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Month: April 2016

Holding Space

Holding Space

Article here

Despite all our efforts, each of us experiences difficult and tragic moments in life. We will all experience the death of loved ones or life altering illnesses or accidents to ourselves or others. Modern society has relegated death largely to hospitals (instead of the home where 90% of deaths occurred even as recently as 100 years ago) and the dissolution of nuclear family support systems have left many of us poorly equipped to emotionally deal with these events. Yet, I think most of us know of a relative, friend, religious leader who seems to know what to say and is a gentle pillar in our times of need. They make the journey through these dark valleys much easier in a way that seems almost natural. The truth is that this isn’t something that comes naturally to most. Instead, it is sometimes called learning how to ‘holding space’ or ‘holding sacred space’ for someone.

Holding space means that we are willing to walk with another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control. It creates an environment where people can feel what they need to feel with someone they trust and in doing so, learn how to listen to and trust themselves and their abilities to do the right things. This space allows them to acknowledge and process the often dramatic, illogical, and out of control feelings and thoughts that are common during these moments instead of burying or having them judged and discounted. In my experience, it’s how we become conduits of Christ for others.

Anyway, here’s the 8 points that this article covers about how to hold space for others. I recommend it as a read.

1. Give people permission to trust their own intuition and wisdom.

2. Give people only as much information as they can handle.

3. Don’t take their power away.

4. Keep your own ego out of it.

5. Make them feel safe enough to fail.

6. Give guidance and help with humility and thoughtfulness.

7. Create a container for complex emotions, fear, trauma, etc.

8. Allow them to make different decisions and to have different experiences than you would. 

Find out if you have unclaimed money – all in one place

Find out if you have unclaimed money – all in one place

If the government owes you money and you do not collect it, then it’s unclaimed. This also applies to defunct banks, credit unions, pensions, mortgages, and other sources. The following site gives you all the links on how to look for unclaimed money and avoid scams related to unclaimed funds.

https://www.usa.gov/unclaimed-money#item-37222

Practice your coding skills

Practice your coding skills

For those of us that work in the industry, one of the difficult parts about working in high tech is constantly keeping on top of all the new developments and technology.

One of the things I’ve noticed after you get a lot of years of work under your belt is that you naturally start specializing into certain areas. These specializations are good in themselves, but often they utilize only slivers of the original breadth of computer science, algorithms, and data structures. If one is not careful, you can lose that breadth that is essential to your adaptability.

LeetCode is a great website with literally hundreds of coding problems that can help you brush up on your algorithms, data structures, and coding skills.  Give it a whirl!