Reality Check: Courage and Discouragement

Posted on February 29, 2020 by RealityCheck

If you’ve ever felt the thud of discouragement, you may have also felt that you have no control over how you respond. It’s a powerless feeling, isn’t it?
What brings on those discouraged feelings? Here are a few of the many possibilities.
When I am unable to do something, I could become discouraged because I perceive that I’m not very smart. When I can’t get along with people, I may become discouraged because I believe I’m not very compassionate. When I work and work with no satisfactory reward, I may be discouraged because I’m not appreciated enough.
Discouragement can come from the recognition that I’m not making progress in the direction that I want to go.
Learning is one area where I sometimes see discouragement, and the way folks deal with that discouragement can make a real difference in their lives. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: Agreements Among Friends

Posted on February 22, 2020 by RealityCheck

My old friend passed away. After a century of life, he’d reached his natural end. While our friendship was not so very old; it spanned only about a decade, it had huge influence on me. It was a special friendship, based completely on thinking—on ideas, curiosity, and animated discussions.
No topic was out of bounds for us. We talked about human nature, learning, economics, the weather, and even the untouchable topics of politics and religion. The whole gamut was fair game.
We didn’t always agree. Actually, to be completely honest, we approached many topics from pretty much opposite perspectives. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: The Compassion of Listening

Posted on February 17, 2020 by RealityCheck

If you have an active imagination, you may have a conversation going on in your head right now while you’re reading this.
Perhaps you are arguing with yourself over whether you should have said that thing you said to your friend the other day. Maybe you are worrying about some future possibility that may or may not happen. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: The Gift of a Deadline

Posted on February 8, 2020 by RealityCheck

Many of us have had to work to deadlines, even if we don’t always think of them as deadlines. Whether it’s called a due date at school, a vacation date at work, or even a gathering of friends for a party, the requirement to have specific things done by a specific date is pretty common.
Also common to many deadlines is that once the event has passed, you may as well stop working on it. There’s not much point in spending more time preparing for that one important interview once you’ve had it. There’s not a lot of value in studying one more hour for a specific test after you’ve written it. And once the birthday party is over, there’s little satisfaction to be had by continuing to fiddle with the decorations. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: The Dull of Winter

Posted on February 2, 2020 by RealityCheck

Winter. The dull days, grey clouds, rain, drizzle, fog, and yes, even snow, can be a hard time of year. It’s as if the sun takes a vacation (probably gone south.) For some folks, those dull days stir up dull, dreary feelings that are hard to shake.
If you are adversely affected by winter, you might wonder whether there’s anything you can do about it. You can’t change the weather. You could wait ten minutes and see if it changes on its own, but wishing and hoping doesn’t seem to do much. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: Working with Unpredictable People

Posted on January 26, 2020 by RealityCheck

While we can never predict exactly what will happen, many situations are quite predictable.
It’s painful to touch the hot stove. If I don’t believe it, it only takes one try to learn a lesson I won’t soon forget. Likewise, if I stay up too late, I’m tired the next day. And probably cranky.
We can learn a lot about the relationship between our behaviour and likely consequences from our experiences. Fortunately, we don’t have to personally experience every consequence; we can learn from other’s experiences, too! Continue reading →

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Reality Check: Take It to Heart? Or Not?

Posted on January 18, 2020 by RealityCheck

Whenever people need to interact with each other, there are opportunities for conflict. Conflict shows up among friends, within families, in community discussions and at workplaces.
That’s no surprise. After all, one reason for conflict is because people don’t agree on everything! We have different wants, different needs, and even different perceptions of the reality in which we live. Conflicts can naturally arise from those differences. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: Reassessing Wants

Posted on January 12, 2020 by RealityCheck

Dr. Robert Wubbolding suggests a deceptively simple four-part structure derived from the practice of Reality Therapy. He calls it WDEP: Want, Do, (self)Evaluate, and Plan.
The practice starts with, “What do you want?” Wants can be surprisingly confusing and the path to achieving those wants is not necessarily straight. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: The Making of a Habit

Posted on January 4, 2020 by RealityCheck

The coming of the New Year inspires many of us to make New Year’s resolutions. If you have been thinking that a change in your behaviour is in order, then the New Year is as good a time as any to make that change.
Resolutions often involve giving up some kind of indulgence. For example, lots of folks choose the New Year to resolve to stop smoking, to cut out unhealthy foods, or to reduce or eliminate some other enjoyable activity that you perceive as not being good for you in the long run.
Sadly, resolutions often get tossed to the wayside by the time February comes rolling around. If you want a life-long change, then look at it as making a new habit. Continue reading →

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Reality Check: Prepare, Then Forge On With Optimism

Posted on December 30, 2019 by RealityCheck

Back in my childhood, roughly a thousand years ago, there were a few popular doomsday scenarios that described how awful the world would be when I grew up. If I managed to make it to adulthood, that is.
For example, nuclear war was not a far-fetched possibility. There was also the global cooling problem—that’s where the earth experiences another ice age and gets taken over by woolly mammoths. I particularly remember a woolly mammoth sketch on the cover of an early scribbler, a tad disturbing for any child with a vivid imagination! Continue reading →

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