Had Enough?

You start thinking about the ocean as something that exists in the world as a physical fact. The concept of the ocean is a model and it needs more information than your visual experience. It builds on your empirical knowledge. The ocean is salty water that is sometimes calm, sometimes waving and restless. It has high and low tides depending on the Earth's and Moon's position. It hosts a myriad of underwater animals and plants. I can claim these aspects of the ocean with confidence as they belong to the learned reality of my mental models. Based on this knowledge, I could build up new knowledge about the ocean if I chose to be a marine biologist. In sum, mental models contain old empirical knowledge and have the potential to support new knowledge that is built upon the old. Very few parents will teach us how foolish it is to be afraid of death - because the fact is that all of us will successfully die. It is pointless to be afraid of something that is inevitable! Here, it is important to see and understand the difference between reaction to danger and fear. Everyone can remember a situation when they were blocked - when they were unable to open their mouth: we wanted to address the girl we liked but we hesitated - we wanted to ask the doctor to explain the reason why he prescribed that medicine but we didn't have the guts - we were not brave enough to get to the point. In order to understand this more deeply, I want to quote a great scholar, a free thinker and philosopher, Jidu Krishnamurti. He says that we have to distinguish between fear and acting according to logical thinking. We will not jump from a high building because we are afraid, but because logically we know that if we jump we will most probably die. He calls it: natural self-protective action! He says: If there is a bus rushing towards us we will react immediately and jump aside. That is natural self-preservation or a self-protective action. He spoke of the corrupt politicians siphoning off funds, the tyranny of moneylenders and many other subjects which were irrelevant to my forthcoming question.

Finally, the speech ended with his visit to Mumbai to see a doctor for the severe pain and swelling in both his knees. Ah-thai-tis, he called it, slanting his eyebrows upward and slowly bobbing his head from side to side. He gave you medicines? Don't worry, you will be fine soon,' I said, trying to put him at ease. He started another speech stating that there was no cure for his arthritis, for which he would have to take medicines for the rest of his life. Inadvertently, he was answering my question. This is karma. I have suffered so much. The rest of my life will go on like this. When the child is distressed, the parent is there to soothe. When a mistake is made, the adult is quick to apologize and repair the rupture so that the bond is not broken. With the proper nurturance, stimulation, movement, rhythmical and quiet activities, touch, affection, smiles, and play, the ventral vagal branch of the nervous system receives the input necessary for growth and resiliency. When toddlers begin to stand up, cruise around furniture, and walk, they begin to notice a separate, autonomous identity. When the family creates the safety for this little one to explore their world, respects their autonomy, and sets reasonable limits, the child begins to form a healthy self-image. Children, as they continue to grow, learn to self-soothe, knowing they can seek the comfort of the caregivers when needed. This maturation of the ventral vagus nerve (together with facial nerves), which researcher Dr Stephen W. Porges refers to as the social engagement system, is the basis for making friends, forming cooperative relationships, and engendering a resilient and self-regulated nervous system. Its careful and proper development lays the foundation for solid mental, physical, and emotional health. Unfortunately, not all students start school with a secure, relational bond. The act of being mindful allows us to distinguish between the things that we can change and the things that we are not able to change.

An individual can be aware that if something heavy falls on their foot, they are able to remove it, but cannot change the pain that it caused them. You may not be able to change what happened at that moment, but accept it and make a decision on how to handle it. This may not even temporarily ease the pain, but the fact that they are aware that they cannot change it is a part of being mindful. Relationship Management Working well with others usually begins with having emotional awareness and having the ability to recognize and understand what others may be going through or how they are feeling at that moment. In order to be effective in managing relationships, you need to be able to handle yourself in difficult situations and have the ability to understand and be compassionate when someone has hurt you. This is not an easy thing to do, but it comes with emotional maturity, which is necessary in order to find peace in many situations. When you become emotionally aware, you will be able to effectively develop additional social skills, which will enhance all of your relationships, making them more effective and fulfilling. When you have a good idea of how to manage your stress, this will be important in terms of gaining or improving your emotional intelligence. The person in this example has come to dislike themselves because of a series of thoughts that have played in their minds repeatedly throughout their life. Those thoughts are bits of information, which are what keeps this unhealthy mindset going. This means if they were to make an effort to place new thoughts into their mind- I was not at fault for my parent's arguments, and I am not a bad person- they would be able to gain confidence. As a result, they would require better treatment from other people, and in turn, the quality of their interpersonal relationships would increase dramatically, resulting in a better quality of life for them. If the way you see yourself has lead to low self-esteem, that means you can reverse this effect. While events in our life can rewire our brains, we have the power to do the same thing. This means you can literally make your brain work the way you want it to. Yes, it is true that when something bad happens in your life, it can rewire your brain. This is why outside forces so often play a large role in how we feel about ourselves. The environment around us affects our internal process. The path forward should be clear.

Into the heart of disagreement we must go, with an intention to acknowledge it, appreciate it, and work with it in a way that produces the world we want to live in. I invite you to accept this call to adventure, as a new responsibility required in order for us to meet the new challenges of today. EIGHT THINGS TO TRY YOUR PATH TOWARD THE ART OF PRODUCTIVE DISAGREEMENT Watch How Anxiety Sparks Anxiety is a signpost pointing out our personal beliefs and expectations. Has this ever happened to you? You're doing something around the house, and things are a bit chaotic. You grab your lidded coffee cup from earlier in the day off the table and take a big swig. It would feel like she never died. I could feel that she wasn't But she did die. And I couldn't ignore that. After watching her fight cancer for almost a year, I learned that the last stages of her fight awakened this feeling of inevitability about death. And I think that must have been liberating to my mom. I could feel that she wasn't afraid of death anymore. She was really ready to die. That's how we ended up in a conversation about what people do in Heaven. She didn't have to manage her fear about death anymore. Let's play a game.

Take a look at the following three images and try to predict what will happen next. The images don't show what the next moment will bring but I'm sure you have an idea about it in your mind. Your guess, in fact, is the simulation of a mental model you have about what's going on in the picture. You can come up with different outcomes than the obvious if you really try. In the picture about sky diving, you could imagine the plane taking a sudden turn and the two people falling back on board. In the second image, you could picture the dog missing the ball by a breath and awkwardly biting the air instead of nailing the catch. In the last picture, you could simulate that the child pulls her hand back at the last second after hearing the screams of her mother instead of pulling the pot on herself. All this contemplation, of course, normally happens outside of our consciousness--we simulate our mental models as snap judgments. How to use mental models in systems thinking? It is NOT fear. It is the life experience and teachings from parents and friends who help children learn what is risky and dangerous. When children play with a knife, catching the blade with bare hands, or put their hands in boiling water, they start to react not from fear but from a learned threat to their physical integrity. On the other hand, fear blocks us from being brave. It blocks us from having faith in what we do. Fear is the biggest obstacle towards our prosperity, towards our evolvement, our progress towards a better and happier life. Many times I have heard people saying: We are thankful to fear because it saves us from getting into trouble. It makes us think twice before we make a move. Now, I agree that we have to be careful, but as mentioned earlier in this article, carefullness and fear are two different things. Being careful and reactions to imminent danger are learned categories. When I have paid for all my sins, I will be born again in good circumstances and then I will attain moksha.