There is also a lot more abuse and neglect than people realize (or want to think about). In fact, pretty much every time I go someplace where there are a lot of children with their parents, I can be certain of seeing it in public. While it’s hard to know exactly what goes on at home, seeing mistreatment in public gives us the opportunity to do something about it, even if that means just pointing out that it’s a bad thing.

For the child, the importance of knowing that someone in the world noticed the situation they were in–and cared enough to say something–is difficult to overstate. Even a single intervention can have a lasting impact. But standing up for a mistreated child in public is also a difficult thing to do. In my experience it is almost always very emotionally volatile and even frightening.

I and a number of friends have made a commitment to intervene in abusive situations, and over the past few months I have noticed a big increase in the number of posts people are making on Facebook and some of the message boards I frequent about confrontations they initiated. Sharing the experience with friends and getting support and encouragement in return is a vital part of the process.

That’s what Caring Witness is for. It’s a place where you can post stories about times you intervened when someone was being mistreated, even if all you could manage were some encouraging words to the victim. A community for people courageous enough to confront abusers, supporting one another and getting the encouragement they need. Also a channel through which you can discover new ideas or “best practices” for a successful intervention–since obviously the best outcome is one in which the abuser changes their ways.

Join us! Learn More or Share Your Story.

• Center myself and move physically toward the situation with confidence and presence.
• 2 Options:
• Empathic Identification: “You must be feeling a lot of stress right now. I know it’s frustrating, but you really don’t want to do that. You’re driving a wedge between yourself and your child, destroying the possibility of intimacy and true respect now and in the future. It may seem counterintuitive, but…”
• Firm Countermand: “___ behavior is completely unacceptable, is actually illegal in some places, etc. It may be hard for you to stop, but you just can’t do ___ anymore.
• Remind the adult that they didn’t like being treated that way as a child; consider using the thought experiment about a giant doing the same to them as they are doing to their child.
• Speak to the child and ask if they are okay; sympathize with them and show that something better is out there.
• Consider my responses to the most common excuses and justifications:
• “You don’t know what it’s like because you don’t have the kids.”
• “___ treatment is good for them, teaches them values, etc.”
• “It’s the only way to get obedience out of them.”
• “What else am I supposed to do?”
• In general, expect projection and defenses.
• Strong emotions may not belong to me, but to the child or parent.
• If the abuser accuses me of something, they are certainly describing themselves.

Let me know if you think this is a good idea, or if you have any contributions to make to the script!

For instance I was recently in Colorado on a retreat, I ended up in a debate with a friend about the merits (or lack thereof) of schooling. I got flustered and ended up firing a series of facts at her about the violent resistance to the nationalization of schools during the 19th century. Oops.

What I should have done what stopped the conversation as soon as she began to be defensive. She was cutting me off with objections before I could hardly complete my sentences. It would have been much more effective for me to be explicit.

By firing a series of facts at her which she doubtless had never heard before I was intending to point out the degree to which she is uninformed about this topic. However, because I did it implicitly rather than explicitly, I probably only projected my frustration, irritation, and anger onto her.

It would have been far better for me to stop the conversation and say, “Do you think that I have thought about this very much? I am clearly putting forward a position that is neither common nor popular. Why would I do that if I was not convinced it was true? Do you want to hear why I think it’s true?”

If she agrees that I might have thought about it and that it would be silly for me to spend time and social capital having unpopular beliefs without good reason for them, then it would be perfectly reasonable for her to let me make my case before raising her objections. Maybe I have heard some of her objections before, and maybe I will respond to them before she even bring them up.

If she asks me the same questions I asked her (which would probably never happen, but hey…), I would reply that I do not think she has thought about this very much or done any research, and that she is merely repeating the common opinion which she has heard from everyone else. My intent is to educate her and other people about an alternative possibility which I expect they have neither considered nor even heard much of before.

