My skills

Knowledge Collection Learning
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  1. My skills: Visualising and rearticulating concepts; asking leading questions; inspiring people to think differently; rapid research; writing about complex ideas in non-academic ways; profession-specific knowledge & skills about cultural learning & access; photography; making simple websites and using social media; devising creative community events; teaching; speaking; singing; playing some instruments; cooking.

  2. I suppose everything is essential except photography, singing, music and cooking. But I couldn’t really do without the non-essentials.

  3. The intellectual and professional skills I’m learning through practice of delivering consultancy jobs, being challenged by clients and colleagues. I think this area is where I’m strongest and has definitely made all the difference in giving me choice/agency and a good reputation. I’m very happy I’ve developed these skills but they are quite hard to define. I don’t work in an area that gets accolades and certificates. I always think I have so much more to learn.

Teaching: I did two teacher training qualifications but still find it’s one of the most difficult things to do. I’ve realised it’s about nurturing, and that has made it easier.

The creative skills: I’ve learned writing on some holiday courses but now I don’t need so much teaching, more that I need time, mentoring and encouragement from others (for example, Pat Kane is my ‘affinity partner’ for writing my book). Photography: I did some holiday courses but have slightly dried up and don’t push myself anymore. I find it easy but don’t make images that fascinate me anymore. Singing: I’m having some singing lessons and will go on a songwriting course this summer. Yes, singing makes me happy but I feel exposed when I sing in public so I need to learn how to do it with confidence. Cooking: I just love food and think it’s the key to surviving and thriving.

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Cooking!

Cooking should be considered as an essential skill!!! I had cooking classes in highschool, and these notions have remained with me all my life.

There are people who spend a fortune on restaurant every year. It must create a gaping hole in their budget, not knowing how to cook an egg.

I would add other skills to the list of what makes one happy, like knowing how to grow food. It is really not easy to be autonomous in the production of food. We have lost touch with nature, when were built megacities. A lot of disconnections have occurred.

Any creative activity can help an individual to get back in touch with his / her Self = Happiness.

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Food as the root

I quite agree. Not just cooking but really understanding food, its origins, how to grow it in ways that can restore ecosystems (permaculture, urban agriculture techniques etc). Also, we need to understand much more how food is medicine. If our food is good, we need drugs less. Food is the root of culture and the key to generating biosphere capital.

When I say I can cook, it’s not because I’m technically brilliant at cooking. But I love doing it and am interested in food, and I thought it was important enough to mention it in a list of skills.

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Real potential medecine reducer is quantum healing

I am glad that you mention good food as having a potential for reducing medecine.

Good food is good, because it allows for a good lifestyle, which in turn can lead to happiness. Cooking is good, because it allows to use creativity, share with others, live in the moment, etc.

However, the real medecine reducer potential lies not in food, but somewhere else. The solution is really very simple and is not expensive. If this solution were applied to our societies, spending on health care would be reduced to virtually zero. It is in health that government budgets are the highest, and yet there is still no overarching vision that can help people be healthier.

None of our medical interventions either get to the root cause of disease, or make a significant difference in mortality or morbidity. The concept of body-mind-spirit is slowly gaining in popularity. but has not yet been sufficiently implemented in health systems to make a difference. It is possible to free the body from ravages of disease, by bathing it in joy and happiness. It is principle of quantum healing, which means healing the body-mind from a quantum level.

Of course, good food can keep an individual healthy. However, thoughts and a harmful lifestyle are the real root for unhealthy people.

If someone eats bio food and takes extra care about what he/she eats, but has discursive thoughts all day long, and almost all year long, is filled with hate, maintains thoughts of greed and selfishness, has a heart the size of a raisin, whatever he/she puts in his/her mouth, it will not maintain health over time. A harmful lifestyle is caused by a loss of simplicity and loss of trust (disconnection from oneness). The experience of alienation, fragmentation, isolation (the experience of the separate self) ultimately leads to all the problems, like contamination of the environment, hostility towards each other, poor nutrition, and too much work. A work-oriented society, a success oriented society, in which we believe that material objects are the only source of our happiness, is preventing individuals from reaching a state of happiness.

When it comes to healing, it is unfortunate, but science doesn’t have an idea yet of the role that spirit plays. Quantum healing involves healing one mode of consciousness, the mind, to bring about changes in another mode of consciousness, the body. And this is possible by letting the spirit come into action.

When someone feels intensely happy, or ecstaty, or feels that he/she knows what needs to be known on that moment, this person is connected to spirit. There are three signs of a connection with spirit: love, you feel connected to everything, you feel an intoxication of love; second, knowing this, you feel that you know what you need to know (creativity); and the third is happiness, being happy enough to reach a state where a dormant energy gets unleashed (by the spirit). When someone feels an intoxication of love, has the intuition and creativity (because that’s part of knowing this), or when feels happy, then this person is close to spirit.

