Are you really above the average? Whether or not you are, you are happier! Optimism leads to success and overall more happiness.
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The 2012 summer exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is fabulous. Although there are some pieces there that make you wonder about the entry requirement, there are many more intriguing/creative pieces. Tracey Emin had a completely useless piece of 'art' there for £165,000; perhaps someone with all money and no sense will buy it but I am hoping that no one is that stupid.
Apparently some people have been fainting at the "Brains: The Mind as Matter" Exhibition at the Wellcome Trust because they can't stomach some of the exhibits. In particular, there is a video of brain surgery in action from the 1940s/50s and another of shock treatment from the same sort of period. I wasn't fazed by either - I'm made of stern stuff, I guess. That said, it did get me thinking. Are younger generations of Brits unable to deal with reality? They grew up without seeing animals or other "real" life; if you grew up on or near a farm you likely wouldn't get squeamish over the sight of a few innards. You'd have seen at least a chicken being killed and cows being milked and wouldn't get distressed by the sight of a brain or two. I don't know. I really enjoyed the portraits of people who have donated their brains for research, it really humanised the whole thing. Would you donate your brain for research? I am thinking it's a good idea...but I am yet to fully decide.
This blog is inspired by Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run Until today, I always believed that women sat around tending to the kids as the men went out hunting and "brought the bacon" home. I don't think I learnt this at school, it's just one of those things I knew, you know - "general knowledge". Then, as I was reading Born to Run I learnt that scientists can almost conclusively say that when we were hunter-gatherers the women were part of the chase. For instance, in most mammals, the male is much larger than the female. In human beings on the other hand, the male is on average only 15% larger than the female as we're both designed for the same function: running. Our small nimble size is ideally suited to long chases. Human beings are designed to endure very long runs in pursuit of their prey - meat for food. I once read of a woman who had a baby and went out to complete a marathon the very next (or same) day. I thought she was mad but apparently it's not so crazy. Hunter-gatherer women were exactly the same way; running was not some big thing that you had to go and do. It was a way of life - something you did everyday, kind of like waking up and watching TV in today's world. Is there any evidence for this way of life? In fact there is. Modern societies and the digital revolution remain very new. Hunter-gatherer societies still exist. The Mbuti or Bambuti pygmies in the Congo maintain their hunter-gatherer way of life. Both men and women gather and forage. When it comes to hunting for meat, the women and children take part by 'driving the prey into the nets' (Wikipedia). This driving the prey into the nets is made to sound like a light activity but it's actually a wild chase of man versus animal that can last hours at a time. A group of 6-10 people collectively target and outrun a deer until it's tired out. When they catch it, the kill is taken back to the community and shared collectively. The Mbuti live in groups of 15-60 and total 30- to 40,000 worldwide. They have developed hunting boundaries so that one group doesn't impinge on the ground of another. I expect that this is as much for sustainability as it is for maintaining the peace. Ultimately, people who live this sort of nomadic lifestyle live as one large family. Everything is shared. I kind of envy this way of life. In modern society it's every man for himself: eat or be eaten. On the issue of running. There is an ultra running competition every year, the Leadville Trail 100. Ultra running is running on very rough terrain, on routes where cars can't pass. It's been found that although men can out-sprint women over short distances, when it come to ultra races like the Leadville, 90% of women finish but only 50% of men do. The book didn't drill down on why this phenomenon exists but it serves as further evidence that we were both designed to persevere and persist over hard terrain for long distances. Born to Run is a book about running but I decided to zone in on the issue of women for this post. I have reviewed the book here and written more about the book from a different angle in these posts: I highly recommend this book.
