Peter Slattery

These are a couple more of the things that have caught my attention lately.

This comment from a former governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia questioning the morality of high financial rewards for company CEO’s? From Ian MacFarlane, ex-governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald 4th December.

“Increasing leverage is the easiest way to increase returns in a rising market, and there were incentives to chase these returns and to ignore or downplay the risks. The biggest misdirected incentive was the performance-based pay which awarded massive bonuses to management of financial institutions on the basis of short-term profit results. Annual bonuses in the millions of dollars were not returnable when the short-term profits were lost in subsequent years.”

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From Adele Horin, Sydney Morning Herald 13th-14th December 2008.

Adele also asks questions about morality, privilege and the part that money plays in all of this, and what sorts of money. She writes an article about the recently reported attempted bribing of a school teacher by a parent who wanted their child to enter a selective school. Adele says:

“Private school fees are legal, and so, too, university fees that allow people to jump the queue. But slipping teachers money to try to secure preferential treatment is not allowed.”
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I am always talking about the importance of being in charge as one of the key ingredients and indicators of wellbeing. Here is a related but somewhat different take on the idea of control by Hugh MacKay in the Sydney Morning Herald 13th-14th December 2008.

“The current obsession with control looks to me like a symptom of deep unease in our society. The yearning for control is a cry for help. The most useful response to that is not to say: “Here’s how to get your life under control but to explain that the deepest sense of wellbeing springs not from mastery of our circumstance let alone mastery of others but from mastery of ourselves.”

I recently went to a seminar on ‘Masculinities and crime’. And the speakers talked about the way certain attitudes and behaviours are linked to gender, become in certain ways ‘masculinized.’ Michael Flood was one speaker and Kerry Carrington the other. Kerry spoke about the difference between monologic and dialogic aspects of masculinity, the former being somewhat closed, rigid, controlling and aggressive, the latter more open, fluid, discussive, democratic and friendly. As always I have provided the links here so check out for yourself what they more fully have to say. An important topic.

David Engwicht is maybe one crazy fella. Now is that bad? I must read more of what he says but one of his books is called ‘Mental Speed Humps’…and (if I’ve got this right) he is saying that the more traffic rules we have the less we seem to take responsiblity for what we are doing. We kind of trust in ‘THE RULES’. And there seems to be increasing evidence across Europe that when the traffic rules get taken away, accidents reduce. Yes..reduce. Because we start to pay more attention, be more aware, be more sensitive and more alert and more mindful of others. Kind of makes sense really.

I facilitate many groups and have long been an advocate for working in groups without rules – though I hasten to say that discussions about how we want to work together is something else -because everyone knows what respectful is, and a rule that says we must be respectful is kind of paradoxical. So the ‘mental speed bumps’ idea certainly makes sense to me in terms of running groups. And it makes sense in terms of helping organizations run well. People tend to know already what is fair and what isn’t. If you are in a relationship, you may not have the rules written up on the wall but you sure as heck know whether it’s okay to go out to a bar tonight and pick up someone you might just fancy. We do have ‘mental speed bumps’ and they are good for us.

I suspect David is ever so slightly provocative, as he sits here in New York city in his chair…making a statement about reclaiming the streets…

Nothing wrong with that really.

Ingrid Poulson has been in the news a little lately. In 2003 her then husband, murdered her father and her two young children.

I listened to an interview with her on Radio National (‘Life Matters’ 7th August 2008) and she sounded really lovely, really well, really positive. Pretty amazing. And she has written a book ‘Rise’ and I am only too pleased to say so. I have no idea if it[s any good but I intend to take a look. In the interview I was struck by a number of things. She said that when her children were killed she was ‘un-mumed’. And she asks: what are we without a role? She asks: if we lose our role do we lose our identity? Good questions I think.

She also said something along the lines that at one point she had been telling her story so many times to so many groups that: ‘I was…it was becoming a little bit too much of my story…I’ve really chosen to move on…’ This also seems a great comment about how to deal with tragedy.

Of her current partner she said that perhaps the radio interviewer could ask him to help her with children. So even after her experience of 2003 she wants more children. She says: ‘…it’s something I wouldn’t mind doing.’ Pretty impressive I thought.

And from the Sydney Morning Herald (August 9th 2008) I read that her idea of resilience is based on four ideas:

- Resolve (Giving yourself permission to survive)
- Identity (acknowledging your wins and embracing flexibility)
- Support (You cant do it alone)
- And everyday (eat well, get some exercise and don’t watch too much TV)

I think my top four would be:
- A sense of belonging
- Identity and a clear sense of self
- Good relationships
- A sense of being in charge of yourself

I wonder if we really differ so much? All the very, very best to Ingrid. An inspiration truly.

