Life changing insights

Figuring people out has always been a fascinating and helpful hobby of mine. Last year I was introduced to the "Wired that Way" personality tools. It's not like I haven't enjoyed and learned from other ways of looking at things, and as I've researched more, I have learned that many different people categorize personality in rather similar fashions, but this one was nontechnical yet specific enough that I thought I would share a much reduced version of it. (Ideally, the four categories are arranged in a square with the yellow and red quadrants across the top, and green and blue across the bottom in that order, but I wasn't able to format this blog that way).

Let's do it the fun way.
Desire to have fun.
Need affection attention, approval, acceptance.
Creative, optimistic, light touch.
They excite, inspire, persuade others.
Probably should talk less, get organized and learn to tell the time.

Let's do it my way.
Desire to have control.
Need sense of obedience, accomplish a lot, are usually right.
They are self-confident, restless, and at times overpowering.
Probably should delegate more, be more patient, and be more appreciative.

Let's do it the easy way.
Desire to avoid conflict, keep peace .
Need feeling of worth, emotional support, sense of respect.
They mediate, objectively solve problems, have an even disposition, and a will of iron.
Probably should become more self motivated, move faster, face own problems as well as they handle those of others.

Let's do it the right way.
Desire to do it right.
Need stability, space, sensitivity, support.
They have high standards, compassion, analyze deeply, are creative, organize well.
Probably should lighten up, allow others to be imperfect.

Most of us have one personality type that is predominant, with a secondary type that has an effect on our character as well. Of course, nothing is 100% and we can (should) all learn skills from all personality types, but it is helpful to know what comes naturally. In any case, it has been an interesting exercise in understanding myself, and in figuring out my family. Someone who is motivated by fun just isn't going to be into job charts and schedules. It makes a difference in which options I choose when dealing with people, and it makes a difference in how I motivate myself. The Red/Green combination, and Yellow/Blue combination conflict with each other in a lot of ways and tend not to be natural pairings--look at them and think about it and you will see why!

Realizing where my heart lies (after all these years of thinking it lies somewhere else) has changed my outlook--my goals have not been affected so much as my plans on how to achieve them. School, employment, our society in general seems to demand of us to spend a lot of time in the blue quadrant. Certainly I have been well trained in that area and derive satisfaction from functioning well in it. But I have realized I feel most alive in other quadrants, and knowing that those other characteristics are natural and the way I'm made has freed up a lot of energy and allows me to enjoy activities that previously I had felt were just too frivolous and irrelevant to the serious business of living to be indulged. Thinking like that sucked the joy out of the positives of those other quadrants without leaving me any tools or motivation for dealing with the negatives. As I develop new thought patterns and habits I think things are going to start being different in my life and I look forward with enthusiasm to what the future will bring!

P.S. This particular system is developed by Florence Littauer. Following is a Wikipedia article and a very basic personality test. There are books and official tests available, but this is a start for if you want to know more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_Plus
http://lynn_meade.tripod.com/id139.htm

Planting and harvest

As if there isn't enough to do, Bruce keeps bringing home grapes or apples to process. Personally, I would rather buy the produce off the supermarket shelves, but there is a certain satisfaction from seeing jars of produce on shelves and know you had a hand in making them.

But that isn't really what I wanted to blog about. There's been a lot to do lately, and of the type that leaves a good deal up to circumstances or other people. Fruit is easy (except for being hard work), you know what you have to do to get the results you want--pick the fruit, clean it, cut/juice/smash/cook it, put it in jars, add sugar (maybe), put on the lids, boil filled jars the required time, put the processed jars on the shelf, clean the kitchen.

But how do you find a new job? Or a new host family for an exchange student? There's a process all right, but the results are less certain--research, make contacts, prepare your information, disseminate it, and then wait. Wait for someone to call, wait for someone to ask questions, realize nobody is going to call, do it again. Wait. It's demoralizing and discouraging, and there are a lot of unknowns.

Through this process, this time, I finally figured something out--better late than never! I have known I cannot accomplish my goals by myself--too many things were out of my control and dependent on others. For this and several other reasons, I've made greater efforts to seek the Lord's will. The problem here is that I've always felt bad because I had the theory that my faith was insufficient and I wasn't trying hard enough. THIS time, I have realized that the Lord isn't really unhappy about my supposed lack of faith. Building a relationship with Him isn't His test of us, but His invitation for us to test Him. He knows that building trust takes time, and doesn't expect us to have perfect faith in him right off the bat. He doesn't just expect us to take His word for it (even from such an impressive authority as the scriptures), but to prove Him. For how many years have I heard/read this and it didn't hit home?

