Entries Tagged 'Lifelong Learning' ↓
February 22nd, 2010 — Lifelong Learning
I love my computer dearly, but I wouldn’t trust it with my life unless I had no choice. Unfortunately that’s not an option in modern cars. The manufacturers are replacing the old-fashioned brakes and accelerators with electronically controlled versions, which made us very nervous when we first heard of it. Apparently the technology was first developed by airplane engineers to improve reliability and lessen the weight of the vehicle, thus improving fuel efficiency.
My husband and I aren’t surprised that these electronic controls may be causing some of the recent Toyota fatalities. Given our experience with computers and electronic devices like DVD recorders, we’re more surprised there haven’t been more life-threatening glitches.
What do you think?
February 1st, 2010 — Lifelong Learning
This past week Rummuser suggested I comment on a New York Times article with the catchy title Seeking a Cure for Optimism. The article argues against extreme positive thinking, the idea that if we just work hard and look on the bright side everything will go the way we want. That conclusion is like the one we came to last week, that having a positive attitude doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes open and our brains plugged in. Hopefully people who weren’t doing that before have learned from the recent financial crisis.
Let’s face it, it’s not an either-or thing. A positive attitude promotes creativity, flexibility and cooperation, and it motivates us to take action. On the other hand being more negative can cause us to gather more data, look for pitfalls and think more critically. We need both. Brainstorming is a good example. To come up with new ideas that are sound we need both the generative and critical phases.
The article points out too much negative thinking is “just as delusional as unquestioned positive thinking.” We need to encourage realism, to try to see the world “not colored by our wishes or fears, but by reality.”
Amen to that!
What do you think?
October 5th, 2009 — Lifelong Learning
Do you know anyone “at that age”? Do you know of anyone who never slips back to “that age”?
I for one still slip from time to time, but I am getting better at keeping centered in my values and not being tossed around by other people and external events. It’s a lifelong project and a fun hobby. 
That’s probably why I was so fascinated by a New York Times article that B. Wilde told me about. The author, Laura Munson, had been practicing staying centered and it paid off when her husband told her out of the blue, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”
Until then she had been feeling good about their life. In her mind they had achieved their dreams. They had created the life in the country they had wanted. They had 20 acres of land, a farm house and horses and dogs. They also had healthy children and were doing the family activities that would give the kids a chance to experience the world while building wonderful childhood memories.
So even though she was taken off guard, she didn’t react blindly. Instead she quickly regained her composure and said, “I don’t buy it…. It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”
He reacted with hostility for about four months while she stayed centered and continued with the family activities without him. After about four months he joined them again. He had been going through a crisis with his work and as she said, “My husband tried to strike a deal. Blame me for his pain. Unload his feelings of personal disgrace onto me. But I ducked. And I waited. And it worked.”
It pays to practice being centered. You never know what might happen.
September 14th, 2009 — Humor, Lifelong Learning
As usual this post is presented as food for thought.
In a comment to last week’s post Rummuser said he thought the U.S. and Indian governments have been destroyed by capitalism. Here is my view:
I don’t agree with Rummuser. In the nominally communistic (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”) Soviet Union the high party officials were living it up while the common people were suffering. And in China there have been plenty of documented stories about local officials stealing from the people in their districts, with no recourse for the victims. Good government is hard to come by…it’s an age-old problem, a problem a lot older than the idea of capitalism.
The above cartoon reminds me of a story a school-teacher friend told me years ago. There wasn’t much money for raises so the teachers were asked if they wanted percentage raises, which benefit the more senior teachers the most, or equal raises for everyone. Even though she would have gotten more with a percentage wage, she voted for equal amounts to everyone. She wanted to be fair to the new teachers. It turns out her fellow teachers voted the same way.
The administrators had no problem with that. They simply gave themselves raises based on the percentage of their salaries and divided the rest of the money equally among the teachers. The public school system is not a capitalistic one, but that doesn’t mean the administrators didn’t look after their own interests.
Life isn’t always fair. People aren’t always fair. For me it helps to have a sense of humor.
What about you? What do you think?
August 17th, 2009 — Lifelong Learning
Do you think it’s possible to be too generous, to help too much? I’m sure Grannymar will agree with me…yes! Some people will take advantage of the good nature of other people. I’ve even been in situations where the people who volunteered the most were looked down upon by others. They were thought of as second-class citizens who were too stupid to look out for their own interests.
Those aren’t my values so I would be cheating myself if I let situations like that make me cynical. The solution for me is to notice when it’s time to say “That’s enough. It’s time to move on.” It’s my choice to help, and I need to do it without expecting appreciation. If I can’t do that cheerfully and/or if other people treat me badly because of it, it’s time to try something else.
