Winning Ways Women Can Make Money Online

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Leslie Campo

COVID-19 has stretched budgets thin across the country, but many women have lost tons of money due to losing their jobs or having to take fewer hours to work at home to care for children. Women in particular need to make more money thanks to the struggles of the pandemic.

Fortunately, the Daughters of Sheba Foundation is here to detail a number of ways that at-home working women or mothers can still make money.

Passive Income Streams

Want to earn money while relaxing or taking care of your family? In that case, passive income is the strategy for you.

Passive income streams allow you to earn money through advertising or other methods over time, usually requiring a minimum of daily effort. Passive income stream ideas include:

  • Making your own blog network and advertising on the network
  • Marketing through affiliate marketing to earn commissions on sales of specific products
  • Teaching online courses and selling the courses repeatedly
  • Making YouTube videos or other content and earning income through ads

Form a Company

Of course, you can also make money by forming your own company and selling products or services! For many women, this is the entrepreneurial ideal. If you lost your job, consider it a sign from the universe that you need to build your own company you’ll never be fired from.

If you decide to make a business to make money, consider starting your business as an LLC instead of a sole proprietorship. Limited liability companies get better tax breaks and may allow you to expand your company if it really takes off. Just make sure your state doesn’t have any surprising rules regarding LLCs before you file your paperwork.

No matter the business you decide to start, you’ll need a great marketing campaign to spread the word about your brand far and wide. Hire a great web designer to create attractive online ads and a fantastic-looking website with excellent images. You can even collaborate with them and send JPG files back and forth as you figure out how the site will look and what images are best for your online ads.

Just don’t forget to use a handy JPG-to-PDF converter – this will allow you to compress JPG files when you email them but recover the images’ full quality when downloaded.

You might also consider going back to school to acquire a business degree, such as an MBA or Master of Business Administration. Such degrees give you extra business management skills and may give you the knowledge and tools you need to thrive in any economic environment. You may make more money online with a business degree since you’ll make smarter decisions when forming a company or engaging in other capitalist ventures.

earn moneySide Hustles for Working Women

If you’re not interested in making a permanent business, you can still make money online through side hustles. There is plenty of online side-hustle opportunities these days, including but not limited to:

  • Answering surveys or questions for small fees
  • Working as a digital assistant for a company
  • Teaching courses or teaching English to foreigners
  • Selling photographs online as stock photos

Job Boards and Freelancing

If you’re a seasoned professional in one or more fields, consider signing up for a job board and becoming a freelancer. Freelance photographers, writers, video editors, and oftentimes make more money than their counterparts in traditional companies.

Setting Up Your Office

If your goal is to work from home, do yourself a huge favour and dedicate part of your home to being an office. It should be an area that’s comfortable but distraction-free. If that requires some renovations, don’t worry – as an added benefit, such improvements also boost your home’s appraisal value!

Women Are Winning, Even with COVID

All in all, the COVID-19 pandemic has been tough for women. But women just like you can still make money online to pay for bills, cover family expenses, and get back on their financial feet in no time. Consider trying each of these ideas at least once to see which you prefer! 

Credit

Leslie Campos created Wellparents.com to offer help and resources to busy parents who want to stay healthy and active. Her site offers parents a variety of information from stress-busters to exercise ideas to healthy eating tips. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, CrossFit and watching the Great British Baking Show.”

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Worth Reading: Tried And True Manuals For Success

Posted on March 28, 2022 by Guest Contribution

“Worth reading: Tried and true manuals for success,” by Michael J. Armstrong, Brock University

Editor’s note: The Conversation Canada asked our academic authors to share some recommended reading. In this instalment, Michael Armstrong, an operations research professor at Brock University who has written for The Conversation Canada on topics as diverse as student success rates in school to the mathematics of Civil War battle, shares the top three books that he recommends for guidance on making the most of your career at any age.

Here are three books that I often recommend to my students and friends. All are practical guides that have stood the test of time. The first will help you start your career, the second will help you succeed in it and the third will help you profit from it.

Books For Success

What Color Is Your Parachute?

A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

by Richard N. Bolles (Non-fiction. Paperback, 2016 and others. Ten Speed Press.)

This is a popular guide for job seekers. Like most such books, it gives advice on the mechanical details of job hunting, such as good ways to organize a resume.

More importantly — and less commonly — it helps people figure out what they want to do with their lives. What kind of career will best fit your personality? Will you be happier working with people or with data?

The book is an obvious fit for graduates seeking their first job. But it could also help teenagers choose the best education to pursue after high school, or adults trying to make their careers more satisfying.

The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know

Studies in Organizational Theory and Behavior

by R. Richard Ritti, Steve Levy and Neil Toucher (Non-fiction. Hardcover, 2016 and others. Chicago Business Press.)

Don’t let the academic-sounding subtitle deter you. This is a highly readable book. It consists of short stories or parables that illustrate how people behave and interact at work.

Every workplace has an official structure and formal rules. But workplaces contain people with individual personalities and relationships. This book will help you understand the unofficial structures and unwritten rules before they get you into trouble.

