We're not the Wayans

[frissonfinder]

It would be interesting to know how many pence out of each pound we pay in tax/national insurance goes into the pocket of the shareholders for privately owned companies when their dividends are paid.

Is there anyone able to give at lease a rough estimate?

[conscious-love]

Hi there. I’m having trouble with forgiving myself over past mistakes. I have a perfectionist mind and when I think I was not perfect my mind will randomly remember it during quiet moments in my day. How do I forgive myself? Also, I love the blue in your blog! Thank you for your time and have a lovely day :)

First of all, LOL to your username 😂 And thanks! Blue is my favourite colour 💙

Edit: they changed their username

So, hello! 👋🏻 I’m all too familiar with perfectionism, and I know what it’s like to wrestle with guilt. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

It feels like perfectionism is simply a fear of failure, and it is that, but more than that, it is rooted in fear of being shamed by others. This can stem from childhood: parents who only praised us for achievements, being known as the “gifted kid” or “the smart one,” parents/peers who ridiculed/rejected us, an insecure attachment style, and so on.

It can sometimes be connected to OCD. That said, not every perfectionist has OCD and not everyone with OCD is a perfectionist.

Sometimes it is just learned behaviour — it’s because our family was that way.

And sometimes a traumatic and/or deeply embarrassing event can trigger it. Traumatic events include things we’ve done wrong; in fact, the literature on trauma has shown that we are more deeply traumatized by “bad” things we’ve done than the things that have happened to us.

Regardless of the cause, perfectionism is highly treatable. Re-wiring our brain is not easy, but it gets easier with practice. It’s about finding the right resources and techniques, being consistent in practicing, and having compassion for ourselves.

The antidote to perfectionism is self-compassion. Because perfectionism is rooted in fear of shame, the way to overcome this affliction is to be kind to ourselves, and to teach ourselves to be okay with “good enough,” instead of viewing it as failure. This really is all about re-framing our thoughts around success, productivity, failure, flaws, and ultimately — worthiness.

It’s very common for anxious and ruminating thoughts to enter our mind while we’re at rest. Our response is often to keep ourselves busy, but this is not an effective long-term strategy. You’ve got to face those thoughts head-on (pun intended). If you don’t get to the root of the problem, you’ll never untangle it. Not only that, the problem will compound.

So how do we combat these ruminating thoughts about failure and guilt? You’ve already alluded to the answer — forgive yourself. Here’s what I know about failure, guilt, and self-forgiveness:

All forgiveness starts with acceptance. You have to admit to yourself that you are not perfect, that you’ve made mistakes, and that you will continue to make mistakes almost every day for the rest of your life. This does not mean resigning to mediocrity, and it does not mean shaming yourself. It is neutral. You are not perfect. You make mistakes. That’s just the way it is.

Once it’s sunk in that you are not, in fact, perfect, it’s time to accept that you’re not supposed to be perfect, and that you never will be. Accepting you’re not perfect is one thing, but if you still have it in your mind that you’re going to keep trying until you’re perfect one day, you’ll remain stuck in this cycle of anxiety and shame.

You need to internalize the reality that by virtue of being human, you are imperfect. To quote Brené Brown, “you are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” On that note, definitely check out Brené Brown, she’s freaking amazing — she’s a research professor and the world’s leading authority on vulnerability and shame. Here is her first Ted Talk called The Power Of Vulnerability and here is her second one called Listening To Shame. Her books are great as well; here is a list of her books. I also enjoy her podcast, Unlocking Us; here is a link to it on Apple Podcasts, and here is a link to it on Spotify. I’m seeing now that she actually has another podcast as well, called Dare To Lead; it’s not on Apple Podcasts, but here is the link to it on Spotify.

Anyway, where I was going with that was, you are imperfect because you are human, and that is a good thing. If you were perfect, no one on earth would want to be near you for very long. You would make people feel inadequate, and they would not feel truly understood. They would not feel like they can open up to you, or that they have anything to truly bond over. You would only ever have surface-level interactions. Being imperfect is vulnerable, and you can’t have true connection without vulnerability. Not only should you forgive your imperfection, you should embrace it! 🤍

Messing up and falling short don’t exactly feel good, but they don’t have to feel like the end of the world either. In fact, with practice, you can let failure motivate, not discourage you. Making a mistake brings you one step closer to mastery. Learning that you’re wrong is a blessing; it reorients you on your way to finding the truth. Without mistakes, you wouldn’t be able to walk today. You wouldn’t know how to read, unless you were born with the magical ability to download information instantaneously. We fail forward, that is how we learn and gain competency. Failure is our signal that we’ve done something wrong, and that we need to reassess and recalibrate. It’s valuable feedback, and it’s necessary for growth and success.