Attempting to educate people is not condescending, since I am anticipating that they have the capacity to understand my arguments if only they will take the time to think about them. True condescension would be to never talk to them at all about the research I’ve done and to assume that they would not understand it anyway. If someone accuses me of being condescending by trying to educate them, I can be certain that they themselves are being condescending in that moment by assuming that my intelligence combined with the work I’ve done to discover the truth has not achieved anything at all.

I have a hard time making drawings like this because this low level of detail seems to me somehow inaccurate. I focus so much on getting the details right that I can never actually finish an art project. I have had this limitation for a long time, which is why I could never finish a project in art class on time in elementary school.

But I must realize that photographs are not even meant to convey infinite detail, although they do suffice for enough detail in most circumstances. Paintings or drawings are meant to convey ideas, not pictures. If with a simple brushstroke I can convey the idea of a leaf, then I can stop adding detail and move on to the next idea. Photographs capture images of things that already exist; but I can draw or paint things that do not yet exist.

While looking at the chalk art tonight I was also struck by the degree to which the artists considered symbols and images to be malleable. They manipulated various images in order to convey an idea about them that would otherwise not be obvious. For instance, one artist drew the seeds of a flower as they were blowing away in the wind as skyscrapers. Another placed all kinds of environmental imagery in Mother Nature’s hair as it was being blown by a windmill that she held in her hand. Images could be blended, distorted, amended, or otherwise changed to fit the artist’s needs.

I am afraid to do that. For one thing, to distort an image in this way is to fail to depict it “accurately,” and it goes against my technical perfectionism. My fear may also be rooted in the same emotional cause as my early environmentalism. Implicit in the manipulation of imagery is the assumption that the materials out of which that imagery is constructed are not scarce. If material resources are scarce then manipulating them in the name of expression is wasteful. It feels wasteful to me to make multiple drafts of an art project. I look at the paper, glue, paint, and time as at least partially wasted if they are not dedicated directly to the final product. This is an emotional leftover of my days as an environmentalist (and of the emotional cause of my environmentalism).

In philosophy, the high value I place on accuracy and faithful representation is warranted. It makes me very successful in the realm of determining truth from falsehood. When I want to compare an idea in my head with the contents of reality, dedication to truth, accuracy, and consistency is especially appropriate. Truth is still important in the creation of art, but it conveyed in a different way.

I am particularly bitter about the lies I have been told through art. Artists have greatly misled me about what to expect in the world, and I am angry at them for it. I do not wish to repeat their mistakes and hurt other credulous children. However, truth in art is a little different from truth in philosophy. As an artist the truth I seek to convey is about my internal state, about my emotions. The fidelity of my depictions to objects in the outside world is therefore not of primary importance. My standard should not be whether a particular image “looks correct,” but whether the idea or emotion I wish to convey is elicited in the viewer.

Art also gives me the opportunity to create new truth. While being careful not to lie about what is possible or why it is possible, I can show others my vision. I can communicate my ideals through art in a way that is impossible through any other medium.

The philosophical perspective and quest for the discovery of truth has dominated much of my life over the past few years. I do not believe it is fundamentally opposed to the creative potential of art. Perhaps the two disciplines merely have distinct domains. I don’t have to let philosophy rule my entire life. Clear, rational thinking is important, but I don’t have to do it all the time. It is a tool which I have access to at any time, but I also have access to other tools. I want to spend more time developing my creativity and less time censoring myself by obsessing over “accuracy.”

It’s not that I make up these expectations completely out of nowhere. People often give me (what I consider to be) indications of interest, initiative, or reciprocity. There is an initial flurry of conversation and activity, and then things sink back into normal monotony.

I want to protect my capacity to be excited about and look forward to social activities. Every time I suffer a disappointment like this part of me becomes more and more convinced that such disappointments are the rule of life rather than the exception. It begins to expect them every time and thus prevents me from becoming excited. When someone commits to going out with me I automatically begin discounting the probability that it will actually happen, thus dampening my excitement. I wonder if I am somehow giving people permission to disappoint me through some behavior or words of mine. What is it about me that makes them think this is okay?

