Image from Redbookmag.com

In a day and age where everyone is telling the world about whatever is on their mind via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking devices, it seems that it is only fitting that we go one step further down the social networking spiral. That’s right! Anonymous posting of events in your life. See, its one thing to go and let everyone you know what’s going on, or even 1,800 total strangers (like I do from time to time…what is wrong with me? :) ), but its something entirely different when you can share an event with a bunch of people, and make it completely anonymous.

Enter FMyLife.com and GiveMeHope.com.  Two distinct sites with two distinct purposes. FMyLife, in case you couldn’t tell by the title, is a site where you share a terrible event: something ironic, funny, or just out and out painful, and at the end, put the letters: FML. In essence, the idea is that because something bad happened to you, well, then we should just *F* my life. Now granted, I understand the nuance of sarcasm, and recognize that this sort of thing can be helpful and cathartic. However, is saying F My Life really the way to go here?

And if it is, what does that say about our perceptions of life, and its value? This has to do with Words, what you say to yourself and others. The quesion here is, are your Words affecting how you perceive yourself and your life?

The other side of this coin is GiveMeHope.com. This site is all about things that happen to people, good but also some bad, that give people hope to go forward with their lives.  Same concept, but different spin. There is certainly a stronger level of optimism in the posts, and people seem to want to inspire others to hope as well.

So what’s my point here? Great, Jim. Two websites, one thinks life sucks, the other is about hope. Big deal.

Well, it is a big deal if you consider that our Words have been shown to affect our attitude about ourselves, our lives and those around us. Not only that, but it can also affect your overal physical health. Don’t believe me? Go take a look at what the Mayo Clinic has to say about the power of our words over our lives.  Here’s what popped out at me:

“Researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:

• Increased life span
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress
• Greater resistance to the common cold
• Better psychological and physical well-being
• Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress “

So my point is, think about how your negative self talk and thinking affects you. I know it got the better of me this week (what, with my celebrity envy and all), and it really affected how I saw myself and my world. Once I snapped out of it, things seemed to go a lot better (I usually don’t let things get to me for more than a couple hours, give or take).

Moreover, think about what thinking positive can do for you. I’m not talking about the corny Stuart Smalley stuff. I’m talking about just straight up honesty about how good things are in your life. For me, the key to contentment in life is humility and gratitude. If you can’t be grateful for what you have, then you’re going to be ungrateful for what you don’t.

So be careful with all this FML stuff. Consider that perhaps your life and how you see it has much to do with your attitude, and if you let the negative stuff get  the best of you, it can have greater consequences than you think.

Kate Le Page also has a good article on this at Suite101.

On a housekeeping note, I have got to fix my email notifications, because it seems my WordPress doesn’t like telling me when I get comments. Its either that or my new Motorola Blur. Not sure which one is in the wrong here, but I’ll figure it out.

I haven’t been doing my usual “Monday and Thursday” blogging simply because I’ve been met with a quandry as of late. While part of this has to do with recent events involving the creation of a new human being, the rest of it has to do with this question:

Which is better: Feeling Great, or Doing Great Things? (this has nothing to do with me continuing to write a book…no…)

I found myself thinking a lot about this, mostly because I am split between the two. One the one hand, after a long day, I want to take some time to relax. In my field, we call this “self-care”, and place a high value on it, simply due to the nature of the work we do with people. At the same time, I can’t help but notice that there are people out there with less talent, less ability, less overall intelligence that have far more notoriety, influence and fortune than I do.

And I choose to let that drive me a little cuckoo.

Now that sounds a lot like I’m tooting my own horn, but if I didn’t believe I was a good therapist, then guess what…I wouldn’t be.

So as a result of sitting and watching people on TV (and maybe I’m just watching too much TV, and that’s my problem) do their thing and pimp out their self-help stuff, I can’t but sit here and think about how, if I had enough drive and motivation, I could probably do the same thing.

And yet, can I drag my own sorry behind out of the long hours and work with people to be able to go the extra mile and do what it takes to achieve that?

