What I Learned From 2007 - Sam Brougher
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Inquiring minds want to know: What were the most amazing, profound, surprising, or even whacky things you’ve learned over the last year?
Here’s an entry from my buddy Sam Brougher. Sam was one of the earliest participants in our monthly WILF projects. But what really got me was that every time we’d email each other he seemed to have a different address – and sometimes a different name! Finally I just had to ask him one day, “Just WHO are you, anyway?” Here’s his answer:
I am Sam (isn’t that a movie?) from, recently, Your Scared Seductive System and previously from Forest Azuaron.
Your Scared Seductive System is a psychology blog, and typically exhibits random research or news stories I find with a psychological bent or personal interest of mine, as well as reader requests. Forest Azuaron was my writing blog, and had an on-going fantasy story, general writing advice, and reviews of others’ writing (and ended partly because I didn’t have the time, partly because I didn’t write fiction as well as psychology, and partly because I didn’t trust Blogger to let me keep my copyright if I ever wanted to publish any stories I posted on it).
Here are my favorite posts from the past year (and it has been a long year, hasn’t it?)
January: Three Main Characters (Forest Azuaron)
I like this post, since it highlights four character types that are often overlooked: the Reluctant Hero, the Evil Hero, the Good Villain, and the “I’m Just Doing My Job” Villain. Try and think up examples for each of these, it’s fun!
February: Help! Help! My Creator’s Attacking Me! (Forest Azuaron)
Ah, character abuse. The single most enjoyable part of fictional writing. And the best part? At the end of the day (aka, story), despite all the abuse, you can still have them win the… war, battle, girl/guy, Math Olympiad, what have you.
March: Weekly Writing: Gods: Geneology (Forest Azuaron)
This is what happens when I decide to make a pantheon for my little world. Do I do something easy like modified Greek? No, too common and well known. Norse? Not so well known, but far too highlighted for my tastes. Egyptian? There we go. Anything beyond Ra and people give you a blank stare. Of course, the problem with using Egyptian, as I found out after I committed myself, was that there are over 100 Gods/Goddesses, and each one has at least a dozen incarnations based upon what region of Egypt you look at. Just another example of me biting off more than I can chew…
April: My Fantasy Novel’s Original! Honest! (Forest Azuaron)
I love this test. I honestly think that every fantasy writer should have to take it before they get published. I’ve read a significant number (read: over 100) Dragonlance books, and they basically fail almost all of those, but they were one of the first, so they have the right. Anymore, though… you just have to come up with something new, fresh, ORIGINAL. Main reason why I write modern/scifi stories most the time. Medieval’s been done to DEATH, it’s time to move on (unless you’re really creative and can pull it off).
May: Literature Review: Till We Have Faces (Forest Azuaron)
I admit, Till We Have Faces was the first C. S. Lewis book I ever read. It made me realize, I must read more. I have never read a book with such well developed characters in my life. Ever. Things to aspire to…
June: Summer Vacation (Forest Azuaron)
This was the beginning of the end of Forest Azuaron. It was summer, I was working until 7pm for NO PAY at a psych lab in Santa Barbara, CA and loving every minute of it (well, not the video emotion coding, but that’s a different story). I think that summer single-handedly killed my thoughts of ever becoming a serious writer at the time. And, now that I’m back to classes and everything, my thoughts have bounced back, how strange…
July: You Spin Me Round (And Other Optical Illusions) (Your Scared Seductive System)
This was an easy choice since… uh… there was only one post. Although, it was a pretty awesome post! If everyone could just go and stare at the naked spinning woman for a moment (it’s okay, she’s just a silhouette)… and now make her spin the other way (it’s easiest if you focus on her legs). Probably one of the most fun illusions I’ve seen in quite a while, and you don’t get queasy.
August: For Every Baby You Don’t Make… (Your Scared Seductive System)
This post was actually the start of quite the extensive debate on their Yahoo Group Why Breed? (which I have since vacated, as they were getting annoyed that they were running out of arguments and I was still determined to have children, and with no new arguments, I felt our mutual contributions to each other were at an end). However, I do encourage everyone to read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn which, while not advocating anything as extreme as VHEMT, has an interesting philosophical take on the expansion of humans and their intentional killing of other species.
