#vs. how many i have successfully learned from reading the dictionary

[coquelicoq]

this post is brought to you by: la lettre A

i finished all 58 pages of the letter A in this french dictionary! and it only took me 18 days!!

knowing myself and how i work, if i want to actually keep this up long enough to finish the entire dictionary, i should celebrate this milestone with a look back at what i have learned and accomplished. (not that i actually need an excuse to ramble about words, but i'm not gonna turn one down lol.)

keep reading to learn exciting things such as: which french nouns for abstract concepts can be masculine OR feminine! which french playing card is idiomatically considered to have bad fashion sense! which prefixes are actually TWO prefixes meaning totally different things, the little fuckers! and more!!

first, some stats

percentage of dictionary taken up by A words: 7.6% (58/763)

percentage of dictionary read so far: 8.4% (counting the preface and abbreviations)

rate and duration: 3 pages/day for 18 days (approximately 1-2 hours per day)

total entries: 2304. note: this is not the same as the number of words defined (an entry will often contain derivations of the main word, such as adjectives and adverbs formed from a noun) or number of definitions (an entry will often define multiple senses of the same word)

rows added to my vocabulary spreadsheet: 214. these are not all of the words i didn't know, just the ones i want to prioritize learning. baby steps.

times i learned a word from the dictionary and then later that day encountered the same word in the wild: probably like ten times!

times i learned a word from the dictionary and then later that day encountered the same word in the wild and still knew what it meant: maybe four times lol

fun facts about A words!

you may have noticed that there are a lot of pages in the A section (relative to the mean, which would be about 29 pages/letter). this is primarily because some very productive prefixes start with this letter!

prefixes of note

a- (toward, to). eventually i managed to internalize that if there's a word i don't recognize that starts with an a, if i chop off the a (+ the following letter, if it's a doubled consonant) it will often leave me with another word i do recognize, and the a- word indicates some kind of movement toward the state or action indicated by the shorter word. the entry for a- (the second entry in the entire dictionary) told me this explicitly, but it didn't really sink in until like...yesterday lol. you'd think i would know better, from 1) taking latin (this prefix is from the latin word ad, meaning to), 2) having a form of this prefix in english as well, 3) knowing how prefixes work, etc., etc. but alas. i stay humble 😔

a(n)- (not, no, without). very fun when you have a letter which at the beginning of words can mean either "not [root]" or "becoming [root]". big shoutout to greek and latin for that.

it's interesting that this dico didn't have an entry for the ab- prefix (also from latin, the opposite of a-). ab rights!! (one of my favorite latin verbs is abesse, meaning "to be away". present participle: absens, absentis. look familiar???)

anté/anti- (before), from the latin ante, vs. anti- (against), from the greek anti. greek vs. latin strikes again!!!

apo- (away from, off). obviously english also has this prefix because french forced their lexicon upon us, but i hadn't actually put together before now that it was a prefix because i've never studied greek. so now i am doing the next best thing, learning about english by reading about greek in a dictionary about french.

archéo- (ancient) vs. archi- (chief, ruler). mostly notable because i used to be very distressed by the fact that the ch sound is pronounced differently in these two environments. but now i know (it's a k sound in archéo and an sh sound in archi)!

auto- (self) vs. auto- (related to road vehicles). i just love that the second one came from the first via back formation (from automobile), aka the popular girl of the morphological processes.

i wouldn't really call them prefixes, but avant (before), après (after), and arrière (behind, back) also all begin with A, and they are stuck in front of other words to make new hyphenated words, thus padding out the A section further.

page hogs

(entries taking up 1/6 of a page or more)

à

affaire

air

aller

appel

appuyer

art

attendre

avant

avoir

like you guys don't get enough attention already !

🤯 momence

accourir takes être as auxiliary in the compound tenses! are you seeing this shit!!! dr. & mrs. vandertramp is a LIE!!

guess what the verb alphabétiser means. did you guess "to alphabetize"? WRONG! it means to teach someone to read and write!!

in other "learning things about english by reading a french dictionary out loud" news: did u know that reMUNeration is a word? not just reNUMeration (which is also an accepted spelling), but reMUNeration. the m and then the n! what! how have i never noticed this in the past 34 years of my existence! some people may say it's strange to read the dictionary, but i think this proves i need to read MORE dictionaries actually. life is beautiful. consciousness is a miracle!!

the noun l'après-midi (afternoon) can be feminine or masculine! how do you pick? idk! gender anarchy! this just in: every afternoon is genderfluid hours selon les francophones!!

okay, here's a headscratcher. l'auriculaire (noun) means "pinky finger", but auriculaire (adjective) refers to the ear/hearing. the only explanation i can find for this is on french wikipedia, which is very [citation needed] and seems apocryphal at best. (and if that wasn't enough totally unrelated body parts for one word to be about for you, auriculaire can also refer to the chambers of the heart 😇)

mes bien-aimés

favorite words to pronounce

antipathie [ɑ̃tipati]

antiquité [ɑ̃tikite]

antithétique [ɑ̃titetik]

architecture [aʀʃitɛktyʀ]

association [asɔsjasjɔ̃]

au-delà [od(ə)la], especially with the article (l'au-delà [lod(ə)la])

authenticité [otɑ̃tisite]

autochtone [otoktɔn]

tous azimuts [tuzazimyt]

please listen to my one true love (voice reading french words on wordreference dot com) pronounce "association". crops watered etc.

least favorite words to pronounce are any that start with aéro-. consecutive vowel sounds and an r sound? sans façon, je m'abstiens 👍

FAVE WORDS PERIOD

une accolade: an embrace/a hug, or one of these guys: { }. is that not the cutest shit.

une agrafe: a staple. i've become very attached to this word for some reason. (haha, attached, get it)

un aimant: a magnet. i am SURE i knew this at some point but fortuitously i forgot all about it, allowing me to see it with fresh eyes and be delighted all over again. (aimant is the present participle of the verb aimer, meaning to love. therefore magnet = one who is loving 😫💘)

tu ne manques pas d'air ! : you've got some nerve! ooh, i just know this is going to come in handy.