Guilt is useful insofar that it gives you feedback about your decisions; it teaches you lessons, guides you to live in alignment with your morals, and helps you be loving and fair in your relationships. But once you’ve learned the lesson or received the feedback, you need to drop that shit immediately. Harbouring guilt beyond its utility is not noble, it’s self-destructive, and harmful to the people around you. Maybe you’re wondering how that could be. “Aren’t these people the most sorry? Aren’t they the last person who’d cause harm?” Counterintuitive as it sounds, I’ll explain why it’s harmful. Being around someone with a guilt complex is exhausting. They often project their insecurities onto you, accusing you of insulting their morals or intentions. You have to walk on eggshells around them to avoid triggering a shame spiral. You hear them say the same things over and over again, ruminating over their mistakes but never learning their lesson (which means embodying it, not just thinking and talking about it). You watch them make poor decisions because they don’t feel worthy of good things, and it hurts watching someone you love do that to themselves. It’s paradoxical. People hold on to guilt because they’re worried about being a “bad person” or a “failure.” Little do they know, pathological guilt (aka shame) morphs a person into someone who is far from virtuous. Chronic guilt makes people self-centred, because everything reminds them of their suffering. It makes them afraid of vulnerability, and the inability or unwillingness to be vulnerable is cowardice. Furthermore, pathological guilt doesn’t make you a better person. A person who learns their lesson, makes amends if necessary and appropriate, vows to never do it again, and puts it behind them, is someone who turns their mistakes into fuel for personal growth — and they become a better person. The person who messes up then dwells on it forever? That person is not growing. Those with pathological guilt can seem like they’ve learned and grown because they go on and on about their guilt. But becoming a better person after failure means striving to be your best self, so that you can do as little harm and as much good as possible going forward. But shame doesn’t help anyone. Shame inhibits a person’s ability to show up as their best self and create the most positive change they can, and that is the paradox — that believing you are a bad person only takes you further and further away from becoming a truly virtuous person. That’s not to say that those who are plagued by shame are bad people — in fact, their “guilt” is actually illogical — what it means is that shame is so corrosive that it foils even the most well-intentioned person’s efforts to grow, and avoid doing harm. In other words, it’s not helping. Let it go.

So what does self-forgiveness look like on a practical level? It means not shaming yourself for transgressions, being patient with yourself, and speaking kindly to yourself.

When you hurt someone, you make amends if necessary, possible, and appropriate; you learn from your mistake, and you promise yourself to never do it again. The mistake has given you valuable feedback, and now you’re a better person because of it (and your relationship was probably deepened/strengthened as well).

When it’s icy out and you slip on the sidewalk, you laugh instead of looking around frantically to see if anyone saw you. You notice thoughts like, “oh my god I can’t believe I did that,” and “I’m such an idiot/clutz,” and come back at them with thoughts like “wow that was close, I could have seriously hurt myself, but thankfully I didn’t,” and “oh my god wait until I tell ___ about this😂” and (sarcastically), “well that was pleasant.🙄”

When you study your hardest for a test but you don’t do as well as you hoped, you let yourself feel sad for a couple minutes or seconds, and then you come in with the self-compassion. “I tried my best and that’s what matters,” and “well, now I know what I need to work on,” and “at least I got some right,” and “at least I showed up and took the test even though I was nervous. That took courage.”

When you’re not feeling great emotionally and it’s affecting your schoolwork or your ability to socialize or your ability to keep up with household tasks and self care, you don’t use shame to try to motivate yourself. You first admit to yourself that you’re not feeling your best, and that it’s affecting your ability to function at your best. You take care of yourself as best as you can, and remove unnecessary tasks and pressure. You figure out why you’re feeling this way, so that you can then figure out what to do about it. And sometimes, that something is just waiting it out, because sometimes that’s all we can do. You practice being patient with yourself.

Those ^ are some of the ways opportunities to practice self-forgiveness will pop up in your everyday life. Here are some that you can do intentionally:

Do your inner work. Go to therapy if you can afford it, talk to loved ones, watch videos, read articles and books, etc. Research self-forgiveness and self-compassion, and other topics like personal growth, healing and recovery. Journal about your history with shame and perfectionism. See if you can find clues that might explain how they came to be. What purpose does perfectionism have in your life? We don’t develop these coping mechanisms for no reason. Even the most toxic of coping mechanisms work in some way, but they don’t help as much as others, and they generally do more harm than good. Yet, we develop them for a reason, and becoming aware of those reasons helps us have compassion for ourselves, and will allow us to create new strategies to meet those needs and solve those problems.

