Owlo knows

Start acting more like a woman!

This was told to me many times from different people no particular gender. Someone once said to me "Start acting more like a woman. I may start respecting you. Stop acting like a man". This blog sounds like regular feminist fighting to be a woman but truly I'm taking you on a journey to dissolve all these concepts and create absolutely. What is "acting more like a woman?" I always wondered, this concept of behaving in a certain manner I don't get. Are we not from the same base of biology with both X and Y chromosome having both male and female hormones? What am I doing wrong according to people that make me less of a woman? I'm a beautiful woman with long beautiful hair and also have enough yummy yumms to attract someone, I am soft and caring, very caring! I'm vulnerable yet strong, I'm emotional yet independent, so how do I precisely tell what are the characteristics that belong to a woman and what to a man? I thought for the longest time it has to do with culture and traditions I belong to, but as I was exposed to different cultures and traditions I learnt it is universal. So what makes the difference, why am I so taken back with that sentence? A constant battle from being the true essence of who I am and who I am expected to be like. I've been on this self-discovery for years now and it is beautiful how my journey has become more and more interesting as I proceed. With a simple question, it began when I was in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India at a monastery in the mountains living with the monks in silence to meditate on this one question, "Who am I"? It was a strange experience being in silence, I could literally hear my thoughts aloud like an empty vessel making so much noise. I'll get to how I learnt to quiet my mind in a different post. Otherwise, I'll be writing a book here. Anyway since then, the answers have been changing. It begins with I'm a woman, daughter, sister, wife, mother, daughter-in-law and so on, these are just still labels. Like the layers of an onion peeling off one after the other. Mind you this just didn't happen in a day or two its taken years. It's been 5 long years since I started this journey and I know I have a long way to go. So coming back to "start acting like a woman" being with monks wanted me to be more like them, staying in silence for 10 days was more blissful than I expected it to be. No technology and no distraction just me and my thoughts. I understood that I'm more like a river, who liked to flow and get into all the rough edges, some places I'm harsh and flow down hard and could drown you and some places I'm so still and clam that you could see what's beneath so clearly. I'm providing and also dangerously destructive. How do I classify my self a man 'Purusha' or a woman 'Prakurthi'? How do I peel these layers? How do I allow these labels to not affect me? Honestly until recently, when someone said these words to me repeatedly after each conflict I hadn't come back to this concept. I thought something is wrong with me, my way of responding to certain actions. From my understanding, I realised that I'm so free-flowing and in my path and tune, I don't categorise myself to a specific category and I could intimidate a person and that would lead to confusions. This narrows down to one thing in my journey of self-discovery of who I truly am. We are never one thing we are a mixture of different traits. We may have a dominant quality of a concept, but truly never just one concept. To understand how much of what we are in the journey. In NLP they say we don't truly see the things the way they are because we are always filtering and processing information and labels which could make more sense to some than not having. Hence they categories me to behave in a certain way to fulfil a certain role. So to act more women-like is a concept that is alien to me because I don't have labels to categorise people. So I don't recognise that and since I don't recognise it, that doesn't affect me any more- "if I'm more women-like or not".

Enneagram & Relationships

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Stages of competence

When searching for change our lives it can sometimes be useful to recognise where we might be in terms of our awareness and conscious control. Can't sing for toffee Imagine a scenario where someone tells you that you can't sing. You might be a bit surprised by this as you thought you were good at singing. With a bit of time and feedback you may realise that aren't actually that great at singing and that you either need to come to terms with it or do something about it. Let's say you decide to do something about it and you practice, or get singing lessons and you learn how to be good at singing to the point where you can sing well when you make an effort. After time, when you've put in hours of practice you might get so good that you can sing confidently without even thinking about it - at this point you are unconsciously good at singing. Four stages of competence The example above represents the four stages of competence: Bad but you don't know it - unconscious incompetence Bad but you know why - conscious incompetence Good and you know why - conscious competence Good without thinking about it - unconscious competence This can be applied to anything we do, include the way we act or think! The flipping point Most people have a sense of the fact that they're not good at something - what they do at this point is the crux of the matter. Many people repress or forget or pretend this isn't the case and so they continue to make the same mistake, often at great expense to themselves or others. They may be completely aware of the fact that something is wrong in their life, but may be falsely attributing it to something that isn't even connected - or even blame their issues on someone else. As a result many incompetencies in people's lives continue to exist and perpetuate much longer than they could. The flipping point is the point at which the person accepts that they have something they want to solve but they don't know how and they commit themselves to learning how to correctly analyse and monitor themselves and what actions to take accordingly. By then 'doing the work' they can move into conscious competence and ultimately into unconscious competence. If you find you're stuck with one or more bad habits, this structure could help you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Personality lectures - Jordan B Peterson

