Category Archives: Character

Active listening and active thinking – 3

Posted on by
Reply

Advertising plays a very large role in forming and changing your opinions. Advertising is stealthier and goes about changing your thoughts in more subtle ways than than friends and family may. Advertising works in ways you may not be aware of.

Subtle printed advertising is occasionally based on images of sex or death when it is not blatantly using sex to sell a product. Images for underwear ads are too obvious; this more subtle advertising uses hidden images in ads. With a creative mind and a program capable of crafting and modifying a picture, it is not difficult to create hidden pictures within a picture that only your mind is aware of.

One of the burger chains going back to the eighties has been linked to subliminal advertising. In the 80′s they ran a magazine ad of nice juicy hamburger. Of course the hamburger did not look like one you would actually buy, this hamburger was displayed open faced so you could appreciate the juicy meat, the crisp lettuce, fresh tomato and the crunchy onion on top.

Unfortunately crunchy was not all the onion had going for it. If you took the magazine ad to a copy machine and copied it in black and white you would find a different sort of hamburger on your plate. On this hamburger the onion slices were arranged to spell the word SEX. Very creative of the advertiser to have such a dual purpose ad campaign.

The ad appealed both to your visual senses by being a very appealing hamburger. The hamburger also appealed to your other senses by sending out a message that you would not see because you expect to see a hamburger, not onions spelling out the word SEX.

Liquor advertising is famous for its imagery, and I bet you have never noticed? The ads are so sublime, usually showing a well to do man or women in fine clothes with a bottle of something around them having a nice conversation or a quiet moment.

Or it may be a scene with a nice glass of warm looking liquor with a few ice cubes and water droplets beaded on the glass. It looks so warm and inviting it almost sells itself. Almost is the key thought when it comes to selling liquor.

Liquor advertisers found that through creative airbrushing and image manipulation that air brushing a shark head or body enhances sales. Also you can find hazy variations of monsters, or other images that scare most people. There is something about monsters and death that makes liquor sell.

A new form of advertising has crept its way into our lives. This is advertising done by teens and young adults who get discounts or other perks for hyping products. Do you recall someone playing with and talking about how great their newest cell phone is? Or how much better their new mp3 player is? Or how about those cool new tennis shoes, or pants?

At the movies, and in the sitcoms products are displayed or used so you can observe them without really taking notice of them. Bigger offenders these days may be where you work. Large and not so large companies give their employees bags, key chains or other items that end up in the hands of family or friends?

When out and about, or traveling, almost any place you stop at has you lined up in their sights as a potential walking billboard. Every hear the phrase, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt? It is truer than you thought, and you are paying for the privilege of being a walking billboard.

How about getting a little something to eat and drink, and a free t-shirt? Sound good? LOL!

Share

Active listening and active thinking – 2

Posted on by
Reply

I hope it is clear why active listening and active thinking are important for you. Wandering around not actively listening and not actively thinking about what you hear or say is not the best way to manage your life. At best you are are not in control of your life, and at worst you are inclined to believe something that probably is not correct and could cause you problems.

People who gossip are people in our lives who want to influence what and how we think. They are always at the ready to tell us some story about someone, who usually is not their best friend. Because they are around us every day, we do not see how easily they may influence us.

A gossiper will show up with an exciting story about someone you know. The first question in your mind as part of active listening and active thinking should be: is this really important?

Is whatever the gossiper is talking about really important? Most gossip is an attempt to change your opinion about something or someone. Most people who gossip hold firm opinions about whomever they are gossiping about. They want you to think like they do.

As an active thinker and listener, ask yourself if what they are saying rational or logical. By taking this first step you are setting up the process of possibly discounting what you are hearing. What you are being told may be true, or it may be a tall tale in disguise.

Just like political ads, a gossip may not be telling you the real story. As an active listener and active thinker, it is easier to see if the story is being told to support the gossiper’s opinion of the person. Because you are actively partaking in the exchange, ask relevant questions about what you are hearing to determine if what you hear is worth your time.

Using active listening and active thinking, you are not as likely to say something you don’t want repeated. If you do not give any information to a gossip, they will start looking for someone else to gossip to and about. If the gossip is your friend, eventually they will drift out of your life.