September: Narcissism (Your Scared Seductive System)
This actually started when someone following VHEMT called me a “narcissistic idealist” in my Baby post (see above). Being called a narcissist is quite the serious charge, really, when you understand what being a narcissist really is. So, I used this opportunity to start (what I expected to be) a series of posts about personality disorders (I’ll hit OCPD next, honest).
October: BS in Psychology (Your Scared Seductive System)
I’m particularly proud of this post, since this is a serious problem in my field (and I expect in many others as well). All psych majors at my college are required to take an Experimental Psychology class, several weeks of which we go over how analyzing results to false conclusions is bad, and then how to identify when other people do it.
November: Is Psychology Actually Scientific? (Your Scared Seductive System)
The first hurdle when explaining psychology to someone for the first time is getting them to understand that not all psychologists are therapists and counselors. The second is getting them to believe it’s not witchcraft.
December: Naive Psychology and Helium (Your Scared Seductive System)
And the third is getting them to understand that psychologists do, in fact, know more than them about the inner workings of human beings, even themselves. Psychology is a science as complex than any other (more than some), and “life experience” does not qualify as training.
Well, those are my favorites for the year. It’s always odd to look back and go, “Whoa… I actually wrote that?”
Thanks for the wonderful activities, Bob!
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So what’s it all about?
Friends, if you’ve written about it at your blog in 2007, then you’re invited to join us for this special edition of What I Learned From… Care to share with us your favorite/ best/ most controversial/ strangest, etc. posts? (You get to pick one from each month you’ve been blogging in 2007.)
Well, don’t just sit there like a bump on a pickle; click the link, check out the simple instructions, and jump right in! Get your entries in by Sunday night, January 13, and I’ll publish them all right here at Middle Zone Musings.
You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!
4 responses so far
Middle Zone Musings is a comfortable place to stop, have a cup of coffee, swap a few stories and share practical ideas for the real world. I don't ask for much, just a bit of your brain every now and then. Have a seat, take a load off, and relax...
Robert, Just wanted you to know I really like your site. You have good reading material. I want to tell you about a site I joined called http://entrecard.com
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Thanks, Rose! I’ll check it out…
This is a quick and effective NLP technique for keeping confident and focused.
Take a minute to imagine yourself riding in a roller coaster. See yourself sitting in
the front car, riding up and down.
Now, make another picture of a roller coaster, but this time, do NOT see
yourself in the picture. See it as if you were actually looking out of your own
eyes, sitting in the roller coaster. Ride for a few moments.
Now, which one of those felt more real in your body? I’ll bet anything it was
the second kind. An image or goal only appears real to your mind if it comes in
the second form, as if you were seeing it through your own eyes.
Step One:
Recall a time in your past when you felt confident and powerful. A time where
you fully felt the way you’d like to feel. This can be anywhere and
about anything - a great golf shot you made, or an “A” book report you did in
school. Running a race, scoring a goal….
Step Two:
Close your eyes, and see yourself in the first kind of picture, going through
that experience again.
Step Three:
Now, step into the picture, and see the events as if you were actually looking
out from your own eyes. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel how good
it felt in your body. When those feelings of confidence and power reach their
peak in your body, reach over with your right hand, and give your left wrist a
squeeze. Run through this twice more, giving the same squeeze in the same place.
This will train your mind to recall those feelings of power and confidence
whenever you squeeze your wrist the way you are doing now.
Step Four:
Think of a situation or circumstance where you would like to be more confident
or more poised or whatever it is you’d like.
Step Five:
Picture it the second way, as if it were going on and you were seeing it through
your own eyes.
Step Six:
As you do so, reach over with your right hand and squeeze your left wrist,
triggering your confidence anchor. This will train your mind to automatically
call up the feelings of confidence and power when you are in a situation like
the one you are seeing through your own eyes. You won’t even have to think about
doing it, which is the advantage. (And that’s why anchoring works where
“positive thinking” won’t, because often by the time you get yourself thinking
positively, it’s already too late.)
Hey, I’m familiar with this technique! Thanks for sharing it!