[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 1: Dreams]

[Clytie Siddall]

On 31/03/2007, at 2:30 PM, Gloria W wrote:

>
>> Your other assignment is to get the book "When I Say No, I Feel  
>> Guilty" by Manuel J. Smith. It's an excellent book that's been  
>> around forever, and which contains much of the inspiration for  
>> this Course.
>>
>> Another excellent book is "Mastering the Gentle Art of Verbal Self- 
>> Defense" by Suzette Haden Elgin. It excels at teaching how to  
>> recognize common verbal attacks, especially of the "dang, I think  
>> that's an attack but I'm not sure why," and how to not get sucked  
>> into off-topic, defensive, and pointless circular arguments.
>>
>>
> A friend of mine recommended the book "The Gift of Fear", by Gavin  
> de Becker. It talks about how many women intuit danger and ignore  
> their intuitive signals, because of their social training to always  
> be nice. It may help.
> Gloria
>
Some years back, when I was in hospital for several months, for the  
first time in my life, I wasn't _being_ something for somebody. I  
wasn't being a daughter, student, wife, employee, mother, voluntary  
worker, whatever. I had nobody needing me to do things, expecting  
things of me.

It was frightening. A huge blankness, and no tasks to fill it.

Lucky I was there so long. I wasn't able to ignore that situation. I  
even had the opportunity to do an assertiveness training course,  
which changed my life. I shudder now at how narrow, how externally- 
controlled my view of life was at that stage.

I was completely unaware of the basic human rights on which the  
course was based. I remember how blown away I was when I first read  
them:
___

Basic Human Rights

1. The right to feel good about yourself

2. The right to act in ways that promote your dignity and self- 
respect as long as others' rights are not violated in the process

3. The right to be treated with respect

4. The right to say "No!" and not feel guilty

5. The right to experience and to express your feelings

6. The right to slow down and think

7. The right to change your mind

8. The right to ask for what you want

9. The right to do less than you are humanly capable of doing

10. The right to ask for information

11. The right to make mistakes
___

I doubt if any of you are as spiritually impoverished as I was then,  
but if any of these human rights don't seem completely intuitive to  
you ... believe them.

They give us permission to be ourselves. Which is what we were  
designed to be in the first place.

***

BTW, thanks for sharing about ambition. I've never been the least  
ambitious, and felt guilty because of it. It's been another thing  
other people have expected of me: vicarious success, in at least some  
cases. But it's not me.

Now I feel better about it, reading that others feel the same. I  
think ambition is perhaps a legacy of the male social structure. It's  
competitive, linear, alpha dog. I grew up in that sort of system and  
learnt to succeed in it.

It never felt right.

:)

from Clytie

Clytie Siddall -- Renmark, in the Riverland of South Australia

Apologies if this email is badly written or difficult to understand:  
due to illness, the writer has cognitive problems, has great  
difficulty typing and is severely debilitated.

Current Net communication capacity: only very occasional email.