Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me Do you remember this nursery rhyme? When I was younger, I believed it. I thought I would rather be yelled at than physically harmed. While I feel lucky to have received more verbal bullying than actual butt-kickings, I’m not so sure the damage was less harmful. As an adult, I realize words have real power and do a lot of harm on…
Do you remember the term ‘coping mechanisms’? We used to hear this phrase often, usually when people were referring to our bad habits. Like, smoking is a coping mechanism for stress. Avoiding conflict is a coping mechanism for people who don’t want to get involved. Denial is a popular coping mechanism for avoiding hurtful truths. Though the term ‘coping mechanism’ has sort of gone out of style, we still talk about the same phenomenon. We…
As we conduct the great KEW acid tests I have to establish a baseline. In this episode I want to touch on a few elements of the ‘human personality’ and our ‘global value system’ that I think we can improve on. I think humans are great, but there are a few key items I want to mention: One of the big issues is that we think linearly. We tend to look at things as either…
In the most recent Episodes I shared the capstone of my work thus far on Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom. Episodes 99 and 100 represent the culmination of the preceding 98 Episodes and 30+ interviews. The Uniqueness Imperative and the Evolution Paradox emerged, organically, from two years of podcasting and blogging on KEW and I appreciate your help elucidating those ideas. For the past couple of weeks, (May – June, 2022) I decided to write…
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Desiree Argentina on her podcast ‘AccordingtoDes‘. The Episode title is ‘How IFS Can Help You Overcome Anxiety and Depression’ and goes into my history with therapy and my struggles with mindset/mental health. Des was so easy to talk to and the rest of her episodes look awesome. She has a huge prescence on TikTok, as well. Here is her summary of our interview: “Chris explains that…
I am extremely excited for you to meet Neil Bjorklund in this week’s Are vs Should Interview Series. Unlike most KEW interviews, I knew Neil prior to having him on KEW. But probably not as well as he knows me, as he is my coach. I have worked with Neil for a little over a year, doing somatic healing work using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model. Neil has all sorts of other training in…
As we figure out exactly what is happening at KEW, which is mostly coming up with workable strategies to help analytical, empathic, and intelligent folks live calmer and more relaxed lives, it’s necessary to state our assumptions and identifying elements. In any good scientific endeavor (and this ISN’T science, but I’m trying to take a standardized and similar APPROACH) it’s nice to state your assumptions up front. It tells the reader/listener/viewer/colleague where your head was…
With apologies to people suffering with Multiple Personality Disorders of any type, I hope I can borrow the term for the purposes of an analogy or metaphor. I have mentioned Richard Schwartz and his Internal Family Systems (IFS) work before. IFS describes our minds as naturally having multiple ‘parts’ or characters. When I say ‘multiple personalities’ this is what I mean. In the content of the Are vs Should Problem, we have to look at…