Looking: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Peebles was the first thing you saw when you came into our house. I'd come home from school each day and maybe spend an hour or two trying to teach her to talk back to me. Models test our assumptions and theories. Ultimately, every model is only as good as the quality of the thinking that went into creating it. So how can we improve the quality of our thinking? By learning additional, auxiliary thinking tools. This sounds like an easy process in theory, but in practice we need to use a lot of thinking skills effectively to correctly articulate and test a hypothesis, create mental models, and implement the changes needed. Let's talk about these auxiliary thinking skills you can practice in isolation. The Essential Thinking Tools As you engage in systems thinking, you will see that some cognitive skills preponderate in each part. I collected the following thinking tools that systems thinkers want to practice: Beyond these five, systems thinker and managing director and founder of High Performance Systems, Inc. When my mother spoke of those days, she remembered being forced to work so hard that she asked for death to come so that she could eventually rest. Fortunately, her physical will to live was stronger and she survived the war. But the fear was deeply embedded in her mind from this point - fear of being alone at age 10 made her desperate to hunt for a new husband later on. This is how far I can trace the root of fear that was the cause of my brother's unhappy life and premature death. You are right to think - somebody has to stop this trail of suffering! The only question is: who must do it? But before I explain that, please acknowledge that I am not blaming my mother or my stepfather for any wrongdoing. Not at all!

They were doing the best that they could at the time. But fear and ignorance were blocking their clear, natural view. I had perfected the art of mismanaging relationships. I had this uncanny ability to destroy any relationship in a single interaction. As an asshole I'd score a perfect ten. If any other human being on the planet had the same degree of insecurity and self-fixation, and had similar anger management issues, they too would be singing my songs of loneliness crammed with self-pitying lyrics. I'm stinging in the rain. Assume that chaos and suffering are wild weeds that I didn't want in my garden. But with my right hand while I was frantically plucking the weeds off the ground, with my left hand I was tossing the weed seeds back into the furrowed earth. If everything is perfect, are we doomed? Quite the contrary. With deliberate actions of gratitude, kindness, compassion and an array of positive deeds, we can change our states into positive and happy ones. He had tried to express his dread to his mother but she dismissed his feelings; No one except Chinh's older sister--who was herself distressed due to the family dynamics--saw his pain or predicament. Meanwhile, Chinh fantasized night and day about being a professional wrestler, but he had barely enough strength or confidence to get out of bed to come to school, let alone become part of a high school sports team. It wasn't until Chinh revealed a plan for suicide at school that his parents finally recognized the heavy emotional toll that the repeated harassment was having on their son. The next youngster mentioned above is Sarah, who had been very excited about starting second grade. After an enjoyable shopping spree with her mom to pick out new school clothes, she was told abruptly that her parents were getting divorced and her father would be moving out in two weeks. Her joy for school became paired with panic and sadness. The aliveness in her stomach changed into tight twisted knots.

No wonder she was the school nurse's most frequent visitor! Our last example for now is Raul. You should always have the courage to love again, trust again, and try to live actively because that is what life is all about. The experiences that you will have are going to create memories, both good and bad that will last for a lifetime. The more time that you spend alone, the higher the chance that you will place yourself in danger of becoming even more stressed, more depressed and finally, dependent on isolation instead of being with other people. If you consistently allow yourself to be detached from the world, it is going to become normal to you, so you will not even notice that you are actually trapped in that isolated existence. This is unhealthy, because you can fall into a cycle of isolation, and the longer that you stay there, the harder it will be to get out. You will eventually become what you believe, so the more you believe you cannot change your ways, or get out of that situation, then the longer you will stay in that environment. If you continue to convince yourself that no one is able to help you, the more you will believe that, and you will always try to convince other people of that as well. Believe it or not, you can become codependent on negativity, guilt, and anger, which all will eventually breed shame because you have convinced yourself that you are not able to cope with the world on your own. It can become an addiction, the same way that people get stuck in abusive or toxic relationships, and they can never seem to get themselves out of the situation. This will usually cause them to develop a sick sense of excitement, and they begin to attach abuse and neglect to feeling excited. It is to drive the point home to keep your eyes on the future. Most of us go through cycles of having a self-sabotaging mentality at certain points throughout our lives. Whenever life knocks us down, it is completely normal to feel discouraged. It is not being defeated to feel sensations that are natural responses to certain situations. There are certain feelings we cannot help but have because they are a natural response to disappointment. When something upsetting happens to you, you will feel a mixture of unpleasant emotions. However, you do not need to let these sensations control you. Think about a time where you had a lengthy project to complete.

You were at the end of it. You had been through a lot, and what you really wanted to do was give up and take the grade that would result from not doing whatever you left undone. The common thread among all of these behaviors that show up as a result of the backfire effect is our perception of an unacceptable demand on our freedom. We may or may not have strong beliefs about which friend is to blame for the breakup, or how much we want to indulge in drugs and alcohol on our own time, or which team deserves our loyalty, but we do have strong beliefs about what we think other people should be allowed to request of us. When others infringe on this deep core value, it sparks the backfire effect more than anything else. The ancient Greek myth of Eris, the goddess of discord, chaos, and misery, shows us how much trouble we can get into when we try to change people's minds. When every other god and goddess on Olympus was invited to the wedding of Theseus and Peleus except for Eris, she was furious. What, they didn't want her to ruin their good times with all of her chaos, misery, and discord? It honestly sounds like a fair enough reason to me, but Eris wasn't having it. It's not my fault that I'm the goddess of discord! When Zeus refused to change his mind, she decided to show him what chaos, misery, and discord were all about. For all their might and power, the Greek gods were terrible at the art of productive disagreement. You should also know that I gave up on my lessons with Pebbles after about a week. Playing with Barbie and her friends proved to be a much easier task. Plus, someone had to drive Barbie's new ride and help her host her last minute soirees. I swear I tried my best to take care of Pebbles. And I thought I was doing a good job. You know, as good as any child takes care of any one thing. I hadn't had that bird for more than a month when I came home from dance class and noticed that Pebbles was gone. Her cage was gone.

I instantly went into a full-on kiddie panic attack when I saw that her little area in our living room was replaced with a brand new wooden coffee table with a pretty piece of stained glass in the middle of it. The nasty stench Pebbles caused (that really bothered me and my mom) was also gone, swapped out for my mom's favorite household scent: Pine-Sol. Creative and Analytical Thinking Creative thinking is relating or producing a thing or idea that was not previously related. Creative thinking comes in handy when trying to solve problems when you're panicked. Some ideas might even be created to prevent panic. When I took my two children to Disney World, they were young enough to enjoy the amusement park, but not old enough to reliably remember their parents' names and phone numbers. I had temporary tattoos created for them with my name and phone number on them in case we got separated. Luckily, it never happened, but I got asked about where I'd gotten them from a lot of parents during our week-long vacation. Creative thinking requires your imagination and can lead to a literal fount of ideas and solutions. Analytical thinking is convergent, meaning it pares down to a small number of distinct ideas, answers, or solutions for further analysis and utility. In comparison, creative thinking is divergent, meaning it begins with a description and then splits in many different directions to find many possible solutions. So never blame our parents, we have to give them all the respect we can, because we wouldn't be here if we hadn't had them. However, we can and should condemn their wrongdoings. So, we love and respect our parents, and we will do until our last breath, but we condemn their negative actions and omissions. The next step in stopping the trail of suffering is to identify who should take charge and how? Who is responsible? Actually, the answer is simple. It is ourselves and nobody else! If we rely on somebody else to help us, they can only distract us for a short period of time before the fear comes back again.