How to Bounce Back

I've lifted the following article from Bobbi Emel's blog -- thebounceblog. Emel is a psychotherapist whose self-asserted passion is to "help readers bounce back from life's challenges - the big ones as well as the little ones that trip you up on a daily basis.

Spread from EMILY LOVES TO BOUNCE by Stephen Michael King

Want to bounce back better and faster when life hits you with unexpected surprises?

Here’s a quick list of some of the most useful tips to get back on your feet.

1. Acknowledge what is in front of you. If you’re in the middle of a bad situation, it’s time to really see what is happening. You must be completely honest with yourself – no more denial or wishful thinking that it will get better. Strip away the intense emotion from it, identify the problem, and accept that it is reality.

2. Realize that change is always going to be in your life.

You struggle against change. You waste a lot of energy making sure that things stay the same in your life. Save your energy for better things and accept that change truly is a normal part of life. Expect it.

3. Learn to be an optimist.

Optimism and pessimism are ways you explain why things happen to you. Being optimistic allows you to bounce back because it helps you focus on the positive and not predict the negative. The web is full of great articles on how to be an optimist instead of a pessimist. Go check it out.

4. Be nice to yourself.

Here are the three keys to self-compassion proposed by researcher Kristin Neff: a.) Stop your inner criticism. Treat yourself as you would your best friend, b.) Everyone has flaws. Everyone. Remember that you’re a part of the human race so you’re bound to make mistakes, and, c.) Practice mindfulness by noticing your thoughts and feelings, but have no judgment about them.

5. Let it go.

Grasping tightly to a belief, behavior, or material object only drains your energy and narrows your focus onto that object. In order to be resilient, you need flexibility and openness to options and opportunities.

6. Have a tribe.

It’s vital to have friends and family who can rally around you in an emergency. Make sure you have a good, stable tribe at your disposal.

7. Look for the silver lining.

Always look for the lessons and gifts that are inherent in adversity. Maybe you’ll learn that you’re stronger than you thought. Maybe you’ll find out how many people really care about you. The silver lining is there if you look for it.

8. Develop post-traumatic growth.

When faced with trauma, a small number of people develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the majority of people bounce back naturally after a month or so, and the remaining people actually grow and benefit from the experience. How? The basics are being optimistic and looking for the lessons in their lives. Give it a try.

9. Find a mentor.

Researcher about childhood resilience shows that the presence of even one caring adult in a child’s life can make all the difference. It can for you, too. Find someone you admire and trust and use them for guidance and loving support.

10. Look at problems from different angles.

Although the crisis in front of you may look dire, ask yourself if there is another way to look at it. Might it actually open up opportunities for you? Are you magnifying it unnecessarily?

11. Remember that you’ve made it through tough times before.

Unless you’ve led a charmed life, you’ve been through difficult situations in your past. And you’re still here to talk about it, so have faith that you’ll make it through again.

12. Think about kaleidoscopes.

When you look through a kaleidoscope, you see a beautiful pattern. It’s so pretty, you may not want to change it. But, eventually, you have to turn the dial. Suddenly there is a chaotic jumble in front of your eyes but then, magically, another beautiful pattern emerges. Life can be like this, too. So remember when things are jumbled in your life that they may be actually forming a brand new, beautiful image.

13. Take a break.

It’s important to refresh both your body and mind so take a break now and then. And remember that it’s okay to distract yourself from mental and emotional experiences like grief and rumination, too. You could use a break. Go do something fun. Really, it’s okay.

14. Remember that you already are resilient.

As mentioned in #8 above, most people are naturally resilient and you are probably one of them. Just because you struggle for a bit doesn’t mean you’re not resilient. It means you’re human.

15. Common humanity.

Remember that you are a part of the human species and therefore quite likely to have some flaws and make mistakes. But everyone does. You are not alone in your experience of struggling with external or internal adversity.

16. No one said you have to like it.

You know what? Sometimes things really do suck. So, just because you need to be resilient doesn’t mean you have to like the situation you’re in. You can be accepting, open, and flexible while at the same time acknowledging that the problem sucks.