I often recommend The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know to people starting their first job. It would be especially good for someone promoted to their first management or supervisory role.

The Wealthy Barber

The Common Sense Guide to Successful Financial Planning

by David Chilton (Non-fiction. Paperback, 2002 and others. Stoddart.)

Once you receive your first paycheque, you’ll want to read this beginner’s guide to personal finance. It covers the basics of investing: retirement savings, mutual funds, etc. It also introduces a lot of other financial topics: savings versus spending, insurance that you do or don’t need, and so on.

This probably isn’t the only financial guide you’ll ever need, but it is a good first one. I typically recommend it to recent graduates starting their careers. But it also suits mature adults dealing with money issues for the first time, perhaps after the death or divorce of their spouse.

Have an enjoyable and productive fall!
The Conversation

Credits

Michael J. Armstrong, Associate professor of operations research, Brock University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Feeling Relatively Poor Increases Support For Women In The Workplace

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Guest Contribution

“Feeling relatively poor increases support for women in the workplace – but men still don’t want them making household decisions,” by Katrina Kosec, Johns Hopkins University and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, University of California, Berkeley

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The Big Idea

Feeling poor relative to others can spur families to support women in pursuing work outside the household and to invest more in girls’ schooling, according to our new study. But that does not mean women become more empowered.

In 2018, we conducted a survey experiment in Papua New Guinea to see how feeling economically left behind affects gender attitudes. We used a special type of survey technique to subtly alter respondents’ perception of their economic well-being in relation to other households. Half of the study participants were randomly primed to feel that they were at the bottom of the wide income distribution.

We then surveyed both women and men in both groups about their attitudes toward women’s roles to assess the effects of our experiment on gender attitudes, specifically. We found that attitudes about women’s proper roles are sensitive to perceptions of their relative poverty. When those surveyed felt relatively poor, they were more likely to support women’s economic participation, including in terms of girls going to school.

Male Support

At first blush, the increase in male support for women’s working seems to be good news for women’s economic empowerment. But we found two troubling side effects.

First, being primed to feel poor did not lead men in our survey to indicate greater support for women making decisions about how to manage household assets. But it did lead women to want more decision-making authority. We speculate that women feel the stakes are higher to make good economic decisions when they feel poorer and are expected to contribute relatively more to their household’s income. These contrasting effects for women compared with men are important, as they suggest societal income inequality may trigger greater household tension. This is worrisome, particularly in places with an already high rate of domestic violence like Papua New Guinea.

Second, we carried out focus group discussions and confirmed that working outside the home does not reduce women’s unpaid domestic burdens. Indeed, some women even indicated these unwavering responsibilities as a reason to shy away from the formal labour market lest they expose themselves to violence at home for failing to perform domestic duties.

In other words, feelings of relative poverty are yet another factor fueling the demand for women to “do it all” – generating income outside the home while also performing a disproportionate share of household chores.

supportWhy It Matters – Support For Women

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected both to significantly increase the number of people living in extreme poverty and to worsen overall income inequality.

Our findings suggest that, as a result, more women around the world could want to or be compelled by family members to enter the workforce. While women’s economic participation can be a positive development, the benefits are lost if it mainly means women’s workloads increase without greater ability to make decisions affecting their lives.

This underscores the need for more government support for women’s actual empowerment through efforts like offering couples workshops that encourage women’s participation in household decision-making, as well as education campaigns aimed at confronting harmful beliefs about the acceptability of domestic violence.

What’s Next

We are carrying out similar work in Nepal – a country that is similar to Papua New Guinea with respect to levels of gender inequality and economic development, but different in that citizens often rely on remittances to make ends meet. It’s unclear how societal differences like this will affect our findings.

Different countries and cultures, with distinct roles for women and relationships between spouses, may yield divergent impacts of perceptions of relative poverty on gender roles.

Credits

Katrina Kosec, Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Half The World Is Facing Water Scarcity, Floods And Dirty Water

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Guest Contribution

“IPCC report: Half the world is facing water scarcity, floods and dirty water — large investments are needed for effective solutions” by Balsher Singh Sidhu, University of British Columbia

More than half the world’s population faces water scarcity for at least one month every year. Meanwhile, some people have to deal with too much, while others have access to only poor water quality. That’s billions of people living with drought in Africa and India, facing flood risks in Bangladesh or lacking clean water due to excessive fertilizer use in the United States, Brazil, China and India.

Climate change exacerbates global water insecurity because it contributes to more frequent and severe droughts, floods and extreme rainfall, accelerated glacier melt, rapid declines in groundwater and the deterioration of water quality. These water-related risks of climate change have negative repercussions for agriculture, energy production, water infrastructure and economic productivity, as well as human health, development and well-being around the world.

Water is central to the discussions about how societies, economies and governments adapt to climate change, and the vast majority of adaptation strategies already in place are water-related. Yet researchers know little about how effective they are.

