Said With Courage

  • 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.