My cousin posted this video on her blog. I was so touched (almost cried but I'm made of stern stuff!) that I had to put it up too! It's about not giving up. At the bottom I add one of my favourite poems, When things go wrong as they sometimes will; I used to have the poem hanging up in my room as a teen. When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you are trudging seems all uphill; When the funds are low, and the debts are high, And you want to smile, but you have to sigh; When care is pressing you down a bit - Rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, As every one of us sometimes learns; And many a fellow turns about When he might have won, had he struck it out; Don't give up though the pace seems slow; You may well succeed with another blow. Often the goal is nearer than It seems to a faint and faltering man; Often the struggler has given up When he might have captured the Victor's cup! And he learned too late, when the night came down, How close he was to the golden crown. Success is failure turned inside out, The silver tint of the clouds of doubt. And you never can tell how close you are If may be near, when it seems afar. So stick to the fight when you are hardest hit, It is when things seem worst that you must not quit. Author : Unknown
I’ve been wanting to tackle this issue for quite a while now. If you look at my Facebook "Info” page you will notice that there is one key piece of data missing that everyone else seems to have displayed: my birthday! There’s a special reason for this. In addition to thinking that it’s not very relevant to anything, I also abhor the idea of people saying ‘happy birthday’ to me on my wall. I’m not going to pretend that I have never done this myself but I think it’s firstly, lazy and secondly, so low effort that it means almost nothing to the recipient. When you see birthday messages on your wall from 100s of people do you sit there thinking, “Aren’t I popular, look at me, I’m a person of the people, loved by many…” You really shouldn’t; those message are very low delta. People write them almost on autopilot: rapidly drafted without the writer even thinking that it is YOUR birthday. They probably write exactly the same thing for other people. They might even have a message they just copy and paste from one wall to the next! Furthermore, wishing someone happy birthday on their Facebook wall can’t be used as a means of ‘showing off’ that you remembered their birthday because the fact is, you did not. Facebook alerted you to the event and you took out 15 seconds from your precious day to write on the person’s wall. If I care about and appreciate someone and assuming I haven't forgotten(!), I will make contact with them via the email, text, telephone or the Facebook INBOX. I will let them know what I wish for them on this special day and I’ll find out what they have planned for the day. If I write on your wall and you haven’t also received a message via one of the aforementioned platforms, I am probably not that into you. This probably applies to all the other folk that wrote on your wall. Let’s think about this in a real life context Assume you live in a little village where a birthday-board is put outside people’s doors on their birthdays. Would you just walk past and scream happy birthday across the fence? I assume you wouldn’t. You would probably enter the front lawn (their personal space) for a short while have a quick chat then be on your way. You might even give the birthday guy or gal a small gift – a fresh banana or peach from your land, a handmade card or simply a pleasant wish. The Facebook inbox or email inbox is such an intimate place. If you are going to send someone a personal wish you have to think a little about it. It’s less transient and that is exactly why most people don’t do it. This year, I am going to do something different. I will put my birthday up on Facbook a week before my birthday and simultaneously disable my wall. I would really like to see how many people take that perilous journey to my inbox. Why don’t you try the same, if I get even 10 messages, I would rate that as doing very well and I will respond to each message in turn: a personal message deserves that respect.
Organization The pace of modern life means you need to be able to juggle many things at one time without stumbling, getting confused, angry or annoyed. Tall order? Yes, it is. Presentation, packaging The comments on this article are even more interesting and insightful than the article itself. One anonymous comment reads: “My son recently went for a minimum wage menial job interview. He dressed smart casual - no jeans, ironed shirt, neat haircut and the rest. He didn't get the job but at least the manager took the time to write to him and commend him on his appearance and enthusiasm in the interview.” That’s just it, right? If you receive a gift that’s been neatly wrapped and ‘ribboned’ you will take more interest in it that a carelessly packaged box wrapped in newspaper. The same applies at interviews. Even if you are applying for a low-skilled job dress smartly, smile and act enthusiastic. The very fact that this employer took the time to commend the young man for his presentation shows he was pleasantly surprised. Overall, I would say that if you are highly numerate, literate, fluent, learned, disciplined, organized and well-presented and you still can’t find a job, it’s possible that it’s because you is black! Whatever the case stay positive. Academic profile Nowadays so many people have great GCSEs, great A-levels and a university degree so if you don’t have the same, it will count against you. Discipline A couple of boys admitted to having a criminal record. One paragraph in the article read: "'I’ve been looking for a job for almost seven years,' says Gogo, 28, who served three years in jail in his teens for what he describes as a number of small offences. 'I would take any job, I don’t really care, I’ll take any job — but once you get a criminal record, even a minor criminal record, it’s hard to get any jobs.'" Let’s be honest, if you were about to employ someone you would want some sort of signal that they are disciplined, right? That they will get to work on time, that they won’t be dishonest and overall that you can trust them to do right by the firm. In times of such high unemployment, when employers can afford to be picky, they will take a criminal record as a ‘signal’ of poor discipline. If someone has a criminal record the best they can do is admit to it before it’s ‘discovered’ and try to explain it away. If an employer discovers the record on their own they are more likely to think you lied than if you are upfront about it. Everyone knows that having a criminal record does not in itself mean you’re a bad person but it’s part of your profile and as such indicates something about your character. Like as not, the signal is not usually a positive one although rarely it can be (see Nelson Mandela). Most applicants competing for the same job will not have a criminal record. On 26-Mar-12 the Evening Standard produced a highly emotive article about the unemployment levels of young black men: Young, Black and Shafted. The interviewees were all from the low-income neighborhood of Dalston. Personally, I don’t think that this story reflected the unemployment levels of black people from wealthier and more educated neighborhoods. Growing up in Malawi, the concept of race and racism almost never traversed the contours of my brain. As a result, when something bad or negative happens to me, I almost never think of it as “racism”. I don’t argue that racism does not exist but I think this article lacked balance because it left some important areas unexplored. It entirely focused on race rather than the issue of: what are employers looking for and are these qualities lacking in the interviewed cohort? What is it that these lads can do to make themselves employable? And, if you can’t find a job, have you thought of creating one? I want to tackle the issue of employability in this blog. WHAT EMPLOYERS WANT: Numeracy You don’t have to be a super mathematician but basic mathematical skills are needed in almost any job. I am not talking about simply adding up but being able to understand ratios, proportions and if you are in a desk job formulae in Microsoft Excel. A surprising number of people are severely lacking in this area. If it can’t be done on a calculator, they get stuck. Literacy and Fluency Being brought up and bred in Britain doesn’t immediately imply an ability to fluently speak in English. Many people’s grammar is all over the place. Hand them a piece of paper and ask them to write something and in the absence of a spell check the piece is riddled with spelling errors. It's also likely to have misplaced commas and full stops, a poor flow as well as an incoherent structure. If the job involves writing to and communicating with clients this simply cannot do! You need to speak and write well, your grammar needs to be in check and you have to space your paragraphs. Effective communication is a must. I understand that a top City law firm had to provide elocution lessons to a few of their new graduates because customers complained about their Estuary English.