[nom] par alliance: [noun]-in-law. i like this because une alliance is a wedding ring (and also, more directly, an alliance. but that's boring!).

une amphibologie: sentence or phrase that's grammatically ambiguous. obviously i'm all over this. cela va de soi.

ahaner: to puff and pant. i love this one because it's onomatopoeic (the h is silent, so you make two "ah" sounds in a row, like you're breathing out twice)!

french has a word meaning "person who goes on vacation in august" (it's aoûtien(ne), from août, meaning august). how fucking rad is that?

i love et alors ? (big deal), et après ? (so?, so what?), and j'en ai vu d'autres (I've seen worse). also à d'autres ! (yeah, right! or likely story! or (for the brits out there) pull the other one! or (this is not in any dictionaries but i am extrapolating) nice try but i wasn't born yesterday!)

avoir une araignée au plafond: to be a little cuckoo, to have bats in the belfry. literal translation: to have a spider on the ceiling. just reminds me of that classic tumblr post about nicolas ii the last czar of russia hanging from the ceiling fan. i know that post is about bad vision, but the vibes are there and that's what matters.

archi- is a prefix in words like architecture, but it can also be added to adjectives as a slangy intensifier meaning very, extremely, super.

mentir comme un arracheur des dents: lie through one's teeth, though the literal translation would be more like "lie like a tooth-puller". is this because dentists are always like "this will barely hurt at all"? (omg i just looked it up and found a source (reputability: unknown) that says exactly that)

arrondir [qqch]: round [sth] up/down. aw look, it's got "rond" right in there. and i like that you can use the same construction regardless of whether you're rounding up or down, because it's not actually necessary to specify.

habillé(e)/ficelé(e)/fichu(e) comme l'as de pique: dressed like a scarecrow, looking like something the cat dragged in. literal translation: dressed like the ace of spades. is the ace of spades known for looking bedraggled in french card decks?? dying to know.

un ascenseur is an elevator, but it can also mean scroll bar. that makes so much sense! they do look like little elevators!

accrocher means a lot of things but primarily to hang, hook, snag, grip, etc. (it's related to crochet, hook.) one of its figurative senses is to get along, click, hit it off. les atomes crochus is chemistry (between people)...literally "hooked atoms". avoir des atomes crochus avec [qqn] means to have a lot in common with [sb].

autant pour moi: my bad, silly me. apparently was originally "au temps pour moi". au the temps, they are a-changin...

l'auto-stop: hitchhiking! as far as i can tell, stop came from english, but it happened centuries ago, and this dictionary isn't marking it as an anglicism. i mostly think it's funny that french definitely couldn't adopt the word "hitchhike" (french has, like, two of those sounds in its phoneme inventory lol) but they still ended up with something that came from english but which their lexicographers are not acknowledging as having come from english. (canadians say faire du pouce which is also great)

faire avec: make do, get by. i love a preposition that doesn't take a complement! feels illicit. like we're being naughty. even though it's actually so accepted as to be included in an abridged dictionary for a language that has literal laws about which words not to use. i know, okay? just let me have this!

next up: 34 pages of la lettre B 👀👀

[moonlightchn]

𝖂𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘, 𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖘

and basic shit you should know before interacting I guess~

*Disclaimer: all the information this post contains will be based on things I’ve learned over the years and my personal modifications are NOT to be taken as the general rule. This is MY abo concept for this bot in particular. Yall are free to agree, disagree, take ideas, adapt to your own bot, etcetcetc. Bye. Also sorry this doesn't have a read more;;;; I tried :(

Hello, this is (not) JYPe,

and welcome to the first episode of “Admin’s abo concept isn’t probably what you think so we gonna go in dept on this shit hehe ”. This was originally going to be a one part documentary but I realized I would probably keep coming up with or remembering stuff and these would be so LOOONG so I decided to just do it as I go and I’ll use the hashtag “admins abo tmi ” for this yeah. But also remember you can ask questions if you have any or if you don’t understand something because I usually ramble a lot.

Today we’ll be talking about 3 things that seem to be the most important since they’re the most brought up on my RP’s and they are:

Turning/Transforming.

Heat vs Rut.

Mates.

So let’s begin!

🌙 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌/𝕿𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌…

There’s two meanings to this concept, one is the concept of turning from human form to wolf form, and the other one is being transformed into a wolf by different means (these usually depends on which story you’ve heard, it can be being the 7th boy child in a family, it can be a bite or a scratch, it can be eating raw meat, etcetcetc).

*This change has now also been added to the Chan’s pack introduction.

What are the definitions of this words? Cambridge Dictionary defines them as:

Turn: to (cause to) become, change into, or come to be something.

Example: “Chan turned into his wolf form”

Explanation: Chan, already a werewolf, turned and changed into his wolf form.

Transform: to change completely the appearance or character of something or someone, especially so that that thing or person is improved.

Example: “Changbin was transformed into a werewolf.”

Explanation: Changbin, a regular human, was transformed /by a wolf/ into a werewolf.

𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌…

In the classic folklore, turning consists of 2 phases, human with NO wolf characteristics whatsoever, (which is what makes it so hard finding out who the werewolf in town is) and fluffy wolf with some human like characteristics (being biped, having arms instead of four legs, body structure humanlike. The best examples I can think of are the underworld lycans mmm tasteful). Another general rule for classic werewolves was that the person and wolf were two different minds, the person never remembered turning and had no idea they were the werewolf terrorizing town. While being human, the person didn’t even have the wolf skills like hearing or strength. They were just regular boring humans. Another thing was that they had no control whatsoever and ONLY turned during full moon, but I’m not getting into that yet.

Here are some examples (it’s basically furries oop).

Moving on to my concept, I decided to have 3 phases of turning, consisting on:

Human: Basic, simple, boring human. No presence of wolf features whatsoever. YET they can still make use of their skills such as sensitive hearing, smell, extra strength among others.

Half-turn: Heavily inspired by Teen Wolf tbh, SOME features are present and can generally be controlled, such as eyes, ears, tail, fangs, claws. Can even be confused for hybrids. (sumn like this please appreciate my art)

Full-turn: they become big scary fluffy puppies. Let’s remember how they look like.

Channie Chan Chris

𝕿𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌…

As mentioned before, transforming depends on which story you know and what you’re settling for. Generally we always talk about bites and deep scratches. Some of the most known stories about how to become a werewolf are being the 7th boy child born in a family on a full moon, or in Greek mythology, Zeus transformed some dudes into wolves after they tried to feed him human meat. There’s many different stories you can pick from, they’re just one Google away~

On my concept, though, the only way to transform is through a bite, even though I always keep options open.

I will probably be talking about the 3 types of wolves and deepening this a bit more later on.

🌙 𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖙 𝖛𝖘 𝕽𝖚𝖙.

Imma give you a wolf biology class because I know too much useless info and I WANT TO.

Rut: The rut is the mating season of certain mammals. The rut is characterized in males by an increase in testosterone, exaggerated sexual dimorphisms and increased aggression and interest in females.