This post was inspired by gaelikaa’s The Reluctant Memsahib. In it gaelikaa tells how she was consistently paying 10 rupees instead of the usual 5 when she took short trips in a rickshaw. At first it was because she didn’t know the usual fare, but she continued even after she found out what the going rate was. She figured the drivers worked hard and the extra 5 rupees would mean more to them that they did to her. That strategy worked fine for a while… the rickshaw drivers were happy to have her as a passenger. But one day she needed a longer ride, and a friend told her by all means don’t give more than 30 rupees. So at the end of the trip she tried to give the driver 35 rupees, 30 for the trip and her standard 5-rupee tip.
That sounds generous enough, right? It turns out the driver was incensed and felt cheated. He demanded she pay 50 rupees, because she had set up the expectation that she paid twice as much as the standard fare. There was no convincing him otherwise.
Have you ever had an experience like that, where your generosity caused you trouble?
May 18th, 2009 — Lifelong Learning
I created the above graphic to remind myself of how I used to prepare my speeches years ago when I was in Toastmasters International. It may seem strange to start by writing the conclusion, but that’s why the method is so powerful.
Mike’s comments about PowerPoint in last week’s post reminded me of this method. He started me thinking about the pros and cons of PowerPoint. I’m impressed by the power and intuitiveness of the program, and I think it’s a helpful way of organizing complicated technical information. See, for instance, this example. But, thank goodness, my talk a couple of weeks ago was not a technical one.
If I were to prepare the speech again I would ignore the suggestion that the first or second slide should be an outline of the presentation and that we should follow the order of the outline for the rest of the talk:
That’s a fine left-brain approach, but if we’re trying to have an impact on the audience we need more than logic. I discovered the following suggestions when I was in Toastmasters and found them to be invaluable:
-
What effect do I want to have on the audience? Am I giving a speech to inform, to persuade, to entertain, or to inspire?
- What main idea am I trying to convey? (This will be my conclusion.)
- What will I say first to get the audience’s attention and lead into my subject? In other words, how will I open my speech?
- What specifics or examples do I have to support my conclusion? What handouts, audiovisuals, anecdotes, jokes, etc. can I use to keep my audience’s attention as I move forward to my conclusion? Does everything in my speech relate to the purpose and main idea? Will I be able to keep the audience’s interest throughout the speech? Does my speech flow smoothly from one point to the next? Does it present the audience with a unified whole?
The trick was indeed to start by writing a strong conclusion.
Once we know the message we’re trying to convey, we can write a punchy introduction to get the attention of the audience and… this step is crucial… to include something that will echo in the conclusion. I’ve given many a speech where I did that and had no idea exactly what I would say in the middle. But I always had a wealth of possibilities and I had culled them in advance so they supported the purpose and main idea. The talks were short…usually only five to seven minutes…so it was easy enough to keep them unified. Not having them rigidly outlined in advance kept them fresh and spontaneous, and it helped me practice thinking on my feet in front of an audience. Again, the trick was to have the conclusion echo the opening so the speech had a solid feeling of completeness.
The speeches did take a long time to prepare, but that was all right. I always learned a lot by giving them.
So thanks, Mike, for reminding me to ditch the outline and instead begin with the end in mind.
Thanks to
Grannymar,
tNb,
Cathy,
Mike,
tikno,
Laurie,
suzen,
Tess,
bikehikebabe,
Evan,
rummuser and
Looney for commenting on last week’s blog.
May 4th, 2009 — Lifelong Learning, Living Fully
(To see a video of how pictures like this are taken click here.)
It’s been a busy two weeks:
- I finally switched my video editing over to the Mac, which meant learning Final Cut Express,
- I gave a 40-minute presentation on stress management, which meant making my first Power Point slide show, and
- I had to fix a problem with my web site.
All in all a slightly overloaded but rewarding time. I’m now restoring my balance by watching some videos and resting. That’s an important part of a balanced life, but one that our culture often ignores.
Enough for now! Back to my R & R.
April 20th, 2009 — Change, Lifelong Learning
This is a picture of me this past week, digging for information. I was learning about a former U. S. military terminal that is now the site of a Russian gift to the American people. (Click on the link to see a spectacular view of the gift.) I wrote about this monument last Friday in Why Didn’t We Know About This?
But in that post I didn’t mention what a great symbol it is of the end of the animosity between the U.S. and the Soviet Union/Russia. The following photo shows the Military Ocean Terminal Bayonne, which was opened as a military base in 1942 and closed in 1999 because of the end of the Cold War.
