For this final blog post of 2021 I’m going to be thinking about making better choices. How to think about the process of making decisions, so they can be better ones.

What makes a “better” decision? That’s up to you. Consider what you want, and what direction you want your life to go. What do you want to bring MORE of into your life, and what do want LESS of?

One book I’ve used as a reference is Yes or No: The Guide to Better Decisions, by Spencer Johnson. It’s written as an allegory, meaning it’s in a story format to make its points. While it’s a bit reductionist, I think it makes a good starting point.

In Yes or No, we’re asked to consider six questions. Three of these questions are more intellectual/logical, three are more about being in touch with your feelings.

But before we even get to the questions, here’s a bit of Johnson’s advice to begin.  STOP any action you already know is a bad choice.  That’s taking up too much of your energy and time already, and gets in the way of your willingness to make change.Making Better Choices

The six questions are:

  • Is this a real need, or something you want?
  • Are you considering a range of different options?
  • Consider the consequence of each choice?
  • Are you being honest with yourself?
  • Do you trust yourself?
  • Do you believe you deserve good things in life?

You can use this process on any kind of decision, big or small.  Maybe practice on a few smaller choices, just so that you get the idea and flow.  However, this process is going to be much more useful in situations where the outcomes are more long-lasting and significant, or where other people are trying to influence your choices (and you’re doubting they have your interests in mind).

First question first. Is this a real need? Who gets to define what is a “real” need?  The ability to name, to define something, and have others buy into that, is power. It can be subjective, and change over time. When you get to decide what you really need or want (and, BTW, there’s nothing wrong with WANTS), that’s owning your power.

Think to a time when you were undecided, and others were trying to influence you about what you should need. How did they try to persuade you about what you really needed (or wanted)?

Are you looking at a range of options? This doesn’t mean you have to test-drive each and every product, you could be looking at a range of offerings that will have their own advantages and drawbacks. And this question dovetails with the next one, considering the consequences of each of the options. Maybe you’re considering job offers, or what college to attend, or moving to a new apartment. What are some of the issues? What would be the impact of location — ease of access to shopping and transportation and quiet? Cost? Social environment? Would it change your strategies of safety planning?

Now that we’ve looked at the first three questions, time to consider the second three. Remember, those first three are called “intellectual” or based on logic and reason. The second three are based more on emotion, on how you feel about this choice.

Frankly, we all more often make decisions based on our feelings, then use our intellect to justify them. So the feelings part is not — should not be treated as — an afterthought or aside. I think this is the more essential set of questions.

Are we being honest with ourselves about our situation? About our finances? About our needs and priorities? Are you seeing the lines where your responsibilities begin and end? For instance, in many emotionally manipulative relationships, one person tries to make the other feel responsible for their feelings. As we all know — at least intellectually — we are responsible for taking care of our own feelings, not everyone else’s.

Does your decision show that you trust yourself? Again, in many emotionally manipulative relationships, one person tries to undercut another’s self-trust by constantly criticizing them about anything, little or big. They can lie and “gaslight” the other, trying to convince them that what they see is not real, sometimes even calling them “crazy.” Or telling them outright ‘no, you’re not feeling that.’

Do you deserve better? Do you deserve to have good things happen? People in highly toxic relationships can hear “you’re lucky to have me, you’re so stupid or ugly or [fill in the blank with your favorite derogatory term] that nobody else will ever care about you.” Even if you don’t hear this sort of crap outright, over time our life expectations may have been tempered just by daily weathering, so that you can feel that this is about as good as you can expect. Maybe you think this relationship is OK because all spouses are like this, or all supervisors get away with that, or this is what coaches are supposed to do. But do you deserve better? If you’re mulling over this question, betcha the answer is yes.

Finally, we like to think we make decisions on our own. Not really true. We are social creatures: we tend to make choices and decisions similar to those choices and decisions made by others with whom we identify. Never underestimate the need to fit in, and that’s a real need. Johnson’s lack of consideration here is one of the biggest drawbacks of his little book; nevertheless it’s a good starting point for making better choices.

EmPOWERment Self-Defense is one way to open up your range of choices.  Our winter class schedule is posted, see if you can make that choice today.

Good evening, all. October 29, 2021.  A fine Friday night, just 2 days from Halloween.  The past couple of years have certainly had peaks of fear and scare, who needs Halloween? Well, a lot of us do!  

