Coping With Change - Mini-Quiz

Why do we resist change? Most People live with the illusion that humans welcome change but the fact is we do not --unless it is to our immediate and obvious advantage. And even then it is difficult for most people to cope with a major shift although they desperately yearn for something new. Read the article and take the quiz.

When Dorothy Hamill won the gold medal for figure skating during one of the Winter Olympics, it was a magnificent accomplishment for a twenty year old girl. But it's possible Dorothy did not spend one hour planning what she would do should she win her heart's desire. No sooner did she come home than a flock of leeches pounced on her, taking advantage of her innocence to use and abuse her for their own financial benefit. They confused Dorothy and brought such conflict that she went into emotional shock that complicated her life. She eventually skated again in her own ice show, having matured as an entertainer but it took almost ten years to cope with the major changes a gold medal brought to her. Of course, she isn't alone. Not a year goes by that famous young athletes and actors don't ruin their prospects through the use of drugs and the abuse of other people. Too much change that comes too fast is always a problem.

Because humans were so long evolving into what we are today, with our emotions still far more primitive than our intelligence and logic, it seems entirely likely that our fear of and resistance to change is carried in our very genes. Change came very slowly to our ancestors. We suspect that President William Howard Taft from the late 1800s would have felt more at home in ancient Rome or Greece than he would in contemporary America. There have been more changes in society from 1890/1900 when our fathers and grandfathers were born than from 200 B.C. to 1900. And the tempo of change continues to increase. Life seems to be turning upside down and that's very frustrating. Who could have believed at the end of World War II that skinny little Vietnamese riflemen, shivering with malaria in the monsoon, would maul United States Marines severely enough to lose America the Indochina War? Or that a rag-tag bunch of Islamic fundamentalists could hold American diplomats captive for years and then force a president of the United States to wreck our economic future with massive debts and to cripple the American Bill of Rights? We all resist change unless we win some immediate benefit and yet, it keeps sweeping over us despite our crying out -- Stop the world - I want to get off! No sooner do we win a bit of physical and psychological comfort than our key activities and relationships shift into a new and challenging mode and we are forced to rethink our values, attitudes and choices. We all to often fear and resist anything that is different from life when we were learning who we were and how we fit into the scheme of things.

However, simply knowing that change is inevitable and that most people resist adapting does little to move us beyond useless traditions and crippling ideologies from the past. We need to adapt and make responsible choices as did a friend of ours -- Susan Frey who'd been conditioned by her grandparents and parents to think of herself as a broodmare. Susan had married young as women of her generation were expected to do, had three children in quick succession and settled in to be a traditional housewife to a bread-winning husband. She and Harold even attended a week long seminar in which a religious educator taught that the father was the commanding officer who gave the orders, the mother was the company adjutant who stayed home and carried them out and the children were troopers who saluted and did as they were told. Unfortunately, that simplistic approach was disastrous. Sue grew weary of doing all the scut work and Harold became tired of being responsible for everything else. He fled the family, leaving Susan with no money, no job skills and no security, in other words, one of the 20th centuries major problems, an irresponsible husband and father living in a self-defeating patriarchal model of marriage, came crashing through her life. It became worse. When she turned to her family and church for support, both failed her badly.

Her parents - especially her mother - blamed her for Harold's desertion. Had Susan, her mother insisted, been a good wife her husband would have stayed home as Susan's father did when they'd faced problems years earlier. They offered largely criticism as their daughter struggled to survive. Her pastor, who'd brought into the community the military style family seminar leader, took Susan to task even more severely. He preached sermons that one Sunday condemned working mothers who sent their children to day-care centers and the next Sunday blasted lazy welfare women who failed to teach their kids the values inherent in standing on their own two feet. It was a catch twenty-two approach used by a reactionary man who hid behind a pulpit and chose out of context scriptures through which to make fear driven, anti-women attacks.

