44 - Turn up the light
Welcome friends. I hope that something in this week’s newsletter speaks to you.
Photos of the Week
Kona and I spent some time between Muncie and Richmond this week. We enjoyed spending some time with Gayle while we were in Muncie. We headed to Richmond for a busy weekend that included a birthday party for Clifton who turned 4 earlier in the week. The timing worked out well that Dad, Susie, and I got to enjoy the Sounds of the Season concert at Central United Methodist in Richmond. It was exceptionally good and so nice to get to experience with my family - and see so many of my friends.
Turn up the light
Gaslighting has been on my mind all year. I experienced some gaslighting as my time at my former employer ended. I’m glad I recognized it for what I was - intentional manipulation on the part of others - rather quickly. I was only able to do this with the help of supportive friends and family as well as an excellent therapist.
Since Merriam-Webster declared Gaslighting as its 2022 Word of the Year, I thought we’d dig into it just a bit here. There are two definitions for gaslighting:
“psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”
“the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”
Gaslighting takes many forms. This article from healthline summarizes a number of different ways that you might experience gaslighting - or that you may contribute to gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a repeated pattern of activities. It is not a one time event. The one time event may be rudeness or insensitivity but it is not gaslighting.
Unfortunately, gaslighting often happens in relationships with extreme power dynamics as well as in romantic relationships. Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse. So, if you are experiencing gaslighting please seek help from a trained mental health professional.
My focus today is on how we prevent gaslighting others. I have been working with a number of coaching clients who are - in one way or another - victims of gaslighting. Here are a few tips that I’ve used to always keep the person and their experience at the forefront of any interaction and avoid gaslighting:
Do not assume that someone else’s version of a story is the truth. If two people are involved in something, the truth of an experience is somewhere between their two retellings of an event. Adding a third person means there are three versions of an experience. And so on. Do NOT take one person’s word for something. Ground your conversation with someone in their feelings and their experience of a situation.
Take notes of conversations and refer to your notes when discussing events. It is important that this is not misused. Do not add or embellish events. Record a factual narrative of what occurred.
If you cannot have a conversation about an event in that moment, acknowledge the need for the conversation and schedule the conversation for the near future. Do not act on the event until you have had an opportunity to have the conversation.
How have you experienced gaslighting in the workplace? What strategies have helped you to combat this form of mental abuse?
Where’s Kara?
A quick summary of where I’m going to be hanging out online and IRL over the next few weeks. Join me, and if I’m visiting near you, hit reply and let’s meet up!
In Real Life (IRL)
Nothing on the books at the moment right now except lots of time with friends and family around Indiana.
Around the Virtual World
Quarterly Retreat - It’s still a great time to prepare for an awesome 2023 by signing up for the Quarterly Retreat All Access Pass or the Quarterly Retreat Workshop. Visit https://karamonroe.podia.com and download the workbook for free and check out all of the offerings.
Join My Course and Community - You will often find me hanging out in the course and community for my course “Facts of Life Book”. Do you need to organize your most important stuff for life’s most important moments? If so, then the Facts of Life Book course is just for you. With loads of templates, tools, and guides I’ll help you get your most important information organized. Newsletter readers - get in now for the low cost of only $25 for life!
Creative Work Hour - Every single day of the week, at 10 a.m. eastern, a group gathers online in Zoom to do a quick check in, a brief meditation, work for about 50 minutes on whatever they want to do, and then check out with one another for 5 minutes. Creative Work Hour is one of my favorite places to hang out online and I’ve been there every single day that I could be there since about March of 2022. Come as often or as little as you need to get projects done. To register for the sessions (they are free but you have to sign up to get the zoom link) and to learn more, visit https://lu.ma/CreativeWork.
AP Productivity - I’m once again joining my friend R.J. Nestor as a mentor in his exceptional course AP Productivity. We started a Cohort in October, but you can join in on the next offering by visiting his AP Productivity page and watching this space. I’ll always let you know when a new offering is about to begin.
Tools, Tips, & Tricks
Make Hashtags Accessible with Camel Case - and a bonus hack!
A few weeks ago, someone used the term Camel Case which was new to me. There are at least 7 different cases for text. They are:
UPPER CASE - every character is capitalized
lower case - no letters are capitalized
Sentence case - the first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized
Title Case - the first letter of each word is capitalized
camelCase - the first letter of each word within a compound word, besides the first word, is capitalized
PascalCase - the first letter of each word within a compound word, including the first word, is capitalized
toGGLe caSe - random characters are capitalized
This tip is to use Camel Case in a multi-word hashtag or any other type of text as it makes that text translatable by a screen reader for a person who is sight impaired or experiencing your text via audio for other accessibility reasons.
BONUS TIP: To quickly change the case (upper vs. lower) of text in Microsoft Word, highlight the phrase, then hit Shift + F3. Changes cycle through all lowercase, first letter capitalized, and all in uppercase.
Use your space bar to navigate the web
I was glad I remembered this one the other day when a web site I was using seemed to freeze up with my mouse. Even though mouse activity wasn’t working, this tip still worked. Hitting the Spacebar scrolls down a web page; hitting the Spacebar + Shift lets you scroll back up.
What I Published This Week
I’ve lost contact with my muses and discipline - trying to get it back this coming week as Kona and I will be home for several days straight. Traveling has been rough on my routines these last few weeks.
My Digital “Garden”
As a part of the Obsidian Vault Rebuild Series that I wrote on Medium and YouTube, I began using Obsidian Publish. This add on tool for Obsidian allows you to easily publish your “in progress” notes to the web. If you want to see what I’m thinking about, this is a great place to see inside my head. It’s always available at https://publish.obsidian.md/iwannabeme
This Week’s Featured Book Note
Each week, I’m featuring one book note from a book I’m currently reading. Click the image to view this week’s note as a PDF file.
I’ve always been pretty flexible but I’m feeling that is not the case as much anymore so I grabbed Full Body Flexibility from the library. The most interesting thing I’ve learned so far is that stretching before a workout is not necessarily the best strategy for preparing for a workout. I do wish the author had cited their sources for the research on this because I would enjoy digging into this research.
Diversion
Did you know there was an Excel World Cup? Yes, that excel - the spreadsheet software. You didn’t know? Neither did I until Gayle brought this joy to my life. Here is a quick highlight video.
Ways You Can Support Me
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https://karamonroe.podia.com
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Readwise is an incredible service that takes all of the highlights you take on Kindle, on various web sites, and in so many other places and stores and organizes them for you. It generates a daily (or more often/less often as you prefer) set of highlights for you to review so that you can better remember what you read. Readwise also syncs with all kinds of apps including Evernote, Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research, Log Seq and more. If you’d like an extended 60 day trial, use my link https://readwise.io/kara
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