When facing a crisis

[Kindly pass this post on to others whom you think may consider it interesting or pertinent]

• Take time to think things over even if the act of thinking things over feels or seems impossible. Get some distance to gain some objectivity. When your thinking is nudged and poked by overwhelming feelings of sorrow or anger you know it is still necessary to take more time before you respond.

• Reactive behavior is unlikely to do you or any situation you are facing any good. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction which is probably not going to be very helpful to you.

• No response from you is better than a half-baked response from you. Be aware that your half-baked ideas will be misunderstood and often in ways that are not to your advantage.

• While you may not feel like it, take care of immediate business in your immediate environment. This will get your wild and wandering mind temporarily off things and you will feel as if you are accomplishing something with your day.

• Remind yourself daily that you are the one common denominator in all of your relationships, that while you are thinking or feeling like a victim you are no help to yourself or to anyone, and your deepest resource is the valid and authentic and talented person you know yourself to be.

Within each person is a holy place called The Self. It is here, in the deepest recess of who each of us is, that the human spirit, soul, intellect, meld and form the powerhouse or engine room for who and what each of us is. 

The subtle art of self-care — “subtle” because there is a delicate difference between being self-caring, selfishness, and being self-serving — is fundamental to good mental, emotional health, and also relational health.

Appropriate self-care is not selfishness or self-indulgent. It is not self-centered-ness. It is not self-serving. 

It is self-awareness. 

It is self-monitoring with the firm understanding that each person is responsible for the condition of his or her self. 

Each of us is responsible for how we relate to all others (to neither dominate or be dominated). 

Each of us is responsible, when it comes to ALL other adults, for maintaining relationships that exemplify mutuality, respect, and equality.

Part of self-care is the enduring understanding that each person has a voice to be respected, a role to be fulfilled, and a calling to be pursued. 

Every person (every Self) requires room to grow, space apart from others, while at the same time requiring intimacy and connection. 

The healthy Self is both connected and separate all at the same time, underscoring again the subtlety required in the art of self-care.

Dear Mr Smith

I trust you are well.

My name is Sibahle Nsukwini I am a final year student at Durban University of Technology. As an upcoming journalist I always follow the steps of people who are the best in the game and who have experience in journalism like you, Mr Smith.

I read your article in The Mercury newspaper which has a title that says “Beauty is all around us, in all we meet.” The article inspired me a lot since I have been struggling to myself since high school.

The article lifted me as it said all people are beautiful and there is gold to everyone, it gave me strength to continue love the way I was created and to tell myself that even if people can poke fun of me they will not touch or shake my silver and gold, I just have to be strong.

When the time comes next year and if I quickly get job Daily Newspaper Organisation ,I will write articles like yours maybe I will touch souls and give hope to the people who are in the dark.

Thank you so much sir and keep being the light to us

There’s an “us” between us, between you and me, no matter how close or platonic our relationship may be.

When I do my part to care for it (the “us”) and you do your part to care for it, things go better all round for each of us. We do this when we each maintain clear distinctions of who and what we are to each other. When I’m honest, kind and generous toward you, intimate or platonic, and you return the favor, the “us” grows in trustworthiness and our confidence in each other and even in ourselves, grows.

There’s “space” between close friends and intimates and when I do my part to care for it and you do your part to care for it, things go better for each of us.

The space between us is kept clear, clean, healthy when respect and equality and mutuality and freedom flow between us.

When the space between us is clear, the story we know and tell of each other is affirming and accurate. It is when the space between us is cluttered with half-truths and suspicion that we have to invent the story we tell ourselves and it usually comes out full of hope or fear – or both.

Which self within you will reign this hour, during this encounter, or this day?

• Anxious self: anxiety messes with hearing, seeing, assessing and is reactionary and so unhelpful decisions are usually made. The anxious self needs time to settle, take stock, reassess.

• Angry self: anger driven decisions usually have in-built vengeance or hurt as part of any process. Anger driven moments lead to damage and usually remorse. 

• Victim self: the victim defends and protects and decisions are hardly decisions at all but drawn out processes cloaked in “poor me” non-thinking. This may lead to short-lived unhelpful sympathy from others.

• Arrogant self: arrogance blinds and deafens, makes the needs and cares of others hard to see let alone acknowledge and respect. Arrogance pushes others out of the way. 

• Indifferent self: indifference is neutral blindness toward others. It inures, it separates the indifferent from others and from him or herself.

• Flippant self: the flippant flaunts though times others find tough as if everything is a joke and of no consequence. Flippancy is pseudo protection and denial with little more to offer than brief moments where the joke feels real. 

• Sane self:  the sane self stops and thinks, weighs pros and cons, takes time for deliberate thought regarding how decisions and behaviors impact self and others. The sane self looks ahead. 

Seek your sane self and “live” from there! 

It’s the place to be

My personal challenges offered to me by me…..and, I’d love to read yours to you:

• Resist the urge to know, teach, correct, and walk into circumstances you think familiar but perhaps are not. Your belief that someone or something or some circumstance is familiar is the very belief that renders you at least an arm’s length (maybe much more) from learning anything new or loving in helpful ways.

• Welcome the inevitable necessity of death preceding new life as in “a seed must die before it can produce fruit” and therefore cast off familiar labels and that which demands connection to the life you wish to leave and therefore holds you back from the life you desire to embrace. 

• Trust in new ways while resisting the urge to trust in old ways which proved unworthy. It’s ok to question motive, your own and the motives of others. It’s ok to withhold hospitality and generosity as you conduct possible due diligence. Trust is not diluted because it takes time.

• Declare with gentleness ways in which you want to be loved without apology. Love demands nothing of another but gentle declarations of what’s wanted and needed can assist love to flourish.

“Yes” is a powerful word if it comes from the power center of your life, which, of course, not every “yes” does. 

If your “yes”  comes from the power others have over you – by your complicity or their seductive complexity into which you may have surrendered, your “yes” may land you in hot water. 

Let your “yes” to opportunities come from the unique you, a person who is  not pushed or pulled to please or appease but speaks from a solid sense of who you are and what you want and who also tabulates your history of good and not too wise choices into your deeply considered “yes.”

“No” is a powerful choice, a definer of limits and setter of boundaries, but it too can emanate from fear of displeasing others or fear of imagined dangers from sources known or unknown.

“No” is a door closer and often on doors best left shut while “no” can also block possibilities of life-giving and new adventures. 

“Let me think about it” is also a powerful response to the invitations life offers. It gives space and time to weigh variables and assess assets and revisit goals. 

“Yes” or “no” or “let me think about it” are all gateways to greater emotional health when they come from your solid, healthy self.

There is incredible beauty and generosity and kindness in our immediate environment if we have the eyes to see it and the courage to embrace it and the willingness to be a part of it. 

Yes, there are shootings and there are liars and thieves all of which (and whom) cause distress and grief and much more, but goodness and beauty far outweighs the powers of all that seeks to ruin. 

All people are beautiful. 

There’s gold in everyone, even in those who seek to do us harm.

I myself have been misguided for so many years and harshly judged others many times I can hardly expect others to possess “less misguideness” than I “enjoyed.” 

Some years ago I met a young man – at the request of his church – who’d committed a double murder.  

After an hour or two once the trust barriers were broken and, despite the steel bars that separated us, I saw his beauty.

I saw it every time we met. 

No, I don’t think I lost sight of his dastardly and brutal acts or of the pain he’d inflicted on so many, but, I did see his humanity. 

I did encounter his beauty, the handprint of a loving God in his life.

It’s there, dig deep into your own magnificence and you’ll see it in others, all others.