Author Archives: John Jolliffe

Time Limited Nature of the Growing Up Process

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During a recent television interview the host asked what I thought the number one challenge facing the American Family today? My response was, “Confusion regarding the time limited nature of the growing up process.”

For most of us it is easy to have children; the challenge is raising them. As almost every parent will admit, raising children is a long-term responsibility, which is seldom accomplished as planned, but the effort to achieve it is one of the most important activities of their lives.

Recently, when I spoke to a group of parents and teenagers about their relationship, I asked the audience what they wanted from each other. The teenagers wanted to be listened to; they wanted concern and respect; and they wanted time and attention from their parents. It’s an obvious truth worth repeating, “If our children don’t feel listened to at home, they will be listened to by their friends, who by default will become an increasing relevant influence over our child’s behavior.”

Parents wanted their children to behave. Parents are often preoccupied with their children’s behavior, which includes school grades, issues of respect for parents, neglect of responsibilities around the home, use of alcohol and other drugs, and early sexual activity. Many parents commented that they were afraid of the influence of others – the peer group. Truest truth? It is the quality of the relationship between the parents and their children that will have the greatest influence, if not undermined by family dynamics.

The most challenging life stage for both parents and children is Adolescence. In seeking a simple, understandable structure for this crucial life stage, we need first to define two basic terms, childhood and adulthood, and draw some careful distinctions.

bubbles 039_peCHILDHOOD is defined as the time between birth through high school – 18 years of age, when a young person lives under the parental roof and is supported and raised by their parents. During this phase of life – childhood – parents have the right, and responsibility to set limits on the child’s behaviors, ranging from allocation of studying time, to conforming to curfews, to the use of alcohol and other drugs.

ADULTHOOD, as I define it, is reached when the maturing child assumes the financial responsibility for their own support. It is imperative that families plan for the age of 19 as the time at which the child becomes an adult. Should the child upon reaching the age of 19 desire to continue their schooling or seek employment, but have yet to save enough money to live independantly of their parents, then by mutual consent, the parents are encouraged to extend childhood longer until the child can successfully sustain themselves financially. Too many children and their parents go off to college confused that they are now adults and should be extended the privilage of adulthood, while still financially dependant upon their parents. This confusion of when Adulthood begins is a source of continual conflict between children/adolescence and their parents.

file0001337084503ADOLESCENCE chronologically extends from ages of 12 through 18. A short transitional period of academic, biological, emotional, social and intellectual elements which young people struggle bravely and often desperately to piece together. I am convinced the major tension between children and their parents is due to the failure in understanding that adolescence belongs to late childhood, not early adulthood.

LATE ADOLESCENCE, ages 15-18, is an intense time between freedom and responsibility, and the clumsy integration between personal, and peer-centered influences, and the traditional values of their family. The goal of the late adolescent period is the same for both parents and children: To do all that can reasonably be done to help the growing child acquire the skills, including educational, interpersonal, and self-mangement skills, which will maximize the young person’s ability to function as a productive independant adult by age 19, or extend childhood until such skills are acquired. There are no adults financially dependant upon their parents.

file5131239156112Children learn to become adults by understanding, accepting and working within reasonable rules for behavior, including participation in a family life, and avoidance of alcohol and other drug use.

The wise and effective parent not only enforces necessary rules and worthwhile values; he or she helps the child see beyond them to the working principles, which underpin them. Children become adults when parents parent. These important distinctions may help.

 

Today Is Your Life

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The most important part of life is living. And the most valuable day of your entire life is today. The value of today is exceedingly high because you have waited all your life for this day. If you are 57 years old, you’ve waited 57 years for this day, today. Life is not what’s to come; it’s here, today. What is the quality of your today, the only time you have to live?