This blog was written a week ago and wasn’t meant to be posted until the weekend but something happened today that required that I post it right away. I explain the event at the end. When I first came to England I had never spent any time thinking about the concept of atheism. In fact, having never met an atheist I thought the term was a dictionary concept rather than anything that actually happened in practice. The first time someone told me that they didn’t believe in God I recall being appalled. I went from having a mild crush on the guy to thinking: I don’t really like you, for if you don’t believe in God you have got to be satanic. That moment was a turning point in my friendship with this guy because I don’t think I put very much into being friends with him after that. When he told me that he suffers from depression, I remember thinking that it was probably linked to his non-belief of a higher power! Being at the University of Cambridge, that was just the first of many encounters. Cambridge is a breeding ground for thinkers, people that question everything and from that moment on I met many atheists with the end result that I now understand and respect their view. I think it takes a lot more effort to not believe than it does to believe. Most of us were born within a certain religion. We were indoctrinated with it from a young age and have never thought to question it. A lot of introspection resulted from my meeting and questioning so many atheists. Every single atheist I know has a very sound moral code. In fact many behave better than some of my fellow Christians, I know that if I misbehave I can just go to confession and God will forgive. An atheist has to live with it in their conscience, they can’t pass the buck on to God. Upon looking at myself I accepted that: I have never known hunger. I have never known cold. I grew up in a two-parent home where I was loved and cared for. I have never known any real want. Mine has been a safe and sheltered existence and that in itself means I cannot judge those that have suffered in ways I can only imagine: Many people out there are going to bed without any food tonight. If such a person told me they didn’t believe in a God, how could I even begin to judge them negatively? There are many little boys and girls out there tonight being abused by the people that are supposed to protect them. A girl out there is zealous and enthusiastic about a trip she has been promised to a developed country where she can better herself – little does she know that she has just become someone’s drug mule or sex slave. I watched a program a couple of weeks ago where a woman was being forced by her husband to sleep with other men for money; he beat her if she refused. Some punters came to her house at lunch time, her husband made her cook lunch for all of them, he then accepted some money and she had to a go to a room to let the man do his business. She described herself as being “the unluckiest woman in the world”. “What could be worse than this?” she asked the journalist. Indeed, what could? I for one could only weep as I watched the injustice unfold. So, what ominous event happened today? Sometimes events call one to question whether God does truly exist and today was one such day for me. My sister’s Facebook status update in the morning said something about God always knowing what was going to happen in advance of its occurrence and as such we should trust him. Cynically, I thought, “Does he know in advance when a helpless five year old child is going to be molested by those that should be trusted?” Watch enough episodes of Law and Order: SVU and you too will think in these mysterious ways. Anyway, the very thought made me begin to question God’s existence. When I got home from work I decided to do a patch of housework, I very rarely do housework during the week, I save it for the weekend. I would say this event occurs but once a month, if that (my husband says once a year!) As I was cleaning I decided to clean out a compartment of my tumble dryer that’s supposed to be cleaned once every three to six months – it hadn’t been cleared in at least a year. On the second scoop out of the gunk, I found a ring that belongs to neither me nor my husband; a guest must have forgotten it. It reads: Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding Pr 3:5. I was spooked! Can a question be more directly answered?
