Your Rainforest Mind

Book: Your Rainforest Mind Author: Paula Prober

Introduction

• All ecosystems are beautiful, but a rainforest is more complicated, creative, sensitive, fragile, multilayered
• Can give more when allowed to be itself

Language:

• D - I shall be presenting my version, you can decide if it works for you
• L - Effervescent
• P - "not enough" and "too much" at the same time

1. Too much: Intensity, Sensitivity, Empathy

Takeaways

• Reduce the self-imposed pressure to be thorough, [fast] and exacting. Try doing those activities for pleasure
• Compassion and healthy boundaries are compatible; Limit the involvement is others' problems, so that there's more energy to be efficient in the long term
  • It's alright to be careful with your energy and time
• Cheerfullness as a typical RFM coping strategy

Strategies

• Protect yourself when you feel assaulted by noise, smells, emotions, thoughts, chemicals, bad architecture
  • Leave early, step away
  • Wear sunglasses, earplugs, wear hooded sweatshirts
  • Breathe slowly
  • Visualize protection
• Find a creative outlet to be as 'much' as you are
• For sleep:
  • Make a list of things that bother you to pick up tomorrow
  • Calming music
  • PMR, AT; breathing
  • Different combinations of melatonin and/or herbal remedies
  • Dreams can be as fascinating as real life
• Find activities and people that allow you to be intense
  • Debate, chess, running marathons
• T - Make a list of things that relax you
  • Massage
  • Herbal remedies, flower essences
  • Excercise
  • Mindfulness, prayer, yoga, energy touch, tai chi
  • Painting

Resources:

• Internal family systems therapy
• The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You (Book)
• Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair "Excellent book if you want to do some deep emotional work"

Language:

• L - pungent
• P - while X and Y might be important to many people, you might find them indispensable
• LP - It rubs off on me

2. If you're so smart, why aren't you saving the world

Takeaways

• OQ - "Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. You can not turn away. Your destiny is bound to the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must come prepared to touch and be touched by each and every thing in heaven and hell." -- Andrew Boyd

Language:

• P - We dive into the mystery together and swim around in the questions
• L - Basking -- lie exposed to warmth and light, typically from the sun, for relaxation and pleasure. synonyms: laze, lie, lounge, relax, sprawl, loll;
• LP - explore a new way to be X

Strategies

• Since you will feel the suffering of others anyway, try breathing into it rather than tensing against it or trying to avoid it
  • Drink tea with your demons
  • Перенаправлять энергию, а не сопротивляться ей
• Use your privilege as an opportunity to serve. Your basic needs are met => find your ways to be of service
• Sometimes go into temporary denial

3. Perfectionism, Precision, Procrastination

Takeaways

• ... did not experience a learning process that included lots of falling and getting back up again
• ... she hit that awkward stage where she had to practive the new techniques before she would be good at them. Then she quit
  • Past perfect!
• You may not realize people need lots of practice to master something
• "What I'm doing is so mundane, at least I can make it interesting by adding pressure"
• "brain atrophy" -> depression

Fighting with it all:

• "Intelligence is a process, not a thing"
• Growth mindset
• "We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell of us." -> "We wind up in space, but not alone. [..] unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship" -> Live consciously
• "Saying no to our deepest desires will mean self-imprisonment in a life too small"

Strategies

• Not everything you do has to be thorough and precise.
• Choose only the projects you want, make them perfect, let everything else be shallow
• Measure your success not just by "grade". Effort, enjoyment, complexity, opportunities for growth, meeting new people
• Growth mindset -- when you're uncomfortable with the struggle, remind yourself that you are upgrading your brain
• "Folder with motivation" - relive nice and motivating experiences
• P - If you find yourself surpassing X, let yourself feel the conflict, as well as any sadness or loneliness. Give yourself permission to move ahead, look for colleagues or new mentors

Language

• P - Making simple mistakes is a threat to your very personhood
• DL - seem impressed with themselves
• P - A passion to aim consistently juts beyond one's capabilities
• D - what she described as
• L - quench; gyrating (=rotating)
• DP - even if there's controversy over some of X's concepts, you can benefit from the theory

4. Too many possibilities, too many choices.

Takeaways

• if they try to nurture all their potentials, they will end up second rate in everything
  • Relevant: https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-decide-what-to-do-when-you-are-multitalented-and-want-to-have-all-of-it/answer/Shulamit-Widawsky:

by honoring all your options, focusing on them, picking the ones you want the most, and giving yourself the gift of mourning the rest so you can apply your strengths to worthwhile pursuits without watering them down so far you never have enough time and energy to become great at anything.

• "Knowing that you take longer to make decisions because you are a divergent thinker, have perfectionist tendencies, are sensitive, and care deeply about your impact, can allow you to dis-identify as [..] an obsessive-compulsie, careless, weak time-waster"
• Immersed learning as a common learning strategy
• Struggling to learn something is neurologically beneficial

Strategies

• When choosing careers, know your values. Craft a career that combines many of your interests.
• Consider becoming a consultant and speaker in an area which combines many of your interests or a researcher
• You can change decisions later!
  • I you end up making the wrong decision, it is not usually a tragedy

Resources

• http://puttylike.com/start-here/ - site about multipotentiality
• The Renaissance Soul (book). "concrete exercises that can help you figure out how to manage and manifest your careers"
• Be a free-range human "excellent guide for creating career paths"
• B - Rebels at work -- "making a difference in complex systems". Cliff notes: https://medium.com/@lifecliffnotes/life-cliff-notes-rebels-at-work-carmen-medina-lois-kelly-5bbaae250f84

Language

• P - we are lucky people who, if left to our own devices, are never bored for long [...] ready for newt subjects sooner than other people
• O - shadowy empty forest that had too many paths that went off far into the foggy distance
• POL - intellectual polygamist
• P - a satisfying set of careers
• LP - listen to what s/he is saying as well as to what s/he is not saying
• Q - Bad decisions make great keynote speeches and humorous books