How many days do you think the average person lives? According to the National Vital Statistics of the CDC (Center for Disease Control), and other think tanks we know the following:

Females live an average of 81.2 years (29,638 Todays)

Males live an average of 76.4 years (27,886 Todays)

Average of the two equals 78.8 years (28,762 Todays)

Debbie, 57 years old, has already lived 20,805 – todays. If the Average life expectancy is 78.8 years (28,762 todays – Debbie’s 20,805 yesterdays) Debbie has 7,957 todays left. Each of you reading this article is encouraged to do your own math.

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Assuming you could predict the last today of your life, and also assuming you are of sound mind and body when that last today comes, what would you prefer – another hour of television, another compliment, another dollar, or another today? A practical suggestion to living life to its fullest is to slow down, turn off the technology for just a while, breath deep and pause until you understand the incredible gift of your today.

How many tries do we have left to get it right?

We all woke up in this place called today. And many of us will be given 28,762 tries to get today right. And some of us have only a little over 7,000 chances left.

Here’s today’s recommendation. Trouble is what we introduce into our lives in the form of stress, which we put on ourselves, and each other while denying any responsibility. Stop blaming others for ruining your today. It’s your responsibility to protect your today. Do with it as you wish, but stop blaming external reasons or others for how you allow your today to be spent. If the truth were known, you choose how you spend this rare and precious gift, and with whom you share it. It is your decision, and decisions have consequences. Don’t leave the most important thing in your life today to the responsibility or care of others.

People often lament wishing they could change the past. I believe you can change the past, and here’s how. What is today tomorrow? Yesterday, which is the past. If you get busy and change your todays, you will have changed your tomorrows, which becomes the past. Honestly, if you start today fulfilling your own life, and encourage and support others in doing the same, you’ll stop wasting your limited allotment of todays, and whatever you have left in your account will be enough!

I’ve often commented, “I wished people would come to therapy on the best todays of their lives instead of the worst.” Why? “So we could understand what we were doing that contributed to today being it’s best, and commit to continuing to practice the same.”

file6791272408911The prospect of being content, joyful, or satisfied today is within our grasp. A pleasant countenance is an internal massage we provide for our self.

Commit your today to being your best by becoming more aware of how your life impacts the world around you, triumph over your weaknesses, and learn to trust yourself so you don’t fear the truth. The weaknesses we cannot accept in ourselves make us vulnerable and defensive which contributes to stress. Understand your defenses are the blind spots in your journey in becoming your best. Evolving into your best self takes courage especially at first when there is more to concede.

Today is your entire life. What will you do with it? Consider carefully, what you choose to do with today may well become your legacy. It makes little difference why you did what you did. In the end it matters only that you used the precious gift of today in the manner you chose.

Do your own math!

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Robin Williams 2011a (2)CC BY-SA 2.0view terms Eva Rinaldi → Flickr: Robin Williams - → This file has been extracted from another image: File:Robin Williams 2011a.jpg.

Poking Holes In the Darkness

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Robin Williams 2011a (2)CC BY-SA 2.0 Eva Rinaldi → Flickr: Robin Williams - → This file has been extracted from another image: File:Robin Williams 2011a.jpg.

© Photo by Eva Rinaldi Licensed under CC 2.0

The tragic recent events of Robin William’s life cause us to pause and realize, those that often entertain us are not entertained. Robin gave us all the things he would have wanted to have for himself. He was comic relief, but he was not relieved.

The 1947 Frank Capra Classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, a movie fantasy, is the story of a small-town banker whose attempt at suicide is foiled by his guardian angel.  Frustrated, the banker laments that the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

This gives the guardian angel (named Clarence) an idea.  With a nod of his head, he announces to the banker, “You’ve been given a great opportunity – a gift – to see what the world would be like if you had never been born.”

It's a Wonderful Life DVD
The message of this film is dramatically timely owing to the tragic ending of Robin William’s life. It’s A Wonderful Life reminds us that each life is connected in one manner or another to every other life. And as John Donne said so long ago, “No man is an island.” We are reminded that everything that exists is accounted for – every hair on our head is numbered, nothing is valueless or irrelevant. The existence of each and every one of us is intentional and important.