Part of my disappointment stems from my expectation that other people will be as consistent in keeping their commitments as I am. When other people flake on plans that we made, even if it is for a “good” reason, I feel that they are somehow giving me a signal of how important I am to them. When they don’t call me or take the initiative in planning times for us to be together, I interpret their behavior the same way I would interpret such behavior in me. If I don’t ever call someone, it’s because they are not important to me. If I don’t make room in my schedule to spend time with someone, it is because spending time with them is less important to me than my other commitments and projects. I understand their behavior to be implying a particular order of priorities.

People use various forms of the excuse “I forgot” when telling me why they didn’t call me or couldn’t honor some commitment they made to me. My first response to this excuse is to think that it is completely bogus. I don’t often forget things that are important to me. And when I do have to reschedule a social event for some reason, I’m quick to apologize for it and ensure that it doesn’t become a pattern.

But perhaps people’s forgetfulness is more than merely an excuse. Perhaps it is a cognitive reality that they do not have the mental function necessary to maintain a constellation of plans inside their heads the way that I do. The evidence for this lies in the way I keep track of things I need to do outside of the social sphere. In past years I have diligently recorded homework assignments and tests in a notebook or day planner only during the first few weeks of a semester. After that most of what I need to do is stored in short-term memory within my own mind and I somehow manage to remember most of it. I do this less now because I have recognized the degree to which it taxes my other mental and emotional processes, but the ability is there. Most other people do not seem to have this ability. They might be lost without their day planners.

When I think of other people in this manner I am no longer angry at them; my anger is replaced by sadness for them and for myself.

Another common excuse is that people don’t “have time.” They are “busy.” I understand this to be a delineation of priorities rather than an accurate description of how hectic their lives are. But I also am unconsciously assuming that they have the same degree of control over their schedules as I do. This is clearly not the case. Most people are enslaved to their schedules. They are not in control of their lives, and this is a tragedy. The fact that they do not make time to spend time with me this not reflect on me and may not even say anything of their estimation of me. One clue that led me to this conclusion was observing that I also feel a great deal of helplessness and frustration mixed with the repeated disappointment…

Since the helplessness is not objectively mine but depends upon their actions, I think it comes from them. Through this pattern of interaction they are projecting their helplessness on me. How can I stop myself from being the vehicle of their projection? How am I opening myself up to it?

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What do you think of when you hear the phrase “personal growth”? All kinds of warm and fuzzy connotations are attached to it, but what does it really mean?

Philosophers, artists, and spiritual thinkers have tried to create or discover a roadmap for growth for centuries. One could be forgiven for observing the state of human society and surmising that all these efforts have been in vain. But believe it or not, people actually have come up with some pretty good ideas over the years, but you probably haven’t heard of most of them. Even when good ideas have made it to the mainstream, they have as a rule become so diluted so as to have lost most of their power.

At Sunday 2.0, we’ve done a lot of digging. We have searched out new ideas from a host of sources, both well-known and esoteric. Although we haven’t found a single silver bullet that answers the questions of Growth and Enlightenment once and for all, we have discovered a number of edifying and practical concepts that we believe are worth sharing.

Finding fellow travelers on your journey will make your quest for personal growth more enjoyable and more successful. Join us Sunday mornings for a presentation on some of the most interesting and inspiring ideas we’ve come across. We hope you hear something you can use to make your life better, and we hope you’ll meet people who are on the same path and can provide support and companionship along the way.

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Nash Yielding, and I am a Briarwood graduate from the year 2007. I attended Briarwood for all of my schooling, from K-4 through the end of high school. Since graduating, I have spent some time studying psychology, both formally (through college classes) and informally (by reading a number of books and current journal articles, and by listening to interviews with experts in the field). Conflict resolution, both among adults and between adults and children, has been of particular interest to me.