I have heard that we should pray as if everything depends on the Lord, and work as if everything depends on us. In theory it sounds understandable, but in reality, when is anything enough? What is the relationship between them? So my conclusion at this point? The Lord gives us the seed. That's His part. Our part is to prepare the ground, plant, and fertilize. And then it's His part again and He sends the sun, the rain, and the miracle of growth. The more ground we prepare, the more He has to work with. Being prone to guilt, of course I can always say, "I could have done more", but a wise woman at church suggested that if we counsel with the Lord as to what we should do and what we have done, the Lord will let us know if we've done enough. What more do we need to know??

So what is the result of all this pondering? Well, still no new job. BUT the host family I was looking for came forward, and they are really neat people--the husband being the mayor, no less, of one of our local communities. The Lord knows where to find them!! My part was getting the word out, HIS part was bringing it to the attention of the right people. Who they are, the timing of the whole thing, and the graciousness of them and the temporary host family all show me the Lord was in on it all along.

The Lord's patience in working with me is astonishing and heart-warming. And the results of me working with HIM are inspiring and effective. The harvest is sure. I am grateful.

Walking tall

After years of treating my body with minimal respect, things are finally changing. I've always known I can't lose weight and I haven't the discipline to exercise, and of course, I was right. But feeling myself starting to descend the slippery slope into depression, and not wanting to go to that horrible place I was two years ago, I had to make a change before it was too late. I don't know why depression should be such a widespread problem in these wonderful days in this wonderful (if imperfect) country but from what I'm hearing, it certainly is. I've fought it with varying degrees of success--perhaps my best effort involved the putting together of a "blessings" journal, which, to this day I continue to fill (along the lines that if we counted ALL our blessings, we wouldn't have time for anything else). It directs my thoughts to better things and is so chock full of fun, gratitude, people I love, and lessons learned that even just holding it makes me feel good. But it seems that even so, attacks of depression come, and this past summer was one of them.

THIS time I concentrated on reading scriptures and exercise. One thing leads to another, and starting an upward spiral isn't much harder than slipping onto a downward slope. It took me one and a half months to get started on the challenge to read the Book of Mormon over the summer, but just the same, I almost did it. Just finishing the remnants now. And a place that was hungry in me is being fed and I am grateful.

But other types of feasting may not be as positive, so the other thing I did is join the "biggest looser" group at my workplace. I didn't care that much about winning, although I can be a real competetive person, I just didn't like the way I looked, and since depression always reduces my eating anyways, why not? But just starving myself wasn't very effective, so I started walking to work. Then exercising. Then finding sneaky ways to exercise while sitting at my computer at work. My weight seems to have plateaued but my clothes fit better and I'm sore. SOMETHING is happening. It does help that there's group support though weight loss certainly isn't an absorbing topic of conversation. And sore though I am (it's abating now), my posture has improved. And my attitude. And my outlook. And my house is cleaner. Not sure that measurements would show anything, but I feel taller.

Speaking of respecting Mother nature....

This was the beach we found at our former favorite cliff jumping spot. Compare to the two pictures below and see one small sample of what a spring flood can do. This is only sand. There were places along the Cowlitz river where whole bars of boulders had been moved from one side of the river to another. Trees had been uprooted. The bridge crossing the river was cracked clear through (probably by an uprooted tree? Boulder?) causing the road leading to the bridge to be closed.

Lessons learned from canoeing

Lesson #1. Do not take a new and inexperienced exchange student out on a canoe with a loose camera in the boat.

Lesson #2. Give longer canoe sailing lessons to said exchange student before handing him the sail controls during wind gusts.

Lesson #3. Wear whatchamacallem thingies to secure glasses to face when taking a supposed fun and easy canoe trip down a higher than usual (almost freezing cold) river while camping.

Lesson #4. Do not hit rock after successfully negotiating shallow rapids (we were informed they were a "low 2" on a scale of 1 (calm pond) to 6 (certain death) on white water difficulty ratings--see #7). Note: said exchange student present, but not to blame.