Because our world is so big and our universe so vast, it may seem sometimes that no single life can be all that valuable. Yet, precisely because our world is so big and needy, each life becomes all the more important. Our lives have unique significance.

Life has a way of preparing each of us specifically for our role in grand scheme of existence. If we were all as useless, insignificant and replaceable as we sometimes believe, how could the grandeur of the greater good ever be realized? Without you and me, who would sow the seeds, turn the soil, water the seedlings and encourage the growth?

Consider Two Thoughts

  1. Ponder how your life was enhanced by some significant “other” – a parent, sibling, teacher, coach, neighbor or family relative.  Their contributions to your life continue to shape you in invisible ways.  Consider how your life would have been different had they never been born.  As people contribute to your life, they return a portion of the sacrificial investment others made for them.
  2. Consider how the lives of others would be altered if you had never been born.  Each person makes a direct or indirect impact upon the lives of those they contact.  Who would not be here today if you did not exist?  What impact have those you raised had upon the lives of others?  How much suffering would not have been relieved?  What work was accomplished that would not have been done in the same way that you accomplished it?  Don’t minimize your uniqueness.

In the movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, Clarence had only advanced to the rank of “Angel, Second Class.”  However, he offered this first-class summation:  “Each person’s life touches so many lives that when he or she isn’t around, it leaves quite a hole.”

As you reflect on the turns your life has taken in the past year, perhaps it’s time to give some thought to the ways you can directly contribute to the lives of others.

For example, you contribute to another’s life when you:

…learn to overcome what troubles you.

…become increasingly more mature, disciplined and accountable.

…become an inspiration to others as they witness your change.

…reach out in meaningful support to others.

…teach others, who ask, what you have learned.

…support the efforts of others who make an effort to support you.

In a variety of ways, you make indirect contribution to the lives of people you may not even know.

 

“Reality, what a concept.” Robin Williams

X Marks The Spot

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Charles Steinmetz

Charles Steinmetz

Charles Steinmetz was known as the “Electrical Wizard” at General Electric during the early days of the twentieth century. On one occasion after his retirement when the other engineers at GE were utterly baffled by the breakdown of a complex machine, they asked Steinmetz if he would come back and pinpoint the problem. Steinmetz spent several minutes walking around the machine, then took a piece of chalk and made a cross mark on one particular piece of equipment. To their amazement, it turned out to be the precise location of the breakdown.

A few days later GE received a bill from Steinmetz for $10,000, a staggering sum in those days for a few moments’ work. They returned the bill to him with a request that he itemize it. He did:

Making an X $1.00

Knowing where to put it… $9,999.00

The ability to diagnose and knowing where “X marks the spot” has always been a rare and precious gift. Few things are more futile than people who try to make corrections or changes without a proper diagnosis. Knowing how to diagnose, knowing where to place the X, is rarely complicated to the one who knows the truth. For the most part, it involves a willingness to pay deep attention. The real masters of “X marks the spot” are the “Self-Diagnosers.”

History is replete with moments in which efforts at self-diagnosis – exercising powers of awareness, assuming personal responsibility, and a commitment to making corrections or changes when and where necessary – was recognized as the hallmark of maturity. People would daily examine their lives in light of an internalized standard be it the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, or a quote from the Readers Digest.

Human-Change-ProcessesMichael Mahoney, in Human Change Processes, writes that three great questions lie at the heart of every notion of psychotherapy. Can humans change? Can humans help humans change? And are some forms of help better than others? These are not just therapeutic questions; they should be the deep concerns of every parent, employer, or average Joe and Jorgena who desires to make a difference.

In my daylong seminar, “Planning The Rest of Your Life,” I request people write out their eulogies. Eulogies are what people say about us after we have lived out our lives. Once written, these eulogies were to be thought of as templates – boundaries  – within which people could safely conduct their lives. Once you know what you want people to say or think about you – “X marks the spot” – live out your eulogy.

