person’s schemas are different but do get passed down from generationally and based on culture. In order to answer why people do stuff, we must look at the attribution theory byways of its internal (personal attitudes and character) and/or external (based on a specific situation occurring) nature. A covariation model pits these two against each other were we rely on consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency information to make our decision. Where we being flawed human beings are susceptible to the fundamental attribution error where we tend to match up to how a person's behavior and disposition should go together. We tend to do this by way of a 2 step process that begins with a dispositional analysis that can be, but not always is, followed up by an analysis of the situation if we possibly feel we are making an error in judgment. This chapter also discusses on, several occasions, the distinct differences between eastern and western cultures; eastern cultures being interdependent cultures that view themselves through outsiders’ eyes and with more holistic thinking, and western cultures being individualistic thinkers that analyze everything and are very self-absorbed. Attributing to the self-serving attributions of defensive attributions (mortality avoidance), belief in a just world (good and bad people get what they deserve, karma), and the bias blind spot (we are not susceptible to attribution biases, other people are). The cultural role in attribution formation is definitely different depending upon the culture you’ve grown up in.

I can honestly say that I am aware that I am a girl made up of schemas. I am fully dependent upon them and I put everyone I meet and every situation I’m in into one. Though, I would like to think that I tend to think more holistically than the apparent, traditional westerner. I like to look at the situations surrounding people and when I feel that a certain situation merits my attention because I have learned that other people's business does not need to be mine, I take in the surroundings of that situation instead of focusing on just one aspect/person. People sometimes get mad at me because I like to be the outsider looking in, including on myself, that way I can see the whole picture instead of one piece. What is one piece? One-piece never finished a puzzle or told a whole story. I do look at the dispositional attributes of any one person or situation but at the same time, I am also looking for what is causing them to have that disposition. Everyone does not act a certain way for no reason. They act a certain way for very specific reasons and while I use my schemas to definitely fill in what I cannot find clear answers to, I always continue to look for those answers until my puzzle pieces all fit how they should. Because I do these people around me wish I was more apathetic, empathetic, and/or sympathetic but sometimes I just have to look at the whole picture as facts and assess it in terms of what is really going on. That way I can make my decision of whether this situation/person is something/someone I want to be around. That in itself does allude to the fact that I do follow an individualist approach; since I look at the “whole” for myself, not for the good of the group. I was not raised with strong affiliations to anything/anyone so I have only myself to affiliate to.

Touch Observations for Class

Our skin is essential to our emotional connection with other living and non-living things. Not only is it essential to fully functioning people but it is even more essential to those who are blind and see with their haptic perception. They cannot touch color but they can map out a room in their minds just by feeling everything located in it and distinguish what everything is just by recognizing its texture and size. They don’t have to see the impending storm on the horizon to feel its moisture in the air or feel the sun beat down on there skin after the storm passes.

All of these sensations are transmitted throughout our adult bodies over approximately 2 square yards to our brains registering the beauty of the day or the sweet embrace of a loved one or even the harsh interactions with rude manner-less people who shove their way passed. Every hug I give to my son is registered through his skin starting with his mostly unnoticeable hair that covers his whole body and his glabrous hands that are hugging me back that sends information through the outer layer of epidermis skin to the inner layer of dermis skin. From there it is transmitted to somatosensory receptors that are located throughout his spine and then it follows a fast path through large fibers of the lemniscal system. Its final destination is the somatosensory cortex of the brain where it registers my warm loving embrace as comforting him or protecting him or just marveling in the simple gesture of squeezable goodness. The importance of skin is truly beyond measure because without it we could not register pain or register real love. Skin allows us to feel temperature changes and vibrations of sound, it allows us to truly experience the world around us by not only seeing and hearing it but physically getting involved in it. With every passing movement we make our skin informs us to everything that we're walking on or touching, informing us as to how to dress to feel comfortable in changing temperatures and what to avoid in order to avoid pain or if the pain is occurring informs us so we can move to stop it or what to seek help for, may it be a burn or intense pressure. If problems with the skin sense should occur phantom feelings can arise leading us to think such things as insects crawling on us when they’re really not. Also, we can sometimes have phantom temperature feelings arise that cause our body heat to rise or our cooling mechanisms to kick in despite temperature stabilization around us. These phantom symptoms can inform us that something else may be going on with our minds or bodies that we need to address or maybe just be the reaction of eating a chili pepper or York peppermint patty.