I recently spoke with Dr. Mosbacker about alternatives to spanking, which I believe (and which research has shown) to be not only ineffective, but a counterproductive means of discipline. I was overjoyed to hear that the practice has been officially discontinued at the high school and junior high level, but I believe there is a good case to be made for change at the elementary level too.

Like any exercise of authority and power, spanking creates external incentives for a child to change his behavior. It may achieve compliance in the short run, but it does not promote genuine understanding of the difference between right and wrong [1]. A child who is spanked does not internalize a methodology for making healthy and sound decisions. He only learns to follow the dictates of authority in the moment [2]. Instead of spanking, teachers could model negotiation. They could explain why certain rules exist, and how they serve the interests of both the school and the child. Children want to cooperate. If they are given the chance to understand the purpose of a rule (and if the rule makes sense), then they are much more likely to participate in following the rules and encouraging others to follow them as well.

If a child is climbing on a fence, the teacher could threaten him with punishment, or she could say something like: “When I see you climbing on the fence, I feel afraid because you could fall off and hurt yourself, and I don’t want you to be hurt. Even if you are a good climber, other children who are not good climbers may see you climbing and want to copy you. I don’t want them to fall and get hurt either. I want you to have fun, but I have to watch the whole playground. I can’t make sure everyone else is playing safe and having fun if I have to spend all my time paying extra attention to you because you’re doing something dangerous.” She could go on to suggest alternative forms of play that don’t involve increased risk.

This approach may seem time-consuming—and at the beginning it is. But because it promotes understanding of the reasons behind the rule, the child can internalize the logic behind not only this particular rule, but perhaps other rules as well. Children want to know why things are the way they are—That’s why they’re always asking!

Negotiation begins when the teacher explains her perspective, but that’s only half the equation. It is equally important for the child to be heard, and to feel that his perspective is understood. Even if the rule doesn’t change, it can be enormously helpful for the child to have the experience of being listened to. If his thoughts and feelings matter, he is much more likely to feel that he has some investment in the school. Children aren’t alone in this. As adults we also feel more invested in our relationships when someone listens to us—our bosses, our neighbors, our spouses…And of course, there may be some chance that the rule is not serving its purpose (to keep the children safe and happy, to promote a secure and stimulating learning environment, etc.) and needs to be amended. Because children experience the teacher-student authority relationship from below rather than above, they may be able to see something that others have missed.

Spanking can also be physically dangerous. There is no safe way to hit a child, particularly a young child. Depending on where they are hit, bruising and even damage to bones and tendons can occur [3]. Even if one is attempting to hit a child in a “safe place” the child might move in the last moment so that he is struck in an unsafe place (such as the lower back, tailbone, or a major nerve, which for young children are still developing and are easily damaged). What if the child were to fall and hit his head or eye against the corner of a desk or table? A teacher may be two, or three, or even four times larger than a small child. What if the teacher overestimates his strength? What if a teacher gets carried away in the moment?

Certainly the school has policies that attempt to protect against extremities, such as recommending that teachers not “spank in anger,” and requiring that two adults be present during the procedure [4]. But the physical, emotional, and spiritual risks of spanking are not reduced by hitting “without anger.” In my experience at Briarwood the “rule of two” was never followed (I was spanked once and saw other children being spanked on at least four other occasions, and there was never a second adult present). There is no way to enforce this policy; children are unaware of it and therefore cannot report violations (or will not, if they fear additional punishment), and teachers may also be unaware of the rule, or they may not wish to enforce it on themselves.

Spanking can harm brain development. Even if no visible physical damage is done to the child’s body, being struck by an adult (or even being threatened with such aggression) causes the release of stress hormones in the brain, including cortisol. Overstimulation by adrenaline and cortisol, particularly during the rapid development that occurs at an early age, has been shown to cause brain damage, even significantly reducing the size of certain areas of the brain. Such brain damage can result in learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and an inability to empathize with others—resulting in aggressive or even violent behavior [5].