Heat: The estrous cycle or oestrous cycle is the set of recurring physiological changes that are induced by reproductive hormones in most mammalian therian females. Estrous cycles start after sexual maturity in females and are interrupted by anestrous phases or by pregnancies. This cycle presents four phases, the one known as “heat” being the second one, estrus or oestrus, that refers to the phase when the female is sexually receptive.

What are seasonal breeders and what is mating season?

The breeding season is when seasonal breeders reproduce. Seasonal breeders are animal species that successfully mate only during certain times of the year. These times of year allow for the optimization of survival of young due to factors such as ambient temperature, food and water availability etcetc. Male seasonal breeders may exhibit changes in testosterone levels, weight, and fertility depending on the time of year. Female seasonal breeders will have one or more estrus cycles only when she is “in season” or fertile and receptive to mating.

Wolves fall in all of these descriptions.

What does all of this shit mean and why do I care lmao?

This means that if this was a logical bot I should only be doing NSFW like one week during 4 months a year LMAO no frfr

This basically means that RUT and HEAT are the seasons when the MALE and FEMALE respectively are ready to mate with each other to reproduce.

I’ve seen many male idol hybrids having heats instead of ruts, which I have no problem at all with and am sure no one else does really, but I think you should KNOW that a heat would not make them want to fuck, but get fucked. Heat would be the need to be filled and not fill others. A heat and a rut does NOT have to equal dominance or submissiveness in bots, anyway, that would be like saying being top or bottom determines who is dom/sub and that’s wrong, so just a PSA I guess.

Now, how does this affect my CB and ABO concept?

I’ve never, anyway, read anywhere of classic werewolves reproduction, which leads me to believe that they’re probably sterile. So I will stick to real life wolves rules but on my own way. Wolves are even monogamous and I dont go by that one lmao.

Reproduction rules on my ABO are really simple, ruts are once a month, around 5 days, and each of the guys have different characteristics for them. They’re only capable of getting someone pregnant during ruts, too. I just generally believe all girls are on the pill tbh and I never really use condoms but guys irl please practice safe sex wrap your or your partners willy before going freaky and stay safe.

Not sure if there’s something else to mention here? Let me know.

🌙 𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘…

Mates are the wolf equivalent of soulmates, but that’s bullshit. I mean, I’m not gonna say they’re not real, I just mean that the general idea of only one person for the rest of your life and if it’s not them you’re miserable is dumb when we’re talking about beings with feelings. Did you know wolves irl are monogamous and mate but if their mate dies they just look for another one and move on? Now you know.

The thing with mates and marks, in my humble opinion, is that they don’t mean anything. Peoples hearts change, feelings come and go, and my wolves are NOT about to drop everything they have for some person they don’t know who happened to be their true mate. In fact, Channie is the only one who believes in them. The mates issue is a bit complex if we think about it over each of the Chan’s, but on a general idea, the mates are not exclusive for the guys, and I’ll probably make a tmi on the boys at some point, but Chan met his mate and it didn’t work out, for example. Mates go further than the marking, btw, mates are a special, cosmic bond. Marks are just that, marks.

And talking about that, we do not vibe with marks. The original folklore states marks as the way a wolf has to claim their partner as theirs and keep away others, especially from an alpha, and they’re supposed to go both ways, so marks between human/wolf, for example wouldn’t be possible. There’s also two marks.

The first bonding mark is generally given during sex between mates and heals, and the second one in front of the pack (there’s a whole social status thing involved here but were not touching that yet) and its permanent. Also marks are literal WOLF BITES so no, they’re neither small nor cute. Just look at these teethies and picture the scar in a neck-shoulder. That’s your bonding mark.

(they're cute tho I uwuuu)

What I’ve been reading around in fanfics and seeing around is that bots have been mated and claimed with marks, which is ok if you’re into that. My chan’s, though, find physical marks archaic, possessive and toxic. And honestly I personally do too.

You may have noticed by now that even though the boys are quite possessive, they’re never trying to scare away others and their sole way of marking is love marks that heal eventually and scenting. Permanent marks are a nono.

They will NOT mark anyone as their mate. Especially Channie plz he’s baby.

This is a personal decision and it does not mean that marking is RIGHT or WRONG. I just personally see marking bites as marking your partner with fire or something and I dislike the idea a lot.

ALRIGHT I THINK THAT’S ABOUT IT FOR TODAY I FEEL LIKE I WROTE TOO MUCH ALREADY??? Feel free to ask questions or request certain topics! I think next topics will be Social Structure, Skills and maybe Self control or Moon Cycles.

If you read all of this WOW CONGRATS??? I LOVE YOU EXTRA MUAH

One question I got on the asks was “since their fur color seems to correspond with their hair color, what happens if they dye their hair?”

Nothing happens babe! When they’re half turned they will have really funny colorful hair, but when they fully turn their fur stays the same! hehe Don’t worry, Chan won’t be a clown red wolf heh

OK BYE MUAH MUAH

Tags (hmu for removal:] if you don’t care about this hehe)

@yandereminholee @bunjihyo @shinhaneul-oc @sub-chungha @song-mingi-cb @grungeyuta @yourhwaa @bunny-woong @princess-yeji @xash-axx @7deadlysins-chan @camgirl-jihyeon @hybrid-wooyoung @vampirehhj @ghoulxbaekhyun @mafiaxnct127 @deadly-skz-gods-cb @mafia-chaeyoung @vampiresanha @sub-minho @starsirah-oc @femboy-minho @subbyhyunjinchatbot @weeb-wonwoo @yandere-wendy @musiclovermino @galaxy-ateez @chanlix-koalas @vampirechangbinnie @mafiafelixlee @madmanwoodam @sweetandsleepyjamie @yanderedahyun @hunter-chaeyoung @hwangyeji-cb @artsydahyun @gamer-yeji @yourminju @seulgi-foxy @kittensua-cb @softbabieinnie @softboyfriend-cb @iceskater-sana @irregularchatbot @yandere-miya @doll-seungmin @skz-cb @subbylino @babie-sanie

[southern-belle-outcasts]

4, 5, and 20 mun views

Mun Views 

4. On your fandom. 

Which one lmao....um, well X-Men? Cool, a lot of the fandom to some degree is drawn cuz they can relate be they part of some type of minority group. Don’t see too many assholes, I think most of the jerks that were on here fell off during nippocalypse. There is a divide with the comic elitists vs xmcu and it’s dumb. I used to be an xmcu blog cuz I WANTED to read the comics but I was a broke ass college student who had literally no access to that, but I’d seen Wolverine and the X-Men, plus the movies that were out at the time. If I’d let those asses run me off, well, wouldn’t have continued to build my comic book collection (I’d already read Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, I’m talking specifically X-Men comics).