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Self Drama Diamond

If you're life is full of drama and you feel like you've lost control, it might be because you're caught in the drama triangle. It's a tangled web we weave in life and sometimes it can feel tricky to know how to get out. Help is at hand. You're not alone and there is a way out. The first step is to see what's going on. To observe the pattern you're stuck in. This could be the drama triangle. The Drama triangle The Drama triangle states that you oscillate between three positions: Victim - life is hard because people make it hard for you Rescuer - You help because you want someone to like you for it Persecutor - You retaliate because of a perceived hurt Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows! It can be tricky to get out of this pattern. If you see that people or life is hard on you then you may feel like a victim in life. This can make you feel anxious and worried. You may perceive your partner as being the one that's persecuting you - making you feel bad because they don't understand you or don't care. You might react to that and lash out and say something or do something 'wrong' either from yours or their perspective (i.e. you become the persecutor) . They might get upset or angry and feel victimised by you - 'You always do this, you make my life so hard'... (i.e. they become the victim). You then feel bad about what you've done (or they make you feel bad) and then you feel you need to make amends or make them feel better (you rescue them). They will then play the victim until they feel they have discharged enough hurt or suffering onto you or punished you (i.e. move into the persecutor role again) or until things become so raw you have to spend some time apart (playing both the hurt victim and persecutor by ignoring their messages for example.). Rinse repeat rinse repeat again and again and again. And it might not just be your partners, it might be with your support network too as you might use them as a way to 'drain' your emotional trauma by playing the victim and talking down your partner to your friends, making them into rescuers (which they might or might not want to be). Unfortunately, all this does is reinforce the drama triangle and it's stranglehold on your life. Does this sound familiar? Join the billions of people on the planet that this is true for. But it really doesn't have to be that way. So what do I do? Opt out. The only way out of the triangle is to be the fourth role - Supporter. Be supportive to yourself and to your 'other'. Do not rescue them. Instead Rescue yourself. Recognise that this pattern is abusive to both you and them and that it has to stop. Recognise when the pattern happens and use a pattern breaker to stop it. This can be as simple as saying, "We can do better than this. Let's stop, reconsider and come back to this when we're in a better frame of mind". Sticking to this plan is important as it will start to re-create the boundaries of acceptability that you may have lost as a result of being stuck in the triangle. Reflect. Remind yourself what you want. Be compassionate to yourself and your partner. Give it space. Give it time. Reconnect with yourself. This is the critical piece as someone who is at peace with themselves is at peace with the world. If you don't know how to reconnect with yourself because it's been too long then it's time to put a plan together and get some help to get back to yourself, reinforce those boundaries and remind yourself how you want YOUR life to be. Not someone else's. If you want help with that then get a coach. Do the work. Break the patterns as only you can really make the changes in your life that will break dramatic habits. Remind yourself that this is your world and your mind and your heart and your head. Repeat it as a mantra. Regain your strength and use space and time to readdress your situation. When things are tough you often need to take a step back to fix yourself before you reconnect. Learn what works for you to do this - for me it's playing the guitar. Choose something that nourishes yourself like nothing else. Keep doing it. Fill the dramatic void with your own self love and self respect... Life isn't drama it's a choice. Make the choices that help you to be where you need to be to help others. If you're not in a good place then you're not going to be able to help others and if you're so hell bent on helping others then don't forget that you're included in that too. If someone is driving you crazy then give them some space. Remind yourself of the positive things that they bring in your life and don't blame them for everything. Life is a mirror so ask yourself 'how is that true of me?'. To recognise it in others we have to understand that pattern. Are you acting with love and compassion? If not, why not? Drama often comes from places other than the people we direct it at so take a step back and reflect, remind yourself what makes you happy and do that.

