Said With Courage

  • The hook and the stream

    Sometimes you only catch a fish for the sake of catching a fish.

    Pull it from the stream, observe it, marvel, tenderly unhook, release.

    The fish swims away.

    This process of throwing a hook into the water attached to a line to a rod to a pair of arms, is called fishing.

    Similarly when we go about our day moving from task to task or conversation to conversation we can practice something called ‘being’.

    It’s an art I’ve never understood because nobody speaks straight. Always riddles and kaons and yet I’ve been fascinated by that which I cannot grasp since I was a kid.

    Being, like fishing, can involve throwing a hook into the stream and pulling up whatever thought happens to swim by.

    Pull it from the stream, observe it, marvel, tenderly unhook, release.

    The thought swims away.

    I find with enough practice, I notice random hooks I’ve not seen before.

    Pulling all sorts of thoughts out of the stream of consciousness.

    It invites enquiry; what exactly is behind the compulsion to continue throwing hooks and grabbing those slippery thoughts to examine them?

  • Dimensions of a good life

    What is length without distance, shape without size or water without temperature?

    Measurements give options (I can freeze water because someone figured out how to measure the temperature and change it).

    But there’s lots of things which affect us that we don’t measure.

    Things we hardly ever talk about, in fact there’s entire languages yet to be discovered which will let us describe the unspeakable.

    What are the dimensions of a good life?

    How do I measure the distance, size and temperature of the right choice?

    So far I have some dimensions; alignment, authenticity and virtues.

    • Alignment is internal calibration, when my desires match my direction I’m in alignment.
    • Authenticity is when my actions, thoughts and beliefs are in harmony.
    • Virtues are the mental scaffolds that help me make better choices.

    One of the hardest parts of personal growth is that it’s personal, but all the info out there is not personal. It’s generic.

    What are the dimensions of the advice helping you to change?

  • It takes both practice and reflection

    It’s easy to blow past a life event and not look back.

    Some personality types are notorious for it. The Type A is a classic.

    “There’s no time for the past we’re too busy moving forward!” – last words of some person about to get a hard lesson.

    If we don’t learn from history we’re doomed to repeat it.

    What’s with the hurry?

    If you slow down, you might actually get somewhere.

    Movement requires direction between two points, but it also takes reflecting in order to make the right course adjustments along the path.

    What’s with the resistance for reflection?

    Where does that reluctance come from?

    I can’t answer that because I have the opposite problem. I have such intense, crippling imposter syndrome that I reflect almost compulsively.

    Reflection acts almost like a safety blanket for people like me, who ruminate and overthink.

    But to move forward it takes both; practice and reflection.

  • Experience is not enough

    Improvement takes more than just showing up.

    I have to reflect upon experience to turn it into wisdom.

    Like getting nutrients from food.

    What happens when food is eaten, not digested?

    No nourishment, no change.

    Building any skillset is the same.

    When I don’t digest what’s happening as a result of the choices I make, I tend to make the same choices.

    Again, and again, and again, and again.

    Q: How do I know I’ve learned something?
    A: Given the same circumstances, I make different choices.

  • The past doesn’t control the future, but patterns do

    Although I’m not doomed to live out the same dynamics, I will…

    Until I slow down for long enough to change.

    People say the past repeats itself, but actually patterns repeat themselves.

    The pattern is in the present. It imposes itself on how I look at the world, something familiar yet painful.

    Uh oh, I’ve seen that look before, I know what (s)he’s thinking. I know what’s coming next.

    I may talk like I’m seeing the past, or know the future, but the past is over, the future isn’t even real. It’s an idea.

    I’m not seeing the past. I’m seeing the pattern.

    The brain searches for threats, thought interprets sensation.

    ‘That discomfort means (s)he probably ____, this feeling means (s)he’s going to ____.’

    The pattern encoded into my nervous system, the meaning I make, it only exists right now – in this very moment.

    My body prepares for a fight.

    The past might be gone, but the pattern remains.

    What happens next? A story as old as time.

  • Is she really crazy, or…?

    Confession time, if you tell me your ex ‘is a crazy ____’, my first thought is ‘what did you not take responsibility for?’

    It’s about to get real. Grab a helmet.

    I had every justification to call my ex a crazy ____. By her choices, the drama, the tantrums, the fights, the accusations, the endless interrogations, missed calls etc.

    We didn’t know how to navigate our trauma, hell I only learned what the word ‘trauma’ means 3 years after we broke up.

    More words I needed; boundaries, enmeshment, projection, vegas nerve, non-violent communication, courage, responsibility, maturity.

    We were doing our best with a lifetime of baggage.