The following autobiography presents as a profound diagnostic tool for self-examination. Read it aloud frequently, and acknowledge in which chapter you are presently stuck. Even though there is no cure in diagnosis, telling on your self, thus saving others the burden, still makes the top ten lists for the best gift you can give another.

theres-hole-in-my-sidewalk-romance-self-discovery-portia-nelson-hardcover-cover-art“Autobiography in Five Short Chapters”

By Portia Nelson from There’s A Hole In My Sidewalk

Chapter I

I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost … I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in … it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

The interpersonal world in which you are presently engaged is looking for a few good people who know where to place the X. To that end, I promise to provide you with more than the chalk in each of the Therapy Story Blogs.

The Perils of Liberty

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You live almost twice as long on Earth than the typical person did at the beginning of the twentieth century. You have an unlimited food supply at affordable prices, never the slightest worry about shortages, unlimited variety, so much to eat that overindulgence now plagues, not just the well-off, but the poor; the poor being more prone to obesity than the population as a whole. You are a recipient of incredible advances in political freedom, freedom of expression, sexual freedom, and freedom from conscription. You can talk to anyone in the world quickly, and relatively inexpensively, know everything there is to know, and think and say whatever you please. Contemporary life in the United States is the realization of utopia.

Freedom’s unintended consequence – Choice Anxiety

If you agree with the previous paragraph, I ask you, “Is all this freedom making your life easier, or are you discovering an unintended consequence of freedom – Choice Anxiety?” Now liberated from the constraint of social and economic forces, you emerge into a potentially anxious dilemma of having so many options that choice itself becomes a problem.

President Bill Clinton (1996 - 2000)

President Bill Clinton (1996 – 2000)

On the first day of the twenty-first century, President Bill Clinton declared Western society had “never before enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity combined with so much social progress.” And yet life experience teaches that pleasant living standards do not insure a broad sense that life possesses purpose. You may have conquered poverty, welcomed the arrival of leisure, and attained a material standard unthinkable four-generations earlier and still feel, “Is this all there is to life?”

If you resemble the remark I am about to make, finish this article and call me in the morning. “Somehow in the process of living with all this freedom, I realize, I’ve gotten lost along the way. I lost my sense of purpose and direction. I lost my capacity for uninhibited joy and celebration; and if the truth be told, I hear a silent suspicion whisper within me, ‘something is not right.’ But what?”

So in the absence of clarity you try making changes. You travel to new places, alter the way your body looks, acquire more, love someone new, and perhaps distract yourself long enough until convinced you feel better. But, with a capital B, the existential crisis returns and you begin to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with you? “Why aren’t I happier? Am I just ungrateful, destined to never be content?”

The truth is pieces of you have gotten lost along the way. But how, where? Some pieces of you may have been taken away, while other pieces were given away, or hidden away, and still others were simply forgotten about. Without these pieces, you are unlikely to experience the qualities of life for which you are searching.puzzle

I propose your search to find these pieces of yourself begins with new questions: “What do I want? When am I most content? How do I sabotage myself? Do I have the courage to try again differently? When was the last time I did something for the first time?”

Each Second Opinion article will provide guidance for your private journey long after the July 4th Liberty Celebrations dim. Authentic new journeys begin quitely with new questions, rarely with fireworks.

Look to next month’s article of Second Opinion to provide you with a very effective tool to chart your progress in “X Marks The Spot”.

Trust

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In last month’s article, I reconfirmed there were no better minds than yours; and that it is not safe to assume otherwise in light of fall-out in confidence surrounding the loss of Malyasian Flight 370.

In today’s article I want to set the record straight about some of the misunderstanding surrounding who can you trust. I have always thought it best to trust no one. As odd as that might seem, what you are about to uncover by reading this article is an essential truth you have known, but didn’t trust about trust. The confusion and thus the challenge with trust are with whom to be vulnerable? Whom can you trust? The very nature of the question concedes you to be a poor judge of character. By asking the question – “With whom can I trust?” – you admit the following.  “I am not a good judge of people. My friends say I can trust you, but can I?  I don’t know whether to believe you when you suggest I can, or my friends when they say I should?” Question –

What do you need to know in order to be able to trust? 

