Living with the Jungle

Even though I can see in each word their "approach" to psychology, that doesn't jar me as it might have in the past. (because I can sniff out their educational mantras it would normally turn me off what they were trying to say in the first place)

I am really finding this book, in conjunction with another one (which is obviously from the same "camp" so to speak) I read a few months ago, I am really able to look at my mental blocks with a little bit of understanding. And those of you who know me well, I like to really understand things. If I can understand it I can accept it.

Anyway, the quotes I'd like to share with you all:

 

"Some parent-child pairing are and easy fit, and some are not. When there is not a good fit, children can end up feeling defective in some way, not entitled to claim and pursue their own interests and goals, paving the way for procrastination."

"Researchers who studied parent-child attachment patterns found that parents who were attuned to their children as little as 30 percent of the time were able to foster secure emotional attachments in their children."

"When your self-system is too rigid, you hold yourself fast to the perfectionist demands that lead to procrastination; you keep doing the same thing over and over, whether it's working or not; your expectations of others are unyeilding; and you experience inner turmoil when you assume life will be a certain way, and it  just isn't. At the other extreme, a chaotic self-system reflects disorganization. When you're confused about who you are and what you want, torn by distress and conflict, or lost in the last-minute frenzy of procrastination, you are not functioning in an intrepid way."

"Procrastinators may feel so guilty for lost time that they pressure themselves to use every minute productively, only to find that they have set up impossible expectations."

"You may feel too guilty to ask for help. You may believe that because you've been Very Bad (caps are sic), you now have to be Very Good to make up for it. You may feel that you don't deserve to be helped, so you can't delegate or rely on others. Refusing help is a good way to procrastinate yourself into martyrdom."

"If you are stuck in the past, you can't enjoy the present of plan for the future. If you're stuck in the present, you're at the mercy of the immediate moment, with no connection to past and future; you can't benefit from your experience. If you are stuck in the future, you're locked in a world of fantasy, either positive or negative, and all you do is plan or worry."

"Procrastination may be a reflection of our feeling overwhelmed by too much, or it may express a yearning for something we are missing."

"Procrastination is often a way of retreating from challenges; instead, remember that tackling challenges can benefit you. Does this challenge stretch you? Does it help you develop and grow?"




These last ones are more about development stuff, but I found it interesting because there is a lot of research that also shows babies will not learn a language from a TV, radio, any other mechanical device. I think this says a lot about how we learn (i.e. we must have some sort of interaction to learn "passively") and what "innate language" might look like. This is important to me because of being amid scholars who seem to think rigid structure rules are the innate things, rather than the social pattern building things.



"We know now that the brain is wired to be 'ultra social.' It literally grows and develops in response to the way we are responded to by the people who care for us."

"More and more, it is becoming clear that the state of one person's brain affects what happens in another's. And that means caretakers do much more than change diapers and provide food: 'They activate the growth of the brain through emotional availability and reciprocal actions."



There are way more quotes I want to share. But I think that is enough for now. More later!