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NRS: The Toolkit
14 years ago
General
Merc's FA Journal:
Welcome to my first FA edition of "No Real Solution"
In this edition of NRS, I want to explore something I've been cogitating on for a while and see what comes of writing it out.
Again, as with the entire point behind NRS, this is my perspective on reality. I do not fault you if you would prefer to go Adam Savage on me and deny my reality, that's your life given right!
So without further Adieu:
The Toolkit:
I have what I would call a "Mental Toolkit".
With this tool kit, I am proud to say that I am amazingly stable both in personality, emotions, and logic. I have been relied upon and called 'dependable' by many people in my life.
Today, I want to work through this and analyze my mental toolkit for my own benefit. I post it here because it may benefit someone else, and that would be worth every moment I spend on this.
A mental toolkit is a very important thing to have. Indeed most people have one. However, like real tools, you must keep them cleaned, organized, and cared for. With disuse or misuse, these tools can fail you when you need them most.
The tools:
1) Curiosity:
Curiosity is an essential tool in my toolkit, and is organized as the most accessible, because it is possibly the best reaction to any situation I have ever encountered or expect to encounter. When something is dangerous, you inspect it cautiously till you understand it and can properly respect it. When something is fun, you explore it till you know why it is fun and how to share it with others. When something is just strange, you investigate it till you know what it is, what it means to you, and how you can use it.
2) Confidence:
Without confidence, you are unable to explore and be curious. You cannot discover new things about yourself and the wonderful world around you. The more you discover, the more your confidence strengthens and becomes a useful tool. Confidence is not the same as being foolhardy, there are thresholds you should not cross, but you can never know where those are without pushing your boundaries and using the confidence you have to gain more.
3) Courage:
As hard as it is to define, courage is a crucial tool in your mental toolkit. Where Confidence relies on what you know, Courage relies on the fact that what you don't know should never scare you. This is why Courage is such a sought after personality tool, because the most amazing people we know seem to have it in spades and never fear the unknown, they never let anything stop them from understanding.
4) The ability to listen without judgement:
This tool, despite it's long name, is essential not only for dealing with other people, but in dealing with yourself. When you think about yourself, your situation, or something internal, it is helpful to be able to listen to your own thoughts objectively and without condemnation. It helps you to prevent negative self-talk and to understand why you feel and react the way you do. It is necessary for working on an emotion within yourself without needing to resort to external council. Not to say that external council is a bad thing. In fact, that is my next tool.
5) Empathy:
This tool is one of my most precious. I am still not sure if it is a learn-able skill or solely innate, but it is undoubtedly one of my most well used tools. In essence, Empathy as my tool, is the ability to listen to, hear about, or imagine another individual in a particular situation and to be able to feel the emotions and think the thoughts they would likely feel and think. Of course this tool requires calibration and is most reliable when the individual is someone you know. The better you know them, the more accurate it is. The most challenging use of this tool, what I would call 'True' Empathy, is when you are able to completely feel and think with that person, without any interference from your own thoughts or emotions on the situation.\
6) Knowing when, how, and from whom to ask for help:
This is a difficult tool to find and keep in good condition because we seem to be of the social opinion that the most well adjusted individual never needs help. This is far from true! The most well adjusted and stable people I have ever known are actually some of the most helpless with everyday tasks. They have become adept at seeking help and are then able to make many close ties to good people. I will admit that this tool took me a long time to find and it is still a challenge for me to use it regularly.
7) Planning:
One of the things that I have found is a large mark of achievement in moving from adolescence to full adulthood is the ability to plan. This includes setting short-term, long-term, and tactical goals. There are so many opinions on the best way to plan that it is fairly evident that it is a hard won and very personal skill. When you find a method that works, use it and keep trying to improve it.
8) Strategic Paranoia:
This is one of my personal ones. I believe I recognized either the usefulness of paranoia when I was young, or recognized that it was going to be a part of my personality. Either way I have worked for years to develop this mental skill, so bear with me on this one.
Essentially, this tool allows me to conceptualize a situation or event within my mind, use True Empathy (#5), and understand exactly what I would feel, think, and do in that situation. I call this skill Paranoia because I usually focus it on negative or stressful situations.
However, like many powerful tools there is a danger or two you must keep a careful eye for when using it. The development of psychological/clinical paranoia is the often the fixation and worry over one particular situation or threat over a long period of time.
The second danger is that you MUST set a threshold. This threshold is there to let you consider a situation, realize that it is more stressful, depressing, or alarming than you are equipped to handle at the moment. If it is beyond that threshold you must acknowledge that it exists, has a possibility, and then store it away without further thought. This makes it so you are only dealing with the imminently possible and useful situations and preparing for them.
