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Guest MormonGator
8 minutes ago, my two cents said:

Teach them to follow their gut instinct!

The biggest mistakes in my life (both personal and professional) have been when I followed by gut/instinct rather than my head. I admire people who can trust their gut and not have it lead to disaster. 

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44 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

The biggest mistakes in my life (both personal and professional) have been when I followed by gut/instinct rather than my head. I admire people who can trust their gut and not have it lead to disaster. 

How interesting. Really. "Following my gut" has not come naturally to me; I'm much more likely to analyze a situation and follow my head. But I have found through long (and often painful) experience that I pretty much always do better to follow my gut.

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On 3/21/2017 at 4:41 PM, Eowyn said:

My heart is so heavy.

We had a meeting at work today with a group of women who run an underground organization to rehabilitate girls who were victims of trafficking. 

Many are sold by their own families. Most by their "boyfriends". The great majority come from broken homes (I don't mean divorce, I mean families that shouldn't be raising children at all) and addicts. 

This isn't Manila or Bangkok or anywhere else across the ocean.... this is in our small town. There are FOUR safehouses here She told us chilling stories of things that have happened right under our noses. The problem is massive and growing, but no one wants to believe it exists. 

She also treats kids as young as 8 who are addicted to pornography. 

What this tells me is that there are people who are walking among us every day who are willing to buy and sell children for sefish and horrific purposes, and others who are deliberately exposing (and exploiting) children to porn . People we see at the store and in our neighborhoods and at our schools and probably even at church. 

How am I supposed to safely raise children in a world like this?

A sawed off shotgun and a Bible. One in each hand.

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How to safely raise children in a world like that?  Do what the Filipinos do. 

I mean, that kind of stuff is in every city in the Philippines.  In my hometown, a mother sold her 6-year-old daughter to an online-porn outfit.  It was either that or her daughter starves to death.  The mother figured, the daughter will be fed and clothed and taken good care of as they need her healthy to perform for them.  Then when she gets bigger she'll be able to escape them with lots of money in her pockets.  In other cities and towns, human trafficking occurs because they're so messed up with drugs that they need the drug money more than they need their children.

Anyway, Filipinos fight this thing through SUPER STRONG FAMILIES.  Many of the American family is composed of broken pieces put together - adult children without a relationship with their siblings or parents, parents not having a relationship with each other and their children. Step parents not having a relationship with their step children, etc. etc.  A stick is easily broken.  A bundle is harder.

Children in strong families in the Philippines grow up under the security and protection of the family identity and traditions.  You try to hurt one of the children, you're not only facing the parents and siblings.  You're facing the entire clan.  Strong families have family names that are known in the area.  Bad guys, including the street drug dealers, stay away from people with known family names.  Strong families is not just beneficial for social dangers.  They're also beneficial for spiritual dangers.  When you have a situation where the teachings of the parents are echoed by the grandparents and the aunts and uncles all the way to cousins many times removed, children tend to be secure in their identities and their sense of right and wrong even among strangers.  And when their own parents or siblings fall off the path, these children run to the grandparents or the rest of the clan to find safety and the clan applies pressure to the wayward family member to straighten them up.

We need to bring strong families back in the American cultural tradition.

 

 

Edited by anatess2
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On 3/21/2017 at 4:41 PM, Eowyn said:

 

What this tells me is that there are people who are walking among us every day who are willing to buy and sell children for sefish and horrific purposes, and others who are deliberately exposing (and exploiting) children to porn . People we see at the store and in our neighborhoods and at our schools and probably even at church. 

How am I supposed to safely raise children in a world like this?

Welcome to the real world. The one we live in. The only world your children know. You must teach your children how to live in it. To love without condition yet be prudent with trust. To fill them full of hope, not fear. 

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Guest MormonGator
12 hours ago, Vort said:

How interesting. Really. "Following my gut" has not come naturally to me; I'm much more likely to analyze a situation and follow my head. But I have found through long (and often painful) experience that I pretty much always do better to follow my gut.

Yeah I admit I'm in the minority. When I "follow my gut" and trust someone I shouldn't or I "feel like" doing a certain thing, it often turns out to be wrong. I've learned to second guess myself using my head. 

Obviously, I speak only for myself. 

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18 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Yeah I admit I'm in the minority. When I "follow my gut" and trust someone I shouldn't or I "feel like" doing a certain thing, it often turns out to be wrong. I've learned to second guess myself using my head. 

Obviously, I speak only for myself. 

The scriptures teach that revelation comes to both the mind and the heart(aka gut)

Its been my observation that people tend to favor one mode or the other in their normal decision making process.  But they "feel" the spirit better in the un or lesser used channel.

I tend to be a thinker... so when my heart (or gut) starts telling me something I had to train myself to pay attention because that is going to be important in one way or another.

I presume it works the other way as well based on a few things I have heard from people who are more heart based decision makers.

 

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13 hours ago, Vort said:
14 hours ago, MormonGator said:

The biggest mistakes in my life (both personal and professional) have been when I followed by gut/instinct rather than my head. I admire people who can trust their gut and not have it lead to disaster. 