Arrowverse? I don’t follow many of the blogs, I have a select few I follow. My fandom experience is pretty much my friends with fairly similar views so I can’t speak on the fandom outside of the fact there’s a loooot of veiled hating on women of color under the guise of griping with the crappy writing. I try to avoid it. I don’t hold with Iris and Cecile hate, they’re good characters subjected to the writing of white men, what do you want.

Star Wars? NOPE. Hell naw. No thank you. Bye. I have no interest. I make it very clear this is a “the prequels are the shit, TCW is a fucking joke and trashes the characters, not!Star Wars mouse sequels are non-existent, the og EU is not legends it’s the only recognized canon” blog, and I’m this unapologetically. I have extremely strong opinions, I’ve literally been in the fandom since I was 6, I’ve spent hours reading EU content, visual dictionaries and encyclopedias, concept art of the movies books, comics, novelizations, etc. If you’re a stan of the other...stuff, I’ll probably say shit that will offend you and it’s probably for the best you don’t follow me cuz I’m not censoring these opinions, ever, at all. And for the love of all things holy, if you want to call R*ylo okay, or Anidala toxic, we meeting up behind Denny’s, yo.

Supernatural? Kinda sorta, considering I don’t link Nil and Farrar to any of the show canon besides using some of the monster lore. Like we don’t do the appropriation of native spirituality on this blog, so there’s no use of W*nd*g* cuz you’re not supposed to write or say that, like no. I have major problems with the show, that’s a mile and a half long, past season 5 it went downhill, they really should have left Swan Song as the finale. The queer baiting and bury the gays, the trash trash trash finale, the way any poc and female characters are handled, there’s so much oof. I stay away from it. Honestly kind of nice to see the SPN crowd was mostly quiet, it was RAMPANT when I first got on here, and there was a looot of drama. The way the extreme crowd of the fandom conducts themselves with the actors and stuff tells you a lot. Another nope. I prefer to stick to fandomless urban fantasy.

5. On exclusivity. 

If that’s someone’s jam, that’s cool. Doesn’t bother me. At one point I was exclusive to a few versions of characters. Not anymore, but I can understand how sometimes someone just clicks for you to the extent it rubs you wrong seeing a different version. It doesn’t stop me from writing with other people so I literally give no fucks and don’t see why anyone else should either.

20. On 'popular' blogs. 

Here’s where I piss a lot of people off, and I don’t really fucking care, as having at one point been an even more actively sought out blog back when the MCU was taking off in 2012-2014 and having tons of asks and thread requests, I can more than speak on what it’s like being a popular blog.Technically still am, you don’t have to take my word for it, just look in my thread tracker, and that’s not even all the threads cuz some are in drafts cuz they’re starters and I can’t add yet.

There’s nothing wrong with people enjoying your writing and following you. Awesome, good for you. It often proves to be a lot for people and I don’t like when I see people biting off more than they can chew but still pushing for more followers and asks and threads. Frankly, it’s really, really rude. I get wanting to make people happy, or wanting to try new threads and stuff, but you should also be reasonable with how much you can manage. If I see someone complaining about having too many drafts and asks and then not being able to write because of the pressure, but then daily pushing their promo or their wire or memes...and nothings coming of it...and they’re admitting they can’t get their muse to reply...then STOP. “You don’t owe anyone anything” means you don’t owe anyone respect and obligations that aren’t due.

When you decide to join a collaborative writing hobby, you’re still committing to your partners to write to some degree. Now if that means you’re going to be slow, and super minimal with which followers you actually interact with THAT IS FINE...as long as you have that communicated and make it very clear to the people who follow you they’re probably just following to be lurkers. But I can’t get with constantly pulling for interaction then within the same day the whole inbox is being dumped, drafts are being dumped, the same three people are the only ones ever getting a reply for the past three months, etc.

There’s been times I’ve said I can’t plot right now, there’s been weeks I bump all the memes in my queue further down so that they don’t post so I can catch up. I’m so secure with partners I don’t follow back unless I get my rules code sent in (newsflash: 9/10 I never see it). I never post a promo. I really don’t need to, if I see someone I really want to interact with on my dash, I’ll follow first, but I can’t in good conscious promote myself when I’m at a decent spot keeping up with a LOT. Sometimes I’m really glad I’m a multi with OCS and mostly female muses, it helps avoid ever reaching the point where I’m just getting too many followers to keep up with, but giving yourself a cut-off isn’t a bad thing people. Trying to do too much is.

There, I have successfully pissed off a ton of people, but I’m not taking it back. There’s way too much immaturity on this matter on here, and it’s really a litmus test of the people who HAVE been in group hobbies that are interdependent of cooperation of all members offline, and those who haven’t. “It’s my hobby” isn’t this get of of jail free card you get to wave everywhere when you want to ignore people. You can’t pull that in most hobbies that involve more than one person, whatever it may be, if it’s a DND group, rec sports, chess, whatever. This is my hobby too. I just probably take hobbies and commitment to other people to a more...respectful level. If I have real life, or physical issues, of course that takes priority, but here’s a little secret...we ALL, like 99% of the community, have some degree of mental health, nuerodivergence, jobs, home life, chronic physical issues. I want you to single me out the mun that doesn’t have any of that impacting their writing capabilities to some degree. Please, find them for me. You having those things doesn’t make you special and if you can’t communicate that it’s too much, you need the “flood of follows” from your promo circulating but can’t ever write...I’m just sighing over here.

If any of these opinions rub you wrong, I don’t mind you just unfollowing,that’s fine. No one is forcing you to remain. I strongly believe the people that don’t want to remotely take it seriously, and the people that do take it more seriously, should just keep to themselves, that way no one is getting offended by the other for how they choose to enjoy their hobby. You should enjoy it, goddamnit!!! But NOT at the expense of stringing other people along. Communication is kind of essential here, as much as people want to go “I’m too shy, BLOCK”, but y’all I have ADHD, RSD, social anxiety (I used to live in an anxiety attack it was so bad), and I still do my best to communicate with people even on uncomfortable topics. If I can manage, so can you. And if you CAN’T be mature...and communicate...then mayhaps stick to fanfic until you learn how.

