Author: Kris Wilder

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Fallen Stories, Negative Self-Talk

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We tell ourselves fallen stories, negative self-talk. Sometimes these stories are ego feeds, they’re a great story about how wonderful. That we the best and we’re pretty darn good at what we’re doing.

You’re Not Good Enough

Then of course there are those other stories, those fallen stories, negative self-talk, where you’re not good enough. Who thought you could do that? Why would it go any other way? These kinds of stories – we are a captive audience.

We are able to create these moments, these short stories, the fallen stories, about ourselves, and we tell ourselves those stories. The most powerful stories are the ones we tell ourselves, good, bad, or indifferent. We are far more cautious, far more judicious in what we say and how we say our words and thoughts to others than we ever do in our internal conversation.

Destroy That Lie

Let’s give that act of internal storytelling a new framework in which to look at it. If you are tied to a chair in a basement with a single naked light bulb above your head and a re-education agent was demanding you speak certain words and in glowing terms over and over regarding the presiding Führer, you would recoil from this picture.

The Good Stuff Happens in Your Head

Yet it happens in our heads on a daily basis. The negative talk. The most powerful stories are the ones you silently tell yourself and you do it repeatedly. They can be as horrific as the picture I just painted, being underneath that naked lightbulb on a chair, or they can’t be useful, uplifting, creative, and of course realistic.

Because the most powerful stories, we tell ourselves take place between the ears and we’re always listening.

Call it Fallen Stories, or negative self-talk, it is as scary as being strapped to a chair and browbeat into an idea not based in reality.

Here is a past podcast that deals with: The Non-Existent Problem

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Sprinters v. Hikers

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Sprinters v. Hikers is one way to look at information. There is a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, and this is not an exact quote, but he relates all truth passes through three stages. The first stage is the idea is ridiculed, secondly, the idea is violently opposed. Thirdly the idea is accepted as being self-evident.

That’s the difference between sprinters v. hikers. Stay with me for a minute because this is a fun way to frame information. Lies travel fast, they’re sprinters. Lies often carry with them a salacious tone, the are nasty they can be evil rude, brutal, and harmful.

An overreaction to this, of course, is to see that information and be in a state of ridicule. We may choose to look at the information in a negative light. A quick decision is made and sometimes after everything has played out and with hindsight, which we know is often 20/20, we get a clearer version of what has happened.

This is not always true.

Context of course is the order of the day. When it comes to these kinds of situations you have to have the flexibility and you have to have wisdom. One of the ways to go about that is to treat the information as if it were a sprinter and to wait for the hiker. The hikers aren’t fast but they carry a backpack, a backpack full of information. Yes, it is sprinters v. hikers.

So, go ahead the next time you hear something think of it as a sprinter.

Let that sprinter run on by if you’d like. Then wait for the methodical hiker. Then you can let the hiker sit down and share the information that they gathered on their hike, their trip as they observed everything along the way. Let the hiker share the information around that campfire.

Not a Perfect Method. Sprinters v. Hikers

Measuring information in the context of sprinters v. hikers is not the perfect way to see the world, no question. Often that sprinter has done gone and run off down the hill spreading their words, their thoughts, their ideas. And doing it in a fast way when sometimes we need to step back and wait. Wait for that hiker to arrive and see what they have to say.

Here is a link to another post you may find interesting on the topic of: Cultivating a Life

A 9 minute video on: Arthur Schopenhauer

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Consistency in Life

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Consistency is greater than quantity and its greater than quality. Morning TV shows, you know, those Good Morning AM Sunshine, they are tripe. But those shows are there every morning at the same time with the same rhythm.

Their power is not in the quality or the quantity or what they provide regarding their content. These shows power lies in that every weekday morning. They’re there at the same time, every day. The evening news has these same qualities, except more laden with turmoil and mayhem.

Children Love Consistency

Mess with a child’s rhythm and see how you pay the price. A childlike mind when unobserved in an adult or unintended will behave in the same way. Our minds love consistency. Take away a tradition such as a holiday dish and see what happens and see the disappointment.

When you step back and look at that dish that is missing, see the rip in the consistency and expectations. But you know what? You don’t order that special dish at a restaurant. I would submit you’ve never ordered at a restaurant and you don’t make it your home. it may not even be that good it’s that you enjoy the rhythm of it the consistency.

Consistency is a Powerful Attribute to Have

Consistency is a powerful attribute to have in life. To be that person that is consistently present and dependable, there is no other superior quality.

Having the presence and that consistency of presence, that makes the difference. Succinctly there is no quality time, there is the consistency of time, quality is nice.

Quantity can be rewarding consistency is king and consistency is king in every phase of life.

Here is a 6 Minute Video on The Consistency Principle – The Six Principles of Influence

Also, as a thinker, you may like this post on how to use a quote in an effective manner in your life: Quote Sitting

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Stories We Tell

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These stories can be a good thing or they could be lies but we’re not going to delve into the idea of the lies right now we’re going to stick to the stories. 

