Five questions meme

[chickenfeet]

frankie_ecap asked questions and got (1) What are the benefits that you've derived from the CBT, and what are your reservations and criticisms?

It wasn't CBT, it was more Adler/Freud influenced analysis. It helped me process some childhood stuff which I came to realise was responsible for some very deep, repeating patterns of behaviour. I can recognise the triggers for certain kinds of downward spiral now and recalibrate appropriately. I don't have the terrifying toxic nightmares anymore. If i had to find a criticism it's that it is very slow and frustrating as a process.

(2) What difference has it made to your life being back at work again? and (2a) It seems to the reader as if your career is really set on an impressive path now - where do you see it going next and why?

No foster kittens. I see less of the lemur. I'm tired a lot of the time. I think I'm doing something worthwhile. I don't know whether my work is 'impressive' or not. I don't think my career is. I've occasionally been able to find slots where I've been able to do interesting and valuable things for a few months or years but I've never really been able to capitalize on that. I still want to help build a really impressive ehealth consulting practice but I'm not sure that anyone really wants one. At least I'm not sure anyone is prepared to stay on strategy long enough to create one. It's currently a very opportunistic field on both the supplier and the client side. It's not easy to be consistently effective, intellectually consistent and ethical in the sense of always behaving as though the ultimate impact on the patient and citizen is what matters. I may be too inflexible to achieve all that i want to.

(3) What are you learning from being a coach? What advice would you have for someone starting out in coaching?

Where to get fake ID for my daughter? They do very nice University of Alberta IDs on Yonge St.

I think I'm leaning that coaching is mostly facilitation and knowledge transfer. The caricature of the American school or college coach who screams their head off at players and so on just isn't me. This year I'm going to take more time to work with the team to set goals and expectations. It isn't school. The boys don't have to be there. There are no exams to pass or key learning assessments. So, I want to figure out what they want to achieve and then help them achieve it.

My advice to starting coach would be to reflect on what s/he got out of being coached and how much of that was a function of the coach(ing) and how much a function of what s/he put into it themselves.

(4) If you had lots and lots of money, what would you do with it and why?

This depends I think on whether one is talking Pubshy type lots of money or Bill Gates type lots of money or controlling the US Budget lots of money.

If it was Gates or Soros style wealth I think I'd do pretty much what they do. Try and identify interventions that make sense that won't be made by governments for all the usual bullshit reasons. I'd focus on underdeveloped countries and on the relatively cheap things that have been shown to make a huge difference; public health, low tech infrastructure, basic education and empowering women

If I was only investment banker rich I'd take more vacations, buy a bigger apartment with somewhere for the lemur to do messy lemur stuff, donate more to arts organizations and find some local charity where i and my money could make a difference. Maybe setting up kids sports programs in some of the grottier bits of Toronto.

(5) Who would you like to become the next US president and why? Which candidate(s) do you fear, and why?

Of the ones who have any chance of winning I'd go with Obama. I don't trust Clinton an inch. She just looks too much like a female American Tony Blair for me. I think Obama is the one most likely to reverse some of the atrocities of the last eight years and perhaps the least likely to get the US into any other stupid adventures. I still shake when I think how close nuclear war was last April.

Of the Republicans, McCain looks the least Fascist, but that's not saying much.

Truth to tell, the mongers of fear have got the US population in such a state that the probability of common sense emerging any time soon seems to me low.

Comments

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

She just looks too much like a female American Tony Blair for me.

Heh, that's true. I'm glad to find another Obama supporter out there, since most of my friends-list seems to be behind Hillary. Too bad you're not a US voter.

Unfortunately I have a gut feeling that Hillary will end up the Democratic candidate. She seems to have the backing of the party machine.