17. Look up.

Do you find that you keep your eyes to the ground a lot? Do something different – look up! You might see something you’ve never seen before. And looking up helps provide that distraction that we talked about in #13 as you notice the color of the sky, that cool piece of architecture, or the intricate spider web design in the corner of the room.

18. Simply notice.

Feeling bad? Okay, but you don’t have to buy into your emotions. Just notice them. And withhold judgment about them or yourself.

19. Be kind.

Commit random acts of kindness. Helping others creates positive emotions in you which then expands your sense of possibilities in the world - the idea that there is more than one way to get through your current crisis. Problem-solving a situation becomes much easier and you’ll find that positive emotions help exponentially with your ability to bounce back."

 

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Mecca

Picture of Mecca with the Kabba at the centre. (source: unknown)

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Relax!

Source: Bizarrocomics.com

 

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Sit

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

Vikram Seth

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Ghazal - Sudarshan Fakir

Mere Dukh Ki Koi Dawa Na Karo
Mujhko Mujhse Abhi Juda Na Karo

Na-khuda Ko Khuda Kaha Hai To Fir
Doob Jaao Khuda-khuda Na Karo

Ye Sikhaya Hai Dosthi Ne Hame
Dosth Bankar Kabhi Wafa Na Karo

Ishq Hai Ishq Ye Mazaq Nahin
Chand Lamhon Mein Faishlaa Na Karo

Aashiqi Ho Ke Bandagi 'faakir'
Be-dili Se To Ye Fida Na Karo

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Assessors, Navigators and Aggregators

One of the chief pleasures of the internet is the serendipitous discovery of sights and facts previously unseen. A few of the tools I use to do this, mostly on my iPad, are Stumbleupon, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pocket, and Zite. (Hmm, see the trend? Face-book, Stumble-upon, Flip-board, Insta-paper, You-Tube...there must be a name for this enthusiasm for naming your company/app with two evocative words instead of the good old brands like Ford, Black's, Kodak, GM, IBM...but this is tangential to my point, sorry).

Stumbleupon and Flipboard both operate on similar principles: You tell the app what kinds of things interest you and then, in the case of Stumble, you are sent on a corkscrew ride through the interweb. Things are a little hit-and-miss with Stumbleupon but the chances of happening upon something truly interesting keeps me coming back. Stumbleupon also asks you to give a thumbs up or down for any given site you are taken to and subsequently refines it's searches to better suit your tastes. So less stumbling as it "learns" you. A terrific time waster.

Flipboard also asks for your interests and then presents sites and articles that it figures you will be interested in reading. Instead of taking you to a specific site, Flipboard shows you a number of sites in the form of a magazine cover. If something interests you, you click and read and then return to the app to peruse more pages. Yet another app, which I don't often use, is Zite: highly recommended by various sites as an aggregator of your personal interests. Zite works pretty much in the same way as Flipboard, including presenting material in a magazine format. It would be only a matter of taste as to which app you choose to use. Oh, heck! Why not live on the edge and download both?

InstaPaper is one of my favourites. It is an aggregator of long articles from such esteemed online and hard copy publications, inter-alia, as the NY Times, New Yorker, The Boston Review, GQ, Vanity Fair, Foreign Affairs and The American Scholar. It is a great app to use if you take transit as it will display articles in their entirety even when your device is not online.

InstaPaper is related closely to a web site known as Pocket, formerly known as Read it Later. This is a service which will save articles/pages from anywhere on the web with one click, allowing you to come back to these saved articles at a later time when you find time to read them. I guess this assumes that you are not going to be rooting around the web all the time, but will take time and read the articles you have archived. My relationship with Pocket is sometimes hot and sometimes cold.

