"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'. They will ask 'Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?'" Susya, a Hasidic rabbi
"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'. They will ask 'Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?'" Susya, a Hasidic rabbi
"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Jalal al-Din Rumi
I'm running a ten-session training, starting next week, called "How to live well - a shared exploration". Here's a link to a description of the first evening - "How to live well: 1st meeting - values, self-determination theory, roles & goals". Before, during & after the course, there's encouragement to fill in questionnaires. This is suggested for at least three reasons. One is that when we measure something, we tend to pay more attention to it. Keeping track is often a therapeutic intervention in its own right. Secondly we're using questionnaires to see if changes in our behaviours actually produce the improvements we're hoping for.
“ Hope is the dream of a soul awake. ” - French proverb
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength
” - Ralph Sockman
So this is the second session of the "Compassion, wisdom & wellbeing: 8 week training". I posted a description of the initial session a few days ago ...
I've already introduced this course in an earlier blog post "Compassion, wisdom & wellbeing: an 8 week training". This post gives background for the first session of the training. It will be particularly relevant for participants, but others not coming to the course itself may well find these ideas interesting & helpful. I certainly hope so!
“ The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. ” - George Bernard Shaw
Self-determination needs balancing. Lyubomirsky/Sheldon. Burnout. Self-assessment. Intentions.
I wrote a blog post yesterday morning setting the scene for a two day workshop I was about to go to with Professor Kathy Shear on her treatment approach for complicated grief. Well, how did the day go? It was very interesting, inspiring, and also a little too much "simply sitting listening" for my tastes. It's hard to know what the best design for this kind of two day seminar should be. I strongly suspect though that just sitting taking in, even such excellent information with the opportunity for regular questions, isn't the most effective way of transferring knowledge. Hard to do it, but more active audience participation would probably serve the workshop's goals even better. Despite this, the material being shared was great ... really fascinating and important.
I was struck by a couple of papers on grief that I read last year. One was Kathy Shear & colleagues' "Treatment of complicated grief in elderly persons: a randomized clinical trial" and the other was Bryant et al's "Treating prolonged grief disorder: a randomized clinical trial." I was impressed because Shear's paper showed clear benefits of one treatment over a valid active comparison treatment. Trials showing better outcomes of treatments that have been compared with "treatment as usual" (TAU) or "waiting list control" are two a penny. However an intervention that produces an obviously better outcome than a valid alternative intervention makes me sit up and take notice.
