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OK, where's me donuts???

Pretty close, Ash. Lemme take a stab.

You force yourself. If you know that you will have a chance to get to them later, and that they will be treated fairly and with respect, it's pretty easy to wait for the chance.

So here's an example... before I fell asleep, I was ruminating about John McCain's little trick today of saying to the press that he supported a bit of legislation in his home state that would limit or reverse or perhaps abolish Affirmative Action programs. This left me feeling furious. I see it as a dirty trick by his advisers, likely Karl Rove, to play the race card that Obama has so deftly avoided so far. An ugly attempt to inflame and spread fear, which had largely been kept from the race so far. I was and am really pissed about this, so.. how wouild I use the Itemized Response to consider the news and the issues in a more constructive way??? Lemme try to follow the recipe I gave in the earlier post.

Headline - I wish I could find a more effective response to the news story from McCain's camp about supporting legislation to end affirmative action in the state of Arizona.

Positive elements -

+ 1. It could reveal and make public the McCain campaign's moral vacuum.
+ 2. It could be a great opportunity for Obama to respond in a way that drives the discussion back to post-race and post-gender even more powerfully than before.
+3. It is an opportunity to show McCain flip-flopping on the issue and showing his true colors and intent by pulling up some of the statements he made in favor of Affirmative Action when that program was installed in Arizona to begin with.
+4. It is an opportunity for Barack to build strength in the black electorate which had been lagging for the past few weeks.
+5 It is an opportunity for Barack to "mend fences" with the Moral Imperative" crowd (Jesse Jackson) in a way that makes it comfortable for them to join the post-race strategy.

ok.. on and on.. I could easily get a dozen here.. and then push hard for three more before I move on to the negative reactions... I'm limited to three and I must put them into a form that invites further work.... lemme try...

I wish I could think of three possible ways to express my moral outrage in writing, such as letters to the editor, blog comments, etc.

How best to convince the Obama campaign to avoid being dragged in to this debate because it's exactly the antagonistic, fear inducing approach that cost Hillary the nomination.

How best to convince J. Jackson and his allies and contemporaries to take the point on this issue so that Barack can continue to appear both "post-racial" and "post-gender" and thus safe for for an even greater percentage of the electorate at large...

Now at this point I could just stop work because I've given my mind a suitable workout. Or if I wanted to continue and actually try to find an idea I want to pursue, I'd select one of these responses to work further, and ... let's say... I might pick this last point...

That would be the new headline and I would do another Itemized Response and perhaps pick one or two of the ideas that come from that to actually turn into behaviors that I attempt.

And with this fifteen minute exercise, I have turned a truly negative reaction that was eating at me for several hours into a couple ideas I'm encouraged and energized about. For me, that's one good way of taking a negative reaction and making it a positive (healthy) force in my life.

Howzat? Ask away whatever questions remain.

Really cool IBF. I like all of your thinking on this.

Thanks, IBF. I'm going to have to think about this. It's a variation of other techniques I've learned (cognitive restructuring and Byron Katie's "The Work"), and it has always seemed to me that the less immediately personal an issue is the easier this type of work is to do.