Read this article first. “The death of publishing is greatly exaggerated. We will still need publishers as long as we read books, just as we still need critics to review those books. It is part of the great filtering process of literature and culture.” Sebastian Shakespeare I think this article misses three key points: Self-published does not mean self-edited I wrote my first novel in 2010. I haven’t yet published it but I wrote it for the sake of writing it. I wanted to produce a thought-provoking, well written story and upon completion I submitted the work to a professional editor who read the work, edited it and gave me an 8-paged critique. Everyone knows that poorly written work won’t sell and you will find that many self-published works have been edited professionally. Self publishers aren’t going the DIY route because they can’t find a publisher I can think of at least three reasons that one might choose to side-step the traditional route. Ease – the publishing industry makes getting your work even read very difficult. This, in part, is because they are inundated with manuscripts. To help them sort through the stuff publishers prefer submissions channelled via an “agent” and this long chain is frankly off putting. Self-publishing requires a little technical know-how and you’re up and away. Many gen-Ys are super confident with technology and will choose the quick and easy way if they can’t be convinced that there is a real benefit in choosing the more treacherous path. Control – the publisher, being the ‘fountain of knowledge’ that she is on themes that are commercially viable and those that are not can exert so much control over a piece of work that you ultimately don’t even recognise it as yours. Or have to make too many compromises. Some people prefer having more control rather than less and self-publishing provides that. Income – a traditional publisher will typically give you 5-10% of profits. Self-publishing can yield up to a 70% share. Publishers might argue that you are getting a smaller piece of a larger pie but why should you be happy with that. If you have done a piece of work you should get most of the reward. Reviewers not publishers or professional literary critics “sort the wheat from the chaff” We live in a world of reviews. I understand that most readers are women especially when it comes to fiction. They base a good portion of what they read on recommendations from friends. Failing that, reviews from every day people help us decide what to read next. If a literary critic rates a book highly but on Amazon the majority of readers rate it 1 out 5, that book won’t do well. The review system adds democracy to the process and is now key in sorting through the immense variety we face in this age of mass consumption. You will frequently see comments like “I wish I had read the reviews before buying this book, it was a total and utter waste of time…” That is the power of reviews. I read reviews before every single purchase now, I seldom bother going to the shops especially when the weather is poor. Every electronic gadget I have (except my digicam) was purchased online. And in the case of the digicam I used online prices to squeeze the price down. No one reads a book because it was published by such and such a publisher People have favourite authors. Once an author is established they will have a dedicated following that will read their output regardless of how it is published. This is why you are finding traditionally published authors going the DIY route. Is publishing dead? No, I don’t think so but they are going to have to change their formulae especially when it comes to the income share. Their magical powers of distribution have been taken by technology so they will have to find relevance in another format. I tweet @GirlBanker
To do what you want rather than what makes you money is a luxury preserved for the privileged few12/2/2012 If you know someone that says this it is more than likely that they grew up in a well-to-do home and never knew ‘want’. They see their ‘socialist’ views on life as something that sets them above other people, but seldom do these sanctimonious individuals pause to acknowledge how much of a privileged position they are in. Most people do not have the privilege to follow their hearts. To do so would be selfish and indeed self-indulgent. Money is not evil, it is an enabler, having a little money can be the difference between dying and having a few more breaths on this earth. I grew up in a poor country and was naturally frequently exposed to poverty and want. Yes, I fully acknowledge that I was raised in a relatively wealthy family but when you come from somewhere as poor as Malawi, that doesn’t mean you’re completely sheltered from the vagaries of misfortune. Fortunately for me, the things I enjoyed in life steered me towards a career that earns decent money. If for some reason I decided to follow a self-indulgent path that did not earn money, I would at the same time be taking myself off the path that would enable me to one day contribute in real, monetary terms to my family and to my country. Yes, you can contribute in non-monetary terms but I dare you to say that to the mother that hasn't been able to feed her children for two days. When you're poor, money to purchase food and shelter is all that matters. It consumes your every thought and effort. The needs of my own life are simple and I continually try to temper them. My biggest fantasy for when I have a real amount of money is to build a series of little libraries in Malawi because it is only through study of the written word that people can gain freedom from poverty. Most people in Malawi and indeed in many poor countries follow the path that makes money because they don’t have the choice. They need and want to help their family. The money they earn frequently goes to help with the school fees of siblings and to purchase medical supplies for any family members that are sick. Most poor countries cannot afford a state funded medical system. Free education if it is available is frequently atrocious, you wouldn’t wish it on an enemy let alone a loved family member. I know many including Steve Jobs proclaimed that you should follow your heart not money. I agree that this is an ideal position but most lives are less than ideal. Your family are the only people that love you unconditionally. The more selfless amongst us put our families first and ourselves last and in many cases if given the choices: 1) low-income fulfilling career but unable to contribute towards the extended family or 2) high-income less fulfilling career but able to contribute towards the extended family Most people would choose option two because they have to. So, for those that are fortunate enough to come from a background where they don’t have to make this choice, please stop being so self-righteous and count your lucky stars.
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By Heather Katsonga-WoodwardI'm always thinking, debating, considering and revising my views - some of those deliberations will be shared right here. |