As a researcher in the field of climate change and sustainable food systems, I was part of a team that reviewed more than 1,800 case studies for the “Water” chapter of Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, the second part of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). This newly-released report is the most comprehensive review of climate impacts and how much we can adapt to them since 2014.

waterWater At The Centre of Climate Change Strategies

The United Nations defines water security as having sustainable access to enough water of adequate quality to support people’s well-being, livelihoods and health, without jeopardizing ecosystems. Water insecurity covers a spectrum of issues — too much, too little, too dirty.

Unsurprisingly, a large majority of countries have listed water as the priority for adaptation in their climate change plans. In our review of more than 1,800 climate change adaptation strategies, we found that over 80 per cent were water-related. Some were in response to water hazards (droughts, floods, groundwater depletion, glacier depletion). In others, the response itself was water-related (irrigation, rainwater harvesting and wetlands conservation).

Yet when we looked at the outcomes of these water-based adaptation strategies, we found that only 359 had been analyzed for effectiveness, meaning that we do not know if most of these strategies actually reduce the impacts of climate change and improve health, well-being and livelihood.

Adaptation strategies that are enacted without adequate investigation of their effectiveness not only waste scarce resources but can also distract us from taking more relevant actions that carry larger benefits for the affected population.

Are The Strategies Working?

Of those 359 strategies, most targeted the agriculture sector. Agriculture accounts for 80 to 90 per cent of the total water consumed globally and provides water for 70 per cent of people in developing countries with their livelihoods.

Many of these water-focused approaches included changing the timing and arrangement of crops, choosing better crop varieties and farming techniques, expanding access to irrigation and adopting water conservation practices.

Non-agricultural water-based adaptations to climate change included adopting better fishery techniques in Ghana, planting salt-resistant trees in Bangladesh, setting up desalination plants for urban water use in Spain, building flood-resilient housing in Guyana, among others.

We also found that local, traditional and Indigenous knowledge plays an important role in shaping many adaptation responses. For instance, some farmers in Sri Lanka successfully adapted to the 2014 drought by practising bethma, a traditional technique where the community temporarily reallocated agricultural land among farmers so that each would have similar access to the limited water supply.

Combining local, traditional and Indigenous knowledge with a technical understanding of climate change can lead to the development and implementation of more acceptable and successful climate change adaptation strategies. This not only ensures equitable and inclusive adaptation actions but also increases the proposed solutions’ effectiveness at minimizing climate change impacts.

Water gushing out of a wide pipe into a reservoir.
A tubewell pumps groundwater to irrigate rice fields in Punjab, India. The exploitation of groundwater for irrigation has made this region a major hotspot of groundwater depletion in the world. (Diljot Jatana), Author provided 

Adaptation Responses

The largest number of the adaptation responses, especially those in the agriculture sector, were implemented and led by individual households and civil society bodies. Schemes by governments at various levels of administration — from local to multi-national — comprised the second largest chunk of adaptation strategies.

So far, the role of the private sector has been negligible. Private financing is a minor source of adaptation financing that has mostly focused on developed and emerging economies. Local needs, especially those of the economically disadvantaged communities, have not been adequately addressed by private financing until now.

At the recent climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, global financial firms agreed to fund projects that address climate change mitigation. The translation of these promises into action remains to be seen, but adaptation projects in low- and middle-income countries could benefit a lot from this.

Limited Utility and Unintended Consequences

But we also found that the strategies that work now, might not work in the future. The success of irrigation, soil and water conservation or other agricultural adaptations is contingent on how much warming occurs.

The benefits of these practices are mostly incremental — they have short-term rewards — and may not always lead to transformative outcomes, such as enabling a community to shifts its livelihood to one with reduced exposure to climate hazards.

We found that some responses have co-benefits: they not only help adapt to ongoing climate change but also help mitigate (or reduce) future climate change. For example, reusing wastewater for irrigation can have adaptive and mitigative co-benefits. If implemented properly, such projects can not only provide a reliable water source throughout the year but also reduce the pressure on water treatment infrastructure.

Some adaptation strategies, however, can have long-term negative impacts, called maladaptations. An often-quoted example is that of groundwater overuse for irrigation in India, which currently supports intensive agriculture but is depleting the limited groundwater reserves at a rapid pace.

Adaptation strategies can work, but we need to have a better understanding of their costs and benefits. If the world continues down a high-emissions pathway, these adaptation strategies will start becoming less effective in response to increasingly complex and severe water security issues.

Water is central to everyone’s health, well-being and livelihood. We must focus on adapting to climate change and mitigating its effects immediately and simultaneously if we are to lessen the hardships of the world’s 10 billion people by 2050. The longer we delay aggressive actions, the higher will be the adaptation costs and smaller will be the opportunity window to undo past actions.

The Conversation

Credits

Balsher Singh Sidhu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Brain Scans Of Black women Who Experience Racism Show Trauma

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Guest Contribution

“Brain scans of Black women who experience racism show trauma-like effects, putting them at higher risk for future health problems” ~ Sierra Carter, Georgia State University

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The Big Idea – Brain

Black women who have experienced more racism throughout their lives have stronger brain responses to threats, which may hurt their long-term health, according to a new study I conducted with clinical neuropsychologist Negar Fani and other colleagues.

