#johari's window

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Tips for Self-Improvement: (5) The Observer (5)

Notice when you feel the urge to withdraw in conversation. Withdrawal is a form of strategic manipulation.

Consider how anxiety or anticipation fuels your need for control, and learn to accept not being in control. Question your intense needs for control over time with others and personal space.

Be your own person. Do things you enjoy doing for yourself and not to please others.

Notice how your indecisiveness and non-involvement forces others to initiate first. Do you see any reoccurring patterns or experiences?

Distinguish between how much you allow yourself to feel when others are present, and how much you allow yourself to feel when you're alone. How does safety or comfort play a role?

Avoid being overly analytical. You may be unintentionally coming off as distant, neutral, or absent minded to others. Not everything in life can be experienced objectively.

Feelings should not be avoided at all costs. They are not the end-all-be-all. There are no such thing as binary emotions. Uncomfortable emotions should be appraised as expected and productive. Emotions that make us uncomfortable can move us towards clarity or resolution..

Access to feelings does not mean you can't also be rational. Own your feelings. You don't have to let your emotions get the best of you.

Work with your three guiding principles: Secrecy, Superiority, and Separateness to adjust your behavior & communication when appropriate. Recognize when you are being overly indulgent in self-preservation.

Acknowledge your desire to be recognized effortlessly.

Avoid holding onto a defeatist attitude. Just because you don't get it right on the first try does not mean it's unachievable. Failure is a constant. Success is a variable.

Recognize that self disclosure and being emotionally expressive and articulate might positively influence your relationships.

Try completing something you feel proud of and sharing it with others. Let yourself be seen and acknowledged by others.

Question why you settle for less. Challenge your minimalist lifestyle.

Utilize your unique ability to search for special knowledge and symbolic thinking.

Be open and tolerant of other's needs and emotions.

Learn to actively engage with your emotions in the present. At the same time, allow time for delayed emotional reactions to connect introspectively. Avoid excessive catharsis.

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Fast-Fact Friday

Metamood refers to self awareness of one's emotions. Being able to thoughtfully adapt, critique, and express one's fluctuating moods depending on various circumstances, situations, and contexts.

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"Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals"

-Octavia Butler

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Fast-Fact Friday

Cortisol is known as the stress horomone. It can cause anxiety, acne, & induce adrenaline production.

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Fast-Fact Friday

Metacognition refers to the self-awareness of one's thought process. Being able to articulate, comprehend, and question one's thought process.

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Confirmation Bias (Updated 9/19/18)

Is the process and explanation for how we simplify information presented to us to support our current or previous beliefs. We are all innately biased and are constantly seeking out information that not only reassures us, but also builds off previous knowledge, insight, or bias. This is one of many ways our brains are biologically wired to simplify information for us. Mostly because it takes more time to process new information that may also be unfamiliar & potentially conflicting with our biases. Than it does to unpack familiar information, which causes us to resort to cognitive dissonance. Where our minds find a way to rationalize our biased behaviors, values, beliefs, norms, and or practices even when presented with conflicting or opposing information.

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"Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American Dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else's imagination, and I must engage my own imagination order to break free"

-Adrienne Maree Brown

Reference: Brown, Adrienne M. (2017), Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, AK Press pp. 18

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Fallacy Friday

Appeal to Tradition is when someone makes a claim solely based on referecing or emphasizing the value of tradition as signifigant and relevant without contextualizing it beyond the abstract concept & vagueness of traditon. For instance, simply arguing that latin women should have a quinceañera because it's traditional is fallacious by itself. To use tradition as a claim is like saying "it's true because it's always been true". Supportive evidence that explains more specifically why and how tradition is relevant would be more logical, and less likely to become fallacious.