A social worker finally rescued Susan by helping her find work and child care and to enter a nursing program. Being a single parent and a working mother was the hardest thing Susan ever did, but she continued maturing until she became an outstanding nurse. She joined a religious community that supported her rather than railing at single mothers who didn't live in the traditional manner with a husband - with any man who'd have her, even if he crippled her in a drunken rage or brought herpes or AIDS home. In one of our seminars, Susan said:

Not only do most men refuse a ready made family, I wasn't eager to marry some bozo who'd give me more kids before running off as Harold did. I've had fine relationships - I'm in a loving and supportive one now - with a good guy I love. Perhaps we'll marry and perhaps we won't. Once I learned how to change my world. how to stand on my own feet with a good job, life became satisfying for me and my children.

By maturing steadily, by coping with change rather than freezing in the past, Susan developed the knowledge and wisdom needed to reject the naive advice given by her parents and pastor. Sue eventually became a fully functional person rather than clinging as a subordinate, second class wife to an immature man. She matured through persistence and hard work and is now the resident nurse in a fine manufacturing firm. So must we all mature when we set out to change our world - when we seek a better, more meaningful life.

Remember - while we are asking what the meaning of life is - life is consistently asking us what meaning we are creating for ourselves by managing change wisely. Life demands that we make our attitudes, activities and relationships personality purposeful within our families, companies and communities, in the schools, hospitals and governmental agencies in which we serve humankind. Life challenges us to mature spiritually, to focus all our powers along lines of excellence, to become fully human rather than remaining unhouse-broken barbarians who use and abuse other persons. Successful lives must be connected physically, psychologically and philosophically to individuals and organizations that are actively searching for fulfillment along avenues of achievement rather than simply accepting some decaying status quo.


SELF-FOCUS

WHY DO INDIVIDUALS AND ESPECIALLY ORGANIZATIONS CONSISTENTLY RESIST CHANGE EVEN WHEN MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO IS HARMFUL?

WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN OCCURRING WHEN PEOPLE ARE UNPREPARED FOR CHANGE BECAUSE THEY'D ASSUMED LIFE WOULD REMAIN STATIC?

HOW FAR SHOULD SOMEONE LIKE SUSAN GO IN REJECTING THE ADVICE OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO REAL STAKE IN HER GAME?

Jard DeVille; Psychology Dept. Chair at Westminster College; Director of the Learning And Learning Disabilities Clinic with the University of Wisconsin, also taught in the Executive Development Program at the University of Arizona. He's published many psychology books, seminars and test instruments. He's considered by many to be one of America's foremost leadership scholars. Permission to use if attributed to author with his website address.

Visit http://www.fulfillmentforum.com for FREE psychology lifestyle eBooks & Internet Tools.

Read more of our articles at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jard_DeVille

Email Your Senator & Representative TODAY! Tell Congress to Support REAL Healthcare Reform

It is mostly politicians and corporations benefiting from the status quo who are propagating outright lies about Obama's Health Care reform. They do this to confuse and divide the American people with no regard for the Truth or Facts. Undoubtedly, 'Faux News" is the worst. Behind these lies are spiritually bankrupt manipulators, who are creating their own selfish empire, are wicked flag waving and psalm singing frauds. These users and abusers have already orchestrated the theft of America’s wealth. The richest one percent of Americans already control ninety percent of the nation’s wealth, are now ripping the last ten percent from the rest of us. Of course, many of these abusers cannot help themselves without intensive psychotherapy -- their narcissistic yearning for wealth, power and privilege reveals a throbbing neuroticism that borders on psychopathy. People who are wounded so deeply psychologically and spiritually that they cannot support and trust anyone except a superior class of aristocrats that God supposedly loves best, before whom the poor plebes of society must kneel humbly, are deliberately creating a work force of obedient serfs. Obviously, every loyal American should oppose the wicked triad of abusers who are devouring the affluent middle class and creating an obscenely wealthy minority at the expense of an increasingly large mass of poor peasants for whom blood, toil, tears and sweat have become their daily fare.