© Photo by Tom Riddle via Flickr

© Photo by Tom Riddle via Flickr

My advice is to learn to trust yourself to know whom to trust. This shift in logic empowers you not others. Never again will you have to concern yourself with the risk of giving other people, even members of your own family, the benefit of the doubt. Once you learn to trust yourself to know how to interview, raise questions about any doubt you experience, you will never again worry about whom to trust because you have learned to trust yourself. Self-trusting in your ability to be discerning, and, therefore, no longer vunerable with others.

Observant, you learn that people frequently leak, unknowingly revealing their hidden agendas to the confident observer and student of others. Now armed with the ability to ask questions that begged to be asked, and speak your doubt when you feel it, you are no longer vulnerable to what people want you to believe. You can no longer be manipulated because you are no longer manipulatable. You have rescued confrontation from its aggressive reputation and now embrace it as an artful way of interviewing by asking questions and expressing a point of view.

The following interviewing skills will empower your confidence in trusting yourself not others. In trusting yourself, you do not need people to be any way in particular.  People can now be who they are because you will know them sooner, not later, having acquired the art of interviewing. You see people for who they are; you do not need them to be trustworthy.  Gone are the days of cheap trust when you naively believed in people because to do otherwise would be impolite. Polite is no longer at your expense.

Learn the Lessons of Interviewing Others and You Will Begin to Trust Yourself

  1. Learn to trust your suspicion. If you feel any doubt about what anyone is telling you, express it at once.
  1. Ask to have repeated what you do not understand. “Will you please repeat that?” Step back and observe whether they gloss over the critical details you want explained. If you don’t understand what they are saying, and they can’t explain it any more clearly, it probably doesn’t make sense. Question – Who is the benefactor of your confusion? Stop blaming yourself for not understanding, and stop giving others the benefit of the doubt. It is an important principal to understand everything people tell you. The part you don’t understand is where you are vulnerable.
  1. People you should avoid can be discovered by the wake of disturbances they leave behind. If you trust yourself to pay attention you will find there is often controversy around people you need to avoid. Most of these people have a rehearsed explanation for their past history.
Photo © Taylor Schlades

© Photo Taylor Schlades

  1. Let your suspicion be raised when others use pressure or leverage on you. Don’t be persuaded to rush. Anything worth doing can wait until you have time to think. Time is their enemy and your friend.
  1. Be aware of the most complimentary praise and appreciation of others. Observe whether other’s praise serves their purposes or yours.
  1. Know your vulnerabilities better than others do. People to avoid play on your vulnerabilities.
  1. There are only three responsibilities you owe anyone:
    • Tell the Truth
    • Keep Your Word
    • Be on Time
  1. Learn to be responsible to others not for them. How people interpret your intentions or are affected by your honesty is not your responsibility. Question – Who benefits from you feeling guilty?
  1. If people speak critically or abusively do the counterintuitive thing by asking them to repeat what was just said.  Once people realize you are monitoring the conversation they will correct their speech if they respect you. If they don’t correct what they have said or the manner in which they said it, trust they mean to hurt you.

 

Malaysian Air 370 Confirms Helen Keller’s Axiom

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Photo © Mel Zhao

Photo © Mel Zhao

In the shadow of the mysterious events surrounding Malaysian Flight 370, we would do well to remember the discomforting truth in what Helen Keller discovered and wrote:

{ The idea of } “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Everything about living involves an element of risk and the commitment to trust. These twin towers will never be destroyed. If either challenges you, I promise to write more in my future articles about risking and the ability to, and meaning of trust. But for now let’s review what we’ve learned about security. We have all been raised and comforted with the beliefs that better, smarter, wiser minds than ours are watching over things to keep us safe. They formulate our medications, properly adjudicate our crimes, lawfully watch over our investments as they would their own, represent us in government, collect only relevant information in defense of our country, and most recently, fly us to our destination surrounded by the most advanced technology. We further comfort ourselves in believing if something untoward happens, smarter minds than our will work cooperatively together and protect our interests. In the words of Walt Disney, “Welcome to fantasyland.”