 

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My Bucket List

I have begun, at this later stage in my life, to make a list of things and places I absolutely must see or do, or have done to me. So here goes:

1. Hike the Grand Canyon
2. Visit Gujurath, India with my friend, Anwar and make a documentary of it.
3. Safari through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Parks with my family and take a side trip to show them the town in which I was born. You will spot my town right next to the Lake Nyasa label -- Songea. And end the trip on the island of Zanzibar.
4. 
5. See the Amazon by cruising down the river in guided tour boat. (I know my limits and I don't want some exotic worm getting in my eye and working it's way to my brain to reproduce.)
6. Ride a Segway for hours on end in Miami Beach or Toronto. Totally doable.
7. Dive in Thailand at the Richelieu Rock Dive Site.
8. Go for a pilgrimmage to Mecca, Saudia Arabia.
9. Visit Jamaica with my family for an all inclusive week-long holiday so the kids can see where mom was born. Again, easy-peasy!
10. Pursue photography and writing. More.
11. Read more. More.
12. To not worry so much what people think about what I do and say....fuck yeah!
13. Quit smoking.
14. Debunk any debunkers!
15. To not use so many commas in my writing.
16. See a great pianist play the Brandenburg Concertos in their entirety.

I will periodically revise and add to this list.

 

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At The Cottage - Pics

We spent five days at a place called Lazy Acre Cottages.  A place on Desert Lake, which is itself just a trailer resort anchored by a general store, a playground and a half-moon shaped beach which at it's widest is only 4 metres wide.

The cottage was recommended by one of our neighbours and, to be frank, was a disappointment.
Nevertheless, here are the pics of, at least the kids enjoying themselves, fishing, catching frogs, over-dosing on sugar (there was no TV at the cottage) and swimming.

In Response to an E-Mail Entitled: Why Are the Jews so Powerful?

Sunni or Shia, Allawi or Hazari, Zaidi, Ismaili, Ithnasheri, Bhora, Khoja, Dawoodi-Bhora (a sub-sect of Ismailism)....why? Honestly, just because. There is not one iota of difference between these people and their continued need to split off from the original faith except that it is human nature. And the original faith was itself a splitting off from the religious ideas present at the time of the Revelations.

So when Muslims, even amongst themselves, endlessly split away from each other, it is not surprising that people (all people) are happy to pounce on and denounce, at various times, the Jews, Italians, Japanese, etc. It is just a bigger way to differentiate oneself from the OTHER. Sometimes the OTHER is a Muslim, at other times a Jew.

It is best at these times to look at yourself and realize that most things in life exist on a continuum. A series of decisions or compromises that suit the individual at one point in time. Everything else follows the individual's decision: Including the need to build a theory which will then support our own selfish decisions.

So whether you are a Twelver, a Fiver or a Sevener, it makes not a bit of difference in the greater scheme of things. Born in Wales, Scotland, England; Dublin, London, Devonshire? Honestly, who the heck cares? And can you really spot the difference on the Don Valley Parkway, returning from work on a Friday at 6 p.m.?

 

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Trip to Kingston, Ontario

Seth and Tarah at Chapters looking for a book to read at the cottage. We weren't in Kingston at this point but since it's my blog, I've taken some liberties with the chronology.

While we were busy getting bored at the cottage, we decided to go into Kingston to find some grub. Ended up eating at a Thai food restaurant called Mango. Marsh and I last ate at this place about two years ago. The food and service were every bit as good as that first time.

Seth pleading his case to mom.

Marsh had the Tom Yum soup....apparently, it's really easy to make this truly delicious dish.




The mango salad and chicken satay were delicious.



Later, we took a walk down, the appropriately named, Princess Street and found a store named Tara Natural Foods. The owner was putting away some wooden pallets in his truck and watched me taking pictures of Tarah in front of his store. I told him the reason why we thought his store worthy of a picture; he promptly said, "I should get her a treat. Wait here a minute, I'll get her a treat." And then returned with some popsicles for both Tarah and Seth. So nice to have these things happen out of the blue.



Aside from horse drawn carriages, handing in a wallet which Seth found to a police officer, we also came across this beautiful truck outside a restaurant by the waterfront.

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Algonquin Park - East Entrance

My friend Tracey and I are taking our annual camping trip with our kids. This summer we have decided to be a little more adventurous by going into the interior of Algonquin Provincial Park. In the past, we have stuck to the tried and true -- car parking at one of the closer (to Toronto) provincial parks. In the past we have gone to Sibbald Point, Sandbanks and Awenda.
We will be canoeing this time with everything we might need in one canoe. This has meant a little more planning but it will be well worth it to let our sons get a taste of true wilderness camping.
I have canoed through Algonquin on four other occasions: In the early 80's, I tripped on my own and covered almost the whole distance that I planned on completing. My route: Canoe Lake - Portage 260 m - Joe Lake - Tepee Lake - Little Oxtongue River - Little Doe Lake - Tom Thompson Lake - Portage 2.3 km - Ink Lake - Macintosh Lake. I retraced my steps to return to civilization. (If you click on the picture above you should get a larger image).