    And in the end, she acted crazy.

    But you know why I never describe her as a crazy ___?

    Because I deserved it.

    Our relationship was built on a lie I told right at the start.

    Something small and innocuous to me, but completely self centered and not at all with her best interests in my heart.

    So… was it really that ‘she was crazy’, or was she trying to have a relationship with someone she felt she couldn’t trust?

  • I’m not trying to (…)

    So stop.

    If you’re not trying to (…), just stop.

    What are you trying to (…)?

    Negation leads to causation.

    Next time you talk to someone, start with: ‘I’m really not trying to offend you,’ and then say something. Anything.

    Try to negate crime, cause it. Try to negate feelings of disrespect, cause them. Try to negate offending people, cause it.

    What are you trying to do? Do the thing you’re trying to do and stop trying not to do the thing you’re trying not to do.

    What are you trying to do?

    Do that.

  • Problem or solution?

    I tend to see either problems or solutions.

    But they’re both.

    It’s not a dichotomy with distance between. It’s a timeline, with decisions between, because any problem is a solution in waiting.

    The struggle for me is in recognising I have a problem in the first place.

    Sometimes it feels good to just complain and whinge. I get to vent frustration, someone validates and listens to me. On the other side of it I like how I feel.

    But if it ends there, that feeling is a lie.

    It’s like someone who reads about exercise, but doesn’t exercise.

    My mentor once said people who suffer my complaints are either; others who want to complain too or others who have no choice but to listen.

    Rarely can either person help me move from problem to solution.

    One of the biggest lessons I’ve gotten from years of mentorship is how the right person can validate my pain, normalise my struggle and yet help me do something about the situation causing it.

    See, if I complain to the right person, they don’t shame me. They invite me back into the tribe, yet also help me brush myself off and get back at it.

    I always wanted things to change, but never wanted to change… Until I learned the art of receiving support.

  • A plateau breaking articulation technique

    In suicide counselling I used to struggle to make progress.

    Over time it got easier to break through plateaus – like this…

    1. Write down what I’m struggling with, e.g., ‘I struggle when people ask me for advice’.
    2. Make it a how or what question, e.g, ‘How do I answer when people ask directly for advice?’
    3. Set a timer to 90 seconds and write out 5 different answers as quickly as possible (key – allow them to suck!)
    4. Pick the best one and use it to articulate my struggle with more detail, e.g., ‘I struggle to acknowledge and validate people while also correcting their expectations about what advice I can give’.
    5. Reflect on the contrast between the best and worst.

    Through iteration I’ll overcome multiple hurdles.

    Done correctly the question gets more precise, after a few reps it might look like; ‘How do I answer appropriately when people ask for advice, given that a) they’ve stated their need, b) I’m not in the correct role to fill that need, c) their expectations are misaligned with the service I’m here to offer d) I could potentially connect them to the right service but not unless e) I maintain connection and trust long enough to do so?’

    To break through my current plateau, I articulate it.

  • The abyss stares back

    I’ve had the honour, privilege and terror of looking into cosmic mirrors.

    Psychedelic misuse, mental break down, family struggles, emotionally violent relationships, suicide counselling, training, my partner’s health battles and the evolution of her consciousness.

    Through these life chapters I’ve had the confronting privilege of seeing into the abyss – and yes, find it staring back.

    I’ve been a victim of bullying, I’ve been a bully. I’ve been unlucky, I’ve been blessed. I’ve seen the world through contrasting viewpoints.

    None of them are true, yet all of them are true.

    I suspect deep in the core of what it means to be a human in ego, we have a machine for turning perspective into truth.

    Ask one scientist if it’s a wave, ask another if it’s a particle, they both answer ‘yes’ – and claim undeniable proof.

    The implication can be confronting.

    ‘The thing I look at is that way because of how I look at it.’

    What makes this so confronting, exactly?

    I used to find the idea of a cosmic mirror super scary… until I started telling myself better stories. Truths that help me show up how I want to show up despite the brutal facts of my reality.

    Below is one of my absolute favourites, a real banger.

    Life conforms to the stories we tell.

  • How my mentor revealed the gap

    ‘You’re too hard on yourself’ – feedback I received many times, that meant nothing to me.

    ‘Haha I know right!’ (What the hell are they talking about…)

    I can’t receive what I can’t perceive.

    When someone said I’m too hard on myself, self critical, etc. it was like telling the fish it’s in water.

    Only with wisdom and experience does the fish know it’s in water. Before that, it doesn’t even know water exists.

    Q: How does a fish learn about water? A: By leaving it.

    Changing perspective is a lot like this. It means getting out beyond the safety and comfort of what is known.