I am part of a research team that for more than 15 years has studied the ways stress related to trauma exposure can affect the mind and body. In our recent study, we took a closer look at a stressor that Black Americans disproportionately face in the U.S.: racism.

My colleagues and I completed research with 55 Black women who reported how much they’d been exposed to traumatic experiences, such as childhood abuse and physical or sexual violence, and to racial discrimination, experiencing unfair treatment due to race or ethnicity.

We asked them to focus on a task that required attention while simultaneously looking at stressful images. We used functional MRI to observe their brain activity during that time.

Black Women’s Brains

We found that Black women who reported more experiences of racial discrimination had more response activity in brain regions that are associated with vigilance and watching out for threat – that is, the middle occipital cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Their reactions were above and beyond the response caused by traumatic experiences not related to racism. Our research suggests that racism had trauma like effect on Black women’s health; being regularly attuned to the threat of racism can tax important body-regulation tools and worsen brain health.

Other trauma research shows that this kind of continuous response to threat can increase the risk of mental health disorders and additional future brain health problems.

brainWhy It Matters

Black Americans continue to suffer from health disparities, including being at disproportionately greater risk for stroke, cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, compared with white Americans. Although research has consistently demonstrated that the chronic stress of racism can get under the skin and leave a biological residue of enduring health consequences for Black Americans over time, little research has explored the impact of racism on brain function and health.

There is a large and well-established history of research connecting traumatic experiences, such as childhood maltreatment, physical assault and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, to changes in brain functioning that lead to negative health outcomes. Our study is one of the first to consider how the brain might respond to experiences of racial discrimination above and beyond other traumatic stressors.

Black women may be particularly vigilant about threats within their environment because they have had to adapt to living in societal spaces that perpetuate racism. Knowing this could be a step forward in research and advocacy efforts aimed at reducing health inequity.

What Still Isn’t Known

Our research findings demonstrate that Black people’s experiences of racism can influence how the brain responds and adapts, which deserves greater research attention. My colleagues and I believe that neurobiology research is just beginning to appropriately investigate the effect that racism has on the health disparities seen in this population. Our study provides a preliminary glimpse into the need to consider the traumatic nature of racism in Black lives.

More research is needed across all stages of life, including in childhood, to understand how and when some Black people develop highly elevated vigilance to threats related to racial discrimination, and how that affects their health.

What’s Next

I plan to do more research inspired by the results of this study.

Fear puts strain on the body, but it also can serve a protective purpose. I hope to get a better understanding of the costs and benefits of fear to threats in a context of chronic oppression for some Black Americans.

I’m also interested in how Black people describe, experience and address potential threats when the threat originates from individuals in positions of power who are expected to protect and serve.
The Conversation

Credits

Sierra Carter, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Art of the Con: ‘Inventing Anna,’ ‘The Tinder Swindler’ and Gender

Posted on March 16, 2022 by Guest Contribution

The art of the con: ‘Inventing Anna,’ ‘The Tinder Swindler’ and gender by Kimberly Hillier, University of Windsor and Christopher J. Greig, University of Windsor

The drama Inventing Anna and the true-crime documentary The Tinder Swindler has taken over Netflix — and they’ve also taken over social media and our collective psyches. Both landed on Netflix’s Global Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV shows and films.

These two hugely popular shows both feature con artists and their elaborate schemes among the traditional “man’s world” of high finance. While trading on issues of gender and gender relations (among other things) we see how gender norms inform the ways in which gender scripts are enacted, and at times transgressed, by the two con artists.

Inventing Anna tells the story of real-life convicted con artist, Anna Delvey (real name Anna Sorokin), who masqueraded as a wealthy German heiress to defraud financial institutions and wealthy New Yorkers. The Tinder Swindler tells the story of Simon Leviev, (real name Shimon Hayat), who swindles women he meets on Tinder.

So, what is it about these con artists’ allure, and how do gender and gender relations play out in each drama?

Confidence Artists

In Inventing Anna, we see Sorokin navigate the patriarchal world of power, privilege and New York corporate culture. In her effort to build her exclusive members’ club, the Anna Delvey Foundation, she confidently assures her advisers that she is “trying to build a business.”

Sorokin challenges sexism in corporate culture by assertively pursuing Alan Reed, a corporate real estate lawyer. She convinces him to reconsider his decision of financing her business proposition by relating her experiences of sexism in corporate culture to his daughter Julia’s experiences in her own internship pursuits.

The seductive allure of wealth, power and status is what seems to drive Sorokin as she cons her way into a world that has historically excluded young women (particularly women of racialized backgrounds). But let’s not be fooled — Sorokin’s story is not a story about the advancement of women’s empowerment. Sorokin works for the benefit of Sorokin — at anyone’s expense.

Trailer for Netflix’s ‘Inventing Anna.’

The Tinder Swindler retraces the destructive path of con artist Leviev and how he used Tinder to charm and exploit women.

Leviev groomed women into loving him by relying on traditional cisgender and courtship scripts and presenting himself as the dominant cultural representation of ideal heterosexual masculinity.