Your life will change because if a gossip is talking to you about someone else, they will be talking to someone else about you. This makes room for someone in your life who is more in tune to you, and not just looking for a story.

Here are two quick ideas you can ask yourself when in a conversation that will help you become better at active listening and active thinking.

Is what you are hearing reasonable? If what you are hearing sounds far fetched, it probably is slanted in the telling, or not true at all.

Could what you are hearing have happened as told? Hearing that someone became ill after a meal is more likely than the same person ingesting a tape worm. Not everything you hear is that defined. Using active listening and active thinking, you will better judge what is plausible against what is not.

While you may feel gossip is harmless, it is not true. Someone who gossips with gumption has to keep the gossip wheels greased. If you forget and say something you do not want out in public, and the gossip thinks it is not colorful enough, you can be assured they will add content to make the story better.

Staying an active listener and active thinker is important unless you wish to spend your life parroting what others want you to think. When you listen, listen with an active mind. Question possible reasons about what you are being told. Ask yourself if what you are hearing is reasonable. Think about possible versions that are different than what you are hearing. Think about the source of the story. If the source something ‘they’ said? Just because it sounds true, does not mean you should believe it.

Part one here

Share

Active listening and active thinking

Posted on by
1

Occasionally our friends and the media determine what we think. We compromise our thinking by not taking an active role in what we think. If everyone else thinks something, it must be right? At times like this, active listening and active thinking is called for. Often what we are see or hear is an attempt to sway or change our opinion.

It makes little difference if it is deciding what is a weed or flower, or a what makes a better pet, a dog or cat. In our day to day activities much of what we hear, see, or read is an attempt to modify our opinion. To keep from becoming lost in an opinion sea become an active listener and active thinker. I have learned some techniques that have that have helped me. Maybe they will be of help to you. First some examples of what happens in or world.

In a crowd, we tend to quit thinking and go along with whatever the crowd is thinking and doing. While crowd behavior is generally harmless, it tends to get out of control when people are passionate and not thinking. Crowd and mob behavior at their worst commit horrible mob violence no single individual would think of doing. This extreme behavior happens when people in a crowd let the crowd do their thinking for them. This is an extreme form of group think, but unfortunately not uncommon.

The most obvious group think attempts we generally are exposed to is campaign commercials. Some people were sick of seeing campaign ads before they started airing, and they not since changed their opinion. The truth is, this is one objective of campaign commercials. Campaign commercials have various purposes, although showing their candidate in the best possible light is the main focus. The number one objective is to get you to wonder about your choice of candidate.

When you pay attention, you will often notice there is no real content. Carefully staged pictures or clips are shown accompanied by a disparaging voice over. Statements made are usually not as factual as the maker of the ad would like you to think. Although they are not complete lies either.

One of the ads objectives is to get you wondering about who you favor. If the campaign ad can cast a little sliver of doubt about what you think, the ad has succeeded. It is probably true the candidates voted as stated, but campaign ads do not tell you the whole story about the vote and bill.

Another objective of these ads is to make you sick of the election before it even happens. If an ad can make you so sick and tired of hearing about the election before it is time to vote, it is more likely that you will not vote as a protest against the system. If you are not voting, in essence, the party you oppose gains a vote because you did not vote to cancel an opposing vote.

This tactic is not limited to politics, it is also common in the work place too. If you are not actively listening and actively thinking about the real message purpose, you may be swayed into inaction or allowing an action you would normally be against happen. In some work environments, a few people set the tone for everyone.

A few ideas on how to actively listen and actively think appearing soon.

Share

Handicaps, everyone has at least one

Posted on by
2

Once upon a time a long time ago in bar far far away, there was a young fraternity guy out with his frat brothers having a glass of beer, or maybe two. A young woman arrived who the young man thought was very pretty. He watched her from across the room and over the top of his beer glass. She was out with friends, and there was no boyfriend around.

He worked up his courage and walked on over to speak with her and eventually asked her out. Of course she declined. Eventually they made a tentative agreement to meet in a few days. They talked for a few minutes when she asked him a stop in your tracks question. He never showed up for their meeting.