How interesting. Really. "Following my gut" has not come naturally to me; I'm much more likely to analyze a situation and follow my head. But I have found through long (and often painful) experience that I pretty much always do better to follow my gut.

And just to contribute an additional perspective my default mode has typically been following my gut, or heart, or instincts. Often my default mode caused me problems, and I had to learn through long and often painful experiences, as @Vort puts it, that I needed to use my head more often. I think it's often situational, and maybe the learning curve involves becoming acquainted with the kinds of events where my instincts work and where my head works better.  Interestingly, over time I found that using both my instincts and my head produced positive results; and I learned that often (to my great satisfaction) one actually enhanced the other. 

 

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Observing my children and grandchildren, and comparing their behavior with my own childhood experiences, has been fascinating for me in terms of the gut vs. head thing. It is at once instructive and enlightening to see how the two skills develop. Just yesterday I had such an experience when I picked up my two (twins) 7-year old grandsons from school. One of them got into trouble and the (gut) counsel the other one gave in order to avoid further complications from their parents was very wrong but fascinating to be there to see and hear.

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Guest MormonGator
18 minutes ago, Mike said:

And just to contribute an additional perspective my default mode has typically been following my gut, or heart, or instincts. Often my default mode caused me problems, and I had to learn through long and often painful experiences, as @Vort puts it, that I needed to use my head more often.

Right. I often hear people say that they "just know" something or have a priori feeling. That's nice, and of course it could be right-but it could be wrong too. No one wants to say it, but instinct doesn't always know the answer.  I don't think people second guess their instinct as much as they do their head. Again, if it works for you-great. 

Edited by MormonGator
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@MormonGator I'm interested if you care to share any personal experiences such as the ones you alluded to when you said: 

Quote

The biggest mistakes in my life (both personal and professional) have been when I followed by gut/instinct rather than my head.

Since personal experiences can often be the most impactful for others to learn from or relate to. :)

 

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Guest MormonGator
1 hour ago, Mike said:

@MormonGator I'm interested if you care to share any personal experiences such as the ones you alluded to when you said: 

Since personal experiences can often be the most impactful for others to learn from or relate to. :)

 

Professional: Following a job opportunity or investment opportunity because my "gut" said it would work. Turns out it didn't. 
Personal: Keeping a friendship alive with a self destructive person because it just "felt right". Or, ending a relationship with Jane because I thought my heart was pulling me to Karen. Those are two over simplifications, but they illustrate the point. 

Names have also been changed to protect the innocent. 

Edited by MormonGator
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4 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Professional: Following a job opportunity or investment opportunity because my "gut" said it would work. Turns out it didn't. 
Personal: Keeping a friendship alive with a self destructive person because it just "felt right". Or, ending a relationship with Jane because I thought my heart was pulling me to Karen. Those are two over simplifications, but they illustrate the point. 

Names have also been changed to protect the innocent. 

Well, I think I can relate. ;)

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Guest MormonGator
35 minutes ago, Mike said:

Well, I think I can relate. ;)

Thanks. Like everyone else, I've also let my emotions dictate what I've said in anger, frustration or hurt sometimes. I regret that. When I stop and think before I speak, I find out that I regret very little.   

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3 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Thanks. Like everyone else, I've also let my emotions dictate what I've said in anger, frustration or hurt sometimes. I regret that. When I stop and think before I speak, I find out that I regret very little.   

This is true for probably all of us. When I talked about acting from the gut, I was not talking about acting from impulse. Those are two very different things.

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Guest MormonGator
15 minutes ago, Vort said:

This is true for probably all of us. When I talked about acting from the gut, I was not talking about acting from impulse. Those are two very different things.

Not really. Speaking from/acting from impulse is acting from gut impulse and it's not using your brain to stop and think things out.

Edited by MormonGator
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44 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Not really. Speaking from/acting from impulse is acting from gut impulse and it's not using your brain to stop and think things out.

Then we are talking about different phenomena.

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Guest MormonGator
8 minutes ago, Vort said:

Like the British and Americans: Two peoples divided by a common language.

Divided by age, beauty and charm too. 
 

(playing! @Vort knows I have nothing but respect for him!) 

Edited by MormonGator
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I was horrified to learn that this happens in northern Utah. My wife's aunt and uncle took on foster children for many years. Recently they found out that one of their foster children (only 9 years old) had been sold to a pedo group by his own mother, and not just once, but many times! This child's mom "needed" the money to fuel her drug habit. It's around us, it's real, and it's especially horrifying for parents of young children such as me.

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36 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Divided by age, beauty and charm too.

Sadly, this is probably true.

(But I don't want to shame you by comparing my peerless Icelandic beauty to your reptilian hide. I can't help it if I'm beautiful and beguiling.)

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Guest MormonGator
2 minutes ago, Vort said:

Sadly, this is probably true.

(But I don't want to shame you by comparing my peerless Icelandic beauty to your reptilian hide. I can't help it if I'm beautiful and beguiling.)

lol. That's awesome. 

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