While it is important to hear and see everything and even smell and taste everything it is just as equally important that we feel everything so that we can attain as much out of life as we humanly can. It is a true travesty that there are people in this world that do not have pain receptors in their skin and therefore cannot feel if something is hurting them consequentially leading to their early death. Those people miss out on so many aspects to life because even though we would essentially like to avoid needless pain, to not feel it means an inability to know personal limitations that create longevity.

Sound Observation for Class

The auditory system is an amazing thing. While I have heard it referred to as the second most important sense behind visual, I think it is number one. While it would be incredibly difficult to live without sight, it would be even more difficult to live without sound. The counterpoint to that would be that they have made great strides in developing technology to get our hearing back, such as the cochlear implant, and have not been so successful in creating technology to get our sight back. This is a valid point, however, I stand by my thought that I would simply be lost without my hearing.

The auditory system tells a person so much longer before I ever see anything. The way it collects information and processes it is complicated but so helpful when it's dark out and you’re trying to stay safe. Much like the visual system, it has its limitations but they are minimal when you consider the incredible advantage you have when you can hear something coming and determine its direction before you see it. The auditory system is made up of three sections the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The outer ear consists of the pinna, external auditory canal, and eardrum/tympanic membrane. The outer ear essentially helps keep little insects from crawling down inside the ear as well as acting as an amplifier to make those sounds around us more audible. The middle ear is next and it is made up of the eustachian tube (runs from your ears to your throat), the ossicles bones (malleus, incus, and stapes also help to amplify sounds), and the ossicles muscles (help to de-amplify sounds that may be too loud). Then we come to the inner ear which is made up of an oval window and a round window. The oval window leads to the vestibular canal from the stapes then passes its fluids onto the tympanic canal at the far end where the helicotrema passageway is. The fluid then flows until it hits the round window that will work opposite the oval window to keep the pressure even. These 2 canals also run along the cochlear duct which is encased in the basilar membrane on the tympanic side and Reissner’s membrane on the vestibular side. From the stapes comes a vibration through the oval window that turns into a traveling wave of sound down the membranes where auditory receptors are. Inside of the cochlear duct is the organ of Corti which is an extremely important part of the hearing process. This organ makes electrical and chemical energy out of the sound wave energy pressure we get from its auditory receptors. The basilar membrane meets this organ at its base. Inside this organ are hair cells that do amazing transductions of sound waves and at the top of this organ is the tectorial membrane. About 3500 inner hairs reside inside and about 12000 outer hairs reside outside this organ and they work together to help us hear everything so wonderfully. Inner hair cells can tell frequency changes in sound waves through hyper and de-polarizations. The outer hair cells help amplify sound in noisy conditions by filtering out the noise. Once the sound wave has left the inner ear it enters the auditory nerve from the cochlea where it travels to the cochlear nucleus, then to the superior olivary nucleus, then the inferior colliculus, then the medial geniculate nucleus before finally reaching the auditory cortex. This is done on each side of the brain for each ear. The inferior colliculus is where the tonotopic organization of the auditory stimulus occurs. Inside the auditory cortex which is located on the side of the brain in a groove of the temporal lobe localization of sounds will occur as well as speech perception, etc. Much like with the visual system there are also limitations to the auditory system that can occur when a pitch or frequency is too high or too low. They then become inaudible to the human ear, even though they are audible to the species that is emitting the sounds; which happens to be a defense mechanism for certain species. Also, some sounds can be produced in a too-short fashion that turns there frequency and pitch perception into a click sound as opposed to the sound it is. These sounds can then only be heard if they are recorded and the recording is then played back in super slow motion. Limitations can also occur when certain situations arise such as when I get a cold and my ears or ear becomes “clogged” and I feel like I can only hear out of one ear or no ears because the sound becomes too muffled. Also when I hear a sound coming from directly in front of me I can get disoriented and confused as to where it is actually coming from, as opposed to if it were coming from a specific side and then I could say it’s coming from my right or left side.