I really appreciate that you took the time to read my letter. Like you, I want the children who go through Briarwood Christian School to have a safe, happy, and productive time at school. I want teachers and the students they are responsible for to have the best relationship possible. I want school to be an experience that children look forward to, not just one they endure. Thank you for considering the ideas I put forward above. I hope they are useful in beginning (or continuing!) a dialogue about the best way to model love and respect between teachers and students.

I would be happy to speak further on this matter or to provide additional references to anyone who is interested. Thank you again for your time and consideration.

Nash Yielding
Class of 2007

[1] Alice Park, “The Long-Term Effects of Spanking” – TIME Magazine, May 3, 2010, available here

[2] See Dr. Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training, ch. 9-10

[3] Jordan Riak, “Plain Talk about Spanking,” available here

[4] See Briarwood’s policy, available on their website

[5] Alice Miller, “The Political Consequences of Child Abuse,” The Journal of Psychohistory, available here

I have noticed that whenever I have a peak experience, my expectation for future experiences ratchets up so that I have to do even better next time in order to experience the same good feeling. But when it comes to emotional experiences which are definitely in the top one or two percentiles of my experience, I can expect them not to happen very often. It is unreasonable for me to expect that achieving a peak experience today increases my odds of achieving a peak experience tomorrow. Rather than furiously looking for my next opportunity to win big in the stock market or have a real connection with someone I like, I can take the opportunity to enjoy what I have accomplished. After all, what’s the point of pursuing another peak experience if I’m not going to enjoy that one either? If peak experiences make me frantic and anxious about when the next one is going to come, then I don’t see what incentive I have to pursue them. However, if I take the time to bask in the glow of the peak experiences for hours or even days (depending upon the strength of the experience), I will enjoy them more, have a better outlook on life, have a better experience of living in the moment, and be less likely to make self-distracted decisions in a misguided quest to regularly achieve the unlikely.

The key to increasing the frequency of peak experiences is to become comfortable with them, not to be made frantic by them. I think the best thing to do after a peak experience is to take a break from whatever project or area of my life the experience occurred in. Let the realization sink in. If my emotional apparatus time to reset, taking into account the peak experience but also recognizing the reality of its unusualness.

In the stock market, this may mean taking a few days off after making a big trade. During these days off I may even decide not to watch the market at all; this would give me an opportunity to psychologically disengage from the market and lower the degree to which my psychological patterns have been synchronized with other traders by regular exposure to them. In possible romantic relationships, I would relax and allow myself to feel good about what I have done. I don’t have to immediately start thinking about what the “next step” is, or how I can move on to bigger and better accomplishments. For instance, if I hold someone’s hand one evening, I don’t have to immediately plan for what I’m going to say next time I see her. And if I have the opportunity to rub her back, I don’t have to do that every time I see her in order for our relationship to be any good.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how common this pattern is in all of my relationships. If I reach a certain degree of closeness or intimacy with someone during one interaction, I expect to be able to pick up where we left off next time I see them. But this is often not the case, possibly for a number of reasons, some of which may not even be related to the relationship directly. For instance, if I go to lunch with someone during the week, the fact that we talk about casual topics and don’t end up holding hands and talking about our emotions for a couple of hours does not indicate that our relationship has moved backwards. Perhaps I’m afraid that my peak experiences will go down the memory hole, that no reference will be made to them in our relationship and that they will never happen again.

Peak experiences in my relationships with women seem all too rare, and because I don’t yet have a way of consistently or even predictably achieving them, I am insecure about them. It’s almost like I don’t quite believe they happened; perhaps I only imagined the whole thing, or perhaps it didn’t mean what I thought it did. Perhaps it could be helpful to reference the peak experience next time I see the person involved, such as saying “We held hands last week, and I really enjoyed that.” That way, even if we don’t end up holding hands today, I can feel that the peak experience really happened, that it has not been forgotten, and that it has been integrated into our relationship as a whole.