These stereotypical gender and courtship scripts are often associated with positive traits such as likeability and trust when conformed to and, in early courtship, these traits are more likely to be adhered to.

In a study that explored the perception and negotiation of gender representations and scripts among dating app users, researchers found that traditional and stereotypical gender scripts were broadly adhered to.

The Pretence

Pretending to be the son of the “king of diamonds” Lev Leviev — who he is now being sued by — and using photos of himself on yachts, travelling across the globe, Leviev presented himself as superior through the suggestion of wealth, status and power while reinforcing the male-wealth stereotype.

Trailer for Netflix’s ‘The Tinder Swindler’

Leviev fabricated one personal crisis after another that required his victims’ financial help to sustain his fictitious lifestyle. They took out loans and signed up for credit cards to help him, leaving them financially responsible for his debts — all while providing emotional and psychological support at the detriment of their own.

Once his deception and manipulation became apparent and his victims stopped funding his lavish lifestyle, his sense of aggrieved entitlement surfaced in the form of harassing phone calls and threats.

Exuding supreme self-confidence and a sense of grandiosity, both Sorokin and Leviev’s personalities are shaped by the darker side of personality traits.

Con: The Dark Triad Traits

In psychology, the dark triad traits — which include narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism — have been found to predict a wide array of behaviours and interpersonal tendencies.

Research indicates these behaviours and interpersonal tendencies are often expressed through a lack of moral concern and aggression following provocation and impulsivity — all of which were displayed by Sorokin and Leviev.

Convincing themselves and others of their psychopathic fiction, the “art of the con” that both Sorokin and Leviev proficiently performed was reliant on a system of prevailing gender norms.

Leviev used the ideals of patriarchal masculinity to seduce his female victims, while Sorokin used the idea of feminine innocence to elude any sense of scrutiny from her victims.

Victim-blaming

Inventing Anna and The Tinder Swindler present ways in which courtship and gender scripts reinforce, and at times, transgress dominant cultural ideals of gender. Fan commentary of the two shows also makes visible the deeply embedded nature of internalized misogyny.

The misogynistic victim-blaming towards those who were emotionally manipulated by Sorokin and Leviev demonstrates the tendency to shift the focus away from perpetrators of gender-based violence by punishing and blaming victims.

Whether it’s our relatable appreciation of how easily most victims trusted Sorokin and Leviev, or how the shows made apparent the ways in which gender and gender relations operate in con artistry, both stories have undeniably captivated viewers for varied and complex reasons.
The Conversation

Credits

Kimberly Hillier, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor and Christopher J. Greig, Associate Professor, Education, University of Windsor

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Forgiveness – Breaking The Cycle Of Resentment

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Guest Contribution

By: Lori Radun, CEC

Over 20 years ago, my mother disowned me for a period of 10 years of my life. It wasn’t something I could ever imagine doing to one of my children, but it happened. It was one of the most painful times of my life. I was angry at her. I got married and gave birth to my first child and she wasn’t there. I missed her and longed for a mother-daughter relationship. I cried a lot. Today my mother and I have a beautiful relationship and I am so grateful for our reconciliation. As a matter of fact, her birthday card to me this year said, “You are the best daughter”. Did this relationship we have today happen overnight? The answer is no. At the core of our relationship, today is forgiveness.

What Is Forgiveness?

“Forgiveness is something virtually all Americans aspire to – 94% surveyed in a nationwide Gallup poll said it was important to forgive-in the same survey; only 48% said they usually tried to forgive others.”

I don’t think a single person can escape life without experiencing hurt by another person. Maybe the hurt is angry words spoken during an argument or a friend who surprises you with betrayal. Perhaps the pain comes from emotional neglect, infidelity, divorce or even sexual and physical abuse. Sometimes the hurt is a one-time event. Other times the pain continues for a long time.

Forgiveness is a necessary step to healing from pain. It is a choice to extend mercy to the person who hurt you. Sometimes forgiveness allows you to move forward with the other person and experience a new relationship. Other times, reconciliation is not possible. In this case, forgiveness is more for you and your own personal growth.

Why Forgive?

First and foremost, God commands us to forgive. In Mark 11:25-26, it says “And when you stand in praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins.”

You might be saying, “But you don’t understand what’s been done to me.” And you’re right; I don’t know all the hurts you’ve endured. However, I know from experience that it pays to forgive. Forgiveness is a sign of strength – not weakness. It is the strong person who can put aside the past and let go of anger and resentment. My mom comes from a large family, with seven brothers and sisters. There has been a lot of sibling rivalry, and I’m always amazed at the amount of resentment that still remains in the family today.

Anger and resentment drain your energy and keep you imprisoned by your past. By choosing to let go of your hurt and anger, you give yourself the freedom to fully experience joy in life. Anger builds inside us, so by letting go, you improve your ability to control your anger. We’ve all seen the person who blows up at the smallest incident. It is the accumulation of built-up anger that is unreleased that causes this explosion. So many diseases, like heart disease and cancer, can be triggered by unresolved resentment. By choosing to forgive, you can dramatically improve your emotional and physical health.