When it comes to sound I usually have no problems unless the white noise is masking out the sounds completely, which can happen cause I love to run fans in my house and the emit a lot of white noise, or if I am around water, which seems to drown out sound because sound becomes between 95 and 99% waterlogged depending on the specific water situation and depth of water your in, and I love to swim. Also sometimes sound can become increasingly disturbing and confusing when I have a migraine because the malleus seems to be hitting the incus a little too hard and therefore loudly. Otherwise, I cannot recall too many limitations to my hearing. I am a very avid lover of silence and just listening to what comes out of silence, which helps me keep my ears “in tune”.

Perception Observation for Class

Perception is made up of many processes and explanations of these processes are explained in many theories/approaches. Some of the most known approaches are the bottom-up process/direct perception approach proposed by James Gibson, the top-down process proposed by Richard Gregory, Gestalt principles developed by German psychologists, empiricist approach described by Bishop George Berkeley, and the computational approach. Each theory/approach lending its expertise opinions to why it is that we perceive the world around us the way that we do. This is not to explain the world around us, but simply our perception of it. The perception of it is different from person to person. What I perceive will not be what you perceive, but with explanations as to why we each perceive the way that we do, it is easier to understand how different people think and therefore shed light on why we act, say or do what it is that we do. James Gibson explained back in 1966 what he called the bottom-up process or the direct perception approach. In this approach, he defines it as “data-driven processing, because perception begins with the stimulus itself. Processing is carried out in one direction from the retina to the visual cortex, with each successive stage in the visual pathway carrying out ever more complex analysis of the input.” (McLeod, S. A. 2007)

Gibson strongly disagreed with Gregory believing that no hypotheses were necessary. Everything was right there in front of our faces and in a sense we just know how to react to our sensations, therefore our perceptions as the two are one, sensations are perceptions and perceptions are sensations. Everything is in direct correlation with each other. He presented his theory with 3 points: optic flow patterns (movement), invariant features (depth of field), and affordance (clarity and distinction through examples such as textures and light). Richard Gregory explained back in 1970 what he called the top-down approach. In this approach, he defines it as “the use of contextual information in pattern recognition. For example, understanding difficult handwriting is easier when reading complete sentences than when reading single and isolated words. This is because the meaning of the surrounding words provide a context to aid understanding.” (McLeod, S. A. 2007) A basic use of contextual clues to form and understand what it is our senses are being presented with. Gregory liked to use the words hypotheses and prior experience in much of his explanations for this process. That without prior experience we could not construct plausible hypotheses for the information that is being presented to our senses that we are supposed to perceive and therefore understand. A form of data analysis that comes from our senses, that we are directly experiencing life and thus making assumptions based on our own prior knowledge as to who, what, when, why, and where.

Gestalt theories explained back in the 1920s what German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Edgar Rubin said were “unified wholes” where we take our visual perceptions and group them by certain principles. They said these principles were: similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, and figure & ground. Where if we viewed an image that, for example, was not complete, we would assess it as a whole and fill in what was missing. These theories stressed that it was about the whole and not the parts. The empiricist approach described by Bishop George Berkeley back in the 17th century explained that sensation and perception are to be based on scientific evidence that can be tested and proven. The computational approach described by David Marr’s is a hardware/software approach to how we think about the world around us. In defining the computational theory by addressing the questions that are presented to our visual system, we can then represent those questions algorithmically (our software), so that we are then able to implement the data we have constructed into our brain (our hardware).

Of all these theories/approaches I can honestly say that I feel that I can understand and relate best to the bottom-up approach. I am a see it and now it type of person. I assess my surroundings on a daily bases but not to an analytical degree, I seem to just know my depth and scope instinctively and it actually takes a more concentrated thought process for me to sit and assess and hypothesis and deduce things about my surroundings. It seems much more natural to just go with it. Though in going over all of these theories and approaches I sense some overlaps in each and it seems to me that the best theory or approach would be the one that incorporated aspects of each into one. It also seems clear that all of these are subject to the individual. Some people will resonate better with one theory/approach more so than another and that is because they perceive their sensations differently than the next person, as it should be.

