A Non-Conformist's Guide to Success in a Conformist World, Bryan Caplan I've been a non-conformist for as long as I can remember. "All the other kids love sports" never seemed like a good reason why I should feel - or pretend to feel - the same way. "None of the other adults are wearing shorts and flip-flops" never seemed like a good reason why I should make myself uncomfortable. It wasn't mere elitism on my part. Non-conformism at my intensity rarely allows real-world success. Some of it's luck - especially the luck of being in the right place at the right time to meet the right people. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. The McMindfulness Craze: The Shadow Side of the Mindfulness Revolution (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout) In case we had any doubt after watching Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes," mindfulness is the new yoga - and we are in the midst of a mindfulness revolution. It's been embraced by celebrities, business leaders, politicians and athletes; and recommended by doctors, clergy, psychotherapists and prison wardens. Apps and bestselling books touting the benefits of meditation proliferate. It's not surprising that with unbridled enthusiasm about mindfulness come exaggerated claims and problems that are eclipsed. Backlash was inevitable. Buddhists have also pushed back, arguing that the mindfulness vogue has divorced meditation from its grounding in traditional Buddhist teachings. But focusing on these problems with the McMindfulness craze obscures a more profound one - meditation neglects meaning. I'm both a psychoanalyst and a long-time student - and now a teacher - of meditation. Meditation can transform our lives in powerful ways.
How to Make Anxiety Work for You, Not Against You “Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.” ~Jean Vanier I got fired from my job, my boyfriend left me, and my father died in one day. In reality, my career was going super well, I didn’t have a boyfriend, and my father was amazingly healthy, but what I did have was something I call an ultra amazing imagination, where I would make up fascinating stories about things that could happen and worry about them. (Or as other people call it, general anxiety disorder.) I met my now BFF anxiety when I was about ten years old. I didn’t understand why she was telling me this. Rationally I knew it wasn’t true. Anxiety took the liberty of moving into my room and accompanied me through my teenage years and twenties. The more I ignored her, the more she dug her dirt-filled, jagged nails deep into my bare skin. There was nothing I could do to escape her. Besides, I had grown used to the feeling of having knots in my stomach every day and the sleepless, nightmare-filled nights.
Screw Finding Your Passion Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster. Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no bullshit. Today I received approximately the 11,504th email this year from a person telling me that they don’t know what to do with their life. And of course, I didn’t respond. But more importantly, what I want to say to these people is this: that’s the whole point — “not knowing” is the whole fucking point. The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to ‘find their passion.’ I call bullshit. It’s priorities.
Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason — Tim Lawrence I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time. I’m listening to a man tell a story. A woman he knows was in a devastating car accident; her life shattered in an instant. She now lives in a state of near-permanent pain; a paraplegic; many of her hopes stolen. He tells of how she had been a mess before the accident, but that the tragedy had engendered positive changes in her life. And then he utters the words. Everything happens for a reason. That's the kind of bullshit that destroys lives. It is amazing to me that so many of these myths persist—and that is why I share actionable tools and strategies to work with your pain in my free newsletter. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Grief is brutally painful. So I’m going to repeat a few words I’ve uttered countless times; words so powerful and honest they tear at the hubris of every jackass who participates in the debasing of the grieving: They can only be carried.
10 Signs You May Be Involved With a Sex Addict, By a Sex Addict by Brian Whitney You've been hanging out with this guy for a while and everything is great. That's what you tell people. The truth is, everything is not so great. The guy may be going through a tough time. I did all 10 of the things on this list, in all of my relationships. The list is a compilation of everything I've learned about sex addiction in my own experience and treatment and from many other men in groups I've been part of. Most doctors would prescribe treatment to help your sex addict get his obsessions and compulsions under control. "The sex addict's impulse is to cover the pain of feeling damaged, whereas the opportunist's impulse is to take whatever he can get without having remorse. So what do you do if your partner is exhibiting three or more (my estimate) of these signs? But be prepared for deception. 1. How do you know when a sex addict is lying? Because the addict is keeping a secret -- and living a double life -- he's also covering it up. 2. This is a tricky one. 3.