Without forgiveness, you cannot move forward in your own personal and relational growth.

forgivenessWhat Forgiveness Is Not?

Forgiveness does not mean you allow people to treat you badly. It does not mean you ignore the wrongdoings. It means you accept that the person has made a mistake, and you are choosing to grant them mercy. When you forgive someone, you won’t necessarily forget the hurt. I will always remember the pain I felt when my mom disowned me, but I do not dwell on it, and I do not let it interfere with the quality of our relationship today. I have allowed myself to heal and move on. Forgiveness does not mean you are condoning or excusing the person’s behaviour. And it doesn’t mean you have to trust that person again. Some acts, like physical and sexual abuse, require that you limit your trust or at least test the trust with the person who hurt you. Remember, forgiveness is more for you than the other person.

The Process of Forgiving

So you’ve thought about it and you’re ready to forgive. You’re tired of holding on to old pain and you’ve decided it’s time to let go and move on. What do you do? First, you must face and release the anger that you feel. On the surface of the hurt is anger and you need to break away from that layer first. Underneath the anger is the pain and hurt that you must grieve. There are many ways to release anger and hurt. You can talk about it with trusted people. You can spend time journaling. You can pray about it and ask God to take away that pain and resentment. You can express your feelings to the person who hurt you, provided that it’s possible to have a healthy conversation where both you and the other person speak and listen in respectful ways.

Release Negative Feelings

One of the best and most cleansing ways to release your negative feelings is to write a letter to your perpetrator. In this letter, you pour out every emotion you feel. You tell them everything that hurt you and everything they did to make you angry. Do not hold anything back. Allow yourself to really feel the anger and cry the tears by reading it out loud to yourself. When you are done, burn or bury the letter as a symbol that you are ready to move on. DO NOT give the letter to the person. This letter is for you and you only.

After processing all your emotions, you are ready to make the choice to forgive. It is a choice that requires compassion, understanding and an open and loving heart. When my mother and I first reconciled, we talked about our feelings. Sometimes we even fought because the pain was still fresh. But we listened to one another and we tried to get inside each other’s shoes. It wasn’t easy, but today, even though I don’t agree with some of my mother’s beliefs, I have compassion and understanding for who she is and why she made the choice she did. I love her regardless of our differences.

Mistakes Are Part Of Life

Each of us makes mistakes in life. At one time or another (probably more than one time), we will hurt another person. Maybe it will be an accident, or perhaps it will be a purposeful reaction to someone hurting you. When this does happen, do you want to be forgiven? Do you want another chance to make amends? Most people don’t mean to hurt us – they are dealing with their own pain and unresolved resentment. It’s unfortunate that we take it out on our loved ones, but until we break the cycle, it will continue to happen.

Are you ready to break the cycle and do your part to forgive?

Credits

Author Bio
Lori Radun, CEC is a certified life coach, speaker and author for moms. To receive her FREE newsletter and the special report, “155 Things Moms Can Do to Raise Great Children”, visit her website at www.true2youlifecoaching.com

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Explainer: What Is Intuition?

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Guest Contribution

Explainer: what is intuition? by Ben Newell, UNSW Sydney

The word intuition is derived from the Latin intueor – to see; intuition is thus often invoked to explain how the mind can “see” answers to problems or decisions in the absence of explicit reasoning – a “gut reaction”.

Several recent popular psychology books – such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and Jonah Lehrer’s The Decisive Moment – have emphasised this “power of intuition” and our ability to “think without thinking”, sometimes suggesting we should rely more heavily on intuition than deliberative (slow) or “rational” thought processes.

Such books also argue that most of the time we act intuitively – that is, without knowing why we do things we do.

But what is the evidence for these claims? And what is intuition anyway?

Defining Intuition

Albert Einstein once noted, “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience”. In a similar vein, the American psychologist Herbert A. Simon (a fellow Nobel Laureate) stated that intuition was “nothing more and nothing less than recognition”.

These definitions are very useful because they remind us that intuition need not refer to some magical process by which answers pop into our minds from thin air or from deep within the unconscious.

On the contrary: intuitive decisions are often a product of previous intense and/or extensive explicit thinking.

Such decisions may appear subjectively fast and effortless because they are made on the basis of recognition.

As a simple example, consider the decision to take an umbrella when you leave for work in the morning. A quick glance at the sky can provide a cue (such as portentous clouds); the cue gives us access to information stored in memory (rain is likely), and this information provides an answer (take an umbrella).

When such cues are not so readily apparent, or information in memory is either absent or more difficult to access, our decisions shift to become more deliberative.

Those two extremes are associated with different experiences. Deliberative thought yields awareness of intermediate steps in a chain of thought, and of an effortful combination of information.

Intuitive thought lacks awareness of intermediate cognitive steps (because there aren’t any) and does not feel effortful (because the cues trigger the response). But intuition is characterised by feelings of familiarity and fluency.

thinkIs Intuition Any Good?

Whether or not intuition is inherently “good” really depends on the situation.

Herbert A. Simon’s view that “intuition is recognition” was based on work describing the performance of chess experts.