Practice. Do something imperfectly on purpose. Beth Main said, “Set up some practice situations for yourself. For example, resolve to write one email every day without revising it… Tell yourself, ‘I don’t want to be a perfectionist. I am choosing to let this one go.’” To offer a personal example, I use Exposure Therapy to cope with my OCD. Just the other day, I saw that two boxes in my room were not stacked perfectly one on top of the other (the top one was off slightly to one side). I walked over to fix it then caught myself. I stopped and said (out loud), “no,” and turned back around. Normally, I’d spend at least 5-10 seconds (on a good day) making sure it’s even. But I didn’t give in. It’s these small moments of noticing old, outdated, conditioned thoughts, and countering them with our new, chosen, healthy mental habits that add up and create lasting changes. Perfectionism and shame are mental habits, and like any other, can be transcended. Similarly, forgiveness is a skill that can be developed and honed.

I’ll leave you with some of my favourite quotes (and a few I just found) about perfectionism, personal growth, mistakes, lessons, vulnerability and self-awareness. I’ll only include a couple ones by Brené Brown cause there are literally hundreds I could include 😄 (seriously, check her out, she’s amazing).

If you stop reading here, I hope this helps! Take care 😊 ~ Bella

On perfectionism

Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.

~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

•

A disproportionate need for control — and an overwhelming fear of the uncertainty that can exist in uncontrolled situations — can lead [one] to adopt paralyzingly rigid roles almost like armor against life’s uncertainties.”

~ Allan Mallinger, Jeannette Dewyze, Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control

•

Striving for excellence is a positive quality. Striving for perfection is self-defeating.

~ Melody Beattie

Personal growth

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

~ Brené Brown

•

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

~ John Steinbeck

•

You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

~ Louise L. Hay

•

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

~ Tara Brach

•

You don’t want to beat yourself up for beating yourself up in the vain hope that it will somehow make you stop beating yourself up.

~ Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

•

Forgiving yourself, not guilt, increases personal accountability.

~ David D. Burns

•

Never forget that to forgive yourself is to release trapped energy that could be doing good work in the world.

~ D. Patrick Miller

•

Forgive yourself, you are not perfect. Show yourself grace; you are still learning. Show yourself patience; you are on a journey.

~ Shannon Yvette Tanner

•

You can sit there forever, lamenting about how bad you’ve been, feeling guilty until you die, and not one tiny slice of that guilt will do anything to change a single thing in the past. Forgive yourself, then move on!

~ Wayne Dyer

•

If we doubt that the foundation for inner work is compassion for self and self-honoring behavior, we need only remind ourselves that the opposite approach, feeling guilty or judging ourselves has never really worked.

~ John Earle

•

Dwelling on past bad decisions you've made only allows those decisions to keep defining you. Forgive yourself and move on.

~ Mandy Hale

•

When thinking about life remember this: no amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.

~ Unknown

•

An exciting and inspiring future awaits you beyond the noise in your mind, beyond the guilt, doubt, fear, shame, insecurity, and heaviness of the past you carry around.

~ Debbie Ford

•

Forgiveness takes the burden of hate, guilt, and bitterness off your back and, with a lighter load, you can climb higher and faster, and be much happier in the process.

~ Unknown

•

The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change so that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger but wisdom, understanding, and love.

~ Jennifer Edwards

•

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

~ Oscar Wilde

•

Guilt can either hold you back from growing, or it can show you what you need to shift in your life.

~ Unknown

•

The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.

~ Stephen Richards

Mistakes = wisdom

I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.

~ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

•

You cannot travel back in time to fix your mistakes, but you can learn from them and forgive yourself for not knowing better.

~ Leon Brown

•

Your past mistakes are meant to guide you not define you.

~ Unknown

•

The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence.

~ Unknown

Vulnerability mindset

Just because things hadn’t gone the way I had planned didn’t necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

~ Ann Patchett; What Now?

•

I don’t want to be a perfectionist. I am choosing to let this one go.

~ Beth Main

•

Self-hatred does not serve me.

~ The Yogamad, 45 Forgiveness Affirmations to Let Go of Pain and Find Freedom

Self-awareness

Become aware of the negative ways perfectionism affects you. A few of the problems the authors address in Too Perfect are procrastination, missed deadlines, pickiness, difficulty making decisions, avoiding commitments, lost opportunities, general dissatisfaction with life, guardedness in relationships, and constant worry and ruminations.