Wim Hof Method

No-one can deny the 'cool' of the Ice Man, Wim Hof. His story speaks of the greatest of challenges - breaking barriers of human understanding and overcoming great loss. There's something messianic about Wim - he's a natural leader - engaging and talks of another world of possibility that seems within our grasp. He's both entirely intelligible and at the same time on a completely different plane to mortal man. His message isn't look at me. His message is, if I can do it you can do it to. He's not out for the fame and glory, despite having 26 Guinness world records. He's out there to show us what we are all capable of if we set ourselves to it. His gift to us is a route to a happier, healthier and more powerful life through a combination of simple techniques. The three tenets are: 1) Cold therapy - Exposure - 'Good stress' 2) Breathing - Hyperventilation and ph Balance 3) Commitment - Self-discipline It's taken me a few months to get into it, but I've been cold showering every day for 3 months now as of writing this and I see no reason to stop. Yes it's difficult in mid-winter UK though it always feel's good afterwards even if it's tough at the time. Managing it mentally and physically takes strength that if you don't have at the beginning, comes with time. I've heard people say "it's good to get the worst part of the day out of the way" - there's some sense in that - it's a shock to the system and somehow it feels like good stress. It's taught me to be less anxious and more in control of my stress response. This thread also runs through the breathing techniques - holding your breath for that amount of time does not feel natural at first and your body overreacts. Though with practice you learn to cope with the stress and have greater control over your stress and therefore your adrenaline response. Commitment is part of both physical exercises and routine too. Making space for them in your life, making these small investments in the hope that they improve the quality and length of your life. For me, I believe that it is working - subjectively for me. I'm sure it won't work for everyone because not everyone is ready to challenge their held beliefs. They want to believe that health 'feels' good. It's not always the case! Certainly not in the short-term. For more information on the Wim Hof Method visit his site and why not try his mini-course? For some great insight into the man and how he got to this point, check out Russell Brand's interview.

16 Personalities

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The Anxious Avoidant relationship

Love is a rollercoaster? Anyone that's been in an anxious avoidant

Lollipop Theory

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Circulation

So, I'm often wondering about the biology and biochemistry that takes place from when we're in a state of hightened stress to lower, from anxiety to relaxation. This mostly happens when I take a break and I wonder what's going on as I take that break or as I meditate, beyond the mental side of things. At the moment I'm running a few theories in my mind or at least testing how the frame that they create might change my perception of my experience. I suppose this is shifting into experiential learning once a theory has been gained in order to test it and see where it fits. One of these is the Aboriginal concept of 3 brains - head, heart and stomach which in the west is thinking, following our heart and our gut reaction. My application of this recently has been to wonder whether they could represent a way to shift state and perspective that might be therapeutic, particularly in dealing with raised levels of anxiety. For example, if I am aware of feeling anxious (right now I'm about a 3 or 4 out of 10) then I might want to bring that down as it's not necessary for me to perform in this circumstance. I have a number of different tools I can use - listening to calming music, going for a walk, meditating... though in each case, what is happening on a biological and is that connected at all to my conscious awareness of these things. As I breathe in meditation I'm aware of my breath, but also aware of my heartbeat and how the pace of my heart relates to the pace of my breath. On some level, I'm conscious of this relationship and whether or not my heart is beating strongly or too fast as this makes me wonder whether the breathing is actually working - it's certainly one of the measures. This drove my mind towards the idea of my heart itself and what role it is performing in providing nutrients to my body. Having done a little research, it seems that the body contains about 5 litres of blood (https://www.livescience.com/32213-how-much-blood-is-in-the-human-body.html). This represents 1/14 th or 7% of the volume of our body which is about 71 litres in total volume, including everything. (https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-volume-of-average-human) I wondered whether the heart was capable of pushing that entire volume around once each heartbeat, whether or not that was part of how our circulation system worked so looked at how much blood the heart pumps each minute and turns out that it pushes around 5 litres a minute https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/high-cholesterol-healthy-heart#1). Interesting right? So the heart pumps around the volume of blood that is in our body once a minute.