The usefulness of this mental tool in your toolkit is that you are able to rely on memory, and a quick 'double check' regarding it's appropriateness to the situation. If you can remember the situation and your responses, and you are able to verify it applies to your current situation, you are that much more emotionally and mentally prepared to deal with the situation.
I would like to caution you that this skill may only be useful for certain personalities. It is also extremely hard to develop and keep up with at times. It will also add a lot of stress to your everyday life where you should have no stress at all. The upside is that you will be better prepared and faster to respond to relatively extreme situations.
If you would like to know more about this, please feel free to ask me and we can discuss it.
9) Doubt:
Though this seems like a negative thing to keep in your mind, it is nonetheless a crucial tool. When someone you know only so well insists that they know what is best for you, doubt is a good tool to have. When you have an exciting or intoxicating idea, doubt is useful as a quick check and balance to make sure you are not doing something foolish. When you are depressed or in a bad mood, doubt is a good tool to help you remember that life is not always so bleak. My favorite saying to express this exact usefulness of Doubt is: "Take it with a grain of salt."
10) Wisdom:
One of the most fabled tools in any individuals mental toolkit is the one most easily lost. Wisdom is the understanding and appreciation that you yourself know so much. In it's duality, it also represents the acknowledgement and understanding that you yourself understand relatively little and are always needing to learn. It is also the understanding and expectation that what you do know, is possibly and often simply wrong. This is where Curiosity keeps Wisdom alive and well functioning, as when you fundamentally believe that you have more to learn and you are looking for those things that prove what you know wrong, you are able to actively seek wisdom. This tool is a compass of sorts because it is always pointing a direction, never telling you the destination.
In conclusion:
As in accordance with the final tool, Wisdom, this toolkit is never complete. The tools may be replaced with newer and better revisions, new tools may be discovered and added, and some tools can prove to be faulty. This is simply a fact of life.
So please let me know if you have an issue with anything I have put above, have input on something I missed, or have a question. I'm right here with you and just trying to work things out for myself. This mixed blessing of communication means that we can all hopefully benefit by communicating openly about what works and what doesn't when it comes to dealing with or simply understanding the things we encounter in this wonderful ride called life.
# I almost forgot. Don't forget your towel.
In this edition of NRS, I want to explore something I've been cogitating on for a while and see what comes of writing it out.
Again, as with the entire point behind NRS, this is my perspective on reality. I do not fault you if you would prefer to go Adam Savage on me and deny my reality, that's your life given right!
So without further Adieu:
The Toolkit:
I have what I would call a "Mental Toolkit".
With this tool kit, I am proud to say that I am amazingly stable both in personality, emotions, and logic. I have been relied upon and called 'dependable' by many people in my life.
Today, I want to work through this and analyze my mental toolkit for my own benefit. I post it here because it may benefit someone else, and that would be worth every moment I spend on this.
A mental toolkit is a very important thing to have. Indeed most people have one. However, like real tools, you must keep them cleaned, organized, and cared for. With disuse or misuse, these tools can fail you when you need them most.
The tools:
1) Curiosity:
Curiosity is an essential tool in my toolkit, and is organized as the most accessible, because it is possibly the best reaction to any situation I have ever encountered or expect to encounter. When something is dangerous, you inspect it cautiously till you understand it and can properly respect it. When something is fun, you explore it till you know why it is fun and how to share it with others. When something is just strange, you investigate it till you know what it is, what it means to you, and how you can use it.
2) Confidence:
Without confidence, you are unable to explore and be curious. You cannot discover new things about yourself and the wonderful world around you. The more you discover, the more your confidence strengthens and becomes a useful tool. Confidence is not the same as being foolhardy, there are thresholds you should not cross, but you can never know where those are without pushing your boundaries and using the confidence you have to gain more.
3) Courage:
As hard as it is to define, courage is a crucial tool in your mental toolkit. Where Confidence relies on what you know, Courage relies on the fact that what you don't know should never scare you. This is why Courage is such a sought after personality tool, because the most amazing people we know seem to have it in spades and never fear the unknown, they never let anything stop them from understanding.
4) The ability to listen without judgement:
This tool, despite it's long name, is essential not only for dealing with other people, but in dealing with yourself. When you think about yourself, your situation, or something internal, it is helpful to be able to listen to your own thoughts objectively and without condemnation. It helps you to prevent negative self-talk and to understand why you feel and react the way you do. It is necessary for working on an emotion within yourself without needing to resort to external council. Not to say that external council is a bad thing. In fact, that is my next tool.