[personalcoachingcenter]

Power Coaching Tools: Identity vs. Achievement

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/power-coaching-tools-identity-vs-achievement/

Power Coaching Tools: Identity vs. Achievement

A Coaching Power Tool Created by Heike Geiling (Intercultural Coach, SWITZERLAND)

Are you an achiever?

When we talk about achievements we talk about what the free online dictionary defines as “a result gained by effort” or “a thing done successfully with effort, skill, or courage”. Usually, we associate positive outcomes with achievements and in our Western world effort, skill, and courage are positively connoted terms. Companies are striving to establish achievement cultures because this drives productivity and thus financial gain.

When we apply for open positions we list our achievements in our CVs to show how valuable our contributions were to our past employers. Sometimes we also talk about our accomplishments without distinguishing between the two. But accomplishments are on a completely different scale as Patty O’Grady points out: “Achievement typically measures an externally imposed standard. Accomplishment typically describes an internally motivated goal.”[1] Far too often we take one for the other thinking of accomplishment when in reality we only line up another achievement. The reason is that we do see achievements in a positive light as the task is usually considered to be difficult and the success is dependent on our will power. We tend to value difficult achievements demanding more will power higher. Having the objective in mind and concentrating on our will power we might forget to ask why we are doing a certain thing.

Perspective on achievement:

A majority of us spend most of our careers in corporate cultures that nurture achievement as a value. Even outside the corporate world achievements are highly valued and we gain acknowledgment and recognition for them. For some people, only life-changing experiences throw them out of this circle of achievement and recognition. In the global expat community, a large number of expat spouses have to deal with the fact of finding themselves excluded from the corporate achievement/recognition circle that they were part of in their home country or previous career. Often transferring into a home maker’s life abroad, expat spouses are facing many challenges while adjusting to a new culture. Even though moving to a new country might be an adventure filled with positive encounters and experiences, once the first phase of exploration is over and life has taken on a regular rhythm, many expat spouses fall into an achievement culture by default.

Consider Luisa who moved from Sweden to Vietnam with her husband and two kids. She had already given up her job as an accountant in a large Swedish corporation to follow her husband on his assignment to Belgium three years earlier. She stayed home to look after her small children and took distant learning courses to prepare for her return to Sweden. Now her husband took on a three to five-year assignment in Hanoi. A wonderful opportunity for the whole family to explore Asian culture. Luisa does not mind that her career will be delayed.

The first three months after the move pass quickly as Luisa is busy setting up the house and the family life. She arranges schools and after school activities, she meets other parents and expat partners. She explores the city and sorts out all relevant addresses from hairdressers to pediatricians and dentists etc. Each evening she can tick off another thing from her to-do list; each one a little achievement.

One day all boxes are ticked off. Luisa finds herself at home with an abundance of free time at hand. So she throws herself into “mum”-tasks. She bakes, cooks sew, or picks up some other hobby also. She volunteers to be a homeroom mum or part of the school’s parent group. She will fill her daily calendar with tasks and activities she never had time for in the past. Now she has time to work out and to take better care of her health and outer appearance. She adds fitness classes, beautician appointments, etc. to her calendar. She joins the parents’ yoga or tennis group. Whatever it is, she will do well and she will add another achievement to her long list of achievements.

Luisa struggles to identify what she wants in life. She feels trapped in her beautiful and exciting expat life. She longs for acknowledgment and recognition so she creates tasks and challenges for herself and starts collecting achievements she can be proud of, share, and get recognition for. These achievements give her the feeling of being active, alive, and doing something meaningful.

In her TEDx talk on authentic inaction, Renée Dineen differentiates five different types of “doers”: the achieving doer, the avoiding doer, the controlling doer, the perfecting doer, and the supporting doer. Each of them having a different motivating force to action. The result is the same: it drives them away from who they truly are into externally driven activity.

Identity

“Identity grows […] out of a distinction between one’s true inner self and an outer world of social rules and norms that do not adequately recognize that inner self’s worth or dignity. […] The inner self is the basis of human dignity, but the nature of that dignity is variable and has changed over time. […] Finally, the inner sense of dignity seeks recognition.”[2]

To put it very simply: We define ourselves through and in contrast to our outer world and thus develop a sense of dignity. To strengthen our self-esteem we need the recognition of others. But we need to be recognized for who we are and not for what we do. In our longing for external recognition, we risk forgetting defining what we want to be recognized for. Thus some people throw themselves into activities, lining up one achievement after the other.

People who feel like living fulfilled lives following their career and identifying with the labels they acquired (Director, Head of.., Mother, Business owner, Associate, Manager, etc), rarely ask the question: Who am I? What is my identity? Our identity (the distinguishing character or personality of an individual)is mostly hidden behind all the labels we carry mother, father, friend, brother, sister, superior, team member, associate, daughter, son, wife, husband, teacher, student, caregiver, etc.

For the lucky ones the acquired labels match their identity, they are committed to their roles, they find purpose in what they do. Few people think about their proper identity, they rather build on values taught in their families or cultures. If you do not develop a sound sense of identity you will have difficulties to identify what you want in life or better said to find your purpose.

“…the processes of identity formation and purpose development reinforce one another; the development of purpose supports the development of identity, and the development of identity reinforces purposeful commitments.”[3]

Uncovering identity

So how can you see through the labels? How can you see your identity? These question can help you to take the first steps:

What are your potentials? What are you good at / better than others? Which activities are you willing to pursue putting will, time, and effort in improving your skills?

What is your purpose? What would you like to accomplish that matches your skills and talents?

Do you have the opportunity to do so? What would you need to change to get this opportunity?

People need to be acknowledged for who they are and not for what they do. A first step into diverting attention from your actions to your true self is awareness. What are you busy with? What do you spend most of your time on? Which of these activities mean a lot to you and why?

Coaching Application

Clients who are achievers sometimes have difficulties to draw the line between achievements and accomplishments. They might be action addicts and thrive on the recognition they regularly receive for what they do. A clear sign for the coach to identify the achiever is if the client still feels hollow or empty despite their many activities/achievements.

The coach can support the client in exploring their struggle for recognition by identifying the activities and objectives linked to internal motivation and separating them from the ones externally motivated. Together with the coach, the client can explore the behaviors they demonstrate when in achievement mode and reflect on how they can use this awareness in the future.

To help the client identify behavior patterns and separate accomplishments from achievements the timeline exercise and be a great tool.

Who am I? The timeline exercise.

  Draw a timeline for your life divided into 4 sections and add all significant events to it, refrain from mentioning career-related information. Then use a colored pen to add an emotional graph identifying the highs and lows in your past. Tell your life’s story without referring to any job title or role you held.

Who am I? Tell your story.