In the stock market, when I have a peak experience in the form of a really good trade I can remind myself that I do have the ability to find good stocks and trade them correctly. I can acknowledge the success I just had and appreciate the fact that I will have such a success again, even if it’s not tomorrow. I might make mistakes or the market might not be moving, but I will eventually make more really good trades. The key is to not make really bad trades in the process of trying to force good trades to happen.

The same thing is true in my 3-D relationships. I have had peak experiences before and I will have them again. In fact, the work that I’m doing on myself should increase the rate of peak experiences in both my personal relationships and the stock market over time. I can be happy about this and not worry about rushing the process. If the pursuit of peak experiences does not flow naturally out of my personality and internal processes, but is instead an anxiety management technique, I can only expect it to achieve the opposite of my intended goal. Taking a break and basking in the glow of a peak experience will give me the chance to reset my expectations, make certain of what I did right, and affirm that I will have more experiences like this in the future.

But I have to understand something. Looking in their behavior, I have no choice but to conclude that other people typically are fundamentally satisfied by merely casual interactions.

“Hey, how’s it going?” “I’m not bad. How are things going?” “Good, have you been?” “Busy, but good.” [Insert some irrelevant trivia about the past few days or weeks.] “It was good talking to you.” “All right, see you!”

It is mind-boggling to me, but this is the level of interaction in most relationships. And (at least externally) people seem quite satisfied with this. I think there is evidence for a deeper and unfulfilled yearning in other people, but they work devilishly hard to keep those yearnings unconscious. And I can’t save everyone. I can’t be there for everyone. It’s okay to focus on achieving intimacy in just a few of my most important relationships. I don’t have to try to turn everyone into an enthusiastic, passionate, truthful, and real human being. It would be wonderful if they were, but their transformation is not my responsibility. I want to take responsibility for it, because I want to believe that I have power to make it happen, or at least to “help them.” But the more I try to do this, the more convinced I become that it is a fool’s errand.

How can I adjust my expectations for most interactions so that they are not unrealistic? By projecting my expectations onto them, I may actually be provoking fear in other people. If it’s true that people really are intuitive and philosophical (at least unconsciously), then they will sense my high expectations for them, and if they don’t wish to rise to those expectations then they may be afraid both of what that lack of desire says about them and by what I might do to them in my disappointment. I think I really do scare people. I can be very intense, and if they aren’t used to it (and who are we kidding, they aren’t) such intensity could be startling. And if my desire for additional contact and depth seems insatiable, it is because they are so far below what I consider to be my standard.

Of course, this raises the question of why I am continuing to push interactions with people who are so far beneath that standard. I have been surrounded by such people for such a large portion of my life that I may have developed a psychological complex around “reforming” and “improving” people. But that isn’t what I want anyway. What I’m looking for (particularly in a romantic partner) is self-motivated achievement of this standard, hopefully to a significant extent before we even meet. I need for the other person’s progress to be self-motivated and self-directed. As flattering as it would be for someone to change for me, I would never be able to trust that the change was real, and I would always be expecting a disaster around the next corner.

I “know” that the best way to get what I want is to act with integrity and be honest in the moment, confidently expressing my true self to others so that they may have good information on which to base their decision about whether they want a relationship with me. But I find this so hard to do. There must be some part of me that does not believe this to be the best course of action, or does not agree with the goal. I wonder what kind of counter-arguments it has.

If I am honest with people from the beginning, then I believe that my success rate (of finding people worthy of and willing for a relationship) will be very low. Most people will be frightened away immediately, and I will not be able to sustain the illusion that I have any kind of charisma—or at least enough charisma to overcome people’s bigotry and fear. I’m also worried about what implementing a new standard in my relationships will do to my existing relationships. I would have to go to the people who I am currently friends with and confess all of the times I remember when I have not been honest. The longer and more emotional the relationship has been, the longer and more emotionally volatile this process will be. When I compare this to my ideal, I think that it would be quite fascinating and wonderful (not to mention intimate and cathartic) to be able to have a series of conversations like that with someone, backlogging and digging through both past and present emotions. I think I could do that for days with some people without getting tired of it.

