The Dance of Anger

The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships by Harriet Lerner is an easy to read book, rather insightful, and has decent advice. It doesn’t go too much into depth into any one kind of relationship, but it does offer strategies you can use in a broad number of them. Unless all your relationships are perfect, it’s worth a read.

Ostrich

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley

The ostrich buries its head in the sand (metaphorically, not actually, but go with me on this). However, that doesn’t change anything. You can pretend that he doesn’t drink or she doesn’t lie or he doesn’t cheat or you’re not angry or everything’s fine, but it doesn’t make it so. There is a codependent-recovery saying, “Fake it till you make it”, but that’s regarding your own behavior and your own beliefs, not about someone else. And you never, ever, fake it about money.

The difference, and the problem, comes in with the prequel to the saying. You see, you have to fake it intentionally, and you can’t do that until you know it’s false. And you can’t do that until you’re honest with yourself and see the facts as they really are.

Build your Future on truths, not preferences.

Making Mistakes

Experience can be merely the repetition of same error often enough. - John G. Azzopardi

Sometimes you have to make your own mistakes. Sometimes you can learn from someone else’s, and you don’t have to make your own. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake repeatedly before you learn. Why? Because somewhere along the line, you learned something else, and before you can learn new, you have to unlearn old.

I was taught a lot of wrong things when I was a kid, including a lot of sexist and racist ideas that I’ve worked hard to eliminate from my thoughts. I’ve had a lot of unlearning to do, and I had to clear out the wrong in order to make room for the right.

Making the same mistake over and over can be a similar thing, if you learn from it. Somewhere you learned that this was the right thing, and it’ll take you a while to figure out, deep inside yourself, that no, it isn’t. But do try to learn. Too many people don’t bother to learn from their mistakes at all, much less unlearn something from their past.

With mistakes comes experience, and with experience comes knowledge and the ability to better shape your Future. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, so long as you learn.

More Birds of a Feather

Example is contagious behavior. - Charles Reade

Birds of a feather flock together. Monkey see, monkey do. Herd mentality. The thing is, example is contagious behavior. Who you hang around with, what you watch on TV, what you read are the examples that you put into your brain, and your brain will reply in kind. If you don’t like what you’re doing, find people who are doing what you like and start hanging around them. If you want to think a different way, find others who think a different way.

And if you think, “Oh, that won’t happen to me,” I assure that it might. There have been times that I’ve thought, “At least I’m not as bad as X.” Whatever habit or situation I’ve been in, as long as there was someone worse, I thought it was tolerable. Even when it wasn’t. Especially when it wasn’t, because sometimes that “I’m not as bad as that” was all that kept me from doing something to change my life.

You can life and build your Future without any like-minded people around, but it’s a whole lot easier with them than without them.

Examples

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves. - H. W. Shaw

This quote is right, for the most part, but there are exceptions to every rule. Some people will choose an example that they think fits, or they’ll see an example but refuse to believe it, discounting it as not really applying. While an example may prove itself, it does not necessarily change people’s minds. I could give you examples, but that’d be defeating the purpose.

Don’t take tips on success from unsuccessful people. Don’t take advice on how to be happy from people who are miserable. Be aware of where the advice comes from. Examples are very good at letting you know what kind of source it is.

The Obsession

The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness by Kim Chernin is a very interesting book, and I do recommend reading it. Written over 20 years ago, it still is very relevant to women today. It is about dieting, eating, anorexia, and the power of women. Why is anorexia found almost exclusively among women? Why was it being found in almost epidemic numbers at that particular time? Why are women the ones who diet, to whom the diet books, magazines, and groups are marketed? Kim Chernin answers these questions and many more on an interesting journey into the culture and eventually the soul of current life. I don’t agree with everything she said, but some of her observations are simply amazing and well worth it.