Look at your timeline again. How did you tell your story? How we tell our stories can greatly impact how we feel about ourselves. When did you feel proud of yourself? When did you feel authentic? When did you talk about yourself as a victim of circumstances? When did you feel most fulfilled?

Reflection

What are some powerful questions you could ask to help your client shift from achievement thinking to purposeful identity development?

What are some behaviors that would reinforce identity and being instead of activity and doing?

How can you support your client in discovering their identity?

Recommended reading/watching

TEDx talk by Renée Dineen on authentic inaction

Francis Fukuyama: Identity. Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (2018)

K.C. Bronk: The role of purpose in life in healthy identity formation: A grounded model. New Directions for Youth Development, 2011: 31-44.

[1] psychologytoday.com, Nov 11, 2012

[2] Fukuyama (2018), pp. 9-10

[3] Bonk (2011), p.31

Original source 

[felord]

CS 189 Introduction to Machine Learning HW1 Solved

This homework is comprised of two parts. The first part consists of a set of coding exercises. The second part consists of math problems. Start this homework early! You can only submit to Kaggle twice a day. Deliverables: Submit your predictions for the test sets to Kaggle as early as possible. Include your Kaggle scores in your write-up (see below). Submit a PDF of your homework, with an appendix listing all your code, to the Gradescope assignment entitled “HW1 Write-Up”. You may typeset your homework in LaTeX or Word (submit PDF format, not .doc/.docx format) or submit neatly handwritten and scanned solutions. Please start each question on a new page. If there are graphs, include those graphs in the correct sections. Do not put them in an appendix. We need each solution to be self-contained on pages of its own. In your write-up, please state with whom you worked on the homework. • In your write-up, please copy the following statement and sign your signature next to it. (Mac Preview and FoxIt PDF Reader, among others, have tools to let you sign a PDF file.) We want to make it extra clear so that no one inadverdently cheats. “I certify that all solutions are entirely in my own words and that I have not looked at another student’s solutions. I have given credit to all external sources I consulted.” Submit all the code needed to reproduce your results to the Gradescope assignment entitled “HW1 Code”. Yes, you must submit your code twice: once in your PDF write-up (above) so the readers can easily read it, and once in compilable/interpretable form so the readers can easily run it. Do NOT include any data files we provided. Please include a short file named README listing your name, student ID, and instructions on how to reproduce your results. Please take care that your code doesn’t take up inordinate amounts of time or memory. If your code cannot be executed, your solution cannot be verified.

1         Python Configuration and Data Loading

Please follow the instructions below to ensure your Python environment is configured properly, and you are able to successfully load the data provided with this homework. No solution needs to be submitted for this question. For all coding questions, we recommend using Anaconda for Python 3. Either install Anaconda for Python 3, or ensure you’re using Python 3. To ensure you’re running Python 3, open a terminal in your operating system and execute the following command: python --version Do not proceed until you’re running Python 3. Install the following dependencies required for this homework by executing the following command in your operating system’s terminal: pip install scikit-learn scipy numpy matplotlib Please use Python 3 with the modules specified above to complete this homework. You will be running out-of-the-box implementations of support vector machines to classify three datasets. You will find a set of .mat files in the data folder for this homework. Each .mat file will load as a Python dictionary. Each dictionary contains three fields: training data, the training set features. Rows are samples and columns are features. training labels, the training set labels. Rows are samples. There is one column: The label for each sample. test data, the test set features. Rows are samples and columns are features. You will fit a model to predict the labels for this test set, and submit those predictions to Kaggle. The three datasets for the coding portion of this assignment are described below. mnist data.mat contains data from the MNIST dataset. There are 60,000 labeled digit images for training, and 10,000 digit images for testing. The images are grayscale, 28×28 pixels flattened. There are 10 possible labels for each image, namely, the digits 0–9. Figure 1: Examples from the MNIST dataset. spam data.mat contains featurized spam data. The labels are 1 for spam and 0 for ham. The data folder includes the script featurize.py and the folders spam, ham (not spam), and test (unlabeled test data); you may modify featurize.py to generate new features for the spam data. cifar10 data.mat contains data from the CIFAR10 dataset. There are 50,000 labeled object images for training, and 10,000 object images for testing. The images are flattened 3×32×32 (3 color channels). The labels 0–9 correspond alphabetically to the categories. For example, 0 means airplane, 1 means automobile, 2 means bird, and so on. Figure 2: Examples from the CIFAR-10 dataset. To check whether your Python environment is configured properly for this homework, ensure the following Python script executes without error. Pay attention to errors raised when attempting to import any dependencies. Resolve such errors by manually installing the required dependency (e.g. execute pip install numpy for import errors relating to the numpy package). import sys if sys.version_info 2       Data Partitioning Rarely will you receive “training” data and “validation” data; usually you will have to partition available labeled data yourself. The datasets for this assignment are described below. Write code to partition the datasets as follows. For the MNIST dataset, write code that sets aside 10,000 training images as a validation set. For the spam dataset, write code that sets aside 20% of the training data as a validation set. For the CIFAR-10 dataset, write code that sets aside 5,000 training images as a validation set. Be sure to shuffle your data before splitting it to make sure all the classes are represented in your partitions.

3        Support Vector Machines: Coding

We will use linear support vector machines to classify our datasets. For images, we will use the simplest of features for classification: raw pixel brightness values. In other words, our feature vector for an image will be a row vector with all the pixel values concatenated in a row major (or column major) order. There are several ways to evaluate models. We will use classification accuracy as a measure of the error rate (see here: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn. metrics.accuracy_score.html). Train a linear support vector machine (SVM) on all three datasets. Plot the error rate on the training and validation sets versus the number of training examples that you used to train your classifier. The number of training examples in your experiment will vary per dataset. You may only use sklearn for the SVM model and the accuracy metric function. Everything else (train vs. val plots) must be done without the use of sklearn. For the MNIST dataset, use raw pixels as features. Train your model with the following numbers of training examples: 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000. At this stage, you should expect accuracies between 70% and 90%. Hint: Be consistent with any preprocessing you do. Use either integer values between 0 and 255 or floating-point values between 0 and 1. Training on floats and then testing with integers is bound to cause trouble. For the spam dataset, use the provided word frequencies as features. In other words, each document is represented by a vector, where the ith entry denotes the number of times word i (as specified in featurize.py) is found in that document. Train your model with the following numbers of training examples: 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, ALL. Note that this dataset does not have 10,000 examples; use all of your examples instead of 10,000. At this stage, you should expect accuracies between 70% and 90%. For the CIFAR-10 dataset, use raw pixels as features. At this stage, you should expect accuracies between 25% and 35%. Be forwarned that training SVMs for CIFAR-10 takes a couple minutes to run for a large training set. Train your model with the following numbers of training examples: 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000. Note: We find that SVC(kernel=’linear’) is faster than LinearSVC.