Lesson #5. Stay out of range of other club wielders, er, paddlers when trying to beach canoe.

Lesson #6. Associated with #4 and #5, learn teamwork with other members of the crew.

Lesson #7. Do not tell other passing canoers about your woes while you are still dripping, ESPECIALLY writers of canoeing and kayaking columns for over ten years.

Lesson #8. Make sure roads to pick up point have not been closed.

Lesson #9. Do not pass by daughter waiting dutifully to pick us up where she said she would because we didn't recognize her without glasses.

Total damage: camera, watch, two pairs of glasses and one pair sunglasses, painful bruise over left eye, severely damaged dignity, sore shoulders from carrying canoe half a mile, confirmation of Julie's unstated thoughts that her mother (responsible for all except #2) really belongs on slapstick comedy team.

Gains: Wisdom (maybe), experience, recovered paddles and shoes, dry camera (foresightedly (amazing) sealed in a ziplock bag) with partial visual record, basic paddling lesson from experts, experience taking apart and drying out cell phone (HaHa benefited most from this).

It might also be said that we saw spectacular vistas of Mount Rainier and flower bursting alpine meadows, deep silent woods, and sunshine lighting the leaf tips and sparkling the waters on several hikes. Eric and Bruce had a lovely 20 mile, uneventful but spectacular overnight hike from near Paradise down to Silver Falls, while we spent 1.5 hours trying to start a campfire with damp wood so we could eat something. We also learned that vegetarian hot dogs taste horrible, and that vegetarian patties have egg in them, and that our poor Hindu (non-meat and non-egg eating) exchange student from India is a good sport about all that. We returned home grubby, ready for real food, eager to sleep comfortably, and most importantly--alive! Most unforgettable lesson learned--respect Mother Nature!

She's not a toddler anymore....

A couple of weeks ago we went camping with Julie. Just for a day or two while she went to a printmaking workshop at a museum in the vicinity. Nowadays I mostly see her as a sensible, hardworking, creative person, and a good teacher, but every once in a while the old saucy twinkle still appears in her eyes as she shares a joke or plays a trick on us. She comes up with the funnest ideas for Christmas--the silly
string in our stockings last year
was a blast and added a lot to
the enjoyment of the holiday
(and then there's the boxing
gloves...)

Although, it wasn't actually Julie's idea to pose with the statue--she is just graciously humoring one of her mother's inexplicable whims.




She has always been interested in sports
and taking care of her body, having lately
taken up preparing for and participating
in triathalons. She has even managed to
envigle her non-sports participating
brother into joining her when she goes
biking. Several of the blogs I read are
written by moms with little guys at home,
and I remember those days well, but I
marvel almost every time I see her what
a competent, good, and (mostly) together (nobody's perfect) adult this scrappy
toddler has become.



I always used to get a little upset
when my mother still saw the little
girl in me, but now, realizing how
much I still enjoy the glimpses of the
Julie-that-used-to-be, maybe I'll cut
my own mother some slack! Recalling
the little Julie in no way diminshes the
pleasure I feel in knowing that I had
some small part in helping her become
the amazing woman she is.

If it wasn't so sad, I'd be funny....

Anyone who knows me knows I am pretty committed to exchange students, and to learning from and enjoying the differences between us. These are wonderful kids and being able to host them for a year (if we can) is an amazing opportunity. They are not perfect by any means, but who is?

So I was really burned recently when I heard of a family, after saying they would, changing their minds and dumping a student--because he was Muslim and might do something scary. This is not to say there are no scary Muslims--but the vast majority of them are as appalled by the scary ones as we are appalled by, say, skinheads, the KKK, or, more historically, the Inquisition (all of whom could be considered Christians by people who are unfamiliar with us).

Having hung around with a lot of Muslims lately, I just had to laugh when I thought of some of the scary things I've seen them do......

Develop secret weapons--explosives, I think.

Target practice.

Mingle inconspicuously with the natives so they can become entrenched in our society. (Guess which ones are Muslim).

Spy out the weaknesses of our power grid.

These guys seem to be the ringleaders. Code names are Larry, Curly, and Mo.

Probably anyone who reads this blog is already a generous and understanding person, but I just had to vent!!!