Making of An Activist
-
Fri. 1:30pm
Getting
rid of emotional garbage and becoming who you want to be
Presenter:
Ball, Hershaft, Rising
Activism is important
- Multiply impact
of personal choices
- Save literally millions of animals
- Simple: anyone, any
day, anywhere
Lessons learned
- We have incredibly limited
resources, and must make our choices accordingly;
- We must set aside our own biases and needs
and focus only on the animals' suffering;
- We should recognize that an activist's life
is the most meaningful life possible
Meaningful life: fulfilling our humanity's promise
Make
our life a part of something greater
Make the choice to
be the animals' voice
**********************************************************************************************
Alex
Hershaft, PhD
Farm
Animal Rights Movement, www.farmusa.org
Click
here for a formatted version of Alex's outline.
THE MAKING OF AN ACTIVIST – I
(Taking Charge of Our Lives)
Taking charge of our life is the first and by far the hardest
step toward becoming an effective activist.
What Makes Us Tick?
- Leading lives of
quiet desperation in the land and time of greatest opportunity
- Most
complex device on earth with no instruction manual; takes
half a lifetime to learn
- Mechanistic product of past experiences;
past behavior predictor future; my story
- Self-concept:
self-ideal (who like to be), self-image (who think we
are), self-esteem (how feel about it)
How Did We Get Here?
- Born with clean slate,
spontaneous, uninhibited no self ideal, no self-image,
no self-esteem
- Role models and shapers of self-image:
parents, peers, teachers, bosses, spouses
- Tools: guilt,
shame, conditional love, destructive criticism, punishment,
humiliation
- Stories: personal perceptions of reality dealing
with location, resources, appearance, age,
genetics, in-telligence, education, experience
- Fears: change
(if it ain’t broke), confrontation
(not my problem), control (when my time comes),
deci-sion (I’ll try), failure (I can’t), rejection
(he/she hates me), responsibility (not my fault), sexuality
(won’t
satisfy), solution (won’t work), success
(won’t
last)
- Winning formulas: behavior patterns that
replace open, honest interactions
- Conscious
mind: filters and interprets our experiences and stores
them in subconscious mind; discrimi-nating, analytical,
single thought; like CPU
- Subconscious mind: stores perceptions
of experiences filtered/interpreted by CM; also repeated
notions; unable to discriminate between fantasy and reality,
large storage; like HD
- Stories, fears, and winning formulas
accepted by CM, because generated by us or by role models
or by-passed through repetition, and stored by SM
- They
lead to reaffirmation of self-image and repetitive behavior
patterns; also to destructive coping mechanisms like
anger, alienation, psychotic behavior
Where Do We Want to Get
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: physiological
(food, shelter, rest, sex), security
(physical, financial, emo-tional), acceptance (approval,
recognition, love), self-actualization (living your ideals)
- Each
level’s needs must be fulfilled before
those in next higher level and vice-versa
- Success
as fulfillment of needs at various levels; the role of
money; can forgo/reduce needs
- Goals define direction,
but vague about results and timing; two dimensions: personal,
professional, ideological, but also physical, intellectual,
emotional; can be negative too
- Objectives map steps toward
goal; attributes: short-term, attainable, measurable,
consistent
- Set goals (five years to live), objectives (details),
priorities (include forgone/reduced
needs)
- Develop monthly, weekly, daily schedules and review/reward
process
How Do We Get There
- Self-ideal and self-esteem easy, so dwell on self-image,
key to controlling future behavior;
defined by stories, rackets and fears, and winning
formulas
- Reinventing ourselves is a long and arduous process;
requires breaking the vicious
cycle of reaching for higher goals while held down by our
stories, fears, winning formulas
- Consider personal growth
courses by institutions like the Forum
- In setting goals
and objectives, expand comfort zone: take calculated
risks, learn to live with conse-quences, turn failures
into opportunities, make unreasonable requests
- Take full
responsibility for your life: question and take control
of your stories, fears, winning formulas
- Turn destructive
emotions from masters to slaves: anxiety (turn to motivation),
jealousy (turn to friend-ship), anger (forgive); it’s
not about them, it’s
about you; you must give permission
- Use visualization, repetition to improve self-image
and substitution to banish negative thoughts
- But cherish
and cultivate powerful constructive emotions: joy,
passion, outrage
**********************************************************************************************
1. Self Care - why we need to get over the guilt and do
it already and how
2. Attitude - how to recognize our wins and survive our
losses
3. Being human - the good, the bad, and the ugly
4. Personalizing your activism