Mission: restore harmony to my mind – myself – my life by breaking it down into the three arenas of 1. how I treat and enjoy people, 2. how I treat and enjoy myself, clearing my mind and accepting my emotions “as is” with no justification, 3. my service to the world, currently coaching martial arts, tutoring my kids, cleaning my physical home ext, and 4. the balance between the three areas of life and how to spend limited energy, time, and money with awareness.
Arena 1: Interaction with Human Kind – Life Time Goal: Learn to Treat Myself and Others with Dignity and Unconditional Positive Regard. Tools: Assertive Communication, Tactical Empathy, Observation, Sports Casting, Look Up, Look In.
Tiny Plan: Use problems as an intentional time to connect with other people.
๐น Connect with Other Humans – “I’m surprised at how well it’s been going. A few years ago I hadn’t talked to my father person to person, almost ever, now we have a Friday video call that’s getting less and less difficult. I’m surprised that the wonderful support of the readers of this blog has made me feel so welcomed as a writer and more optimistic about humankind in general. I sometimes worry that I shouldn’t rely on the kindness of strangers to make me feel good, but why not? People will sometimes rob you and make you feel bad, why not just accept the good when it is handed to you? I write even if no one cares or listens, but the reader feedback I get, makes me feel like I’m touching upon common threads that intertwine all our human lives, like this simple and small act of communicating is impactful, and there is a component of connection in this process of blogging. Although critics will say there isn’t connection and interplay of minds, ideas, people, it really feels like there is. I’ve been sick this week, but I’ve been sick with a good attitude instead of a bad one and that strangely has something to do with the support I’ve received since I’ve been writing.”
๐น Read books or Articles – “Reading “Talking to Strangers” (listening via Audible actually that seems to be easier with kids, though I actually slightly prefer reading). It is the first book I’ve read after “How Emotions Are Made,” that references the new science that indicates there is no such things as universal emotion, sadness, happiness ext, but it varies across culture and across time and across people as the rule not the exception, the way I get angry isn’t the same as you or anyone, the old standard of an angry face ext was based on faulty experiments where the testers told the answers to the subjects in the instructions. “Talking to Strangers” is a rather unpleasant book to listen too, but it may help me process the normal news events of today so I can even start to think about how I will explain them to my kids (pedophilia, murder, school shootings, police shootings ext) when I don’t profess to understand these things yet myself.”
๐น Seek and Discuss Healing, Reunite that Which has Been Broken into Unity, and Awareness (in Short, to Renew) – “I’m in the process of trying to start a writing buddy accountability group of some kind, I think it’s an important step in my artistic journey to form some kind of “artist’s cell” for writers.”
Arena 2: Spirituality – Life Time Goal: Think about Balancing Serenity, Proactivity. Tools: Gratitude, Kaizen, Kon Mari, Minimalism.
Tiny Plan: Keep Clarifying My Dreams, Intentions, Goals, and Plans with this Check-In.
๐น Malama Pono – Be forthright and proactive in your life. – “When I started getting frustrated I was able to take a step back pretty quickly, think about what I wasn’t able to get done (why I was mad), and apologize to my kids for getting frustrated so easily. I didn’t have a lot to give this week, I was sick, tired, my head was foggy, but I was so intentional at checking myself fairly quickly, and being proud of what I was able to do, instead of what I couldn’t, that I’m happy with myself overall. There was an article about Fall I was trying to write and I just couldn’t focus enough mentally to feel like there were clarity and cohesion in my mind enough to express the concepts well.”
๐น Radical Acceptance – “It feels good at the end of the week to just let it go, it’s painful realizing the year is so far gone, but it’s better to face the truth and accept the truth instead of hiding from it.”
๐น See problems as opportunities. – “Somewhat, definitely understood that in teaching math or music or reading problems were a good place to change the approach, I haven’t made learning fun as much as I originally wanted to, but at least when things don’t work I change what I’m doing.”
๐น Create your own reality consciously. – “I was able to be bravely and happily sick instead of miserably sick, but I sure wish I could have done many more things than just dishes, laundry, feeding the kids, teaching the kids, those things don’t nourish my soul no matter how hard I try to do them with gratitude, love, and honor.”
๐น Clarify my Dreams, Intentions, Goals, and Plans Here – “It still isn’t perfect, but it’s much more streamlined today than ever before. More like a puzzle than a pile of puzzle pieces.”
Arena 3: The World – Life Time Goal: Responsibility to Take Action Towards my Inner Callings Tools: Permaculture Gardening, Martial Arts, Stoic Living, Self Leadership.
Tiny Plan: Teach martial arts Sundays 11 AM.