4       Hyperparameter Tuning

In the previous problem, you learned parameters for a model that classifies the data. Many classifiers also have hyperparameters that you can tune that influence the parameters. In this problem, we’ll determine good values for the regularization parameter C in the soft-margin SVM algorithm. When we are trying to choose a hyperparameter value, we train the model repeatedly with different hyperparameters. We select the hyperparameter that gives the model with the highest accuracy on the validation dataset. Before generating predictions for the test set, the model should be retrained using all the labeled data (including the validation data) and the previously-determined hyperparameter. The use of automatic hyperparameter optimization libraries is prohibited for this part of the homework. (a) For the MNIST dataset, find the best C value. In your report, list the C values you tried, the corresponding accuracies, and the best C value. As in the previous problem, for performance reasons, you are required to train with up to 10,000 training examples but not required to train with more than that.

5        K-Fold Cross-Validation

For smaller datasets (e.g., the spam dataset), the validation set contains fewer examples, and our estimate of our error might not be accurate—the estimate has high variance. A way to combat this is to use k-fold cross-validation. In k-fold cross-validation, the training data is shuffled and partitioned into k disjoint sets. Then the model is trained on k − 1 sets and validated on the kth set. This process is repeated k times with each set chosen as the validation set once. The cross-validation accuracy we report is the accuracy averaged over the k iterations. Use of automatic cross-validation libraries is prohibited for this part of the homework. (a) For the spam dataset, use 5-fold cross-validation to find and report the best C value. In your report, list the C values you tried, the corresponding accuracies, and the best C value. Hint: Effective cross-validation requires choosing from random partitions. This is best implemented by randomly shuffling your training examples and labels, then partitioning them by their indices.

6      Kaggle

MNIST Competition: https://kaggle.com/c/cs189-hw1-mnist SPAM Competition: https://kaggle.com/c/cs189-hw1-spam CIFAR-10 Competition: https://kaggle.com/c/cs189-hw1-cifar10 Using the best model you trained for each dataset, generate predictions for the test sets we provide and save those predictions to .csv files. Be sure to use integer labels (not floating-point!) and no spaces (not even after the commas). Upload your predictions to the Kaggle leaderboards (submission instructions are provided within each Kaggle competition). In your report, include your Kaggle name as it displays on the leaderboard and your Kaggle score for each of the three datasets. For your Kaggle submissions, you may optionally add more features or use a non-linear SVM kernel to get a higher position on the leaderboard. If you do, please explain what you did in your report and cite your external sources. Examples of things you might investigate include SIFT and HOG features for images, and bag of words for spam/ham. Almost everything is fair game as long as your underlying model is an SVM (i.e., do not use a neural network, decision tree, etc.). You are also not allowed to search for the labeled test data and submit that to Kaggle. If you have any questions about whether something is allowed or not, ask on Piazza. Remember to start early! Kaggle only permits two submissions per leaderboard per day. To help you format the submission, please use check.py to run a basic sanity check on your submission and save csv.py to help save your results. To check your submission csv, python check.py

7         Theory of Hard-Margin Support Vector Machines

A decision rule (or classifier) is a function r : Rd → ±1 that maps a feature vector (test point) to +1 (“in class”) or −1 (“not in class”). The decision rule for linear SVMs is  r(x) =  +1    if w · x + α ≥ 0,                                                    (1)  −1  otherwise, where w ∈ Rn and α ∈ R are the weights (parameters) of the SVM. The hard-margin SVM optimization problem (which chooses the weights) is min |w|2 subject to yi(Xi · w + α) ≥ 1, ∀i ∈ {1,...,m},      (2) w,α √ where |w| = kwk2 =   w · w. We can rewrite this optimization problem by using Lagrange multipliers to eliminate the constraints. (If you’re curious to know what Lagrange multipliers are, the Wikipedia page is recommended, but you don’t need to understand them to do this problem.) We thereby obtain the equivalent optimization problem m X maxmin |w|2 − λi(yi(Xi · w + α) − 1). λi≥0 w,α i=1 (a) Show that Equation (3) can be rewritten as the dual optimization problem                                                          m                   m     m (3)

                                                                      XXX                                                       X

maxλiλjyiyjXi · Xj subject to           λiyi = 0. (4) λi≥0 i=1i=1 j=1                                                                      i=1 Hint: Use calculus to determine what values of w and α optimize Equation (3). Explain where the new constraint comes from. We note that SVM software usually solves this dual quadratic program, not the primal quadratic program. Suppose we know the values λ∗i and α∗ that optimize Equation (3). Show that the decision rule specified by Equation (1) can be written  r(x) =  +1   if yiXi · x ≥ 0,                                       (5)  −1  otherwise. The training points Xi for which λ∗i > 0 are called the support vectors. In practice, we frequently encounter training data sets for which the support vectors are a small minority of the training points, especially when the number of training points is much larger than the number of features (i.e., the dimension of the feature space). Explain why the support vectors are the only training points needed to evaluate the decision rule. Then explain why the non-support vectors nonetheless still have some influence on the decision rule ...what is the nature of that influence? Read the full article

[misanthropillow-blog]

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For lots more exceptionally exercising heart and soul #quotes make sure to follow this link =>   😍 

[personalcoachingcenter]

Power Coaching Tools: Identity vs. Achievement

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/power-coaching-tools-identity-vs-achievement/

Power Coaching Tools: Identity vs. Achievement

A Coaching Power Tool Created by Heike Geiling (Intercultural Coach, SWITZERLAND)

Are you an achiever?

When we talk about achievements we talk about what the free online dictionary defines as “a result gained by effort” or “a thing done successfully with effort, skill, or courage”. Usually, we associate positive outcomes with achievements and in our Western world effort, skill, and courage are positively connoted terms. Companies are striving to establish achievement cultures because this drives productivity and thus financial gain.

When we apply for open positions we list our achievements in our CVs to show how valuable our contributions were to our past employers. Sometimes we also talk about our accomplishments without distinguishing between the two. But accomplishments are on a completely different scale as Patty O’Grady points out: “Achievement typically measures an externally imposed standard. Accomplishment typically describes an internally motivated goal.”[1] Far too often we take one for the other thinking of accomplishment when in reality we only line up another achievement. The reason is that we do see achievements in a positive light as the task is usually considered to be difficult and the success is dependent on our will power. We tend to value difficult achievements demanding more will power higher. Having the objective in mind and concentrating on our will power we might forget to ask why we are doing a certain thing.