When someone has these experiences in consciousness (meaning triggers the happiness process), then the body starts to secrete simultaneously serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and opiates. Serotonin and dopamine are called the ‘happy hormones’. When people are depressed, they are given serotonin. Opiates are the hormones that make us feel high, sometimes when we run or exercise, or even during sexual experience. Oxytocin is the hormone which causes secretion of milk in mothers when they breastfeed a baby. Scientists have shown that oxytocin might be secreted also during sexual pleasure, in particular during orgasm. While the body is secreting the ‘happy hormones’, the immune system is also being regulated (ie healing is taking place at the quantum level). All cells of the body become ‘happy’ and therefore, someone is less inclined to contracting viruses or developing long term illness, or using medecine.

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Hi Bridget, thank you for this overview. I am a bit intrigued about this skill you mention: “writing about complex ideas in non-academic ways”.

What do you mean exactly? How do you do that without falling into journalistic pitfalls, or losing credibility? Is it similar to the thematic blogging, meaning you still use resources and reference ideas, but pack them into simpler language?  or you had something else in mind?

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REPLY TO BOTH

That’s a good question and thank you Alberto for the useful interjection. My writing style has definitely developed a more candid style since I’ve read and written blogs over the past 7 years. I don’t tend to worry about my ‘credibility’ when I write. I’ve not done a PhD and don’t work a lot with university academics, but I do mix with people who range from thoughtfully-practical to highly intellectual. There isn’t really a worry about academic credibility in my discursive circles. In fact, I’m in a group of ‘scholars’ who are doing what we call Wikiquals. This is a collaborative community of researchers, who support each other to develop book-length or substantial research, which can be externally accredited by universities as PhD or similar, but doesn’t have to be.

Most of my colleagues, generally, are concerned to communicate as directly, clearly or passionately as possible with people they teach, parent, converse with or present to. This might perhaps be a feature of UK, even more precisely English, traditions of communication. English culture has a long tradition of pragmatism and a preference for ironic humour to pomposity. The kind of writing that really appeals to me is ‘creative non-fiction’. People like Kathleen Jamie, Paul Kingsnorth, Rachel Lichtenstein, Jay Griffiths or Sukhdev Sandhu. A lot of these writers are also journalists.

I don’t disrespect or want to avoid writing like a journalist, especially when I need to report an event or idea at speed. Journalism is a useful skill, and we can learn a lot about how to do research and communication by reading the best journalists (not least it being an excellent source of global knowledge).

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Oh, great :frowning:

I managed not to have even heard of any of these authors. :frowning:

I guess another social consequence of blogging is that you realize that you have been writing for years without being a tenured professor and no Science Police has knocked on your door. You even got comments and quotations. So you relax and stop worrying about credibility.

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Or your credibility is built through a different reputation system, right? no tenures, ISI papers, Web of Science citations etc.

I find this writing very interesting, and potentially just as hard as academic writing, even though it seems more lax. This component of engaging readers, and communicating “as directly, clearly or passionately as possible”, like Bridget says, must be challenging, particularly when you do want to back it up with the research logic and inquiry.

Thank you both for taking the time, definitely yours are writings I’ll keep an eye on! Much too early for me to take up this writing about complex ideas; At 24 I feel the need to understand complex ideas, then write well academically, and then, maybe, playing with the puzzle and feeling comfortable to put it there publicly, and have my own ideas about how the puzzle unfolds (I see blogging as a much more public and creative act than writing for journals and talking in closed academic circles - which also need more creativity than at present). So that’s the time order that  goes in my head,  also because Academia is the only intellectual path I’ve known and only begun to learn.

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Credibility

Yes, there are alternative and emerging systems for credibility. I don’t even know what you mean by tenures, ISI, web of science etc. I don’t mean to be cynical at all about academia, because I really value the research and teaching they do. It’s just that these terms of accreditation don’t really mean much outside the system.

I think that there is benefit in blogging (even just on a micro scale) alongside working out your thoughts within academic communities of enquiry. There is so much to gain from extending your queries to a wider circle. It boosts your confidence and you are challenged by people with very different perspectives. I encourage children to do it as a method of studying, rather than see it as something you do once you have studied.

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photography

Hello Bridget,

I did some photography courses as well, at the beginning I was very motivated but then when I came back to my daily routine, I felt the same drying out as you mentioned.

From times to times, I use some inspirational “tools” (exhibitions, music, movies) to get back my photography motivation but it is not something that comes naturally…

Do you know why that happened to you? Do you still “push” yourself to shoot or you believe that it will come back to you eventually?

Thank you

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Hello

I think the inspiration hasn’t really dried up. It would come flooding back if I had time and opportunities to set up proper shoots and go on journeys that are dedicated to photography. It’s really just the pressures of daily life getting in the way. I do take photos every week, it’s just that they are inconsiderate and unplanned snaps. I don’t feel I’m making artworks, which is what I would like to do if I had the time. I don’t think creative inspiration comes totally naturally to all of us. Some of us are perhaps more driven to set up the opportunities and find the stimulus, more driven to do that than other things. Instead I’m driven to go all over the place…