So in June we went and did it again. The Beyond Empathy camp in Northern New South Wales. Many of the old crew, and some new crew. Around 50 or so of us, mostly yungins but some of us older ones to add something we hope. And we did a bunch of stuff. And the animoto video here gives you a pretty good idea of what that all was.

And if you can’t make that work for some reason or if you just prefer pics that don’t move about…here are some stills.

A very good experience of people working together, getting on, finding differences, finding the common ground…eating, talking, laughing, pushing boundaries a tad…all in all … a good thing.

I bet you thought you knew what was important? And you’d be right. Body hair! This newspaper article tells us so. Whether guy or doll, bloke or sheila, male or female, excess body hair is something you do not want.

And you can wax, or you can IPL (this is not canned fruit ha! ha! ha!); it is as you know, ‘intense pulsed light’. This starts at around $70 and a full body job is about $300. A bargain. Then there is threading which is of course rolling a cotton thread over what the article describes as ‘rebellious brows’ and a bunch of hairs is then ripped out. And we have of course the more familiar depilatory creams which seem at least to be painless. Sometimes there are just too many things to get excited about aren’t there.

And what’s just fabulous about this of course is that it used to be only women who were worried about such things. But with equal opportunity exploitation men can now line up for a new piece of superficiality to be concerned about. Oh lucky lucky.

So I’m listening to dear old radio national (The show is ‘Life Matters’ May 19th 2008) and I hear Martin Seligman and others talking about teaching Happiness (I added the capital H. It was radio after all) at a fairly flash school in Victoria. And the discussion scrolled through whether it was a good idea, whether most schools could afford the millions Geelong Grammar is spending on this, (the answer is ‘no’), whether there were down-sides, the place of parents in the whole process…a lota stuff. And Michael Carr-Gregg (well know psychologist) was saying that he was seeing kids with ’spiritual anorexia’ and who were filling the void with ‘rampant aflluenza’ and adoration of silly popular figures. (Cannot bear to repeat who was mentioned)….

And, possibly the week before all this I was reading Ruth Ritchie in The Sun Herald on 7-8 June who was saying: ‘We live in a time when contests are not won but lost. The focus is not on the winner but on the fear and humiliation that surrounds loss, abandonment, betrayal and eviction.’

She was of course, talking about the many and various ‘reality’ TV shows where ‘…the winners are so rarely qualified or to be admired for being anything other than the last limpets hanging on to the rock in a tsunami.’

And I think she has a point. She described these processes of elimination as ‘…heartily endorsed, institutionalized bullying.’ And this is all kind of sad really. It seems that depending on the show, people have the chance to be yelled at by a chef, sacked by a rich guy or snarled at by ‘upper class ladies.’ I’m sure there are more shows but gee it’s hard to keep up. So given that we have this awful stuff going on, and let me not make too light of it, I do think it’s awful, maybe the idea of teaching happiness is not a bad idea after all.

And it seems (back to the radio show) that those who are happy tend to be more altruistic, so the idea isn’t about being selfish. They seem to volunteer more, do more stuff for others. So the happiness idea seems to be about being personally strong, about being connected and about doing something meaningful in life. And so yes, all ideas can be turned into something silly (we’re good at that aren’t we for some reason?) or turned into something which exists in name only and is devoid of its own intended meaning. But maybe doing something which isn’t a silly TV show (especially one based on being mean to others), but something which encourages us to be decent to others and ourselves…maybe that ain’t so stupid.

This is just so lovely that I had to add it. Ta Sam for sending it to me. I have read comments that the music is boring…I find it moving, inspiring and delightful. Somone also said that a younger person should have mixed it…though ya know being older maybe aint so bad…and interesting to see Missy Higgins and John Butler in the clip…they aint so old are they? And anyways of course…we all just have opinions. I like this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7QV5cEDfYY

This is not the whole article but these quotes give you a pretty good idea what the point is. I thought it worth putting up on my website. Check out the whole thing here if you would like to.

Zero tolerance-based punishments such as suspension and expulsion, the task force found, have not improved behavior or academic performance. In addition, by shifting the locus of discipline from schools to the juvenile justice system, zero tolerance policies are causing numerous adverse consequences for students, families and communities.

