Archive for May 31st, 2015
Secret to never getting frustrated? You get frustrated because of your beliefs, and Not because of events
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 31, 2015
In: education methods/programs | Essays | social articles
Secret to never getting frustrated?
And how do you change your belief systems?
We all get frustrated.
The guy in front of you is driving like an idiot.
Your boss is being a jerk.
Your partner isn't listening.
And sometimes these all happen to you on the same day.
What's the fix for this? One guy came up with a solution that deals with all of these problems — and more.
Albert Ellis was quite a character. He was controversial. Outspoken.
A bit of a rebel. In fact, the book he's most famous for was titled: How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything—Yes, Anything.
Clever but a bit unprofessional, right?
Here's the thing: according to a survey of psychologists he was the second most influential psychotherapist ever. Sigmund Freud came in third.
Here's what Wikipedia says about his system:
In general REBT is arguably one of the most investigated theories in the field of psychotherapy and a large amount of clinical experience and a substantial body of modern psychological research have validated and substantiated many of REBTs theoretical assumptions on personality and psychotherapy.
His stuff works. And it's as simple as ABCD — quite literally, as you'll see below.
So how can you never be frustrated again? Let's break it down.
The Tyranny Of "Should"
Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Here's what you need to take away from Ellis' work:
1. You don't get frustrated because of events. You get frustrated because of your beliefs.
And where did this idea start? Ancient philosophy. Stoicism. That's where Ellis found the concept. And then he proved it really worked.
…if you understand how you upset yourself by slipping into irrational shoulds, oughts, demands, and commands, unconsciously sneaking them into your thinking, you can just about always stop disturbing yourself about anything.
You're stuck in traffic and that makes you angry, right? Wrong.
flickr/joiseyshowaa/
Traffic happens. But you think it shouldn't happen to you. And the thing that's making you miserable is that word "should."
Here's an example. I say, "This headache remedy probably won't work but give it a shot." So you try it. And it doesn't work. You're not frustrated.
Okay, same situation but I say, "This always works." It fails. Now you're annoyed. What changed? Your expectation.
Or you tell a five-year old to stop yelling. They don't listen. You don't get that bothered. After all, the kid is five.
But if you tell me to stop yelling and I don't listen, you get angry. What's different? "Eric should stop. He's an adult."
Again, nothing changed but your belief.
Pretty straightforward, right? But that leads to a question: how do you change your beliefs? Ellis has an answer.
(For more on a fun way to be happier and more successful, click here.)
The Universe Is Not Taking Orders From You.
It's as simple as ABCD. Really.
A is adversity. Traffic is awful.
B is your beliefs. And often they're irrational. "This shouldn't happen to me." Well, guess what, Bubba? It is happening.
C is consequences. You get angry, frustrated or depressed.
In very few cases can you change A. But you can change B. And that will change C. So let's bring in the 4th letter.
D: Dispute your irrational beliefs. "Wait a second. When did the universe guarantee me a trouble-free existence? It didn't.
Traffic has happened before. It will happen again. And I will survive."
Shutterstock / Rafal Cichawa
Look for beliefs that hold the words "should", "ought" or "must." That's where the problems lie.
You're allowed to wish, want and desire. Nobody is saying you need to be an emotionless lump.
"I would very much like or prefer to have success, approval, or comfort," and then end with the conclusion, "But I don't have to have it. I won't die without it. And I could be happy (though not as happy) without it."
But you can't demand the universe bend to your will. That's where the frustration and anger creep in — because that godlike insistence isn't rational.
Via How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything—Yes, Anything:
When you insist, however, that you always must have or do something, you often think in this way:
"Because I would very much like or prefer to have success, approval, or pleasure, I absolutely, under practically all conditions, must have it. And if I don't get it, as I completely must, it's awful, I can't stand it, I am an inferior person for not arranging to get it, and the world is a horrible place for not giving me what I must have! I am sure that I'll never get it, and therefore I can't be happy at all!"
When you're angry, frustrated or depressed look for those irrational beliefs.
"People should treat me kindly and fairly all the time." Sound rational? Hardly.
"I ought to succeed at this. If I don't, I'm a failure and a loser." Really?
"This person must love me back or I'll die." No, no, no you won't.
What were you anxious or overconcerned about? Meeting new people? Doing well at work? Winning the approval of a person you liked?
Passing a test or a course? Doing well at a job interview? Winning a game of tennis or chess?
Getting into a good school? Learning that you have a serious disease? Being treated unfairly?
Look for your command or demand for success or approval that was creating your anxiety or over concern. What was your should, ought, or must?
Is disputing your irrational beliefs going to immediately change everything? No.