The events of Malaysian Air 370 have revealed several realities, some we knew, and some this seasoned international traveler never had any idea until now:

• Transponders can be manually turned off in flight at the whim of the pilot

• Pilots at will can permanently turn off the oxygen to the passenger compartment

• Passengers know less about their pilots than someone in the next lane on the freeway

• The cost of advance aviation can be reduced by ordering lower qualities of surveillance software and tracking technology making it more difficult to find us once we leave our schedule course of flight

• Cockpit voice recordings of pilots conversations have been limited to 30 minutes in favor of pilots privacy secured through lobbying by Airline Pilots Association

• In the advent of a rogue crew who chooses to go zombie, autonomous, non-cancelling satellite uplinking technology to replace black boxes still fails to be installed in modern aircraft as a cost cutting measure, only to require spending 10,000 times more searching for those boxes in the now famous 40 country, 34 ships and hundreds of aircraft “Needle in the Haystack” recovery

• Just because a company or country can afford advance aviation technology doesn’t mean they know how to manage, maintain, or recover it

• Just because you have allies and friends doesn’t mean they will fully cooperate with you

• Two year old stolen passports are valid at some international airports

flight-data-recorderI’m sure I’m overlooking other horrible facts. Am I the only one? The details coming out of this tragedy make me more than angry, they require me to think ten times over how I go about my airline travel and what is sure to be new citizen group’s demand of airplane manufactures and airlines. For now, if a USA carrier isn’t flying there neither am I.

Broken Engagement

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Last month, a New York court decided a case, Marshall v. Cassano, providing further legal precedence on less emotional grounds the legal characterization of an engagement ring, and the appropriate rules governing its ownership.

John Marshall gave another woman, Delores Cassano, an $8,000 engagement ring.  Delores, in turn, promised to marry John.  John eventually broke off his engagement to Delores.  The New York court applied a Contract Theory upon the issuance of the engagement ring.  The ring is seen as consideration, a thing of value given in exchange to create a contract.  The bride is agreeing to an option contract, that is with the ring, the gift giving fiancé buys the right to marry his fiancée in the future.  She in turn promises to marry him.

Characterizing the ring exchange as an option contract on the right to marry in the future suggests that the jilted bride should not have to give back the ring.  After all, the ring-giver got what he paid for – the option to marry a particular woman who reordered her life and career in anticipation that if he did not opt out of the contract the two would be married.   She made good on her promise to marry by remaining open to the possibility; it was he who chose not to exercise the option.  Conclusion, according to the Court of New York – bride retains the consideration – the engagement ring in question.

For whatever it is worth this is what the New York Court of Law considers a legal opinion.  However, if one has to explore the legal options to understand proper etiquette, then one is already compassionately bankrupt causing others to question whether an adequate explanation could ever be found.

[quote style=”boxed”]I have decided not to move forward with our engagement, and when in the US, I’ll come over to get the ring.[/quote] Many years ago, I was privy to a similar unfortunate case of consideration default.   The jilted fiance was a woman, although equally as many men feel the guillotine of desmemberment when an engagement ends.  Most endings involve some element of shock and despair, depending on how sharp the blade.  Some guillotines fall so slowly one can hear the end of the relationship approaching.  To my unsuspecting maiden, the promise of the future life was severed without as much as a suspicion, a two line email, not as much as a call. She knew she deserved better. The email read, “I have decided not to move forward with our engagement, and when in the US, I’ll come over to get the ring.”

After literally picking herself off the floor, which for an extended time served as her mourning bed, she rose to deliver a searing speech for herself and those posthumusly served by her eloguence.