This decision has to do with all the  elements of the WATER Method: My Words are telling me that I deserve some time for myself, and that I want something more. My Actions show that I’m doing something in one direction, but not another. My Thoughts wander off into how I could be helping others and reaching more people. My Emotions are the feelings that I get when I think about these ideas. My Results are what I have right now, and what I could have if I change any of the other elements.

So when it comes right down to it, what do I value more? At any given point in time, that seems to change, and even if I want something bigger or better, am I willing to do what it takes?

A better question would be this: What do you value more? Do you think that its better to feel good in the moment, or plan ahead and feel good as a result of the things you accomplish?

Trick is though, each of these has their own fair share of consequences. Feel great now, but lost opportunity for accomplishment later. Do great things now, and suffer that difficulty, but feel great later for what you’ve achieved. Each has its own share of pros and cons.

What’s more: How does this affect your mental health? A strong part of mental/emotional health is feeling good or not feeling good, so is it better to feel good in the moment, or work through your issues so you have a longer lasting contentment?

Alright, I think I’ve talked enough. What do you think?

So now that I have my laptop back in my possession, I can finally get back to doing this regularly, as well as working on the WATER Method book. Since I last posted a number of things have happened that caught my attention, and I’ll be sharing them with you over the course of the next few posts.

For starters, I found out that my new child is going to be a bouncing baby boy. Cool, right? Everone was like, “you must be so excited!” Or they would start talking to me about how wonderful having children is going to be. You know what my response was? I was not very excited at all. In fact, my response was so lackluster, that my wife was very concerned, and wanted to make sure I was OK.

Probably not the best indicator that I was showing the proper level of enthusiasm, huh?

So we sat down and had a talk. She wanted to know what the heck was up with me, and why I was a bit detatched from the situation. Turns out I had two concerns: 1.) That child rearing is going to be a lot of work (and it is; whoever told you differently is likely your mum or dad, because they want grandkids anyway), and 2.) I was concerned about the financial strain that children inevitably put on the household (diapers alone will cost you an additional $200/month).

Now, being a therapist and having a penchant for knowing a lot about other people, it seems I missed the boat when it came to myself and my worries here. My wife, in her infinite wisdom shared with me something very solid. I won’t get into the whole conversation here, but the gist of it went something like this.

“You don’t know that its going to be difficult and hard. We have no idea whether or not our child is going to be difficult or easy. We just don’t know.”

So here I stand before you defying my own method of managing anxiety once again. However, I do so to prove a valuable point.

Just because we can’t see or even control the unknown, doesn’t mean we don’t want to.

The insanity of it all, is that we know that the unknown is out there. We know that we can’t control it. We know that even if we try our absolute best to control every aspect of it, it can still turn around and go in the opposite directon of what we really intended. So why do we try to hard to grab this concept? What drives us to get to this place where try to plan for what we can’t see?

In my humble opinion, such as it is, is that we do this because the alternative is not very appetizing. The alternative is doing nothing, and waiting for fate to figure out how its going to handle our lives. Planning for what we can’t see is like taking enough provisions for a camping trip (in case a bear shows up and eats your food), or making sure your sail boat is in tip top shape in case you weather a storm. We do this because we have the unique ability to live vicariously through others, see their mistakes, and learn from them. We do our best to ensure that life doesn’t turn out poorly, and if we can put in some failsafes to try to improve the odds in our favor, then so be it.

So what’s my point here? My point is that even though you can’t control the unknown, you can control what you do about the unknown.  The unknown might scare you to death (like this child rearing thing does for me to a greater or lesser degree), but recognizing that the unknown is something we can’t control right now, and letting the unknown go can be valuable. The unknown doesn’t go away, but the power we give it over our emotions can at least be decreased a little bit.

By the way, turns out I am excited about my baby, but I’m not expressing it appropriately. Not sure they’ve written a book on how you’re supposed to express this, but that just goes to show you that there are parts of my socially inept adolescence still hanging around in my personality. Who knew. 

If you know anything about me, you probably know that when it comes to technology, I try to keep on top of most of the stuff that’s going on out there. Additionally though, I’m also a guy that has a hard time letting old technology go. I had an old cell phone with this enormous battery on it that gave me a ton of talk time. The clips on the battery that kept it on broke. Did I get a new one? Nope, just threw some duct tape on it, and I was good to go.