5 Tips For Empaths To Prevent Anxiety And Depression By Amateo Ra| Empaths have now been scientifically proven to be more prone to anxiety, especially social anxiety, as well as depression. To be an Empath means you have the intuitive ability to interpret other’s emotions. However, while interpreting these others emotions, it’s very easy to take them on and let them affect you negatively. Soon, anxiety and depression set in, and life gets way harder than it needs to be. Being Empathic means you have a very powerful gift, the ability to feel what other people feel and use that emotion for good. All gifts that we possess as humans come with great responsibility. So, what’s your responsibility? Since we were children most of us were told to stop crying, be quiet, sit still and shut-up. While everyone needs to express their Emotions, Empaths have a much greater responsibility than others? I was once told that the majority of people have a backlog of unintegrated emotions and life experiences. The solution? So here’s a big secret.
This Stunning Photo Series Nails What It Feels Like To Have An Anxiety Disorder It can be difficult to verbalize what it's like to experience mental illness, so photographer Katie Crawford decided to show people instead of tell them. In a stunning self-portrait series titled "My Anxious Heart," Crawford captures how it feels to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and depression -- two conditions she has personally dealt with since she was a child. "I created the project as a way for me to personally express what I feel like in my experience. "A captive of my own mind. Crawford accurately depicts how anxiety and depression feel on the inside -- from feeling like you're wrapped so tightly in anxiety that you can't breathe to the agonizing inability to fall asleep when panic is looming. "I want people that suffer from [anxiety] to be able to use these images as a reference if they need it," she said. "A glass of water isn’t heavy. The artist's portraits are a welcome explainer in a world where mental illness is so frequently misunderstood. Close Katie Crawford
Myers Briggs: Cat Edition All 16 Myers-Briggs Types, if they were furballs. We brought together the internet’s two favorite pastimes: MBTI and Cats. Behold, Myers Briggs: Cat Edition. “Excuse me, why have you disturbed me sir?” “Nope.” “World Domination: Initiated.” “I heard there was a party! “My kitty. “Excuse me human. “Mwahahahaha!” “Hi, umm… Oh.. “Pet me. “Parkour Cat.” “Don’t screw with me.” “There you go. “Don’t you worry about those other kitties. “No. “You will obey me.” If you like these… feel free to share ‘em!
What it means to "hold space" for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well - Heather Plett When my mom was dying, my siblings and I gathered to be with her in her final days. None of us knew anything about supporting someone in her transition out of this life into the next, but we were pretty sure we wanted to keep her at home, so we did. While we supported mom, we were, in turn, supported by a gifted palliative care nurse, Ann, who came every few days to care for mom and to talk to us about what we could expect in the coming days. She taught us how to inject Mom with morphine when she became restless, she offered to do the difficult tasks (like giving Mom a bath), and she gave us only as much information as we needed about what to do with Mom’s body after her spirit had passed. “Take your time,” she said. Ann gave us an incredible gift in those final days. In the two years since then, I’ve often thought about Ann and the important role she played in our lives. The work that Ann did can be defined by a term that’s become common in some of the circles in which I work.
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward The first time I saw my wife walking around the Georgetown campus I shouted out “Buongiorno Principessa!” like a buffoon. She was Italian, radiant, way out of my league, but I was fearless and almost immediately in love. We lived in the same freshman dorm. She had a smile bello come il sole—I learned some Italian immediately to impress her—and within a month we were a couple. She’d stop by my room to wake me up if I was oversleeping class; I taped roses to her door. Two years after graduation we married, when we were both just 24 years old and many of our friends were still looking for first jobs. One night, as I approached Giulia’s room, she saw me and collapsed on her bed, chanting “Voglio morire, voglio morire, voglio morire.” Giulia had a concrete life plan: to become a director of marketing at a fashion company and have three kids by the time she turned 35. This is where that lovely storyline ends. (Photos: Courtesy of Mark Lukach) That fantasy shattered in the waiting room.
7 Signs Your Havingness Level is Dangerously Low » BAD WITCHES witchery Published on December 20th, 2014 | by Carolyn Elliott Your havingness level is an internal barometer of how much good stuff you allow yourself to have before your “too good to be true!” The “good stuff” that a low havingness level will cause you to reject may be just about anything – love, money, sex, fun, creativity, joy. In my years of coaching, I’ve discovered that a low havingness level is the one of the very biggest obstacles to success and fulfillment that most magical people face. The bad news is that your havingness level is originally set when you’re a child, and it’s calibrated to precisely match the havingness level of your family. The good news is that you can reset and increase your havingness level in any arena so you can allow in way more good stuff. You know that your havingness level is low when: 1) You constantly struggle to make and save money even though you work hard and are creative and magical and awesome. This one is a dead-giveaway. What to Do About It
What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” One of the things Dr. “I was so shocked. Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world. On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” Schizophrenia and Foreign Energy The last that Dr.