TED Community » Martha Love

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• A comment on Conversation: Is the "gut instinct" real?

  Jul 1 2012: The question of whether the gut instinct is real is one that each of us has to answer ourselves, otherwise it is to us just a fantasy of someone else's thinking. That said, I have studied, in working as a counselor, gut feelings and instincts associated with those feelings for the past 40 yrs (it is my life passion) and am convinced that the feelings of emptiness and fullness in the gut relates to not just the need for food intake, but also for two basic instinctive needs of the human being, thus there are definitely gut instincts. Here is a brief outline of what I found with hundreds of people reflecting on their gut feelings:
  1. The gut is the instinctual response center and we feel either empty or full or somewhere in the middle (imagine a gas gauge) in our gut at all times.
  2. We feel full when our instinctual needs are met and empty when they are not. We are talking not just about food intake (although the feeling of emptiness and fullness in relation to food intake and psychological instinctual needs are interestingly similar and we do get them confused and thus may over eat to try to fill the emptiness we feel psychologically). We are talking about psychological instinctual needs—psychological not in the use of logic but in our needs as human beings.
  3. We have two instinctual needs that the gut gauges—the need to feel accepted and the need to be in control of our own responses to life. These two needs must be constantly in balance. Too much of one without the other leaves us empty.
  4. When we have both of these instinctive needs met, we feel full and thus energized; and when we have neither met, we feel empty and often experience some symptoms of stress in the body like feeling lethargic, anxious, overwhelmed, disconnected and alone.
  Intuition seems to increase as we become more aware of these gut feelings. There is unfortunately not enough room remaining to go on, but there's much more and you may read it on my website or book listed on my Ted Profile.
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  A comment on Conversation: Children's schools should have an "Imagination" period

  May 13 2012: Interesting idea and I support it. Perhaps it would take a while for the students to get into the groove of it, having previously been rather controlled in what they are suppose to learn. So the teacher would need to be patient and not mind a long silence in the classroom to start with. It is like any new student-centered learning experience, takes time to let go of all the restraints we have learned are so necessary and that hamper our creative minds.

• A comment on Conversation: Let's open source this conversation platform

  Mar 14 2012: Yes, do please go for it, Huan, and spread this great conversational format. I think TED has by far the best conversations I have found, mostly because of the diversity and intelligence and tolerance of the people in it, which is possible because of the format set up around conversations rather than around something the people themselves have in common. And TED is set up to ensure people stay on topic and get rewarded with Thumbs Up when hitting the mark (the Thumbs Up emails sort of make my day!). I like the TED format also because people can select the topic they want to converse upon rather than select the particular group and then select the topic in the group, as in LinkedIn. There is generally more passion in the TED conversations than in forums or blogs that are run continually by one person! TED is inclusive and fresh!
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  A comment on Conversation: How important a role do you believe Passion plays as an educator?

  Mar 13 2012: It seems that a good teacher is someone who understands the learning process and has a passion for both learning themselves and the learning experience of those they "teach". I good teacher loves to see "learning " happening in the classroom by his/her students and that is the focus of how they facilitate and manage the classroom experience. In that sense, passion goes way beyond interest, and touches into the very need for our exploration of ourselves and the world around us. "Passion" is more related to feelings and the "gut feeling" or need for the creative experience, the awareness of the driving instinctual needs; and the "interest" is the appetite of the mental processes sparked for the specific subject matter. Both passion and interest must be present and fostered in a true learning environment and the teacher must have them both themselves if the classroom experience is to reflect them both and be truly relevant, meaningful, and authentic.
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  A comment on Conversation: What is your favourite quote and why?

  Mar 9 2012: "As Within, So Without" This is a Hermetic principle and my interpretation is that the external world is reflected from the internal world, so we can change how we perceive ourselves within ourselves and the outer world will reflect this change. Thus, simply put, if we change our inner world of feelings and attitude toward balance and stability, our outer circumstance will improve. Seems to be the principle behind the Rainmaker story Jung tells that illustrates the experience of synchronicity.
  
  Which brings me to another quote, although this one is long, I like it by Carl Jung, particularly the part where he quotes himself (look for the quote inside the quote):
  In his commentary about the Rainmaker story, Jung writes:
  “…but if one thinks psychologically, one is absolutely convinced that things quite naturally take this way [speaking of the rainmaker’s ability to create rain]. If one has the right attitude then the right things happen. One doesn’t make it right, it is just right, and one feels it has to happen in this way. It is just as if one were inside of things. If one feels right, that thing must turn up, it fits in. It is only when one has a wrong attitude that one feels that things do not fit in, that they are queer. When someone tells me that in his surroundings the wrong things always happen, I say: "It is you who are wrong, you are not in Tao; if you were in Tao, you would feel that things are as they have to be." Sure enough, sometimes one is in a valley of darkness, dark things happen, and then dark things belong there, they are what must happen then; they are nonetheless in Tao”.
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  A comment on Conversation: How do you deal with introvert vs. extrovert tensions?

  Mar 7 2012: Michael, I am an extrovert and I would want an introvert on my team any day. While I'm out there responding first to the public, the introvert is figuring out a better plan. It takes both to make the best teams and we depend on each other for our different gifts, as Isabel Myers in her MBTI called the type differences. Extroverts don't mind surprises because we like to learn through trial and error, where as introverts like to think before acting and like to have a plan. You don't always have time for thinking up a plan but you sure need one in the long run, well as soon as possible. Two extroverts might just jump off a cliff together, go too far out on a limb without enough forethought, but an introvert on the team will always bring you back before you go too far out. Of course, don't ever try to stop an introvert once they get a plan of action! Introverts can be some truly powerful people. So extroverts need to allow introverts to introspect and introverts need to respect the extroverts quick movements. Just remember, we extroverts get in and out of trouble 10 times to your once, and it may feel different for us to be learning through trial and error than if it were you. So please don't scold us for not thinking enough before we act and we will enjoy your abilities to take your time introspecting and mulling over ideas before acting. It is a different learning style that we have and we need each other.
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  A comment on Talk: Susan Cain: The power of introverts

  Mar 7 2012: Carl Jung coined the word Introvert and he was suppose to be an introvert. Both Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs, who authored the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that many of you may have taken to validate your introvert-extrovert preference, were both introverts and I know that because I knew Isabel in the 70s and she told me that she and her mother both were INFPs. So all the people who originated the idea of Introvert were introverts rather than extroverts and did not mean anything unworthy about it, in fact, they saw the introvert as deep and powerful.