But when you start disputing you'll see that your expectations aren't in line with reality.
And with a little work, those expectations will start to change.
(For more happiness lifehacks you can learn from ancient philosophy, click here.)
It's as simple as ABCD. Next time you're turning red and clenching your fists, give this a shot:
A is Adversity. Like traffic. Sorry, no genie can let you wish it away.
B is Beliefs. Look for beliefs with these troublesome words: should, ought and must. "Traffic shouldn't be this bad." Not rational. Traffic is what it is. Sorry.
C is Consequences. You banging the steering wheel with your fist and sending your blood pressure into the stratosphere.
D is Dispute. Are you demanding the universe and everyone bend to your wishes? Is that rational? No way. You can want, you can wish and you can definitely try your best in the future, but you cannot demand if you want to stay happy and sane.
Life is not perfect. People aren't perfect.
You, dear reader, are not perfect. And that's okay.
But having beliefs that any of these things "should" be the way you want causes you a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Many of your irrational beliefs are not immediately obvious. Sometimes you'll have to dig to find them.
And you'll need to dispute them a fair amount before new reasonable beliefs kick in. But you can definitely make progress.
What did Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, say way back in the first century AD?
People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them.
What did Shakespeare write in Hamlet?
There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
How about the Buddha?
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
Rarely can you change the world. But you can always change your thoughts.
Najat Rizk shared this link
Mmmm! Not sure how easy it is to apply, definitely easier to read!
A psychologist discovered the secret to never getting frustrated
You don't get frustrated because of events. You get frustrated because of your beliefs.
http://www.businessinsider.com
Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/04/frustrated/#ixzz3Xqr3B7FZ
Tags: adonis49, Albert Ellis, belief systems, expectation, frustrated, REBTs theoretical assumptions, Stoicism, tyranny of "Should"
Colloquial Lebanese is mainly Aramaic/Syriac language
In: Book Review | education methods/programs | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Lebanon/Middle East/Near East/Levant | social articles
One key element of the Levantine dialect heritage is the influence of Syriac or Aramaic terms and even grammatical structures on the Lebanese dialect of Arabic.
BEIRUT: Did you speak any Syriac today?
If you had an extended conversation in colloquial Lebanese Arabic, chances are you did.
Although most languages are governed by rigid grammatical and orthographic rules, they are actually something very vivid, especially in their spoken forms.
Spoken languages or dialects pick up vocabulary from other languages, often when the foreign term is more accurate to describe something.
Michael Frey posted on Nov. 25, 2008
Today, one usually thinks in terms of English and French terms invading the colloquial Arabic spoken by Lebanese, but colloquial itself has borrowings from other languages.
You may think you're speaking Lebanese, but some of your words are really Syriac
Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Middle East from about the 12th century BC until the 9th century AD, when the spread of Islam allowed Arabic to take its place.
Syriac, an Aramaic dialect originally spoken in the cities of Edessa and Antioch, was the predominant form of Aramaic from the second century AD onward and the only Aramaic dialect which existed in a written form.
According to Mario Kozah, a professor of Syriac language and literature at the American University of Beirut, "Aramaic is a little bit like saying Arabic.
When you say Arabic, you could mean Moroccan, Egyptian or Lebanese. In the same way, Aramaic is a general word that includes many different dialects," he explained.
Some of the most important contacts of Syriac and Arabic took place at Beit al-Hikma (House of Wisdom), a center of science in Baghdad which flourished under the rule of the Abbasid caliph al-Maamun (d. 833).
In this center, Greek philosophy was translated into Arabic, under Mamun's directives.
"This school [Beit al-Hikma] was mainly a translation school where texts would be translated either from Syriac into Arabic or from Greek via Syriac into Arabic," Kozah said. "The Syriac translators first translated the Greek into a Syriac draft and then from the Syriac draft into Arabic."
Syriac was selected because it had the technical terminology that aided the translation of Greek philosophy.
Syriac and Arabic had a similar vocabulary, which then aided the translation of the Syriac draft into Arabic. But after Arabic established its own philosophical terminology, the translation via Syriac became unnecessary, Kozah explained.
Today, it is difficult to determine exactly how much Syriac is left in what is called Classical Arabic. "They are both Semitic languages, and therefore a word is naturally being shared by these two languages," Kozah said.
"Classical Arabic has been shaped over the centuries and smoothed over and developed in its own right, to such an extent that it isn't easy to really pick out the Syriac vocabulary in Classical Arabic."
However, it is easier to catch the influence of the Syriac version of Aramaic in today's Lebanese colloquial Arabic.
"Whatever it [the Lebanese dialect] picked up, it kept," and was not formalized like in Classical Arabic, Kozah explained.
