Category: Cross Cultural Comments

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Caring

One of the most beautiful words in English is very difficult to translate into French. That word is Care. Capital C.

To my mind, caring means putting others in the forefront while relinquishing some of our own ego-centric impulses, attitudes and behaviors.

Caring is active generosity. It is respect and consideration and … has such a high cost that only those who have hearts of gold seem to be able to afford it! Because, precisely, it comes from the heart, maybe the soul, with an ounce, or a gram or even less – of reason.

You don’t have to be rich to care. Just human.

Caring is welcoming. It is hospitality of the highest order. It is opening and giving, donating without a tax- deductible receipt. It is Inviting. It is Sharing.

Caring is giving. Not lending. There’s no tangible payback to caring. Even though miraculously, unexpectedly, we’re often paid back in a time of need. And if we aren’t, it doesn’t matter anyway!

How powerful are the words, once pronouned: « I care. » And how insensitive the negative.

Caring is dialogue. It is listening and speaking in return. It is questioning. Not knowing all the answers. It is being attentive to the needs of the other. How extraordinary it is to witness two people fight over how much they have to give to one another! Caring is a private affair.

Caring is devotion. To someone. To a community. To a cause. It’s a human thing … and maybe that’s where the term ‘humanitarian’ – Caring in the public sphere – comes from. Caring is a public affair, too.

The English verb « to take care of » has evolved over the years, decades and centuries. While it retains some of the essence in some uses, its meaning has been transformed into others. It now has additional uses, practical impersonal uses – and sometimes even murderous ones, believe it or not! Read Marleen Dowd’s editorial in the IHT if you’re curious about that one!

Hearts talk and actions speak.
Take care,
And take care of those you care for. You won’t regret it. 

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Au four et au moulin

The French love bread. And to make bread, you need flour. To make the flour, you need wheat. To grind the wheat into flour, you need a mill. The French word for mill is “moulin.” You probably have heard this before as in “Le Moulin Rouge” – or a “Moulin à Poivre” (Pepper mill)

But to make bread, you need to mix the flour with water, add salt, yeast and make dough. The dough needs to be kneaded and then finally when it has risen after a few hours … you need to bake it in an oven. Oven is the English word for what in French is named “le four.”

There’s a French expression, still used today that says you can’t be both at the mill and watching the oven at the same time.

Ne pas pouvoir être au four et au moulin (en même temps).

No matter how independant we might want to be … we can’t be everywhere, doing everything … and certainly not simultaneously.

The French love bread. And to make bread, you need flour. To make the flour, you need wheat. To grind the wheat into flour, you need a mill. The French word for mill is “moulin.” You probably have heard this before as in “Le Moulin Rouge” – or a “Moulin à Poivre” (Pepper mill)

But to make bread, you need to mix the flour with water, add salt, yeast and make dough. The dough needs to be kneaded and then finally when it has risen after a few hours … you need to bake it in an oven. Oven is the English word for what in French is named “le four.”

There’s a French expression, still used today that says you can’t be both at the mill and watching the oven at the same time.

Ne pas pouvoir être au four et au moulin (en même temps).

No matter how independant we might want to be … we can’t be everywhere, doing everything … and certainly not simultaneously.

What’s the opposite of independence: “dependence” or … “interdependence” ?

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Logic and Love

“Logic is no doubt unshakeable but it can’t withstand a person who wants to love.” F. Kafka.

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A nice metaphor

“The cow’s already out of the barn,” he said, ”and we’re now talking about shutting the barn door.”

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lazy lazy lazy me

lazy lazy lazy me

If only I were like a bee

I’d never rest and always be

as busy as a bee.

After nectar never shy

with my sturdy wings I’d fly

from one petal to the next

always hunting for the best.

the profit’s there if you look

and fly away from that book

but if you stay in bed all day

the little bee gets all the hay.

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And then what happened?

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6 Tips to Getting Things Done in 2020

  • reposted from the New York Times

By Tim HerreraUpdated Dec. 26, 2019

Time to focus.

Albert Tercero

This year we learned that the key to doing the things we want to accomplish isn’t time management, but rather attention management. Instead of rigorously scheduling every minute of your day around tasks and to-do lists, approach work more from the perspective of: What are the things I care about, and what are the things I want to devote my attention to?