“Dear Sir for this engagement to you, I compromised my professional career, making  myself unavailable to any further personal and/or professional opportunities. I traveled at considerable physical and emotional expense to join you wherever you were in the world.  I became conversant in a new culture, I invested countless months of relationship building with your family, friends, colleagues, professional and personal staff because what was important to you was growing important to me.  On your part, you induced me into a more intimate relationship by promises and commitment of a future together, and I made serious efforts to integrate our respective families.  My engagement to you meant that much. In exchange, I accepted your proposal of marriage, which you retracted eight months later in a two-lined email breaking more than my engagement.   Now I am back home after having traveled 18,000 miles to retrieve the life I had relocated in exchange for a promise, I am left to process all that passed so suddenly in an otherwise innocent email.

You asked me as I came to retrieve my life, “had I brought the ring?” I said no.  I should have said not only did I not bring the ring with me, but I also forgot to prepare a considered response to a question I never in my wildest imagination believed you were capable of asking. My first loss was over my dream of being forever with you.  My second, perhaps more profound loss occurred as the days passed with no response from the person I considered my best friend.  Two lines in an email with no follow up contact for days?  I always felt safe with you.  Suddenly I didn’t.  Eventually, even my devotion eroded under the deafening silence removing the last romantic blinders from my adoring gaze.”

I met my heroine years later.  A fortutious passing comment assured me the solice I needed in knowing she healed without bitterness.  Without speaking she assured me the wisdom of matured experience reduces the idea of security to a supersition.  The truth we all share is that life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing much.  She never married.

Don’t Believe Everything They Told You!

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1500 years ago people told us the earth was the center of the universe.  A little over 500 years ago people told us the earth was flat.  Somebody, maybe you, came up with the idea that food was a friend, a reward, or a comfort.  Many of us still believe ice cream tastes good.  Ignorance continues to this day to masquerade as knowledge.  What we believe could actually be destroying our very quality of life.  Here’s the challenge:

When we were young, each of us had a need to be told, “Don’t be selfish. Children should be seen and not heard. You are special. People won’t like you if…” What our families told us had a very powerful and shaping effect. Many of us today do more than remember what we were told. Too many of us believe what we remember to a fault. The lives we live today, the decisions we make, the risks we take or don’t, even the relationships we choose or regret choosing, remain as living testimonies to so many early influences of what we were taught to believe.

Part of what it means to grow up and become mature is to possess the freedom, perhaps the courage not to believe everything our families taught us. Rather than blindly following to a fault every precept or admonition, growing up requires us to review, challenge and if necessary, correct some of the ideas and perceptions that have gone into making us the people we are today.

Don’t believe everything they told you just to be obedient or to avoid conflict. Believe only that which makes sense or has been proven by inquiry to be true. A previous call to my radio broadcast illustrates the point well. The call began with this challenge, “Say something positive about religion; I’m an unbeliever.” My response was that there are no unbelievers. Everyone believes something. I went on to ask the caller, “What is it that you believe about religion? I have a suspicion that whatever it is you believe, it is in the way of you believing something else.”

For many of us today, lessons learned decades before continue to shape our perspectives.

Your family of origin did not own the corner on truth. As we grow in maturity, we may discover many of the beliefs our parents taught us were faulty. At best our parents were deceived because they failed to question the actions or attitudes of others they didn’t understand. At worst, our families conceived ideas as a means of controlling unacceptable impulses living within them. The strength of their insistence by precept or example may have made believers out of us. Do we now believe what is true, or what we have been persuaded to believe is true? And how can we know the difference without exposing what we believe to cross-examination?  No influence can be so trusted as to justify the “innecessity” of learning to ask questions and raise suspicions as appropriate for understanding.

file000668644339As a clinician over the past thirty-six years, I have exhumed and collected a number of false beliefs, metaphorical bone fragments from the psyches of people I sought to help. I included a small sampling of false beliefs in this story to illustrate how common, and thereby, unrecognizable they are. You may never have thought to challenge such beliefs because they are so commonly ingrained in our day-to-day existence as to be invisible.