๐น Aloha สปฤina, Teaching Martial Arts – “Going well, this is the only time all week I’m completely at peace and the only time my husband watches both our kids, is it a coincidence or related? I don’t think it’s just that, I’ve always felt completely at peace on the mat and nowhere else.”
Balance Between Arenas: Harmony – Life Time Goal: Resolve Imbalance Between Productivity and Rejuvenation to Safeguard Resilience.
Tiny Plan: Keep Kon Mari decluttering.
โ Money: Keep Careful Track of Your Income and Expenses. – “Nope, spent $90 on reasonable stuff, but too tired to track all of it, laundry soap, guitar wall mount, rainbow jelly boba topping, jasmine tea from Hong Kong, it sounds lavish, but I hadn’t spent much in a long time and it’s also for a good cause of rewarding myself to get a little more consistent with article writing, step up the game of wordsmithing in cohesion, clarity, style ext.”
๐น Cleaning – “Amazing, vacuuming while sick, ext, the bathroom gets cleaned about once a week, the fridge is clean, dishes get not only washed but put away, things that were once super daunting are now just business as usual even when I am sick. I also don’t hate it anymore, one day I started washing dishes “in the name of good” to be a force of good in the world and as silly as it sounds that has made cleaning much easier. I prepared for medical school and now just do medieval peasant chores most the time, but that’s probably a better life for me anyway, and either way, it’s my reality.”
โ Creative Endeavors: Brainstorming, Drawing, Painting, Sculpting, Writing, Architecture. – “I didn’t do enough, I was trying so hard to finish an article or two and just couldn’t focus even though I created enough time, it’s not all about time, having a certain mental and emotional stamina is really called for to write “well” which I try to do since I’m all about process and writing for the sake of craft and truth, even if I fail sometimes, I’m not about popularity, views, sales, I’m all about trying to write well.”
Weekly Review:
10 Points of 12 Points = 83% this week, not bad, yet it’s almost more frustrating that last week’s failure. I was the silver medalist national champion of Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu in 2011 and it’s such an annoying feeling of “almost.” Me and the other competitor tied but there is no overtime in the nationals so the referee just has to pick someone and although I don’t think I was robbed, it’s frustrating to be so close and yet so far. I guess I had wanted the week to be perfect in my heart, but it wasn’t, and in hindsight, that’s not surprising because 1. real life is never perfect and 2. I didn’t have much energy to bring to the table.
Thank you readers for sharing this journey with me, it’s really interesting seeing men and women, young and old, national and international readers, I hope that there is something in my writing that is human beyond everything else, I hope some of the writing is helpful in some way to all of you, and I hope you all know that you are helpful and inspiring to me. ๐
Born to Be Alive 
so, what is “sports casting”..been curious about that
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It’s a RIE (regional infant education) term, meaning saying what people are doing (it’s used mostly with babies and kids, but I find it helpful for adults too). If one child has a block and another one grabs it, instead of saying “give that over,” or “don’t take that,” you say “Clancy has the block, Evony grabbed it also, it looks like they both want the block” short of violence you just narrate out loud what is going on and watch the kids solve the issue. I end up using it a lot with my husband, he tells me about coworkers I don’t know or care about and I just repeat what he tells me. It’s a lot like active listening, but it includes saying what you see as well. It works well for kids when you don’t really care deeply what the outcome is and builds conflict resolution skills between the two parties, sometimes you ask “what can they do” and see them start thinking about it, sometimes they both hold on without fighting, sometimes one lets go right away, sometimes one person cries, most often no one cries, it’s interesting for me, because I would guess that whoever didn’t get the block would cry, but it isn’t always that way. After the kids work it out I see them hand each other “work” materials more (blocks, sand shovels), they sometimes form a team, other times one cries and the other returns the block, sometimes one child is very emotional and the other doesn’t like forming a team with them. It was interesting because many outcomes happen, not just the expected one, obviously some kids break down into throwing, hitting or crying and adults step in, but it’s a lot less then I would have guessed it would be. The most fun part was there were twins in our group, one liked to play with my daughter and one wouldn’t get near her or anyone else. It’s interesting watching children break my illusion of kids acting in a quintessential, expected way. I also forget that adults are all different as well. It’s silly, but I forget it often. I expect everyone to like chocolate so that it’s easy to give gifts, but half the time my husband loves it and half the time he is dieting and hates it so it’s hard to take the time to observe what is actually going on instead of assuming people and situations with people will take the most common outcome all the time. Sportscasting is useful because to do it you have to adopt temporarily the guise of an observer that doesn’t know what will happen (even though it’s true I don’t really connect with that idea often, I think it is mentally draining, but worth it sometimes). โ๏ธ
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