Club Meeting
President Tony was on chaperone duty on Wednesday morning and had to leave for RYDA duties where Marilyn was presenting a leadership session on Public Speaking for future community leaders. Good onya Marilyn.
An interesting discussion on club projects was had in Tony’s absence about the winter Solstice Swim but unfortunately we ran out of time to fully chat about Tim’s observations as a new member.
We’ll return to this as soon as a guest speaker slot becomes available.
Meanwhile members are asked to put their thinking caps on in regards to a Summer Community Project / Event. We need your ideas!!
In other club news your club donated $500 to DV connect. You‘ll remember that Ashton commented that as well as help with life line phones, they could do with some help paying the rent on the premises.
Also the club is sponsoring Lily Thomas from Mountain Creek School at the National Youth Science Forum.
Also your club has set aside $500 towards the Care Outreach Christmas appeal.
If members could also note 25th October in their diaries as that will be when Bill and Melissa from Care Outreach will be at the club to receive member donations towards the Christmas appeal.
Some members have responded to The Smith Family request for help with career advice from local schools. See President Tony for more info.
At next weeks “Lift The lid” walk for mental health, the club would like members suggestions on promoting the club to the expected 1,000 walkers. Suggestions Please. A certain scribe has cobbled together a flyer, but other ideas??
The Board also thanked Bunnings and BOSS for their help in completing the Young Parents Centre in Maroochydore. There help was very much appreciated.
Dateclaimers??…see the club calendar. www.AlexandraRotary.com
Christmas Break Up
From Treasurer Wendy:
Members & Friends of Rotary have you ever wanted to play croquet, well now is your opportunity to give it a go.
Our Christmas breakup will be at the Buderim Croquet Club on Sunday afternoon 3rd December approx. 3.00pm -6.00pm
We do have quite a large club house with all facilities except an oven (do have a microwave) so we can have a ‘party’ afterwards you can also take your own drinks.
A bit closer to the time I will need to know numbers so I can get the courts set up and con some of my croquet friends to help.
This email is a date claimer and I will send out more information a bit closer to the date
And as it’s Rotary Mental health month, and this week a certain scribe has penned two popular articles that will help you with your mental health.
Mental Health. It’s not Dementia, its your memory working the way its supposed to !!
Best selling author Lisa Genova’s book “Remember - The science of memory and the art of forgetting” should be compulsory reading for oldies, or folks who think they are showing signs of dementia. (Thats most of us).
Its a great read, and may provide some comfort to folks who wonder of they are gradually losing their marbles, like I do. Lisa spends most of her time on tour talking to folks about how the mind works and providing support and guidance on how to improve your mental health.
Lisa also notes that humans handle disturbing memories by blocking, or erasing, by overwriting them.
An example from last weeks meeting was when Phillip (as sergeant) decided that sport, specifically rugby union, and the Wallabies score against Wales score would be a good topic to fine folks on.
This clearly demonstrates that Phillip’s brain has either blocked or overwritten the recent Ashes flogging and his brain is now willing to create sporting memories.
Hopefully Phillip’s brain will fully recover from The Ashes trauma and will remember that he’s English and not Welsh.
Mental Health. Use CART to lower your anxiety and help your mental health
Social media platforms causes a LOT of mental health problems in the community. In fact at times it destroys individuals and communities.
It seems that it’s a large part of folks lives, and here to stay. So what can be done about it?
A certain scribe looks at the problem from an engineering perspective.
First, social media is fundamentally a transfer of information to the individual. The information itself is neutral and its only when it enters the brain does it cause angst, anxiety, emotional distress etc.
So let’s look at information in social media….. before it gets into your brain. Every engineer knows GIGO. Garbage in - Garbage out.
A certain scribe was taught that information has 4 attributes, and if any one of these attributes is missing, or distorted, it causes stress.
What are these 4 attributes?
- Completeness
- Accuracy
- Relevance
- Timeliness
Now that information input has been broken down let’s examine how social media deals with these attributes.
Completeness
Social media hates completeness. It loves media bites, slogan, catchphrase, or even better picking an extreme isolated example, applying it generally to reinforce prejudice, hate, drama and appeal to our worse instincts.
Accuracy
Accuracy is not truth. A statement can be entirely accurate, but deceitful, and can cause severe anxiety to the reader either by inflaming prejudice or by harming victims of the inaccuracy.
Relevance
Irrelevant information is a hallmark of social media discussions, and requires vigilance to see it.
Distraction is everywhere, clouding the issue, opinion disguised as facts, personal name calling, gas lighting etc. This is so common, and cleverly used to cause harm to others and inflame tensions with readers/ viewers.
Timeliness
Information needs to be the bound. When does this information rate to? Social media brings up past information (generally without context) or projects the future, to enable dramatic “conclusions” and prejudice thinking.
So next time you are reading something that is causing you some mental distress, perhaps uncharitable thoughts, or worry and anxiety, just bring out the CART and ask yourself, does this pass this particular 4 way test….is this information true?
PS. And don’t forget breathe in for 4, then hold for 7, then out for 8 exercise to help your mental health. You’re welcome.