Take the time required to examine the following faulty beliefs. For greater impact, read them aloud, and then observe your response to learning the truthful alternative.

False Beliefs & Truthful Alternatives:

 

F.B. 1. There’s no one I can trust.

T.A. 1.  Trusting others is made all the more unnecessary when you learn to trust yourself to know who to trust.

 

F.B.  2.  No one is there for me.

T.A.  2.  Some people are there sometimes for some things, rarely everyone all the time for everything.

 

F.B.  3.  People just don’t understand.

T.A.  3.  The worst that can be said is that others understand differently.

 

F.B.  4.  There is a way to say what needs saying so others won’t misunderstand.

T.A.  4.  Say what needs saying, how people interpret what I say is not my responsibility.

 

F.B.  5.   The longer I suffer the more it proves that what I care about matters.

T.A.  5.  Long suffering proves faulty emotional management.

 

F.B.  6.  Life doesn’t make sense.

T.A.  6.  If I find the proper context, life makes sense sometimes the sense of non-sense.

 

F.B.   7.  In order succeed in life you need to be extremely disciplined.

T.A.   7.  Success with anything in life depends upon effective strategies not mere discipline.

 

F.B.  8.  Don’t set your hopes too high.

T.A.  8.  There is as much hope in the world proportionate to the responsibility you are willing to assume.

These are merely example of the faulty beliefs that continue to control our lives.  I invite you to make your own list of your commonly reoccurring false beliefs.  I further encourage you to dig deep enough to exhume the truth that whispers so quietly close to your own ear.

May you have the courage to risk for more truthful alternatives.

The Importance of Language

Share and Enjoy !

Her_Movie_Poster

Anyone who is a fan of repartee and delicious dialogue is going to love HER, playing in theaters everywhere.  The movie explores our most basic human need to connect in order to belong.  HER explores the question of “How do you share your life with another?” Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his operating system Samantha (Voice Over by Scarlett Johansson) in a futuristic, yet feasible vision of our own present infidelity with technology.  The movie explores the human experience of breakups, letting go, sexual pleasure, and emotional attachment through Oscar winning dialogue to covet.  Alienation Syndrome is an actual diagnosis for which the treatment is language.  HER is a movie which richly displays the beauty of language as an interpersonal art form.

Many people today fear the communication process because of more or less normal fears of involving themselves deeply with others.  Some fail to pour themselves into their language nor expect others to do so.  Language must remain on a safe level for these people, void of any adventure.  They habitually put filters between what they really think and feel and what they actually say.  The result is communication that is often muddied, but safe.

Some people engage in language that is overly precise, asking too much of language, while others engage in language that is too vague, asking too little.  Both extremes are usually defensive maneuvers designed to keep interpersonal contacts at acceptable levels.

SamanthaIn either case, the poverty of expression results in patterns of language that prohibit the speaker from expressing what they would like to say.  Language rather than being full and alive is conversationally anemic.

Yet despite the problems with language, language is an instrument by which we examine the world around us.  If we are afraid of this world, our language will be circumscribed and feeble, but if we love the world and are challenged by it, then our language will be strong and searching.  The limits of a person’s language become the limits of their world.

The best that life has to offer invites you to experiment with the wonderful potential of language.  Identify the roadblocks to effective and lively communication.  Language is sometimes a sensitive instrument and at other times a clumsy tool of communication.  Yet, irrespective of the challenge, when we endeavor to enlarge the possibilities of our language, we enlarge our personal possibilities.

A child learning to speak is acquiring one of the prime functions supporting a sense of individual autonomy and one of the prime techniques for expanding the radius of “give and take”.  Speech defines us.  Our language becomes one of the early ways in which we declare ourselves separate and distinct, and not just an appendage of our parents, church, school or family, but a person in our own right.   I am defined by my use of language.  Through language I make myself who, and what I am.

It may be counterintuitive, but I want you to introduce him to HER!