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Category Archives: Curiosity

Books | Joyful Self-Employment

The highly sensitive people I know who are thriving are all self-employed. Is this a coincidence? Maybe. But maybe not. Self-employment has a lot to offer HSPs, and many of our innate tendencies make us suited for taking up the reins of our own business. Self-employment doesn’t need to be a gigantic, red-tape-festooned, complicated step. […]

Multilingualism for HSPs

I’ve been learning German for years and dabble in French now and again. These forays into learning another language make my life richer than I could ever have imagined, not only because of the thrill of the skill or the insight into another culture that only learning their language can provide, but because of the […]

Good News

“Humans were never designed to act as receiver sets for the bad news from around the entire planet.” ~ Christiane Northrup Like other highly sensitive people I know, I’ve never been able to listen to or watch regular news broadcasts because they generally focus on what’s wrong, or awful, or tragic at the moment. Rather […]

Dawna Jones Leads Me on a Linkfest

I hit the jackpot recently through the discovery of Dawna Jones and the various captivating pies she has her fingers in. The first thing I looked at was her blog, Evolutionary Provocateur (“Provoking the emergence of spiritual intelligence, self and organizational self-knowledge … so people can take their whole selves to work”). Her September 9th […]

Differentiation and Intimacy

Differentiation is the process of holding on to one’s self while connecting with others. As a path to true intimacy differentiation is hard to beat. Which is not to say that the path is all shining sun and roses, but committing to being true to one’s self, particularly when there’s pressure not to, brings deep […]

Interview | Nan

Nan is my mother. She’s also highly sensitive, but she raised me in a time before the term or trait of high sensitivity had been popularized. We had a conversation about my childhood – what it was like to be highly sensitive with each other in the days before the current knowledge and tools about […]

Book | Air Guitar

“Dave Hickey’s prose transports are like an eye attached to a butterfly attached to a rocketship…” ~ Lawrence Weschler Dave Hickey‘s résumé is impressive. He’s written for Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Artforum, plus many other publications. He’s been the Executive Editor of Art in America magazine. He’s owned and directed an art gallery. He’s […]

HSP Gatherings

One way to gain confidence and connect with people who are likely to understand you more readily than the general population is to attend a gathering of highly sensitive people (HSPs). The blog HSP Notes is written by a man name Peter. In his post “Connecting HSPs” (scroll down to read the post) he writes […]

Interview | Barbara Brady

Barbara Brady is a Life Coach and Intercultural Trainer who works with clients in person, by phone, and via the Internet. She focuses on supporting people through transitions – from making healthy relationship or career changes, to moving to a location that suits them, to navigating through expatriation or repatriation. She’s also written a book […]

Book | Pattern Recognition

William Gibson is well-known for his science fiction writing, which I love, but my favourite book of his is a non-science fiction novel. Pattern Recognition‘s heroine, Cayce Pollard, is highly sensitive, and that plus Gibson’s mentally chewy writing has made me a happy re-reader of this novel. Cayce Pollard is highly sensitive in a very […]

Time Management for Highly Sensitive People

Time management is only necessary when the things we want to accomplish threaten to take up more time than we easily have for them. Since I know that my high sensitivity steers me toward wanting to please others and I can usually see a lot of subtle ways to make things more complete or useful […]

Books | Tim Moore’s Travel Writing

British writer Tim Moore has charmed me thoroughly. He writes irreverent, utterly hilarious travel memoirs with the twist that he’s frequently and unabashedly incompetent at what he sets out to do. My favourite Tim Moore adventure is told in French Revolutions, in which he hoists his unfit body onto a recently purchased bicycle and sets […]

Book | Kinship with All Life

When a friend recommended John Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life to me fifteen years ago, I was intrigued enough to track it down. First published in 1954, this odd treasure was a revelation to read, not because Boone’s ideas about the ability of animals to communicate with us are new at the concept level, […]

Out-of-Context Quote Book

“It’s like being trapped in an elevator with my own music.” “He’s been a pawn in my little recovery game.” “Everything’s very in-between the trapezes right now.” “Is dog hair your sole medium?” Pluck them from the conversation that gives them contextual meaning and some phrases can go on to live long, meaningful lives on […]

The Power of Curiosity

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” ~ Patricia Alexander Curiosity is like a flashlight beam. We aim it at what we want to see more clearly. Or, rather, curiosity aims us. When we’re curious, we’re the beam of light following the feeling of wonder to the next illuminated view. It’s not about […]