~ Beth Main

•

Forgive yourself for what you think you’ve done or not done. At every moment, you had your reasons for all of your actions and decisions. You’ve always done the best that you could do. Forgive yourself.

~ Doreen Virtue

•

Lack of forgiveness causes almost all of our self-sabotaging behavior.

~ Mark Victor Hansen

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Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.

~ Amy Leigh Mercree

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The more you know yourself, the more you forgive yourself.

~ Confucius

•

There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one's errors. It not only clears up the air of guilt and defensiveness but often helps solve the problem created by the error.

~ Dale Carnegie

✨💙✨💙✨💙✨

I hope this helps! Take care 😊

[frissonfinder]

You can make a joke about absolutely anything with just one exception: something that reduces the impact of how seriously the original subject is taken.

We see it almost daily now. A piece of news or a new policy hits which inevitably marginalises a section of society, or more recently the majority of people. That's when the memes start coming which most will have more access to than real facts or genuine stories of those most seriously impacted. Of course this is through no fault of their own, social and mainstream media will always prioritise popular over authentic.

That doesn't mean to say that memes are wrong. They have become a cultural phenomenon which is unsurprising as the definition of meme is: A unit of cultural information spread by imitation. (That definition also works for Genes when talking biological instead of cultural). We all know how creative they can be but an over saturation of intake I feel dampens the blow of the subject they're based on at times.

Look at the current fuel and energy crisis or general cost of living. I've seen some absolutely hilarious content posted on that but it massively outweighs content that could show the impact its also had on millions of people and families. Dare I say it, the corporations and government at the very least must be thankful for the diversion memes create from the negative effects of their profit making or policy. Some might say this is something that is generated with more intention than is initially obvious.

We all need some comic relief, especially at these times but let's not allow it to make the selfish decisions made by other human beings become too friendly or common place. Not only does it erode empathy we might have to others' situations but it increases a misplaced tolerance we have ourselves for our own.

You've heard it before but in addition to memes and popular online content, have a look for real stories of real people and the challenges this Neo Liberal land grab is presenting to them and yourself.

[frissonfinder]

A little bit on shame...

You have to try and realise that those feelings and thoughts you had about yourself were just that. Feelings and thoughts. They differ dramatically to the reality of those situations.

The shame, humiliation or guilt etc is something the person or people who made you feel like that should have felt themselves. It's also important to remember that the reasons for their behaviour are only caused because of feelings and thoughts someone else has caused them to have about themselves.

Fundamentally, by feeling how you do about yourself at the time, and now, you're taking that on for them. You have to hand that back in order to heal and realise it wasn't for you to own in the first place because you were young, vulnerable or any manner of things that made it easy for them to treat you like that.

Obviously handing back feelings that strong is almost impossible to do externally. As a result this needs to be done figuratively or symbolically as your unconscious doesn't know the difference and its that which needs to know you're letting that go.

Consciously it may be obvious you're conducting some kind of ritual to do this but just trust that your unconscious cannot tell the difference as it doesn't exist in the normal constraints of space and time as your conscious mind does.

[frissonfinder]

It happened again. Two days ago I experienced another Synchronicity!

See below blog Chinese Finger Trap for the first.

This new one was also linked to ACT therapy I believe. I've just started using some of the principles of ACT which have, for the past two weeks proven helpful. The main one being witness to thoughts I'm having rather than being the thoughts themselves.

A couple of days ago whilst driving, a presenter used the term 'Greek Chorus' on the radio. Now I'm not consciously aware that I've heard this before but it peaked my interest. I was unable to Google it at the time and had forgotten to do so by the time I'd stopped. Later that night, whilst browsing Netflix for something to watch I saw the same term used in the description of a film I was about to watch. I immediately searched what it was and found that it was a group of people who rather than being involved in antient Greek theatre as characters, would provide commentary on the action, whether through directly engaging with the audience, song and dance.

I immediately understood how and why a Greek chorus seemed to chime for me and how I needed to be the Greek Chrous witnessing and commenting on the thoughts that are playing out rather than being directly involved. As mentioned, I had been doing it for a couple of weeks already, which seemed to be working although the Synchronicity is reassurance I think I needed I am on the right track.

[anuvisur]

Epic Cosplay of “Horizon Zero Dawn”

[joosh-actual-deactivated2018092]

Practical effects are advancing in the cosplay world while Hollywood atrophies itself with an overabundance of CGI.

[lovestereo]

Visit Original Link

[frissonfinder]

I'll start. First signs of a serial killer:

Driving to work with an uncovered mug of coffee

Turning the volume on the TV down fully instead of just pressing mute

Any more?