 
This first time, I carried way too much stuff and suffered for it. I saw moose, heard loons, carried my canoe for several hundred metres, camped solitary and survived to tell about it. I must admit that I was stumped when I arrived at the 2.3 km portage between Tom Thompson Lake and Ink Lake. There was no way I could have carried the canoe and then my bag of food/equipment and clothing.
Several years later, probably 1986, I revisited the route I took on the first trip with my friend, Rob. We did the long portage and rested on Macintosh Lake for several days of swimming, fishing and exploring.
In the early 90's, I took the same route but this time with my wife, Marshalin. A fantastic trip, with lots of learning on Marsh's part about canoeing. At the dreaded 2.3 km portage we managed to carry our clothing and food bags to the end of the portage and returned to the beginning point to pick up the canoe and yet another bag.
The terrain along this portage is/was rocky, with endless hills and boulders and, of course, bugs. Once we hoisted the canoe onto our shoulders, I heard Marsh say, "I can't do this, I can't." And she started crying. So we took 10 minutes to gather our energies and talk. We were in an impossible position. Half of our stuff was at the head of the portage and the other half was at the tail end of the portage. We would either have to make the trip to retrieve our bags or carry the last of our stuff and canoe to the destination end of the trail. The canoe and bag won because it would mean only doing the portage one more time.
The feeling of elation and accomplishment was powerful when we finally got to the Ink Lake side of things. We took a well deserved break, snacked, watched other people as they came off the trail huffing and puffing. We parked ourselves on Macintosh Lake and luxuriated for three days, after which we took on the portage again to head back home.
My third trip entering through Canoe Lake was the same as those above with the exception of a black bear ambling into our campsite at breakfast time. It didn't take much to scare him off and then we got all our belongings together as fast as possible and finished breakfast in the canoe.
I chose to enter the park from Whitney this time because the paddling looks a bit easier for the first day than Canoe Lake, which is massive and often windy.

The arrow points to our entry point

We have a three hour drive up to Whitney and our route begins with Galeairy Lake. We will canoe five kilometres to the middle of this lengthy but narrow, east-west running lake and camp for the first night.
 

Above is an overview of our route started in the east side and heading north-west.
 

The second day we will break camp and canoe till the afternoon, complete a short (100 metre) portage and finally settle down on one of two islands on Rock Lake. The portage is marked above in red.

The above screen capture shows one of the islands we hope to camp on Rock Lake after a second day of canoeing. We will stay on either Rose (Jean) or Jean (Rose) Islands. No clue as to why they are identified with alternating names on the map.

Needless to say, we are all excited and looking forward to our 'wilderness' trip.

 

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Back in Action

My blog, as you can see, has been reconstituted.  It is not the prettiest thing, but I did figure out how to stop the side-bar from sliding to the bottom of the page.  I do have lots that I would like to write/rant about but have not found the time.  'Well then, make the time!'  I hear you say.  So, yes...I will devote 15 minutes per week, even if it's at work to compose a little something.  I hope that any of you that were reading occasionally will try and check back periodically despite my hiatus.
Some of the things I would like to write about:
1. The diversity of life vis-a-vis nature
2. Yearning for an adventure and possible spots
3. My very own bucket list
4. Going canoeing in Algonquin Prov. Park at the end of July
5. Cottaging for 7 days with the famiglia

 

6. The herd mentality in fashion and the upcoming wedding of a friend.

Blog is Kaput

Dear Reader,

My blog is going through some growing pains. In trying to make the layout of my blog simpler, I have somehow managed to get all the sidebar gadgets at the bottom of the blog. And I can't seem to undo the error. So be patient cause this may mean re-learning some HTML.....eeek!

If you know of and blogging app which actually works smoothly on an iPad, let me know. Blogsy and BlogPress are all they could be.


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This is your Life

Zen Backpacking

Minimalist site for backpacking.