Works Cited/Reviewed:

McLeod, S. A. (2007). Visual Perception - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html

Eyes Observation for Class

I love to read. I actually feel bad for other species that can’t take their thoughts and write them down for others to read and reread whenever they want. The ability to read uses the ability to see different areas without moving our heads. Even every day when I’m doing this, that or the other thing and my son is running around the house playing, I have to keep my eyes on one thing but utilize my peripheral vision to see everything else going on around me. Without the ability to move my eyes without moving my head I’d constantly be giving myself whiplash. The advantage to humans moving our eyes without moving our heads is that we can see what is to approaching us from either side of our vision as well as what is right in front of us. It allows us to have a greater scope of vision without having to constantly move our heads to see what may or may not be coming for where a particular sound came from. It allows us to assess an area better and broader than if we had to constantly shake our head no to see what was around us. I honestly see no disadvantages to being able to move our eyes without moving our heads to see. There are other species that have eyes on the sides of their heads for food/prey purposes and they obviously have a greater side scope than humans do but they need that, they do not need here eyes in front of there heads to do such things as multitask or read. Humans do. Being able to move our eyes without moving our heads is one of those things that we take for granted that helps us navigate through life easier as humans. It is something that aids us when we're in certain situations and needs to have a broader scope on what is going on around us but can't take our eyes off of what were immediately doing, may it be driving a car watching for animals to dart out or being a mom, etc.

Sight Observations for Class

While performing one of the many household tasks that I have to complete each day to keep my home running smoothly, I see out of the corner of my eye, my son about to go after the ball that rolled away from him and he’s about to hit his head in the process. So I drop what I’m doing and reach out my arm and snatch him back before he makes contact with the shelf. Though, on my drive home from work at 4 am down and around the windy back roads that lead me home, I miss the deer lurking in the brush. It had its head down so my high beams don’t catch the reflection of its eye that I usually see that allows me to miss them, and instead I get this one. So in one case, my eyes helped me tremendously to help my son avoid an accident, but in another instance, my eyes didn’t help me avoid the deer that had to cross my path.

The advantage of the human visual system is that it allows us to see the world around us. I don’t need much more supporting evidence than to say, sunrise over a vineyard in Italy’s Tuscan countryside or sunset on the Hawaiian Islands. Without human visual ability the capability to see those things or someone’s smiling face or your child grow up right before you, would not be possible and how much more of an advantage do you want. Our ability to detect color and shapes and capture the vivid depth of beauty that lies around us at every turn (whether we choose to see it or not is not the point) is advantage enough to our ability to see. Because we can take electromagnetic energy and turn it into neural energy that is our perception, our understanding, our interpretation, our basic thought process for collecting and deciphering information that we then use to navigate through life. Our ability to determine between hue, saturation, and brightness allow us to determine colors which can be the difference between seeing a bright day or a gray day, a bright warning sign or a passing by like there was no warning sign at all, or seeing directional signs telling you where you are or getting lost in a wooded forest.

The obvious disadvantage would be our visual systems ability to be tricked. Much as in many species, camouflage is a sly attribute. Funneling of information as the photoreceptors are moved away from the retina can also cause some information to get missed in our visual perceptions. Not that the stimuli weren’t there but because we are trying to take in so much information all at once, bits and pieces of a scene may not make it into our recallable visual field. Dark and light adaptation can have minor to severe impacts on our visual system as well. Depending on the intensity of the dark to light or light to dark situation a person is exposed to. A temporary blinding effect does occur at the initial time of switching and can lead to a bump on the head cause u forget just how close that door is in the pitch black. While sight is a very important attribute to have so that we can see all the beauty that Mother Nature and life has to offer it definitely has its disadvantages as well. As with all things, there is good and there is bad and we must be able to adjust and take each with the other to be able to maximize our abilities in life.

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