Tag: Understanding

Avoiding the Blame Game

When the unexpected happens, we scramble for a story. The human brain is complex, but one of the things that it is good at is creating story. Not only is it good at creation, it also deems story creation important. Some have even pointed out that it is the last part of your brain to go. (Cue the light at the end of the tunnel people seem to constantly remember…especially after the steam engine.) I recognize how fast story creation happens, and it scares me. I often feel foolish when I find out just how wrong I usually am.

So, when we create a story, what do we do? Our brain find the easiest path. Think about how you go to work, or how you eat your lunch, or how you get any habit to stick? All these things, more than likely, came from the easiest path. I can’t get anything to stick unless I make it easy. I often have these grandiose images of being an ultra marathon athlete, but unless I make it as easy as possible, I won’t run around the block.

So what is the easiest path for a story to go? For me, I often find blaming someone rather easy. It allows me to kick off the story making process. If there is a villain, it is a lot easier to make myself the hero. I recognize it now as a matter of ego and convenience. When you blame, it allows the shifting of responsibility to a non-factor. “I couldn’t possibly be wrong, if (insert villain here) didn’t do (blame shifting thing) I would be able to (insert heroic thing here).” It leads to anguish because I have noticed shifting responsibility leaves room for doubt. Doubt sucks. Understanding is better.

So am I saying that villains don’t exist? Not at all. That person could impede your progress. That person could be a villain. That person could be responsible for everything that happens bad to you. Still, instead of playing the blame game, I think learning to understand would be helpful. Even if the person is absolute evil, it will become easier to forgive. To forgive is to move on.

Note: When it comes to anguish, the only person that suffers is you.

Tags blame, Forgive, Understanding

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Video – Knowledge Is Not Understanding

Post author By jrlsage
Post date June 28, 2015
No Comments on Video – Knowledge Is Not Understanding

Knowledge is not understanding. Enjoy 🙂

Tags knowledge, Understanding, video

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Understanding I Am Not Perfect, No One Is

Post author By jrlsage
Post date June 15, 2015
No Comments on Understanding I Am Not Perfect, No One Is

Understanding is hard to come by, even when it comes to understanding yourself.

I recently recognized that I look for no’s far more often than I look for yes’. I succumbed to my ego, probing for anyway to use confirmation bias. I led myself down a path of anguish, often putting my thoughts on other people’s actions.I got lost in how the world worked around me, and didn’t see how I could work the world.

This isn’t to say that there were no walls built-in order to impede my progress. There are several systematic ideas and several different reasons why those feelings existed. A young black man in the united states is constantly facing his mortality in a system that has proven time and time again that it feels that his life is less meaningful, also a corporate structure where his ideas lightly. He comes from a community where those ideals come from schooling he receives, and further driven home by his parents,unknowingly keeping their children locked in the same mental spaces in which this idea of being less than exists.

These two things, these two ideas, can coexist. One must reckon with both to understand his full existence in this world. Perhaps as a reader, you aren’t a black male, but come from something else. The other gender, as well as the other races and ethnic backgrounds that lie within those races have different rules, come from different thoughts, and have different histories. Each person reading this has their own crosses to bear, and I understand that the pain from each is on the person who experiences them. If I ‘m and you’re stabbed, I cannot tell you are not hurt.

The only way we can help each other is to understand that we all have faults, and we all come from different places. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Try not to let one bad moment ruin your perception, because we all go through places of personal pain and horrid group think to come to where we are. We can all help each other become better.