In a recent speech, Bill Moyers reported that the users and abusers of America are propagandizing naïve Americans with a flood of misinformation, are lying constantly to convince us that global capitalism and the resultant collapse of the middle class and the rise of a ruthless American Empire - are the result of natural economic forces. The greedy robber barons insist that the new American economic system, developing without a corresponding increase in decent jobs or livable wages, is another step in the upward and onward march of a laissez faire free market that raises all boats equitably. Their always clever spin doctors counsel us to be patient, to trust their vassal economists who understand these complex issues better than we the middle class dolts. In time, perhaps decades of poverty, a new generation of American workers may recover some of their lost affluence and shall revere the names of the wealthy aristocrats who brought them the benefits of globalized capitalism with a few obscenely wealthy winners and a great host of financial losers. They shall have recreated a new empire of lords and laborers in the manner of the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, Mings, Romanovs, Mayas and the Windsors. Everything important that the founding fathers of our Republic labored so hard to create will be lost.

As Moyers said about the robber barons’ propaganda blitz to persuade people to sacrifice themselves in order to enrich the ruthless cabal, this mind-bending assault is all a fraud. To which I add - This destruction of the American Republic through the crippling of the middle class has been carefully orchestrated. There is nothing the least bit natural about it, for it destroys the very purpose of civilized living -- the protection of its people from the vicissitudes of nature and from the always greedy nobles who are determined to steal everything they can carry away. The robber barons’ scheme returns us to the law of the jungle, to a society in which might makes right and the majority of people are used and abused to benefit the rich and ruthless. The resulting loss of medical care, raiding of Social Security, the explosion of homelessness, poor public education and ever declining decent jobs, is the result of clever planning by cynical administrations from President Reagan to Bush that served the robber barons and greedy corporations. American's people must now get down in the trenches an fight for our lives with the Truth. CONTACT CONGRESS! CLICK HERE http://www.patriotmajority.us/

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Self-Serving Myths Of The Past

Many people see our problems and feel that society is slipping out of control, that the ability to cooperate for the good of our communities has been lost, and our willingness to abide by our long-standing social contracts is compromised. It's true that an entire generation of young barbarians has grown up for whom the way to deal with others is to grab whatever you want. But it seldom occurs to us that our nihilistic system supports ruthless abusers, from back-street hoodlums to Wall Street arbitrageurs and Enron executives. Many naive women and men long for some idealized good old days, while ideologues try to bring them back. Both types ignore one important fact.

The much glorified and mythological American past that many reactionary politicians and religious leaders seek to recreate, as Henry Hyde and Jerry Falwell do, was almost exclusively for the benefit of affluent white males. It excluded Negroes, Indians, poor whites, Mexicans, and most women from any possibility of finding consistent satisfaction.

We know; we were there at the time!

Don’t misunderstand us when we criticize evil choices and call for a rebirth of spirituality. We love our American homeland deeply but we detest and want to expose the ruthless abusers who claim to be the only true Americans as they measure patriotism, success and justice almost exclusively in financial terms. If we didn’t love our people, we’d run with the wolves attacking them. Few persons understand that virtually all wars are financial conflicts orchestrated by ruthless power freaks in high places and fought to the death by poor boys who get few benefits for their sacrifices. Even as, the George W. Bush administration increased fees charging American veterans four and five hundred percent annually in the Veteran’s Affairs hospitals and excluding more and more veterans. The Bush administration prepared to destroy the Veteran’s medical program along with Social Security by privatization. Especially, when we need them desperately with the failings of our financial systems.

Understand this well.

Calling the American past, during the thirties, forties and fifties, our golden era of spirituality and morality, as so many primitive politicians and reactionary religious ideologues do, is a scheme to destroy civil and gender rights and eliminate the wages of the worker from production. It is a form of narcissistic self-deception that leads to private benefits for a few at the expense of everyone else. Here is how it really was for millions of Americans during the so called golden age of morality and decency.