Today, it's not too difficult to pick up Aramaic traces in the Lebanese vocabulary.
Kozah cited the example of "eimata" (or when) as being closer to the Syriac equivalent "emat" than the Classical Arabic expression "mata."
The word "bobo" (baby) in Lebanese is a Syriac word without an equivalent in Arabic.
The colloquial Lebanese Arabic expression "to be late" is "ta'awa'" which comes from the Syriac "et'aouaq."
And from the realm of baby or toddler talk, "wawa" ("ouch" or "it hurts") happens to be quiet close to the Syriac "wawo," meaning pain.
The words for inside and outside, "jawwa" and "barra," are Syriac too, Kozah said. In Syriac, "jaw" means inside, "bar" outside.
Also, many place-names today in Lebanon are originally Aramaic, while different theories exist about what they really mean, Kozah said. These words mostly describe certain local geographic features that might be invisible today.
Stefan Wild, a German linguist who penned a book about Lebanese place-names, wrote that "the spectrum of Lebanese place-names show us an enthralling and extraordinary vivid picture of yesterday."
According to Wild, the town of Broummana means "House of the Pomegranate tree," (Beit al-Rumman), while another interpretation holds that the original meaning is potentially much older, as in Beit al-Rammana, the "house" of the Assyrian god of air, storm and thunder. Turzayya, to name another example, means "Mountain of Cedars."
Even in Lebanese grammar, traces of Aramaic are still obvious. "Lebanese is not just Arabic without grammar," Kozah said. "You might think that a certain Lebanese structure [of a sentence] appears ungrammatical if you think about it in Classical Arabic terms. But if you go back to Syriac, you find that this Lebanese sentence is perfectly normal."
Robert Gabriel, Syriac professor and president of the Association of Syriac Language Friends, agreed, saying that about 50% of the Lebanese grammatical structure is due to Syriac influences.
The common Levantine expression is "ijul-uwlad," meaning "the children came." In this sentence, the verb "iju," which precedes the subject "al-uwlad" is in the plural form. In classical Arabic, such a sentence would be wrong, because a verb preceding the subject remains in the singular, even with a plural subject.
"In Syriac, plural goes with plural, masculine goes with masculine, feminine with feminine," Gabriel said.
Kozah said that in general, the word order in a Syriac sentence is very flexible, whereas in Classical Arabic, the sentence should start with a verb.
"Sometimes, you emphasize something [in Lebanese dialect] by putting it at the beginning of the sentence. You can't really do that in Classical Arabic; you have to emphasize in a different way," he said.
Furthermore, the sound of Syriac is preserved in some Lebanese dialects.
Hany Touk, a Syriac teacher from Bsharri, explained that the "o" vowel in his village's dialect is typical of Syriac. He added that the preservation of this sound in the Bsharri dialect is due to Bsharri's long isolation from the outside world and the relatively low level of interaction with other languages.
Kozah said the "e" vowel in the Lebanese dialect also comes from Syriac. This vowel, called "rboso" in Syriac, is not to be found in the Classical Arabic, he added. This vowel is preserved in the Lebanese pronunciation of "Lebanon," i.e. "Lebnen" and not "Lubnan" as in Classical Arabic.
Finally, Syriac is still present in Lebanese poetry.
"Some of the Syriac metrical system is still to be found in Lebanese zajal, in Lebanese popular poetry," Kozah said. "We find the influence there of early Syriac metrical systems."
Although these examples might suggest that Arabic "borrowed" quiet a bit from Syriac, the two languages had a complex relationship.
"We see very often examples of Arabic taking things further, absorbing them and then developing them," Kozah said.
He stressed repeatedly that further research needs to be done in the field, where many theories still remain unproven, while citing some encouraging signs of public interest in Syriac.
Kozah said that the language was being taught at AUB, in the beginner's course that has been growing increasingly popular.
Syriac classes are also offered at Universite Saint-Esprit de Kaslik and St. Joseph's University, while it is a staple Sunday school offering among several Syriac Christian churches: the Chaldean Church, the Assyrian Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church.
Noor Khalil shared this link
Abir Doumit
On Levantine dialect.
I took an Aramaic (Syriac) college course with the main contributor to the article, Professor Kozah.
Did you speak any Syriac today? If you had an extended conversation in colloquial Lebanese…
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Tags: adonis49, Aramaic, Aramaic/Syriac language, classical Arabic, Colloquial Lebanese, dialects, Lebanese zajal, Levantine dialect, lingua franca, Mario Kozah, Michael Frey, Robert Gabriel, Stefan Wild, Syriac language and literature, Syriac metrical systems