[frissonfinder]

Adding 'Use block when playing fighting games' to my bucket list

[frissonfinder]

I used to work as a cinema projectionist so me and my colleagues used radios. At the end of a shift, my manager shouted my name and walked towards me with his hand out. I shook it only to realise mid shake he'd just wanted the radio back before I left home with it. That was in 2001. I still think about it at least once a week

[frissonfinder]

The reason everyone cheers in a restaurant when a waiter drops a tray is because they think the jazz band has started

[frissonfinder]

A plateau: kryptonite to an INTJ

[frissonfinder]

[frissonfinder]

I'd always been really interested in what causes anorexia and came across a theory about how people with it are trying to take themselves back to no longer existing which was really interesting but didn't fully understand. I then found out about Freud's theory of Thanatos, who is a Greek god of death and basically our instinct to kill ourselves.

This got me thinking that our survival instinct is in direct contrast with a death instinct. So we do all unconsciously want to die just as much as we want to live. Imagine we only had a survival instinct. We'd never get anything done because we'd always be protecting ourselves. I think the death instinct balances it out so we take risks. Imagine your survival instinct wants you to eat, you come to a river where on the other side is a fruit tree. A survival instinct only keeps you on your side of the river whereas the death instinct makes you risk death to achieve something so you cross.

I also think 'death' can be symbolic and can represent other things like psychological damage. Things like embarrassment, pain, rejection, heartache etc. So again, our death instinct pushes us or should push us towards doing those things to ourselves in order to better ourselves. Again it's unconscious so I think if you're not taking risks or 'trying to kill yourself' the death instinct comes out in other ways like drinking, porn, gambling any addiction really. So does it make sense that if you've experienced trauma, so have an over active survival instinct always trying to keep yourself safe, your death instinct is repressed and turns into addition or self sabotaging behaviour?

That addiction or sabotage is us trying to damage/kill ourselves. To sum up I think we need to be completely accepting of death in its literal sense or symbolically as shame, embarrassment etc in order to stop that death instinct manifesting itself in other ways. We have to take productive risks that pay off and not be so scared that we might fail (or die).

[wannaseenirvana]

Chinese Finger Trap

For the last few months, following what had been a difficult year previously, I have been reading a lot about Carl Jung. One of his theories is that of Synchronicity which is, according to Jung, “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”

I've always been a sceptic when it comes to matters such as these. More recently though having read a lot about Jung and his theories I'd come to open my mind somewhat due to how credible others belonging to him have appeared. As with anything, a fair amount of scepticism remains until it becomes personal which I have recently had the fortune of experiencing.

About two months ago over the period of approximately a week I'd seen in my day to day life three separate instances where a Chinese Finger Trap was featured. One was on Family Guy, the other Modern Family and the third I unfortunately don't recall but it was this that stuck out and made me take notice. I wasn't 100% sure what a finger trap was but this was quickly resolved with a Google search.

If not known already a Chinese Finger Trap is a device that takes form of a tube and a finger is inserted either end. If force is used to attempt to pull a finger back out, the device only tightens further making it impossible to release. Almost counter intuitively the only way to remove a finger is to relax and ease into the trap.

Along with the literal description from my search was an example of a metaphorical symbol it also represented. That was and most profoundly for me, that should times be hard and affect you mentally, rather than pulling away or using force you must surrender and/or relax into them.

This hit me hard as my biggest issue during my difficult times and throughout my life in general has been to stress, overthink and try to take control of situations when they arise. This tactic for dealing with difficult or uncomfortable situations had never worked and only aided in making things worse.

The article had also explained how a finger trap is used as a way of summing up a type of therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I had previously researched many different methods of therapy but had never come across ACT. Upon looking into it further I have found that it is the therapy that I seem to chime with the most even after only using some of its most basic principles for a relatively short period of time.

I am going to continue to learn about ACT techniques for therapy and I'm confident already that it will help me overcome the anxiety I've experienced most intensely recently and for probably most of my life.

Going back to Synchronicity, I've seen people explain it as a message from the universe or maybe even god. As it stands I'm not a believer in that. Having experienced what I think to have been Synchronicity I'd say it's an encoded message sent from our unconscious to our conscious attempting to help us better ourselves, which is probably even more profound and powerful.

How Does Acceptance And Commitment Therapy (ACT) Work?

What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and how do you apply it? Here are 30+ Exercises, Trainings, PDF's and Books on ACT for you!

[frissonfinder]

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This is perfect!

[frissonfinder]

01:47-02:25 easily one of the best pieces of music I've heard