A number of years ago there were news reports of poisoned candy, razor blades or needles embedded in treats, kids getting seriously sick — and some died.  The news media jumped on these incidents and pointed fingers at evil strangers adulterating treats for their own perverse pleasure.  But, as you may know, initial reports are usually highly speculative and often wrong.  Remember, one goal of news media is the “breaking” story, and being the first to report is generally regarded as positive.  Whether the information presented is accurate seems to be beside the point.

Studies of kids admitted to emergency rooms around Halloween have shown these reports greatly exaggerated.  Further investigations often came to different conclusions.  One child who died had gotten into another family member’s heroin, and the rest of the family covered by afterwards sprinkling heroin on candy and blaming strangers.  Another child was poisoned by a parent to collect insurance.  (Who takes out an insurance policy on an elementary school age child?  That’s a red flag right there.)

Now, all these stories are between 20 and 40 years old.  I first looked at this issue probably about 15 years ago.  I thought it time to update my info, so went online.  I checked on Snopes.com, and most of their articles are from  about twenty years ago.  Then I went to PubMed.  If you’re not familiar with PubMed, it’s a database of peer-reviewed research.  I was hoping there were more recent articles, but no there were not.

Seems this issue’s shelf-life was limited.  Which brings up the issue Pumpkinof what’s news-worthy, and what’s in the news cycle reflects more a cultural fear than real trends in events.  Was there a cultural zeitgeist at that time, a sense of worry that one’s social environments were changing, that your neighbors came from different, strange, backgrounds, and the unknown was less certain?  And this is how it got expressed?  A time capsule, so to speak, of social concerns indirectly expressed.  We do discuss mass media and its impacts in our six week Self-Defense 101.

Even though these stories are decades old, they still pop up every year, seems the initial reporting became the real story and subsequent investigations and conclusions didn’t exist.

What is a real danger this coming weekend?  Cars hitting pedestrians.  That rate JUMPS on Halloween night.  More people out on the street, maybe excited and not looking, and drivers not taking extra precautions on streets they routinely use.  

Stay safe, stay aware when trick-or-treating (and driving!), and live life.

Today is Wednesday, Sept 22, 2021.  The first day of Autumn!  It’s like a week or so ago someone flipped a switch, and virtually overnight we went from Summer to Fall.  That’s just the way seasons change in the Emerald City.

In last week’s class a participant shared a bystander intervention success story.  She has this neighbor who, when he sees young kids or smallish older women walking by on the street, aggressively approaches them.  He would yell profanities, gesticulate menacingly, and try to get uncomfortably close.  Those targeted, their reactions were — not surprisingly — fearful; they’d try to make themselves smaller, sometimes even apologize, and try to back away as quickly as possible.  Angry yelling dude

This student had had enough of the spectacle.  One recent day the neighbor had begun his rant on yet another older woman walking her small dog.  My student strode near to him (keeping distance of course) and told him to leave, to stop harassing people.  Yes she did raise her voice.  The neighbor was taken aback, and he left.  And, ever since then, whenever he sees my student, he retreats back to the safety of his own abode.

We had been doing more work with bystander intervention since the beginning of the pandemic in our virtual classes.  It is a valuable skill so I’ll be bringing it more into my longer classes (those would be the 5 hour Self-Defense Seminar and the 6 week Self-Defense 101).

A lot of us envision bystander intervention as something scary we would do with angry strangers on the street, or bus, or grocery store.  And those instances are important.  Most opportunities, however, will arise in more familiar settings, and involve people we know.  People with whom we’ve some history, and can often guess their reactions.  And it’s great to learn and practice some skills to make your day-to-day living smoother and more peaceful.  I’ve got a full range of classes coming up this fall, and I’m slowly getting my winter offering up online.

Do you have a bystander intervention success story you’d like to share?

Stay safe, live life.

TED Talks are Ideas Worth Spreading. At least that’s their tag line. And it’s accurate.

TED Talks are recorded and online, and free. The idea is to watch them, and spread them. They’re given by highly thoughtful people, many of them established leaders in their fields, other new emerging intellects. As they say, riveting talks by remarkable people. Watch some, you’ll certainly feel smarter.

Here are a few I’ve watched lately and I deem worth spreading:

Jim Fallon on the neuroscience of psychopathic killers:

Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, on security:

Bruce Schneier, on “security theater,” where what makes you feel safer may not actually be making you safer. So what will?

Do you have a favorite TED Talk?