And this picture shows it more recently, after it was taken over by the Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority:
The monument is in the green area in the bottom half of the picture. We can also see one of Royal Caribbean ships that operate out of the Cape Liberty Cruise Port, also on the peninsula.
The whole peninsula (click the link for another good picture) is scheduled for redevelopment. The Russian monument and the Royal Caribbean port are just the first small steps.
As I mentioned last week, we’re seeing more and more changes in the world. I don’t like all of those changes…for instance, I am concerned about the effect of large cruise ships on the environment… but by no means am I agin ‘em all. I do think the Russian monument is an improvement over the Cold War.
April 6th, 2009 — Lifelong Learning, Living Fully
This month’s topic for Robert Hruzek’s writing challenge is What I Learned From Adversity. Hey, I can do that. As the saying goes, it’s a piece of cake. I’ve been plagued “blessed” with chronic eyestrain since I was a kid. That means if I read (or drive) too much my eyes not only start to ache, I also get fierce headaches and get dizzy. If I’m bullheaded enough to keep going they stop focusing for a while and can be utterly useless for days. It was especially bad in college. It was hard to enjoy the blessings of taking long walks when everyone else was studying for exams.
I haven’t had a bad episode for years, so I must be doing something right. Oh, sometimes I wish I could sit down and read a good book from cover to cover or that I could drive more, but mostly I can figure out how to do what I want to do.
Welcome Adversity? Are You Kidding?
It’s hard to argue with Robert when he writes:
Hey, nobody loves adversity, right? I mean, sure, there’s all that stuff about welcoming adversity because there’s probably a lesson to be learned from it. Yada, yada, yada.
I mean, c’mon; who really welcomes it into their lives?
BUT (and that’s a really BIG ‘but’), the fact remains that adversity is still one of the best teachers I know.
Or, to put it more simply:
If you have to go through the pain you might as well get something out of it.
I’ve told myself that more than once.
Finding the Treasure
I agree with the people who call that something the “treasure” of the experience. I like the term because it means we sometimes have to go digging. It usually doesn’t jump up and bite us on the nose.
So what’s been the treasure for me?
- I’ve learned to plan ahead. If my eyes are involved at all then waiting until the last minute isn’t an option. I can never completely trust my eyes, and the stress of time-pressure is guaranteed to cause them to have a fit.
- I’ve learned to read less and think more. That’s one of the reasons I majored in physics…it required a lot of thinking and creative problem solving but had a light reading load. It’s also one of the reasons I’m so interested in behavior modification and personal growth…I always have my own subject to observe and experiments to perform. It’s a minimal burden on my eyes.
- I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. Now-a-days there are audio books which weren’t available to me when I was younger. And there are a lot of projects I can work on now without hitting a brick wall as soon as I start building momentum. Computers in particular have been a blessing. Because I can stand back from the screen and expand the font size, I can do a lot more work on a computer than I can on the printed or written page. I’ll never take that for granted.
What About You?
Have you ever found treasure in adversity?
March 30th, 2009 — Change, Lifelong Learning
The Woman and the Elevator
A woman was waiting for the elevator, throwing her keys up in the air and catching them as they came down. When the elevator appeared she threw the keys one more time as she stepped inside. But just as she was over the crack between the elevator and the floor, the keys dropped, falling all the way down to the basement. The people in the elevator felt sorry for her until she said, “I can’t believe I did that again!”
The Man, His New Car and his Garage
A man came into his house embarrassed. The hood of his new car was slightly longer than the old one and for the second time he had banged it into the wall of the garage. He was worried about what to tell the fellows down at the auto repair shop. I mean, once was bad enough. His wife suggested, “Why don’t you just tell them I did it?” He thought about it and said, “That might work. It did the first time.”
Stupidity or Psychological Mass?
Do you judge those people as stupid for making the same “dumb mistake” more than once? I don’t. I’ve been there, done that too many times to condemn others. And I don’t even beat myself up when I do something “dumb”. I believe in “psychological mass”. We’re creatures of habit, and most of our actions are done automatically. That doesn’t mean we can’t change them, it just means we don’t do it just by making a conscious decision. That would be like trying to stop a cruise ship by saying, “Stop!” When things have mass and inertia we need to understand what’s happening and plan ahead.
Behavior modification has been my hobby since was 16 years old. And the one thing I’ve learned is to lighten up and get curious. It’s not only more effective in changing habits, it’s also a lot more fun.
What About You?
Have you even changed habits that weren’t working for you? If so, how did you go about doing it?