What she asked really took him by surprise, and after he thought it over, he knew it would stand between any type of healthy relationship that might evolve. She asked him if he realized she was crippled and sitting in a wheelchair?

That was me some years ago when I thought a cold glass of beer made the world a better place. The young woman was a paraplegic. I thought of that night while strolling along today. I had not thought about it for so long it was a surprise, I do not know why it popped into my thoughts today.

My father spent the last six years of his waking life in a wheel chair by that time. I was well used to a wheelchair and knew what it meant for the occupant. I was not asking her hand in marriage, I was asking if she would meet me again under different circumstances.
I did not see her as handicapped, she obviously did and wanted others too also.

I do not know if she wanted my pity, or she wanted me to feel guilty. We are all crippled, and we are all handicapped. Some of us hide it better than others, but we all have our flaws, problems, and personality faults. Whatever flaw(s) we have are just that, they are not a life stopper or we would not be here to start with. Pushing my father around for those six years, let me experience a physical handicap life by proxy, I understood that at least.

When you are out and about and see someone who is handicapped, there is no reason to feel anything about them you will not feel for other people you will see today. We are spiritual beings, and our bodies have little to do with us. Our bodies whatever condition they may be in are our default vehicle for getting around in this world.

Look for the person, not what is wrong with them. When you do this you will find a very unique someone hanging out in a body that may not quite function right. There is a bible verse that applies here. It says something to the effect that to those whom much is given, much is required…. For anyone with a physical handicap, parts of life are a little more challenging, but they have learned to adapt – as we should.

The world is full of people who martyr themselves and complain about their lot in life. Most of them have nothing more than a want of someone to make their wrongs right. For someone with a disability, their world is quite different. Some days are good and some days present challenges that are difficult to overcome. They do not have any options.

People with disabilities I have known tried to show me life can be good and complete be if I chose to make it that way. I was a slow learner of course, I always thought they were putting on an act because it was expected of them. I have since learned I was the one with the disability and not them.

What we think and believe, we are. No one else decides who or what we are, we do. None of us is complete, we all have something lacking in us. It is up to each of us to use what we do have to make our life everything it can be.

Share

When our day is done, and our race is run

Posted on by
Reply

Some nights like tonight, when things are quiet, and the music is just right, I can feel my end approaching. I know it will be tomorrow when my world will be changed forever, and everything I know will be taken away. Strangers will be my family, and if I have any mind left, I will live in a world where none can enter.

A world of memories returning. Thinking thoughts I haven’t thought in decades. Old friends and family members I have all but forgotten will become my closest companions. If my body is wasting away in a corner, or perhaps a bed, waiting for me end, my memories will help comfort me.

If I am very lucky, I will go to bed one night, lay down, turn out the light, think about those most important to me and how much they mean to me, how perfect the world is, and go to sleep. Never to waken again. Someone will find what is left of me, and go through the motions that we go through at times such as those, but my race will have been run.

I can not be sad about it, I have spent my life knowing death waits with me, marking time behind me, over my left shoulder. I am grateful for this knowledge. Death has been my councilor and guide for many years, and there is nothing to fear in death for me. Whenever I question what I should be doing, all I have to do is look over my shoulder, and I see that little swish, the flash of what is visible changing into what is not.

I make my best decisions at that moment. Decisions are easy to make in that instant, because everything I have done up until that moment is weighed, and my path is laid out before me. I can move forward confident that the path I take is the correct path. Consulting death brings me calm, knowing what is important and what is not.

Life is what is important. Making decisions that benefit others without impairing or causing harm to myself is important. My life is my most important possession. Something I do not own, and have so little control over is the most important thing in the world to me. Without my life, I can not do those things I must do. I am not even a spec of dust in a sunbeam.

So when the music, darkness, and my thoughts are aligned, I can feel death behind me, marking time. I know my time is not this instant. I also know that I can not waste what little time I have. Time is too precious, and there is too much to do.

When you look at me, and it looks like I am doing nothing, wasting my time, remember that wasting time is not something I do. I may be resting, or collecting my thoughts. I may even be consulting my final end, to determine how whatever weighs me down at the moment ranks in importance to my final end.