Perspective on achievement:

A majority of us spend most of our careers in corporate cultures that nurture achievement as a value. Even outside the corporate world achievements are highly valued and we gain acknowledgment and recognition for them. For some people, only life-changing experiences throw them out of this circle of achievement and recognition. In the global expat community, a large number of expat spouses have to deal with the fact of finding themselves excluded from the corporate achievement/recognition circle that they were part of in their home country or previous career. Often transferring into a home maker’s life abroad, expat spouses are facing many challenges while adjusting to a new culture. Even though moving to a new country might be an adventure filled with positive encounters and experiences, once the first phase of exploration is over and life has taken on a regular rhythm, many expat spouses fall into an achievement culture by default.

Consider Luisa who moved from Sweden to Vietnam with her husband and two kids. She had already given up her job as an accountant in a large Swedish corporation to follow her husband on his assignment to Belgium three years earlier. She stayed home to look after her small children and took distant learning courses to prepare for her return to Sweden. Now her husband took on a three to five-year assignment in Hanoi. A wonderful opportunity for the whole family to explore Asian culture. Luisa does not mind that her career will be delayed.

The first three months after the move pass quickly as Luisa is busy setting up the house and the family life. She arranges schools and after school activities, she meets other parents and expat partners. She explores the city and sorts out all relevant addresses from hairdressers to pediatricians and dentists etc. Each evening she can tick off another thing from her to-do list; each one a little achievement.

One day all boxes are ticked off. Luisa finds herself at home with an abundance of free time at hand. So she throws herself into “mum”-tasks. She bakes, cooks sew, or picks up some other hobby also. She volunteers to be a homeroom mum or part of the school’s parent group. She will fill her daily calendar with tasks and activities she never had time for in the past. Now she has time to work out and to take better care of her health and outer appearance. She adds fitness classes, beautician appointments, etc. to her calendar. She joins the parents’ yoga or tennis group. Whatever it is, she will do well and she will add another achievement to her long list of achievements.

Luisa struggles to identify what she wants in life. She feels trapped in her beautiful and exciting expat life. She longs for acknowledgment and recognition so she creates tasks and challenges for herself and starts collecting achievements she can be proud of, share, and get recognition for. These achievements give her the feeling of being active, alive, and doing something meaningful.

In her TEDx talk on authentic inaction, Renée Dineen differentiates five different types of “doers”: the achieving doer, the avoiding doer, the controlling doer, the perfecting doer, and the supporting doer. Each of them having a different motivating force to action. The result is the same: it drives them away from who they truly are into externally driven activity.

Identity

“Identity grows […] out of a distinction between one’s true inner self and an outer world of social rules and norms that do not adequately recognize that inner self’s worth or dignity. […] The inner self is the basis of human dignity, but the nature of that dignity is variable and has changed over time. […] Finally, the inner sense of dignity seeks recognition.”[2]

To put it very simply: We define ourselves through and in contrast to our outer world and thus develop a sense of dignity. To strengthen our self-esteem we need the recognition of others. But we need to be recognized for who we are and not for what we do. In our longing for external recognition, we risk forgetting defining what we want to be recognized for. Thus some people throw themselves into activities, lining up one achievement after the other.

People who feel like living fulfilled lives following their career and identifying with the labels they acquired (Director, Head of.., Mother, Business owner, Associate, Manager, etc), rarely ask the question: Who am I? What is my identity? Our identity (the distinguishing character or personality of an individual)is mostly hidden behind all the labels we carry mother, father, friend, brother, sister, superior, team member, associate, daughter, son, wife, husband, teacher, student, caregiver, etc.

For the lucky ones the acquired labels match their identity, they are committed to their roles, they find purpose in what they do. Few people think about their proper identity, they rather build on values taught in their families or cultures. If you do not develop a sound sense of identity you will have difficulties to identify what you want in life or better said to find your purpose.

“…the processes of identity formation and purpose development reinforce one another; the development of purpose supports the development of identity, and the development of identity reinforces purposeful commitments.”[3]

Uncovering identity

So how can you see through the labels? How can you see your identity? These question can help you to take the first steps:

What are your potentials? What are you good at / better than others? Which activities are you willing to pursue putting will, time, and effort in improving your skills?

What is your purpose? What would you like to accomplish that matches your skills and talents?

Do you have the opportunity to do so? What would you need to change to get this opportunity?

People need to be acknowledged for who they are and not for what they do. A first step into diverting attention from your actions to your true self is awareness. What are you busy with? What do you spend most of your time on? Which of these activities mean a lot to you and why?

Coaching Application

Clients who are achievers sometimes have difficulties to draw the line between achievements and accomplishments. They might be action addicts and thrive on the recognition they regularly receive for what they do. A clear sign for the coach to identify the achiever is if the client still feels hollow or empty despite their many activities/achievements.

The coach can support the client in exploring their struggle for recognition by identifying the activities and objectives linked to internal motivation and separating them from the ones externally motivated. Together with the coach, the client can explore the behaviors they demonstrate when in achievement mode and reflect on how they can use this awareness in the future.

To help the client identify behavior patterns and separate accomplishments from achievements the timeline exercise and be a great tool.

Who am I? The timeline exercise.

  Draw a timeline for your life divided into 4 sections and add all significant events to it, refrain from mentioning career-related information. Then use a colored pen to add an emotional graph identifying the highs and lows in your past. Tell your life’s story without referring to any job title or role you held.

Who am I? Tell your story.

Look at your timeline again. How did you tell your story? How we tell our stories can greatly impact how we feel about ourselves. When did you feel proud of yourself? When did you feel authentic? When did you talk about yourself as a victim of circumstances? When did you feel most fulfilled?

Reflection

What are some powerful questions you could ask to help your client shift from achievement thinking to purposeful identity development?

What are some behaviors that would reinforce identity and being instead of activity and doing?

How can you support your client in discovering their identity?

Recommended reading/watching

TEDx talk by Renée Dineen on authentic inaction

Francis Fukuyama: Identity. Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (2018)

K.C. Bronk: The role of purpose in life in healthy identity formation: A grounded model. New Directions for Youth Development, 2011: 31-44.

[1] psychologytoday.com, Nov 11, 2012

[2] Fukuyama (2018), pp. 9-10

[3] Bonk (2011), p.31

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