Work by the Dutch psychologist Adriaan De Groot, and later by Simon and the psychologist William G Chase, demonstrated that a signature of chess expertise is the ability to identify promising moves very rapidly.

That ability is achieved via immediate “pattern matching” against memories of up to 100,000 different game positions to determine the next best move.

Novices, in contrast, don’t have access to these memories and thus have to work through the possible contingencies of each move.

This line of research led to investigations of experts in other fields and the development of what has become known as recognition-primed decision making.

Work by the research psychologist Gary A Klein and colleagues concluded that fire-fighters can make rapid “intuitive” decisions about how a fire might spread through a building because they can access a repertoire of prior similar experiences and run mental simulations of potential outcomes.

Thus in these kinds of situations, where we have lots of prior experience to draw on, rapid, intuitive decisions can be very good.

But intuition can also be misleading.

Over-Reliance On It

intuitionIn a contrasting body of work, decision psychologist Daniel Kahneman (yet another Nobel Laureate) illustrated the flaws inherent in an over-reliance on intuition.

To illustrate such an error, he considered this simple problem:

If a bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

If you are like many people, your immediate – intuitive (?) – the answer would be “10 cents”. The total readily separates into $1 and 10 cents, and 10 cents seems like a plausible amount.

But a little more thinking reveals that this intuitive answer is wrong. If the ball cost 10 cents the bat would have to be $1.10 and the total would be $1.20! So the ball must cost 5 cents.

So why does intuition lead us astray in this example? Because here intuition is not based on skilled recognition, but rather on simple associations that come to mind readily (i.e., the association between the $1 and the 10 cents).

Kahneman and Tversky famously argued these simple associations are relied upon because we often like to use heuristics, or shortcuts, that make thinking easier.

In many cases, these heuristics will work well but if their use goes “unchecked” by more deliberative thinking, errors – such as the 10 cents answer – will occur.

Using Intuition Adaptively

The take-home message from the psychological study of intuition is that we need to exercise caution and attempt to use intuition adaptively.

When we are in situations we have experienced lots of times (such as making judgements about the weather), intuition – or rapid recognition of relevant “cues” – can be a good guide.

But if we find ourselves in the novel territory or in situations in which valid cues are hard to come by (such as stock market predictions), relying on our “gut” may not be wise.

Our inherent tendency to get away with the minimum amount of thinking could lead to slip-ups in our reasoning.

The Conversation

Credits

Ben Newell, Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Show Me The Money: Employees Not Only Want Better Pay, They Want Status

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Guest Contribution

“Show me the money: Employees not only want better pay, they want status” by

Scott Schieman, University of Toronto

There has been endless chatter about the Great Resignation. Renegotiation. Reshuffle.

Regardless of the descriptor used, employees in the United States are purportedly re-evaluating the role of work in their lives. While some of this is related to deeper existential questions — like “What am I doing with my life?” or “Is this really how I want to be spending most of my waking hours?” — there might be a much simpler and more practical explanation for the take-this-job-and-reinvent-it wave.

A classic quote from the 1996 film Jerry Maguire captures it well. Sports agent Jerry Maguire (played by Tom Cruise) has been fired and as he embarks to become an independent agent he desperately tries to retain one of his clients, football star Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.).

Tidwell shouts his demands: “Show me the money!” He adds: “I have a family to support, Jerry!”

Employees: Earning Enough To Make Ends Meet

employeesGiven what Americans say about their earnings, you’d think many would be bellowing like Tidwell. From Jan. 19 to Feb. 2, 2022, my research assistant and I partnered with Angus Reid Global to field a national survey of 2,000 working Americans. We asked: Do you feel that the income from your job alone is enough to meet your family’s usual monthly expenses and bills?

An astonishing 54.8 per cent said “no.”

In 2018, the last time the GSS asked this question, 50.8 per cent of American workers reported that the income from their job was not enough to make ends meet. And the percentage was even higher in previous years: 52.9 in 2014; 53.4 in 2006 and 55.9 in 2002. The highest on record — 58.2 per cent — occurred in 2010 at the tail end of the Great Recession. Considering the ominous news about inflation lately, we figured that this unfavourable perception has spiked from previous years. But looking back through two decades of U.S. data from the General Social Survey (GSS) — a highly reputable national survey of Americans — we were surprised by how prevalent and stable the “no” responses have been.

How Fair Is What You Earn?

But “show me the money” isn’t only about having enough for life’s necessities. It’s also about the sense of fairness — what scholars refer to as distributive justice. In our survey, we asked: How fair is what you earn on your job in comparison to others doing the same type of work you do?

While 37.9 per cent feel they are paid appropriately, 52.7 per cent feel they are paid less than they deserve. On this indicator, the shift is substantial. Between 2002 and 2018, 40.6 per cent on average have described their pay as being somewhat less or much less than they deserve, with 2010 again being the outlier at 46.2 per cent.

We need to earn enough to live, and the amount should be just. But there’s another element of pay that reflects something deeper. A fundamental human motive: status. Justifying his “show me the money” plea, Tidwell roars: “I’m a role model, Jerry,” adding “it’s a very personal … very important thing.”