Even if I am lounging about, taking naps between sips of now cold tea, know that I have received my guidance from an honest source. Even now as I type this and listen to the music dancing through the air, I know this is exactly what I should be doing. I also know that when I am done with this task my most important tasks of today are almost done.

The dishes did not get washed, the grass and weeds did not get cut, and dinner did not get cooked. But none of that is important when weighed against those things I did that really matter. If tomorrow I do not wake, I will have passed over knowing that I took care of those most important things in my life with all the thought and care and attention to detail that I was capable of. If I do wake up in the morning, it will be a wonderful day, because I will already know those things which are most important and which things do not matter.

Stepping away from myself, these are the things I wish for you too. It is my desire that you too finish each day knowing that if you do not wake in the morning you have completed those things which mattered the most in your life. If you do wake in the morning, I pray you know what matters most, and what is idle distraction at best. Unfortunately, and it makes me sad to write it, but your time too is short. Make the most of each minute, and when it looks like you are wasting time doing nothing, you and I will know the truth of your actions, and how well your time is spent doing what is most important in your life at that exact moment.

Share

Melanie Roach, role model

Posted on by
Reply

The surprising Beijing Olympian, thirty-three year old American woman weight lifter Melanie Roach (check out her video) was interviewed on one of the morning television talk shows this week. She was very impressive, not just for her Beijing Olympic weight lifting journey, but in having such a wonderful outlook of all other areas of her life. Melanie Roach uses her learnings and life skills to keep her life in balance.

Melanie Roach told a story that caught my attention over and above the highlighted Olympic Athlete portion of her very full life. It was very affirming for me, and honestly more of an earth shaking moment than Melanie Roach conveyed in the few seconds she had in front of the camera.

Melanie Roach related than when she learned her son has autism, that she went to see her Pastor. Melanie Roach told her Pastor that having a son with autism was not something that she thought she had signed up for [in her life]. The Pastor who is obviously very wise countered that Melanie Roach was getting exactly what she signed up for.

Melanie Roach is now making a very sweet lemonade of this opportunity once she understood this was something she needed in her life, and said that her son and his illness has enriched and fulfilled her in ways she had never imagined. My best wishes for Melanie Roach, and her Olympic trials. No matter what the outcome, Melanie Roach has vibrant full life, and the Olympic trials will be another gilded page in her scrap book of life.

What struck me about Melanie Roach sharing her simple story is the Pastor’s insight on what life is all really all about. Our individual life is not always about having one fantastic day after another. Our life is not even about having one fantastic weekend after a long hard work week. The Pastor understands this, and also knows that we never have anything occur in our life that is not perfect for us, and that we are not ready for.

Trails and tribulations in our life, no matter what form they take are in our life because we asked for them. When we asked for problems in our life, is a point of debate on when and how it happens, but the Pastor is correct, what happens in our life happens for a reason. Nothing in our life happens just because.

When any situation happens to us, no matter how terrible, it is not something outside of our control, brought into our lives from what appears to be an outside influence. When bad things happen in our lives it is because we need them to. We need to experience, what it is like waking each day and seeing no resolve to our situation. It does not matter if it is loneliness, loss of a job, family member, friend, or even our own impending death, we need whatever it is in our life. We need those unpleasant situations happening in our life at that exact moment.

As a friend and I were talking about breaking addictions, he told me, “there is no good time”. He is right, there is no good time, but the time when something bad happens in our life, is the perfect time, and the perfect situation for us.

When something bad happens, do not approach it as yet another obstacle to be overcome, or suffered through. When bad things in our lives are approached from this perspective, that is exactly what they become, another obstacle to overcome. When bad things enter into our lives they need to be seen as opportunities.

Not only opportunities, but opportunities that have arrived at exactly the right time and for all the right reasons. The way we approach what seems to be an insurmountable problem is a defect in our perspective. What is really happening no matter how terrible, unjust, or wrong, is happening for all the right reasons at exactly the right time. No more, no less. Turning problems into something to struggle through, is removing all possibility of personal growth and spiritual learning that should come out of the situation. That is, if we embrace and accept our life’s problems as being perfect, instead of fighting them.

Share