But what if it wasn’t important to them in the same way it was to me? What if they didn’t want to do it for very long—or at all? Well I would feel terrible of course. I would feel that I had been rejected and that there was now a specific and explicit cap on the intimacy of our relationship. My first reaction to that would be either to withdraw or to attempt to somehow manipulate the other person into continuing the process. They would probably resist the manipulation by withdrawing themselves.

Instead of pursuing either of those remedies, I could clearly express my desire to communicate this way and vulnerably state how important it is for me to continue. And of course I could tell them how frightened I was to make such a firm declaration. Then see what happens.

This principle can also be applied in other interactions.

Debate:

In debates with people who hold other positions, try not to think in terms of attack and defense. This pattern stems from the tendency to ego-identify with one’s ideas and positions on particular issues. Rather, treat the debate as an exchange of information, where each person gives their perspective and the reasons and evidence that led them to that perspective. Ideally, this should be completely non-confrontational. Both parties have something to gain from the interaction, even if their positions are not swayed. My goal in debates should be a search for truth—to be so focused on pursuing the truth that it shows through my actions and registers in the other person’s subconscious and disarms their psychological defenses. Ask questions.

Personal Relationships:

Curiosity can be a valuable strategy in personal relationships for determining what, if anything, the relationship is based upon. It can also be useful for expanding the scope of the relationship and finding out more about both the other person and me. I strive to be more objective in my perspective; that is, avoid posturing and really seek out proof (or disproof) of compatibility.

Romantic Relationships:

In my past attempts at romantic relationships, I have focused on trying to get the other person to “like me.” My shyness has been amplified many times by a fear of making a mistake that will result in not being liked. I have been so afraid of making a mistake that I have behaved as if I expect the woman to react negatively toward me. The predictable and frequent result has been the exact disaster that I feared. Instead of fearing some kind of rejection, I should approach the situation/relationship with curiosity: “I wonder if we have anything in common. I wonder whether she is the kind of person who is capable of recognizing my virtue. I wonder if I am the kind of person who is capable of recognizing virtue in another. I wonder whether we are emotionally compatible. I wonder what it is that draws me to her physically and emotionally. I wonder whether my attraction toward her is based on anything more than subconscious judgment based on physical characteristics. This strategy will fundamentally alter the way in which I interact with potential dates (and other people too).

Why is it that the idea of simply asking a girl out whom I barely know seems strange to me? What am I waiting for? How do I expect to get to know her if I never take the initiative to spend time with her? My past and current strategy relies heavily on chance—that we will happen to be in situations where we can interact, that she will happen to not start dating someone else before I have a chance to become comfortable asking her out. In the past I have waited to ask girls out until I had some kind of positive and obvious confirmation that they like me.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I make a psycho-philosophical judgment based on physical appearance, and then I begin to create a fantasy version of her in my mind based on my assumptions and expectations. Then I am afraid of having my fantasy disproved, so I subconsciously avoid closeness and intimacy—or at least I refuse to initiate it.

If I am truly confident about my own virtues, and I know what kind of virtues I want in a friend or romantic partner, then I do not have to be worried about casting a wide net in search of a match. (This also could apply to Stef’s suggestion about training the trainer rather than spending a lot of time on individuals who will not spread the philosophy.) I can then be curious (“I wonder whether this person will accept me. I wonder whether this person is virtuous. I wonder whether we have anything in common. I wonder whether she is willing to think for herself.”) and discover the truth. This strategy could significantly speed up the process of discovering matches in terms of girlfriends and other kinds of relationships. Instead of trying to force people to reach my standards, I can ask, “I wonder whether this person is a good match?”

Curiosity with myself is especially important. If I do something that seems strange to me (for example, being afraid of asking someone out), then I can be curious about my own motives. This will afford me the chance to correctly diagnose the problem and search for a solution, rather than putting off the exploration or assuming that it will work itself out somehow.