    If it weren’t for the people who back me, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as confident getting out of the water.

    My mentor has a way of normalising my discomfort before hitting me right between the eyes.

    He knew exactly the book I needed, just when I could handle it.

    ‘You’re too hard on yourself’ meant nothing until I read The Gap And The Gain. I realised what everyone had been trying to tell me the whole time.

    I was in The Gap and if I wasn’t careful – I’d drown there.

  • Your focus is like a torch

    Here’s a useful frame I didn’t believe in: your focus is like a torch.

    Choosing to believe you can control the torch requires mental fortitude.

    It requires breaking the habit of being yourself.

    When you figure it out, the path becomes much less confusing because you direct where the light goes, rather than having it directed by random forces of emotional chaos.

    Your belief system, the way your self talk operates, how present you can be, all these things and more lead to how you operate the torch of your focus.

    Reading Learned Optimism showed me how my pessimistic beliefs were simply left-over programs installed by others when I was young. I got given these ways of thinking from good intentions, but after soul searching I learned a hard truth…

    I’d rather be an incorrect optimist, than a correct pessimist.

    Reading Learned Optimism humbled me. I realised I needed to find other people who could show me how to improve my thinking, otherwise I’d continue to get the same results I always got.

    Your focus is like a torch, who’s helping you direct it?

  • I’d rather find support for growth than accept the status quo

    When you’re deep in the work it can hurt not knowing where to grow.

    This has got to be the biggest problem I faced in my mental health career.

    I felt ineffective, incompetent, worse than all that I felt like I was letting people down who were relying on me.

    The system around me seemed to whisper ‘that’s how things are, it’s hard, you’ll get used to it’.

    This drove me lowkey crazy and lit a fire in my belly that’s been raging ever since.

    Why do we accept this lack of clarity and precision when it comes to improving our ability to listen?

    As a species we’ve figured out how to use lasers to make chips, manipulating aspects at nanoscale.

    Someone walked on the moon like eighty years ago.

    Yet I have to struggle through the confusion of trying to unpick my own bias from my own experience and throw darts blindfolded to figure out how, where and why I went wrong.

    Well… Obviously I figured out a system that helped over time, but god it hurt to do so.

    There’s absolutely no way I would have made it this far without guidance from people with better perspectives than mine.

    How many incredibly empathic and sensitive people left mental health work because they thought they weren’t cut out for it, when really they just didn’t have the right systems to support them?

  • Perspective unlocks all growth

    To learn non-judgement, change perspective.

    Through eyes, perspective implies height. Through ears, perspective implies clarity. Through finger-tips, perspective implies contrast.

    If you don’t value perspective enough to develop and evolve it, your life will not improve.

    To change perspective, move position.

    Move your location to a height you can see further, or at least to somewhere you can see beyond the current obstacle. Move your focus between the things you hear, paying close attention to where they start and stop. Move your touch across different textures to sense the change in temperature, texture, detail.

    Movement is not linear. Often times, to move forward, you must move backward.

    In order to make progress, you must lose it.

    How else will you gain perspective about the obstacles preventing your growth?

    How else can you learn about the underlying patterns of your behaviour?

    How else do you expect to learn?

  • The accusation that woke me tf up

    Picture this; category seven lovers’ meltdown.

    I fought for my goals.

    To feel respected, valued, loved…

    Resolution.

    We were deep in the shit at this stage, long beyond the point of no return where I was clinging to my defences and justifications.

    She asked me something I’ll never forget.

    ‘How do you expect me to feel right now?’

    It wasn’t asked with grace or enquiry, it was hurled from the depths of pain.

    I got chills. I saw it clear as day, for the very first time.

    The truth confronted me.

    I had put zero thought into how I wanted her to feel.

    Loved, appreciated, valued, special, significant…?

    I had nothing for her.

    No wonder we were fighting… What did I expect?

  • If not me, who’s this for?

    In 2010 I watched a film and hated it.

    Alice in Wonderland the remake with Johnny Depp.

    Detested the movie, but sat through it out of respect for the source material and cast.

    Nearly ten years later I watched it again and found it incredibly moving and thoughtful.

    I loved it.

    What changed? Obviously not the film.

    When I watched it again, I found myself thinking about the kids I might one day have. About the perspective they might one day have.

    Thinking through the eyes of my imaginary teenage daughter allowed appreciation to blossom.

    It’s not that the film was terrible, I just wasn’t the right demographic in my young, dumb, male avatar.

    Since this experience I’ve never been able to hate a film again.

    Judgement is a doorway into the soul.

  • Education systems could build confidence

    At the moment education isn’t built for growing competence nor confidence.