It seems like a small, arbitrary word-swap, but when you’re truthful with yourself about the things that take up your attention — and whether those are the things you’re truly content with giving your attention to — you might realize that solely thinking about work in terms of time spent isn’t the best approach.

Take control of your procrastination

Etymologically, “procrastination” is derived from the Latin verb procrastinare — to put off until tomorrow. But it’s more than just voluntarily delaying. Procrastination is also derived from the ancient Greek word akrasia — doing something against our better judgment.

“It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology at the University of Calgary and the author of “The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done.

That self-awareness is a key part of why procrastinating makes us feel so rotten. When we procrastinate, we’re not only aware that we’re avoiding the task in question, but also that doing so is probably a bad idea. And yet, we do it anyway.

“This is why we say that procrastination is essentially irrational,” said Dr. Fuschia Sirois, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t make sense to do something you know is going to have negative consequences.” Read more >>

Wait to do things until you’re truly ready

Don’t fall for prescrastination, or tackling things before the time is right.

What’s so hard about not jumping the gun?

One explanation is evolution. If you don’t grab the low-hanging fruit now, it might not be there later. You could run out of time to complete a task, or forget about it altogether. Carpe diem, right?

“I actually interrupt people a lot because otherwise I’m afraid I won’t remember what I was going to say,” Dr. Fournier said. Read more >>

[Like what you’re reading? Sign up here for the Smarter Living newsletter to get stories like this (and much more!) delivered straight to your inbox every Monday morning.]

Forget time management. Embrace attention management

Attention management is the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places and at the right moments. Prioritize the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes. Read more >>

Learn how to do Deep Work

‘Deep work’ is a term for focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It describes, in other words, when you’re really locked into doing something hard with your mind. In order for a session to count as deep work there must be zero distractions. Even a quick glance at your phone or email inbox can significantly reduce your performance due to the cost of context switching.

The idea here is that if you want to successfully integrate more deep work into your professional life, you cannot just wait until you find yourself with lots of free time and in the mood to concentrate. You have to actively fight to incorporate this into your schedule. It helps, for example, to include deep work blocks on a calendar like meetings or appointments, and then protect them as you would a meeting or appointment. Read more >>

Don’t let modern distractions steal your attention

Making ourselves inaccessible from time to time is essential to boosting our focus. A 2017 survey from the American Psychological Association found that being constantly and permanently reachable on an electronic device — checking work emails on your day off; continuously cycling through social media feeds; responding to text messages at all hours — is associated with higher stress levels.

Half-paying attention to everything means you’re not able to fully pay attention to anything. And that kind of task switching comes with a cost. Read more >>

Just get it done already

“At some point, we must remind ourselves, any changes we make to a creation no longer make it better but just different (and sometimes worse),” Dr. Alex Lickerman wrote in Psychology Today on the topic of just getting things done. “Recognizing that inflection point — the point at which our continuing to rework our work reaches a law of diminishing returns — is one of the hardest skills to learn, but also one of the most necessary.”

One solution? The M.F.D., or the Mostly Fine Decision. (Patent still pending.)

The M.F.D. is the minimum outcome you’re willing to accept as a consequence of a decision. It’s what you’d be perfectly fine with, rather than the outcome that would be perfect. The root of the M.F.D. lies in the difference between maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers relentlessly research all possible options in a scenario for fear of missing the “best” one, while satisficers make quick decisions based on less research. Read more >>

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Color of the Year: Blue

Pantone Declares Another Year of Blue

By Jessica TestaDec. 4, 2019

Can the latest color of the year help people feel better? Or just help sell a lot of stuff? 

It’s blue.
It’s blue.Clockwise from top left: Acielle Tanbetova for The New York Times; Justin Sullivan, via Getty Images; Adam Berry, via Getty Images for IMG; Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times; Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times (blueberries)

©

“Many of us,” the color company said in a recent presentation, feel anxious, “completely overloaded and perpetually stressed.” The antidote, according to Pantone’s swatch psychologists? Blue. Specifically: Classic Blue.

Read the whole article here!

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It in your self interest …

created by Jenny Holzer

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Understanding and Insight

What makes a teacher a teacher … and a student a student?

A student, a real one, is someone who wants to understand … and a teacher, a  real one, is one who, understanding students,  shines some light on paths to insight.

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