5) Empathy:
This tool is one of my most precious. I am still not sure if it is a learn-able skill or solely innate, but it is undoubtedly one of my most well used tools. In essence, Empathy as my tool, is the ability to listen to, hear about, or imagine another individual in a particular situation and to be able to feel the emotions and think the thoughts they would likely feel and think. Of course this tool requires calibration and is most reliable when the individual is someone you know. The better you know them, the more accurate it is. The most challenging use of this tool, what I would call 'True' Empathy, is when you are able to completely feel and think with that person, without any interference from your own thoughts or emotions on the situation.\
6) Knowing when, how, and from whom to ask for help:
This is a difficult tool to find and keep in good condition because we seem to be of the social opinion that the most well adjusted individual never needs help. This is far from true! The most well adjusted and stable people I have ever known are actually some of the most helpless with everyday tasks. They have become adept at seeking help and are then able to make many close ties to good people. I will admit that this tool took me a long time to find and it is still a challenge for me to use it regularly.
7) Planning:
One of the things that I have found is a large mark of achievement in moving from adolescence to full adulthood is the ability to plan. This includes setting short-term, long-term, and tactical goals. There are so many opinions on the best way to plan that it is fairly evident that it is a hard won and very personal skill. When you find a method that works, use it and keep trying to improve it.
8) Strategic Paranoia:
This is one of my personal ones. I believe I recognized either the usefulness of paranoia when I was young, or recognized that it was going to be a part of my personality. Either way I have worked for years to develop this mental skill, so bear with me on this one.
Essentially, this tool allows me to conceptualize a situation or event within my mind, use True Empathy (#5), and understand exactly what I would feel, think, and do in that situation. I call this skill Paranoia because I usually focus it on negative or stressful situations.
However, like many powerful tools there is a danger or two you must keep a careful eye for when using it. The development of psychological/clinical paranoia is the often the fixation and worry over one particular situation or threat over a long period of time.
The second danger is that you MUST set a threshold. This threshold is there to let you consider a situation, realize that it is more stressful, depressing, or alarming than you are equipped to handle at the moment. If it is beyond that threshold you must acknowledge that it exists, has a possibility, and then store it away without further thought. This makes it so you are only dealing with the imminently possible and useful situations and preparing for them.
The usefulness of this mental tool in your toolkit is that you are able to rely on memory, and a quick 'double check' regarding it's appropriateness to the situation. If you can remember the situation and your responses, and you are able to verify it applies to your current situation, you are that much more emotionally and mentally prepared to deal with the situation.
I would like to caution you that this skill may only be useful for certain personalities. It is also extremely hard to develop and keep up with at times. It will also add a lot of stress to your everyday life where you should have no stress at all. The upside is that you will be better prepared and faster to respond to relatively extreme situations.
If you would like to know more about this, please feel free to ask me and we can discuss it.
9) Doubt:
Though this seems like a negative thing to keep in your mind, it is nonetheless a crucial tool. When someone you know only so well insists that they know what is best for you, doubt is a good tool to have. When you have an exciting or intoxicating idea, doubt is useful as a quick check and balance to make sure you are not doing something foolish. When you are depressed or in a bad mood, doubt is a good tool to help you remember that life is not always so bleak. My favorite saying to express this exact usefulness of Doubt is: "Take it with a grain of salt."
10) Wisdom:
One of the most fabled tools in any individuals mental toolkit is the one most easily lost. Wisdom is the understanding and appreciation that you yourself know so much. In it's duality, it also represents the acknowledgement and understanding that you yourself understand relatively little and are always needing to learn. It is also the understanding and expectation that what you do know, is possibly and often simply wrong. This is where Curiosity keeps Wisdom alive and well functioning, as when you fundamentally believe that you have more to learn and you are looking for those things that prove what you know wrong, you are able to actively seek wisdom. This tool is a compass of sorts because it is always pointing a direction, never telling you the destination.
In conclusion:
As in accordance with the final tool, Wisdom, this toolkit is never complete. The tools may be replaced with newer and better revisions, new tools may be discovered and added, and some tools can prove to be faulty. This is simply a fact of life.
So please let me know if you have an issue with anything I have put above, have input on something I missed, or have a question. I'm right here with you and just trying to work things out for myself. This mixed blessing of communication means that we can all hopefully benefit by communicating openly about what works and what doesn't when it comes to dealing with or simply understanding the things we encounter in this wonderful ride called life.
# I almost forgot. Don't forget your towel.