    It’s built for standardisation.

    Standard scores, standard tests, standard citizens.

    This isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. The way the system is built, like how the petrol system optimises for profit by using extraction.

    The education system optimises for stability by using standardisation.

    It doesn’t have to be this way.

    We’re failing to give people meaningful education because we’re failing them when they make mistakes.

    The incentive is backward.

    If we encourage people to take calculated risks, to weigh the trade offs and make mistakes that are within tolerable levels, rather than training them to avoid all mistakes at all costs, we will produce much more resilient adults.

    Confidence comes from evidence, what happens to a child who never gains evidence that they can withstand getting things wrong?

    What happens to that child when they become an adult?

    What happens to the world when that adult becomes a worker?

  • Education doesn’t educate, it standardises

    The education system seemed like a mystery to me.

    It frustrated me to no end because people wouldn’t (later I learned they couldn’t – big difference) give me a straight answer.

    Nobody really grasped it.

    The stories they told me held no internal coherence, now a decade later I see that I was in fact correct, they were wrong.

    The promise of high school university job happiness was bullshit. Not a deception they were actively aware of or knowingly contributing to. But one they were complicit in the same way we are all complicit in funding wars by keeping our money in banks.

    Education systems were not built to educate people, they were built to standardise people.

    This isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature.

    Recognising this helped me learn about myself, my place in society and the niche I take up in the ecosystem of ideas.

    Some of us are meant to fit in, others are meant to find the unexplored edges and crack them open.

  • Community is just relationships

    If you’re building a community, there’s a lot of pitfalls and traps easy to slip into.

    If you want to skip them and create a genuinely powerful community, there’s only one key thing to optimise for first.

    The way people feel about one another, the trust they have for one another, that’s all a community is, at the end of the day.

    If you have a suburb struck by an horrible emergency, and nobody things to check on one another, do you have a community?

    Of course not.

    In order for people to truly care for one another, they need to feel cared for.

    They need to feel supported, to give support.

  • Commit to self knowledge

    The rewards of this commitment outweigh every other.

    But self knowledge is not found in isolation.

    To see yourself, look into the eyes of others.

    Find stillness and discomfort.

    Enquire about the nature of your reality, ask yourself why things are the way they are.

    Ask yourself for who they are the way they are.

    Seek answers from within and find people who can help you tolerate what you find.

    Until you can enjoy the searching.

    Until there is no need to enjoy it, and it just is.

  • Most people will use AI terribly

    I had a horrifying conversation with someone once.

    They said their writing had declined in quality since using AI.

    This made me question deeply the nature of our relationship with tools to improve our life and make things more convenient.

    The calculator means I don’t have to use pen and paper, nor even understand or engage in mathematics.

    I can figure things out just by pressing buttons.

    I sometimes wonder how this hurts my life, how my thinking suffers for the invisible debt of not understanding theorems or formulas.

    Would it change how I think?

    I look at people using AI and to me it’s all backward.

    Most people use it to skip thinking.

    Mathematics I can live without, but I know I’m missing something beautiful, I can tell.

    What does AI invite us to live without?

    Thinking?

  • Let go to grow

    Builders want to get ahead in life, but naturally as humans we also want to belong.

    In order to get ahead, you have to let go of your desire to belong.

    Something’s got to drive you forward.

    I’ve heard it said you need a mongrel in you.

    In order to move forward, I had to let go of the people who wanted me to stay with them, at the pub.

    I have nothing against those people, I just wanted to open myself up to a different life, one where the pub didn’t belong.

    In order to grow, I needed to let go.

  • Forget goals, set fears

    As someone young, hungry and clueless, I always knew I was missing something.

    A big clue fell right into place when I watched Tim Ferris’ Ted talk on setting fears.

    Applying the lessons in this video shifted how I see consequences, it taught me to look my worst fears right in the eye and step through the doorway of my imagination.

    It showed me how to embrace the emotion and use it to light my pathway forward into becoming exactly the person I know deep down that I can be.

    Exactly the kind of person who 18 year old Said can be proud of to say – fuck, I knew there was a good reason to stick around.

  • We practice optimism

    Optimism versus pessimism.

    Both have utility, but which leads a more fulfilling life?

    As far as targets to optimise for in life, fulfilment seems at least as good as any.

    I’d rather be an incorrect optimist than a correct pessimist.

    Because I can hold ultimate optimism in one hand, and grim acceptance of reality in the other.

  • Hold paradox

    Both can be true.

    • I am happy with who I am.
    • I want to grow and improve.

    Both are true.

    • Language matters deeply.
    • Some of the most important things in life cannot be expressed.

