Archive for year: 2016

A listener messaged to ask about being self assertive. For me the issues of self assertion and confidence run together. Confident people find it easier to assert themselves and people who are self assertive will tend to be more confident. A bit of a chicken and egg situation. I guess our starting point is what is self assertion?

In Britain we tend to confuse assertiveness with arrogance yet they are very different. The Cambridge English dictionary defines arrogance as ‘unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than, or know more than other people’.

It defines assertiveness as ‘someone who behaves confidently and is not frightened to say what they want or believe.’ I would add onto to those two definitions that I often see those who are arrogant as lacking empathy with a tendency to railroad their demands whereas assertive people have empathy and are able to communicate their needs and desires while taking other people’s views, and needs, into account.

So for me it is assertion = good and arrogance = bad.

Arrogant behaviour can also include aggression to enforce it’s demands. Assertive people have the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive.

In social history we have examples of people who have been able to be assertive, on the global stage, in the face of arrogant and aggressive behaviour. For them this is peace versus violence. In recent history Nelson Mandela opted for an assertive approach in facing racial apartheid in South Africa and he adopted an assertive, but cooperative, approach with the truth and reconciliation committee once his goals had been achieved. Martin Luther King used peaceful self assertion in the face of segregation and discrimination in the USA and although the forces of arrogance and violence did eventually kill him his goal was reached. Though the struggle for freedom and the equality of all peoples continues. Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India, used peaceful assertiveness to end British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. Sadly he was unable to overcome all of the aggressive arrogance of his fellow Indians that led to the splitting of the subcontinent into what we now know as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

There are also many examples in social history of those who used aggressive arrogance to get their own way. The big hitters are the Roman Empire, Attila the Hun, the various European empires, and now the modern larger more powerful countries, the USA, Russia and now potentially China, there continue to be the ravages of various religious groups not least of all Christianity and the individual personalities from Hitler, through the various despots in African and European countries right through to our own Tony Blair and Americas George Bush.

One good thing that history shows us is these negative behaviours do not last forever and good, or so it would appear, wins through in the end.
If you review your life you will be able to remember people who were assertive and those that were aggressive. The strange thing is that in most cases both approaches can have the same effect as the person does get what they want. However, aggressive arrogance is ultimately destructive while peaceful assertion is constructive. Individually we have a choice.

Assertiveness like both behaviours is a skill or habit that is first learned then practiced. If you want to be assertive here are some ideas that may help you.

1: Know what you want
It can be hard to assert an opinion or idea if you are unclear of what you are thinking, meeting or needing. In any interaction in which you need to assert your desires or point of view be very clear about what you want, what is the end game for you?

2: Broken record
When you are clear about your required outcome but the other person will not listen or talks over you try using the broken record technique. This is to simply repeat your point of view, same words in the same way every time you are opposed or expected to do something that you do not want to do. This works particularly well when someone will not take no for and answer. It is version of ‘which part of no do you not understand’ but less controversial, as repeating the same words does not directly challenge the other person.

3: Fogging or Hazing
This is when you avoid direct confrontation by creating fog. If you agree with the antagonist but then state your point of view. In your agreement you validate the person and what they are saying this can defuse them enough for you to state your own point of view…

“ I get what you mean, however….”
“ That is a really good point, perhaps we could also…”
“ An amazing idea but…”
” Yeah, I thought of doing it that way but then I realised…”
” I agree with you that, this and that. However we need to treat this that and the other in a different way …”

4: Owning
‘I’ statements can be used to voice one’s feelings and wishes from a personal position without expressing a judgment about the other person. When I own the statement, feeling or argument I am not blaming the other person for my feelings. Using owning techniques can encourage the person to be more open to supporting us.

” It may just be me but I get the feeling that…”
” I have real problems with that…”
” When you say that it makes me feel… Is that what you wanted?”
” Please can you help with this one, I don’t get why you are saying/thinking/ feeling/doing…?”

The rightness of being able to assert your point of view if beyond doubt. The problems come from your belief that it is true. You are worth the skin that you stand up in and you do have an indisputable right to your point of view. Learning to be assertive is just another habit that, if you practice, you will become good at.

A word of warning. If the antagonist is in a real position of authority it may be that no matter what you do to assert yourself you will not be heard and you may need to, or be required to, move on. This is not a failure, its facing the reality of who you are and who or what your are involved in.

The second thing is being aware of psychopathy. It is said that when you confront a bully they will back down. Well, this is true unless they are a psychopath. A psychopath is someone who lacks empathic insight and therefore lacks emotional awareness, empathy, conscience or care. In dealing with a psychopath the best thing to do is to keep your mouth shut and move, as quickly as possible away from them.

Take care and assert your right to be you.

Sean X

Carnivores, pescatarians, vegetarians, fruitarians, vegans, all have good reasons for following their own dietary paths. For some food is just fuel while for others it is a culinary delight. Some fear food and the effects that it will have on their bodies and they become anorexic. While others become bulimic and throw up all that they eat. Thousands and thousands of people follow diets and detox plans and there are those who do or don’t eat certain foods for religious reasons. Food is certainly an emotive issue that effects us all everyday even if we only see food as fuel and a chore that must be done.

What do you eat and why?

This week on the podcast Ed and I were joined by Marissa, who is the director of the Vegan Lifestyle Association – Tea Lover -and Public Health, Nutrition and Psychology researcher. We were discussing food, what we eat and why we eat it. We each came from differing eating habits Ed as a carnivore, me as a veggie with some leanings towards pescatarianism and Marissa as a vegan.