Zero tolerance policies requiring suspension from school were found to be counterproductive on many levels: ‘School suspension in general appears to predict higher future rates of misbehavior and suspension among those students who are suspended.’

Schools with higher rates of school suspension and expulsion had less satisfactory school climate ratings and school governance structures, and tended to spend a disproportionate amount of time on discipline. In the long term, school suspension and expulsion were associated with a higher school-dropout rate and failure to graduate on time.

As to academic performance, the report saw ‘a negative relationship between the use of school suspension and expulsion and school-wide academic achievement.’
The report defines restorative justice (RJ) as ‘a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behavior.’ RJ programs, the report states, ‘involve a cooperative process that 1) identifies crime and attempts to repair its damage, 2) includes all stakeholders to respond to acts of violence and 3) changes the traditional relationship between the offenders and the victims.’ In contrast to zero tolerance policies, RJ is ‘designed to reconcile the perpetrators with the victims, creating a feeling of resolution and increasing a sense of safety.’

‘Restorative justice programs attempt to re-establish positive relationships with adults and ‘teach’ understanding and empathy to those who have been violent,’ the report commented, adding, ‘Restorative and community justice programs in the school setting prioritize activities that try to reduce delinquency and find solutions to delinquent behavior and build a community capacity to respond to problem behavior without resorting to the criminal justice system and to create a safe and supportive learning environment that effectively expresses the values of the culture.’ The report concluded, ‘Emerging data suggest that restorative justice programs may represent a promising alternative to zero tolerance.’

Thought I would put something up here about the resilience stuff as it continues to attract a great deal of attention. That’s good as it’s an important idea. The fear I have is the overuse problem. We use the word so much it gets sucked of its meaning. This has happened to the word ‘empowerment’. People being in charge of themselves really is important, but we can’t hand out empowerment like we had a bucket of it to distribute. And I have literally seen someone answer their mobile in the middle of a conversation about respect! They used the word but somehow missed the idea!

So for what it’s worth…let me throw in some comments about resilience…and its connection to other popular ideas.

Optimism

Optimism is about seeing the best, having realistic and positive views of self and the world, hoping for the best and working towards it.

A strengths approach

A strengths-focus in working with people means just that. Looking to people’s triumphs, abilities, qualities and strengths as a way of approaching life. And of dealing with the difficult stuff, including the less-wonderful aspects of ourselves. It is a realistic and optimistic approach to people.

Resilience

‘The process of growing strong as a person…and being able to bounce back from the hard times of life’.

It is an ongoing process rather than something that you ‘get’ and have forever. The most resilient person will have ups and downs, good days and bad days. There are lots of ideas about resilience.

Let me offer you my list of ingredients for resilience. I have been drawn to these, because each of them I have seen stand out as a real dynamic over and over again in both research and in the experience of my work. And secondly, this framework is useable. It can be translated into do-able actions.

The seven elements of resilience

Meaning
People need to have a sense of purpose, a sense that what we do and who we are actually matters
Meaningful relationships
Being connected to other people in mutually fulfilling, supportive and uplifting ways seems to be good for us. Some of us are more in contact with others, some of us less so. Some people learn to be comfortably alone while others are just lonely. So there are variations. Having said this, for most us, relationships really matter
Participation
Being actively involved in what happens around us, rather than being passive recipients of whatever we are offered, is good for us. It creates a sense of involvement and interest in our own lives and those of others
Personal power
Having some sense of control, some power, influence in our lives builds within us a confidence and ability to tackle life’s hardships and challenges
A strong sense of self
This is much more than self esteem. It is a deep sense of worth, of belonging, of having a clear place and purpose, a sense of agency or personal influence, a sense of being in charge of our own lives
Other’s positive expectations
We are likely to flourish when others expect the best of us. (The reverse is also true). These expectations need to be positive, high and realistic. We tend to do well when others focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t; on our qualities rather than our shortcomings
Hope
We need a sense that we can get through something; a belief, a faith that things can be better, that life will be okay, that ‘I will prevail’.

And of course, these are just words until we bring them to life in the actions we take.

Resilience The shorter version

• Identity
• Sense of belonging
• Relationships
• Sense of being in charge of own life.

And here is another take on this. It is what children say matters to them.
(From a study by the NSW Commission for Children and Young People and Uni of Western Sydney)

• Agency
• Security
• Positive sense of self.

Collectively these ideas can establish a framework to guide how we work with individuals, families and communities ¦noticing and helping strengthen the elements of resilience, working with the strengths of those we work with and noticing movement, change, growth, and having faith that it will continue.