Tell Giselle: Digesting information for optimal growth

Those who follow my work know that my answers to most queries will often address a connection to one’s path of peacemaking. Sometimes this leads to improving or cultivating one’s critical thinking skills, developing greater self-awareness, and minimizing falling into the traps of self-delusion.

One of the joys of operating within this journalism career space is being able to highlight whatever the lessons are that have to do with the practice of seeking truth and accountability. What we, who reside in the written and spoken word, find so pleasurable about this particular business and craft certainly comes down to satisfying an insatiable curiosity, through information that strives to meet those goals.

Some may not realize that all media consumption, which has exponentially expanded through social media outlets, podcasts and the endless loop of breaking “news,” is a terrific opportunity: using it to transcend obstacles to one’s development.

That is, if one is willing to learn by others’ mistakes, and choose not to repeat them.

Reviewing the most recent shakeups in the programming lineup on cable news, one can readily see how these developments offer up some of that opportunity, aka challenge. Each situation reveals textbook lessons of what one should not do to harm oneself and others, as well as what one can do to continue being happily, gainfully employed, but doing it with better professional execution.

Ever since media’s talking heads began inserting themselves into the scandalous headline, to become the story, rather than report a story, our response to this information stream has been an increase in symptoms of irritable bowel and acid reflux. We look at these sudden falls from the heights of professional achievement, that result in the loss of trust, one’s dignity and employment, and our heads spin and shake to the point of nausea.

Yet another public figure becomes thrown off the donkey they’ve chosen to break, chokes dust with utter surprise, and lands in the heap of cancel culture discards. Within nanoseconds the revelations of self-sabotage are on full display through the evidence in other forms of media communication: texting, tweeting, voice messaging.

Why is it so hard for so many privileged, highly educated adults to learn the lessons in honesty, diplomacy, and the value of being discreet, or believe there really are no “private” messages?

The cause of the gastric distress is easy to see. I think it has more to do with our disappointment whenever we learn of a lie or a deception or a breach of ethical boundaries, than it does with us having way too many sources of bad information.

Instead of these outlets and their most prominent faces being only a special supplement to our knowledge base, media consumers seek ever more and more of society’s pathos, gossip, violence and tragedy. And then, full to the gills of those toxins, will choose to point fingers at an individual or a corporate culture as being the source of the digestive toxicity, when instead they ought to be pointing to their own eyeballs.

It has become more apparent to me that not everyone in front or behind the screens, who are absorbing the pixels, care enough about the long-term effects those bombarded beams of fractured light have on themselves and on all of humanity.

The pontificators and preachers, who are drowning in the tidal waves of snark and spin that they make or which follows their plunge into exile, are shining a neon glow on everyone’s accountability. Public figures, including judges and athletes, who play out their dramas of personal failure, missteps and misdeeds are all cogs in a wheel of mayhem that we subsidize with our fixed gaze. Every viewer who tunes in the theater, or viciously comments on it using their own social media platforms to further spread the infection, enables the spiritual and psychological dysfunction to replicate.

We may wonder why so many in the public’s eye enjoy inhaling the gas that inflates the ego, causing them to either spin out of control or else fly too close to the sun, only to vaporize into the netherworld of professional or personal obliteration. This disproportionate sense of self-importance, and the delusion of irreplaceability is a remake of a movie we are all tired of watching, aren’t we? No, the ratings say otherwise.

What is peculiar is that mediocrity in all sectors of our culture seems to rise high up. That is, until its density of ignorance finally tips the scale, and the evidence of poor performance or behaviors becomes too great to miss. Then we cannot avert our eyes.

Rather than feeding one’s desire to be intoxicated by taking the virtuous path, many media consumers are indulging in empty action, even mimicking the Buddhist prayer wheel practice of routinely sending selective energy to the ethers. Perhaps participating in the repetitive spin, that is purely negative, is done by some in the hope of influencing politics or gaining personal favorable outcomes somewhere. Regardless of the motivation, any action that is intended to disrupt a balance of peace, from either self-aggrandizement or by a constant agita, will reveal the stunted development, or constraint, of one’s self-mastery.

Whether we are gainfully employed, or are working in any non-paying sector, such as in supportive roles as mentor, partner, or friend, each person can learn how to be even kinder.

Start by limiting exposure to negative comments. Choose not to be the emitter or amplifier of them. Deconstruct what we know so far of the latest lapses in professional protocol with the ad hominem attacks and see how those comments feel when directed at you or a loved one.

Protect loved ones from becoming victimized by your own missteps by simply adhering to fundamental employment standards: practice the art of being a good team player, or else choose to leave the team gracefully for one that suits your nature and personal aspirations even better.

Anyone can increase their good standing in society by admitting whenever they have missed the mark on the common benchmarks of decency, rather than denying the facts.

Striving to perform at a higher level of excellence should be a hallmark of maturity. Use any examples of professional discord and ugly disagreement to your spiritual advantage. Focus on the intrinsic positive side of teachable moments to fuel your peacemaking.

There are best practices for how to comport oneself in personal relationships. There are also best practices for how to remove someone from their employment position. These best practices start and end

with kindness, and compassion, and the teaching “Don’t do to others that which you don’t want done to you.”

I wish everyone in conflict a speedy reset for a new beginning. May the lessons learned include what was failed to be learned in kindergarten and mastered in adulthood: how to play nicer.