RACIAL HATRED -- Only radicals with a hidden agenda or profoundly ignorant persons can say with a straight face that life in America was spiritual, was more moral when racial and sexist violence was the law of the land, was ruthlessly enforced by state-sanctioned terror. The psychopathic Mississippi or Alabama Ku Klux Klan sheriffs who beat poor people sadistically and organized forty-five hundred murders of black men, women and children during the 20th century were all too real. Louisiana politicians like Huey Long harnessed race hatred for their own benefit and used brutal tactics to block Negroes from first class citizenship. Jard saw this close-up because his father personally saved Long from assassination by two gunmen in the 1930s. Men and women of African, Mexican or Indian heritage, for that reason alone, were not permitted to vote, to serve on juries, eat in restaurants, sleep in clean hotels, use public toilets, go to schools and colleges for which they were paying taxes or hold decent jobs. For generations college educated Negroes were given only filthy, back breaking jobs in steel mills across Pennsylvania and Indiana. Black U.S. Navy gunners, risking their lives battling German U-Boat wolf packs on the frigid North Atlantic crossing during World War II, were beaten savagely by American military police for trying to get hot coffee in government canteens. When one young Black fighter ace from the famed Tuskegee Group returned home from years in combat protecting white bomber crews in Italy, the only job he could get was as a janitor in the local bank. Indian children were locked in concentration camps and beaten when they spoke the only language they knew. Japanese American parents remain locked in concentration camps while their sons were dying while fighting German Nazis as members of the famed 442 Regimental Combat team. The Go For Broke boys won more medals than any unit their size in World War II but when they came home they were denied service by everyone from doctors to barbers and renters because of their ancestry. When minorities tried to succeed professionally, to become first class citizens by enrolling their children in good schools and building their careers, hundreds of armed white men, usually led by police chiefs and blessed by racist pastors, would beat or murder them. There was a lynching of a black man about once a week for a hundred years across the south.


GENDER HATRED -- Even during the profitable postwar economic boom, women remained second class citizens. They were refused admission in universities and graduate school programs only because they were female. Georgia Tech officials denied seven highly qualified young women acceptance in its engineering programs in the middle fifties. The dean defended his decision in court, saying,

We cannot enroll them -- they would have to pass through the male gym on their way to the engineering lab.

Indecent to expose the sweet innocents to sweaty male bodies, cannot cut another door into the lab! Women still cannot serve as pastors in the two largest American denominations. Because they have no testosterone glands, Roberta quips. After all, radical men know that God created women to tend men's sexual needs and see their food is cooked! It was not until 1965 that laws were abolished that prohibited even married women from using contraceptives in order to control the size of their families. Scores of social workers were sentenced to prison by male judges for teaching poor women to use birth control methods. Corporations hired women only as secretaries, food servers and cleaning women, even if they had to earn the family living because irresponsible men fathered children and then ran away from their responsibilities. Teaching and nursing were the only professions generally open to women and they both paid badly. Many, probably most business, political, educational and religious leaders of the era wanted women barefoot and pregnant, subservient to their male lords and masters.

Entire companies still behave toward this way toward women. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently had to press criminal charges against the Mitsubishi Automobile Company in Tennessee to end years of sexual harassment of it’s women employees. Company executives refused to block the frequent humiliation of women and then fired those who complained about their criminally abusive supervisors and managers. The corporate executives, trained in Japan where women are little more than convenient sexual servants to men, ordered their American managers to hire nude dancers and prostitutes to entertain home office vice presidents visiting the factory. Even when they were caught, rather than correcting the abuse, the executives mounted an expensive publicity campaign to escape justice. We are happy to report it didn’t work.

Many sexist men of the lunatic fringe -- with the brainwashed daughters, spouses and girlfriends they manipulate, hate women who are succeeding beyond their abilities -- especially successful women who accept as lovers and mates only sophisticated and supportive men. Bright and competent woman understand that neurotic men are on a one way ride to nowhere, at least emotionally and culturally if not always financially, and choose not to go along with them. Talented women despise their primitive attitudes and assumptions about relationships, and that is more than most existentially alienated men of the right wing can tolerate. The haters are usually supported by fundamental preachers and reactionary politicians in an attempt to return uppity women to subservient citizenship. If that doesn't work, if self-directing women still refuse to waste their potential as menial servants and brood mares, especially if they refuse them as sexual partners, a great many angry men become violent. This was the theme of the motion picture Thelma And Louise a few years ago, in which two abused women broke away from their existentially alienated and brutal men. The macho motto of such men could well be the old New England advice that thousands of fathers gave to their sons before marriage;

A woman, a dog and a walnut tree -- the more you beat them the better they be.

