Day 2743: Good job!

In my good job as a psychotherapist, I sometimes ask new people how they feel about compliments (including encouraging words like “Good job!”).    They often do a good job honestly answering that they have trouble with compliments. I hope I do a good job explaining that

• they are not alone in struggling to believe and accept compliments,
• I like to give compliments, and
• all my compliments are authentic.

When I was doing my good job in person at my office, I would point out the good clock there with the inscription “Show up.  Be Gentle.  Tell the Truth.”  I think that does a good job explaining the process of therapy for both the patient and the provider.

People are dong a good job accepting authentic compliments when they take them in without internal or external protest and simply say, “Thank you.”

I hope I did a good job yesterday capturing these images around me.

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Michael did an incredibly good job creating Shepherd’s Pie from on-hand good ingredients like potatoes, cheese, mushrooms, carrots, corn, and ground turkey.

I have a good many jobs to complete this weekend for my good professional group therapy organization, Northeastern Society for Group Psychotherapy.  I will try to follow my good advice to somebody else about doing a good job for the organization: “Have fun with it!”  I hope I did a good job conveying that a good job does not have to be a perfect job.

That reminds me of a good saying I heard on the job:  “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”  Your Secret Mental Weapon  (found here) does a good job describing how that modern saying derives from these good quotes:

Voltaire: “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Confucius: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Shakespeare: “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”

Striving to better this post, I hope I do a good job finding a good enough video.

Here‘s Alicia Keys with her great new song, “Good Job.”

I haven’t done a good job here if I don’t convince you to watch that video of many good workers doing a good job during the coronavirus pandemic.

Good job getting to the end of this post and thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Day 2562: Motivation

I’m having trouble working up the motivation to do things these days, including

• finishing my country song “What’s Keeping Me Up is What’s Going Down” and
• applying to do another show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

I’m NOT having trouble working up the motivation to

• blog and
• spend time with people I love, including my ex-sister-in-law Deborah, who recently adopted a wonderful English Setter named Lake.

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I’m not sure why I feel like this …

… when I think about finishing my latest original song or applying to do “Group Therapy with Ann” again at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Maybe it’s the fear of failure?  Or maybe it’s the ENFP’s resistance to finishing things and filling out forms.

In any case, I do have the motivation to share my other photos from yesterday.

I don’t have the motivation to put those last two photos right-side up, but I do have the motivation to look for quotes online about motivation.

Wow!  There are SO many motivational quotes on the internet that I don’t have the motivation to go through all of them. Here are four of them:

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” — Confucius

“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”  —  Jordan Belfort

“The way to get started is to quit talking and to start doing.” — Walt Disney

“When someone tells me ‘no’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” — Karen E. Quinones Miller

I think that last quote, especially, is going to help me with my motivation today.

Here’s “That’s Motivation” from Julien Temple’s musical Absolute Beginners with David Bowie:

Absolute Beginners was one of the musicals I planned to include in my Masters thesis for Film Studies in the 1980’s, but I never got the motivation to finish it.

Do you have the motivation to comment about this post?

I always have the motivation to express my gratitude to YOU.

 

Day 2127: I don’t know what to write about hate

Today, the day after the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh Synagogue, I don’t know what to write about hate.  Therefore, I will quote others.

Patriotism is when love for your own people comes first;  nationalism,  when hate for people other than your own comes first.  — Charles de Gaulle

This world of ours … must avoid being a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works.  All good things are difficult to achieve, and bad things are very easy to get.  — Confucius

If you hate someone, it’s like a boomerang that misses its target and comes back and hits you in the head. The one who hates is the one who hurts. — Louis Zamperini

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference — Elie Wiesel

You reclaim your power by loving what you were once taught to hate. — Bryant H. McGill

Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. — George Washington Carver

I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.  I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions,  and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. —  John Shelby Spong

Hate has no place in the House of God. — Desmond Tutu

I never learned hate at home, or shame.  I had to go to school for that.  — Dick Gregory

It is not anthrax or terrorism or AIDS that is the worst ill in our world: The most horrible disease in the world is hate. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.  —  James A. Baldwin

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them,  but to understand them.  — Baruch Spinoza

I don’t know what to write about hate, so I’ll share some photos from yesterday.

I don’t know what to write about hate, so here’s Cantor Azi Schwartz singing Jewish prayers to the fallen in 2015.

 

I don’t know what to write about hate, but I do know how to express gratitude to all who helped me write today’s post and — of course — to you.