Status matters. Not only in the eyes of others, but in our own self-evaluations too. Sociologists refer to this as subjective social status. To measure it, we told respondents to think of a ladder. At the top (10) are the people who are the best off. At the bottom (1) are the people who are the worst off. And, we asked: Where would you put yourself at the present time?

On average, American workers report a 6 on the status ladder. But those who report insufficient earnings and feel severely underpaid score significantly lower (4.9), compared to those who have sufficient earnings and feel their pay is appropriate (6.6). That difference holds regardless of education, occupation, income and job authority.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Some say money can’t buy happiness, but it goes a long way to providing status. And status often translates into happiness.

In our survey, Americans who don’t earn enough to make ends meet and feel underpaid are less happy and hopeful about the future. Life, for them, is less enjoyable. Inadequate earnings and feeling underpaid also erode happiness more strongly than the objective indicators of low socio-economic standing do. And one’s position on the status ladder eclipses all other socio-economic indicators in predicting happiness.

Our sample doesn’t include any professional football stars. But it does contain a broad cross-section of American workers — doggie daycare assistants, accountants, truck drivers, software engineers, sous chefs, electricians, candle-makers and on and on. All have a few things in common: They want to earn enough money to make ends meet, they want to be paid fairly for the work they do and they all share the fundamental human motive for status.

As dated as Jerry Maguire feels, “show me the money” still resonates. Maybe it always will. Given how consistent these indicators of income dissatisfaction have been for the past few decades, perhaps the Great Re-evaluation of work should focus first and foremost on compensation. Channel your inner Rod Tidwell!

Credits

Xin Ming Matthew Zhou, an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, co-authored this articleThe Conversation

Scott Schieman, Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why Not Celebrate Someone Like You This International Women’s Day?

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Guest Contribution

Why not celebrate someone like you this International Women’s Day? by Anna Einarsdóttir, University of Hull

Every year I hope that someone like you or I will be celebrated on International Women’s Day. But it never happens.

Instead, we are inundated with inspirational stories about successful businesswomen – and for that read white and seemingly heterosexual – or world leaders – and for that, read black, possibly activist and probably heterosexual.

While I think it is important to celebrate major achievements for women at home and around the world, these successes and the women who stand behind them seem a million miles away from most of us and our own realities.

Every Story Is Worth Mention On International Women’s Day

The story of the successful businesswoman is sadly not a common one in the UK, where I live. We like to hear it because it helps us forget about the more familiar stories, which are not as exciting and glamorous, but few of us see it being played out by our friends or colleagues. Those less exciting stories should not be relegated on this important day.

The first of them is the non-story – the story of “not much worth mentioning” – at least according to International Women’s Day standards. Many of us feature in this story. We work, but we never get noticed. We work harder, but we still don’t get noticed. In many ways, we resemble the high-achieving woman, but somehow, we don’t quite make it (at least not to the top).

The second is the story of the undesirable. This is the story of women who are punished in different ways for failing to be anything like the high-achievers celebrated every March. This story is of the pain, frustration, disappointment, marginalisation and alienation of women who happen to be black and in business, disabled, working-class, queer, or simply different. It is a story that needs to be told, but I wonder who is listening.

Unkindness In The Workplace

The workplace is not kind to these women. Black and ethnic minority women continue to be discriminated against at every stage of the recruitment process and also in the workplace itself. So are people, and dare I say women with disabilities. Queer women are more than twice as likely to be bullied, harassed and discriminated against as heterosexual women, even when their sexuality is not “officially” known to others. These women are not only different – they are made to feel different, and in some cases, out of place at work.

The human and organisational cost of marginalising some women should not be taken lightly. It stunts career progression and disadvantages women economically, socially and possibly psychologically. Organisations lose qualified workers, profit and can suffer damage to their reputation.

Too Old, Too Young, Too Fat, Too Ugly Are Women Too

international women's dayAnd there are worse stories. The horror story of women who never make it to the workplace or are booted out as soon as people discover that they are too different. Sadly, we are talking about the same group of women here – those who may tick more than one of the different boxes – but it may also simply be women who look “too old”, “too young”, “too fat” or “too ugly”, in other words, women who fail to look the part.

International Women’s Day should be a celebration of women, but every year it becomes a celebration limited to women who can showcase significant accomplishments.

Most of us will never make it onto an International Women’s Day celebrity list. We might have a job, but we still won’t make the list. The truth is that our contributions, however small or large, are often overlooked and many will be passed over for promotion.

Being ordinary does not seem to get women far at work, but neither does being different.

This year, let’s ignore the big brash awards ceremonies, the top-women-achiever charts and the rest of the pageantry. Let’s make International Women’s Day a small-scale event. Let’s recognise the women we meet every day at work and as we go about our daily lives. Let’s think about why some of them struggle to get along.

And most of all, let’s use International Women’s Day to remind ourselves – and everyone else – of who we are as women and why we should neither be forgotten nor overlooked, no matter how ordinary or different we may be.
The Conversation

Credits

Anna Einarsdóttir, Lecturer, Organisational Behaviour and HRM, University of Hull

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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