SOCIAL HATRED -- Freedom of speech was limited during the Joe McCarthy madness of the fifties. Many persons had to take loyalty oaths and the attorney general of the United States kept lists of traitors who protested that the Cold War was harming America. Anyone who blamed the National Guard for shooting down students at Kent State University was called a Soviet sympathizer. Millions of naive men and women were persuaded by well orchestrated propaganda campaigns that shooting the students served the protesters right. Of course, years later former Secretary of State, Robert McNamara, admitted all this in his autobiography. We especially loved the scene in the movie Nixon where President Nixon slipped out of the White House to the Lincoln Memorial to talk to some students protesting the decade long Vietnam War. He asked;

Why do you hate me so much for defending our country against the evil communist menace?

He lectured the kids about the dangers of socialism, until one of the girls cried out with a burst of insight.

Why -- you are so beholding to those making money from the conflict that you can't stop the war either!

J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the F.B.I. For example, kept a secret dirty tricks file with which to blackmail virtually every American political, business and educational leader. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson both hated Hoover and wanted to fire him as head of the Bureau but feared that Hoover would reveal their illicit sexual and financial affairs -- Kennedy’s lust for women and Johnson’s manipulation of defense contracts to amass a personal fortune. Hoover’s greatest vindictiveness was reserved for anyone trying to end the slaughter of sixty thousand American white farm and black ghetto kids being sent to kill Vietnamese farm boys. Along with quarter million more maimed and several million ripped away from their homes. Plus the slaughter of almost three million Vietnamese civilians. He went ballistic when Martin Luther King came out in opposition of the war -- screaming around his office that he was going to get him if it was the last thing he ever did. During the civil rights struggle across the south, Hoover sent only southern F.B.I. Agents south to investigate the murder of voter registration workers. He reasoned they would be less likely to find any exculpatory evidence and he was pretty well right. Only a very few agents were successful investigators. Hoover didn’t work in a vacuum, however. A large number of reactionary politicians later named one Washington building The Hoover Building. He was their kind of guy and he had indeed served them well! Hoover was so vehemently against civil rights that Jard still wonders whether the murderous Hoover didn’t secretly orchestrate both John Kennedy’s and Martin King’s assassination. It was possible because it was later revealed that he had several assassination teams under his personal control.

Signing a petition or going to an anti-war rally was dangerous for anyone who opposed Washington's power freaks. Army officers who protested the Vietnam disaster were cashiered by the thousands. Civilians that our government branded 'Doves' usually lost their jobs and some went to prison. As we said earlier, we do indeed love America and want it to prosper but we see the United States as the people and the farms, the lakes, communities and businesses rather than as the financial, political and religious aristocracy who lust to gain all the wealth and power and prestige. You cannot convince us that reactionary sexist and racist legislators care one iota about the people of this nation! The back room conspiracies, vicious electioneering attacks and outright felonies committed by those who yearn to dominate America have destroyed much trust in and respect for government. That is why the people of Minnesota in a previous election voted into the governor’s office a popular professional wrestler, Jesse Ventura, who beat both political parties in one fell swoop.

SELF-FOCUS
How can so many persons assume that an era of coercion and brutality was more spiritual than this period when more persons have laws to protect them from ruthless and reactionary abusers?

Do the fearful ever talk about anything except reducing taxes and controlling the lives of the women and men who don’t agree with them?

WATCH: Obama Holds Health Care Town Hall In Ohio

CLICK THE LINK TO WATCH: Obama Holds Health Care Town Hall In Ohio.

Obama's got his passion back. If any of you were discouraged last night with President Obama's speech, take heart, watch the video and believe. Yes, we can!

Video: Republicans Attack Health Care

A Video that says it all. Video: Republicans Attack HealthCare

Call your senators and tell them we deserve the same health care they have. Stop the hypocrisy and predatory corporate Health Care. These are the same people who brought the American people Enron, Blackwater and the mortgage/banking ripoff/debacle. They only care about making money for their shareholders and paying their CEO's obscene amounts of money.

Click Here to Call Senate.gov