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Quote by Jan Esh & Stephen Nauta

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Help! There's a Dragon in My Head

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Jan Esh & Stephen Nauta

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“We must do the impossible and start before we begin. Before making that first phone call or visit, freewrite (see Elbow, 1981): Write fast and furiously without worrying about spelling or grammar or coherence. Ask yourself, What images do I hold of the people and the place I am about to study and how do I feel about those images? How did I come to study this setting at this time? Ask yourself about the needs you expect this setting to fulfill: Do I have an axe to grind? Do I have a mission? Am I looking for a cause or a community? Do I expect this study to help me resolve personal problems? Am I hoping to create a different self? What political assumptions do I have? What kinds of setting activities or subgroups might I avoid or discount because of who I am or what I believe?”

NeedsWritingWorryEmotionsSettingImpossibilityFieldworkFreewriteStart Before We Begin
Book:Emotions and Fieldwork
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“He smiled through his greasy glasses with his clear eyes. “Why do we all expect to be happy? We all came out of our mothers crying. Pain is what we do.” It reminded me of a tweet from Alain Botton several years back that sparked a Twitter chat between the two of us: “Happiness is generally impossible for longer than fifteen minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.” Indeed. The great worriers of history were the ones who saw the charging rhinoceros first, had an action plan ready to go should a tiger in camp, fretted that the basket of weeds collected that they may be poisonous. We carry this terror in our genes into our suburban lounge rooms, to our office water coolers, to our IKEA-issue bedrooms. Worry is our default position.”

WorryAnxietyDnaHardwiredDefault Position
Book:First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
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“Every experience that you go through is part of the process of the unfolding of your myth. If you sit back and reflect on your own 2019, on how Life dealt with you this year, you will see how every upheaval, every scar in your Life, is precious in its own way. You will realize how you have emerged stronger and wiser from each experience you have been through. You will be amazed at how you have learnt to cope, how you have moved on this year too, just as you have done, all your Life. This is why it is pointless to label a year as good or bad (or ugly). A set of events simply happened to you this past year. And another set will happen in the year coming up. So, instead of over-analyzing and labeling the year gone by, embrace what is, and train your mind to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. This holds the key to your Happiness.”

HappinessSpiritualityWorryLife LessonAvis ViswanathanFall Like A Rose PetalAvis On HappynessThe Happynesswala
Author:AVIS Viswanathan
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“His reaction looked very much like anger, with threatening gestures, raised voice, and a purple face. But his anger was triggered by apprehension and was mixed with hope that some good discipline might keep me from being so stupid again. It sure did! My point here is that every display of emotion needs to be judged in a wider context. A single label rarely suffices. To call my father's state "angry" fails to do it justice without also mentioning love and worry.”

LoveFatherWorry
Book:Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves
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