Why not eat meat?
My own feelings about not eating meat are not to do with health but with the ethical issue of killing animals to eat. I had a farm for a while and faced the issue of meat eating head on. I think if we all had to kill our own meat then many of us would become vegetarian. When you have raised an animal and know it well, they become more than animals they are people, personalities and understandably they do not want to die, they will fight you for their life.

There is another issue beyond the health and ethical issues of a meat eating diet is that of sustainability and our ability as humans to continue living on planet Earth. It takes so much more land to produce meat than plant protein that in end they we will eventually run out of space. This may also be true even if we all went veggie tomorrow.

David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel -From the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment

Abstract
Worldwide, an estimated 2 billion people live primarily on a meat-based diet, while an estimated 4 billion live primarily on a plant-based diet. The US food production system uses about 50% of the total US land area, 80% of the fresh water, and 17% of the fossil energy used in the country. The heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable. The use of land and energy resources devoted to an average meat-based diet compared with a lactoovovegetarian (plant-based) [including eggs and milk] diet is analysed in this report. In both diets, the daily quantity of calories consumed are kept constant at about 3533 kcal per person. The meat-based food system requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet.

Diary and growth hormones
It is hard to find anything good to say about dairy products. Basically, dairy is designed to raise a calf to become an adult cow or bull. This means that it is full of growth hormone, a fatal disaster for tumours and really not helpful for Prostate glands.

Ethics Vs Health
If you choose to eat for health you have to decide where what you are eating comes from and whether the issues of chemicals and treatment are acceptable to your health regime. If your eating regime is ethical you will need to research theocracies of what you are eating. If food for you is simply fuel then enjoy it.

The future of food
It seems that if we maintain or increase the worlds population there will come a time when we will not be able to feed ourselves using standard farming techniques. To survive we will need to get into factory farming in a big way. This may raise both ethical and health issues.

However you eat, do it mindfully and be happy

Take care

Sean X

We are told by science that life is based on the survival of the fittest. The assumption seems to be that the strongest will survive while the weak go to the wall, that the strong will dominate the weak and therefore spread their genes. This leads us to believe that life is a competition and that those who dominate will win. Perhaps there are other ways of looking at it.

I am not a religious person, for me religion and sectarianism is responsible for much of the world’s suffering, though I would own up to being spiritual. For me God is made in man’s image yet spirituality, or the original energy of creation is always there. It would seem that the unlimited expression of logic and the bloody obvious is that we all come from a common source, common route. Though some like to call this energy ‘God’ in quantum physics they call this ‘source energy’. Pick whatever word or concepts serves you best, the point is that if we all come from the same source and are therefore all the same thing. So, what exactly are we competing against?

I get it that human consciousness is, as yet, pretty un-evolved and that in the fullness of time we might learn to look after each other and be supportive rather than killing, fighting, warring and allowing others to go hungry or lack water to drink. But not just yet! Is it a human competition that some of us survive and some of us do not?

The world of sport is also the world of competition. To have a winner you have to have a loser. If nine people run a race there will be one winner, who we assume is happy, and eight losers who probably are not. Doesn’t seem like good odds to me.

Does it have to be competition?
The idea that evolution has to be driven by competition could be turned on its head. What about if evolution was driven by co-operation.

When you look at the relationship between an insect and flower it seems that they have evolved symbiotically to meet each other’s needs. Just look at our own bodies. According to the BBC…

…humans are teeming with bugs, including tiny spiders,
lice and microbial colonies. Far from being a hazard,
however, they are the making of you.

Bugs are all over us and inside of us.

Every square centimetre of your face houses one or two tiny spiders.

From your head to your toes, your body is a veritable jungle of flora and fauna. Some are visitors, some are permanent residents, but all are enough to make the average person queasy. Whether we like or not, our bodies are perfect environments for the creepy and crawly. For hundreds of thousands of years, these animals have called our bodies home—or at least “food.” This list isn’t comprehensive, but it will give you a taste of the pests that are having a taste of you.

The relationship between us and these bugs, creates both illness and health. For example your gut flora. Experts are discovering the powerful role these tiny bugs might be playing in our lives. The 1,000-or-so species of microbes that live in our guts control digestion…

…so that when we rip out our gut flora with antibiotics we are encouraged to take probiotics to put them back. We and the bugs that live within us have evolved together to our mutual advantage.

Disease
Just as there are bugs that live on us and with us in a symbiotic relationship there are also bugs that harm us, those that do not serve us well. These bugs are not involved with co-operation but competition. They challenge us for our health and perhaps even for our lives. This is not co-operation.

Bigger than bugs
Human beings have lived with, and evolved with, rats, mice, pigs and dogs. We all have grown together. Rats helped clear up our mess, good effect, but they also carried the fleas that led to the Black Death, bad effect. We kill rats because we see them as in competition with us rather than seeing our relationship as a co-operation.

Having discussed this issue with a good friend, I have come to the conclusion that competition and co-operation exist in balance and both compliment each other. We discussed how the competition of war creates co-operative collaboration that leads to breakthroughs in technology that maybe both medicine or weaponry. Many such breakthroughs were brought about by the Cold War.

Competition will always be with us, we can’t avoid it. But, we can choose to develop greater levels of co-operation. Perhaps we can create less war, more caring and more sharing. If I see my fellow human beings as people that I might like to look after rather than beat then the word might just be a happier, safer place to live in.

Take care

Sean X