Stories are how we communicate and make experiences stick.  Stories are how we make ideas work, how we make them spreadable, and flesh out the idea, the story for the concept. This storytelling takes on different shapes and colors as it is wide and varied. But the bones however they are remarkably similar.

Some say there are only seven stories out there, that we only have seven stories to tell in our lives and our entertainment, they are:

The Seven Basic Stories

Overcoming the monster

Rags to riches

The quest

The voyage and return

Comedy

Tragedy

Rebirth

These are the bones of the seven stories.

Every CSI television show episode falls into one of those seven stories. Every Dragnet, every Hawaii 50. One show has a group of High-Tech specialists catching the bag guys. The other is a stiff, hardnosed, seen it all cop and the other is a set of ugly crimes set in a tropic island paradise.

We flesh out our stories to soothe ourselves to suit our needs and to service succor. As an example, with those seven storylines, they’re all there, and the Hollywood writers take that skeleton and change the trim.

The Story and it’s Flair

This means they change the settings and they changed the people, but it’s the same story. We do the same in our lives we add this color, that story, this flair, and your degree of difficulty, in the execution of certain things.

We believe we have a unique story and it’s nice, it adds flavor to life it adds color when we look at the structure.

When we look at the bones of the story not be fleshed out it would become more about the story. More about the adventure, the common experience wrapped in the dressings. The diversity of how we have shared similar bodies. Our stories, or how we’ve chosen to live out the sense of ourselves. How we choose to see the underlying commonality of us all.

Seven stories but the bones of our stories, of our journeys, falls into a simple understanding of a commonality of one another. The understanding that at our core, at our very inner self, were almost all identical in our stories and our structures.

Here is a deeply plunge into the Seven Basic Stories: Definition of Plot for Creative Writers

And here is a supplemental version of the stories we tell: Negative Self-Talk

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I’m Addicted

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Used to express an obsession with something, an object, to a product, is “I’m addicted.”

“I’m Addicted,” is used to share with someone the idea of a product, a movie series, again, about anything as being so good that it creates a mental and physical dependency.

Giving Away Free Will

The idea that it’s a good thing to cede one’s free will to a product or experience. Giving up one’s free will, that’s not a good thing, it should be avoided. I know it sounds as though this is splitting hairs. but it’s so prevalent in marketing and advertising that we sometimes overlook it. “I’m addicted to this new video game,” sounds different than, “I’m addicted to oxycodone.” Both of these statements are giving up one’s self to an external force. Listen to the word addict or addicted, they’re not positive.

Addiction, Not a Positive Choice

I don’t know that there’s any positive connotation to either of these words and in no way should they be desired. Yet they get used and as a point of pride. Being addicted to something is not a good thing. The next time you hear a commercial a promotion, a product is described as addictive then you should turn the other way.

Marketing

They’re asking you to give your free will over to them and their product. Oh feel free to see this as it is, the promoters, the marketer’s, they think you’re weak and that you have no will. That you will step forward and give up your free will and say, “Yes!, I’d like to be an addict or addicted to your product!” In casual conversation, we’ve begun to use it as a point of demonstrating our commitment to a product or an experience.

These folks, claiming addiction, are not demonstrating their commitment. They’re not sharing a commitment. They’re shooting of flare into the sky and telling everybody that we’re willing to give up our sovereignty. To give your sovereignty for a product, experience, or idea that somebody else has pushed across the table. Saying, “Here try this, give up your free will, it’s addicting and we would like you to be an addict.”

Although this is about marketing and product use, if you suspect you are addicted to something far more serious you can take a short Q&A here: How Do I Know if I’m an Addict?

Here is a previous blog on the negative stories we tell ourselves that maybe of aid: Stories We Tell

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Ladies and Gentlemen

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Ladies and Gentleman, those are earned titles. Recently you may have noticed that the world changed. Along with that change came stress, fear, terror, anxiety. The purveyors of this fear are relentless, it’s their job to spread terror and fear. They want to get clicks and eyeballs and create a sense of ambient anxiety.

Tell the Truth

It’s difficult to tell what’s even real anymore. The lies and the deceptions go deep. Some of the deceptions are deliberate others through omission and some of them are errors.

Regardless it’s hard to tell up from down, and left from right. In this sort of his situation, to keep your humanity, I suggest one simple act.  That is to adopt an extreme method of treating all well. Not because they deserve to be treated well, they may have acted like a jerk, but more often than not most people likely do deserve to be treated well.  

Courteousness, the Earmark of Ladies and Gentlemen

The reason you treat others well is not that they deserve it, or they likely deserve it. It’s because it is who you are.  When we go out of our way to use pleasantness and courteousness, we knock the hard edges off of the world and I can’t think of a time more than now, in our lifetimes right now that we need to do just that.

Engage in extreme courteousness, pleasantness, go out of our way to be that person and that’s what I am suggesting to you.

Your action item is to go out of your way to be the most pleasant person in the room and ultimately in doing so keep your humanity. 

Here is a fast read from wikiHow on: How to Become More Thoughtful

A previous post on how a person may choose to see the eternal world: Organized

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