    Both can exist.

    • I am unsure of which direction to take.
    • I will walk forward boldly.

    Co-existence of seemingly competing ideas allows mental flexibility.

    I can allow contradictions to breathe.

    I embrace paradox.

  • Acknowledge the thing and tie it in

    I know I have to ask about suicide, but it doesn’t feel right.

    When I first started it felt so unnatural and uncomfortable, like ticking a box; ‘by the way have you had thoughts of suicide lately?’

    Ew.

    I thought the problem was needing to ask.

    The real problem was not knowing how to ask.

    Simple solution: Acknowledge the thing and tie it in.

    If their last reply doesn’t naturally connect to suicide, acknowledge and tie it in to what you’re there for (provide crisis support, fight mental health stigma, save the world, take your pick).

    ‘There’s a lot to live for, it seems you’ve come really far. Those dark feelings in the valley you mentioned earlier.. have they ever led to thoughts of suicide?’

    Wherever they are: empowerment, humour, pride, whatever they share, you can always…

    Acknowledge the thing and tie it in.

  • Repetition + reflection = revelation

    Repetition is necessary, but not sufficient.

    Reflection is necessary, but not sufficient.

    Without either, the other is ineffective.

    Whether you’re providing suicide prevention, making sales, vetting your next partnership, creating art…

    Whatever you’re doing will improve with the right balance of both.

    Whichever you prefer, the other is calling.

    So listen.

  • If you like your results, don’t change

    Personal growth means having the humility to accept you’re not where you want to be.

    It means having the vulnerability to let your heart whisper it’s secret yearning.

    Can you hear what it wants to say to you? To the world?

    It might yearn for love, or respect, or to heal others.

    They all whisper.

    If you like the results you have, don’t change.

  • A simple formula for volunteer retention

    Volunteer Retention = (reward / challenge)

    Reward = (intrinsic x extrinsic motivation)

    Challenge = (readiness for learning / resilience)

    Resilience = ((self care x self awareness) / support network)

  • Don’t Trust Your First Take

    The first thought I ever have about anything is almost always wrong.

    Look inward and see if you’re the same.

    When I’m right about things, it’s not becuase I’m thinking. I might be feeling, I might speak based on my feeling, when I’m right I rarely have to think.

    But instant thoughts themselves have never once been accurate the first time they speak up inside my mind.

    Can you relate?

    Of course thoughts can -become- helpful when I direct them or listen deeply enough to see what unmet need is controlling them.

    Do they start off that way? No.

    They start like ‘Danger!’ ‘Problem!’ ‘Risk!’ ‘Threat!’ or ‘victim’ ‘shame’ ‘doubt’ ‘uncertainty’ etc.

    If this resonates with you reach out and say so over socials so we can huddle together in the snow.

  • Here’s why he’s defensive

    To level up, current-you must die.

    If the sentence above was easy to read, you didn’t get it.

    To illustrate, let me show you why I get defensive.

    When I’m defensive I believe the story I’m telling.

    ‘I’ve always …’

    ‘It’s not like I meant to…’

    ‘I just feel like you…’

    Without true processing, stories become like prisons keeping my growth limited to the time when I first told them.

    Each of us is a unique constellation and different dots must be connected, but the connections need to happen in sequence.

    For example I could never have opened up until Marissa helped me open up.

    She could never have helped me unless I had helped her.

    It goes back in sequence, and each time our relationship was stuck, it’s because two dots needed to connect between our two unique constellations.

    There’s no skipping the work you’re avoiding. The best way forward that I have yet to discover is becoming trustworthy to someone else who’s becoming trustworthy.

    Together, we can face anything.

    Who do you trust enough to let them safely trigger you?

  • Sensation Versus Cognition

    My language system has two engines, cognition and sensation.

    If I’m using cognition, I get to observe and analyse.

    If I’m using sensation, I get to integrate and transmute.

    Most of us walk around completely oblivious to sensation.

    There’s a difference between feelings and emotions, if you ask someone how they feel about something and they tell you an answer expressing judgement, they’re in cognition.

    ‘It just feels like she did it on purpose.’

    ‘Oh yeah, and what feeling is that?’

    ‘Well, I don’t know what I did to deserve this. Yet it seems to happen over and over. Is this just a (insert whatever demographic most scares me) thing?’

    When our language system relies completely on cognition, it’s like asking the bearau of meteorology to report on how the coming storm will impact the economy.

    Why the fuck are we asking them?

    To genuinely process what they’re going through, someone’s emotions must be allowed to happen. Not rationalised away. Not suppressed or denied.

    Caveat: there’s a difference between crying to release and crying to hold on.