This is generally typical male thinking. After all, most men aren’t much for aesthetics, so long as it works. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve fallen prey to the same malady. My laptop broke and I was ready to replace the screen on it to get it to work (probably was going to need some duct tape there too). Thank God it started working, and didn’t have to do that. When it did break though, I hooked the laptop up to my TV so I could get access to my files (see, tech savy)

Well, the same thing happened with my glasses. Turns out one day I was bringing my dog outside, and I managed to lose them. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, as I broke my first pair, and lost my second pair in a horrible rainstorm in front of Panera Bread. So there I was with no glasses, and once again I have to thank my lovely bride for somehow magically finding my old specs, because without them, I’d be sorely at a disadvantage this winter.

They didn’t fit though, and it drove me a little nuts. So I decided that this weekend, I would take some time to try to fix them, using my honey’s jewelry tools. I busted out a screwdriver and an old pair of sunglasses that broke ages ago, and tried to replace the right arm on the glasses. In about a half hour, I had the thing replaced! I was totally psyched…and then something happened that I didn’t expect.

The other arm broke off.

Suddenly, I felt like I was in a Pixar short (if you’ve seen them, you know what I mean).

So I grabbed some of my wife’s copper wire, and bent it to my will (Muahahaha!). About 20 minutes later, I had two new arms that worked fairly well, as you can see above. I also replaced the nose clips. All in all, the glasses were reasonably comfortable, and fit just right (adjustable too…beat that Lenscrafters!)

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why not just go out and but some new ones? Well, the “Tough Economic Times” gave us a proverbial slap with a newspaper as of late. So as a result, we’re trying to keep as frugal as we can. Needless to say, another $100-$200 for new glasses cetainly wasn’t on the menu.

And hey, they ain’t pretty, but they get the job done. They’re functional. They work, and I can see. Which leads me to the point of all this.

Sometimes your life isn’t going to be perfect. Or your marriage; your kids, your job, or even your living situation. Sometimes you have to be grateful for the functionality of life. If stuff works, and works pretty well for you, it may not be awesome, aesthetic, or even sensitive to others’ feelings. Sometimes what works for you doesn’t work for everyone else, and that’s probably OK.

Sometimes you just have to think outside the box, and make choices based on some of that thinking. Don’t leave inside the box behind either, if that works for you instead.

I guess my point is, through working on my glasses, and fixing them to some degree, I realized that soemtimes we just have to get things to work in our lives. With the chaos we run into regularly with all our responsibilities, it seems nearly impossible for everything you do to go just right. Something’s going to give, and you have accept that to a greater or lesser degree. What you can change here is how you manage those issues when they arive, and being prepared by knowing what your limits are.

Things don’t always have to be perfect, but getting by and working through the issues, and having a level of satisfaction for your hard work is about as close as you can come…and its not bad at all.

On January 4th, PBS broadcast a show called “This Emotional Life,” which talked about different theraputic techniques and recent breakthroughs in mental health counseling and treatment. It turned out that my mother in law watched it; and the therapist I work with; as well as a bunch of my clients. In case you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and click the pic above to check out some of the excerpts from it.

The video excerpt above is about the dangers of some self-help. Dr. John Norcross makes a few points about self-help, and how only about 20% is based on actual research. Additionally, he mentions that there is a danger in the “power of positive thinking” and how people can use it to the extreme and say that calamaties that come their way are a result of their not thinking positively enough.

This actually reminds me a lot of some old school Christian thinking. If something bad happened to you, then you must have sinned in some way. However, if you’re grounded in reality in any way, shape or form, you would realize that everyone runs into difficulty, and some people’s difficulty is greater than others. It strikes me though, that positive thinking has its merit, and he even says in the interview that our Thoughts do have a lot to do with how we operate (which is a concept I talk about a lot here).

So I guess what I’m asking you to do is this: Watch the video and ask yourself if the self-help that you follow is backed by data of some kind, AND is the self-help you’re following potentially damaging? One thing that I’m going to do for sure from here forward, is actually do some research to see if my technique is either done somewhere else by someone else, and if there is research to show that what I’m doing here works.

Don’t get me wrong! I do have my education and 8 years experience to back me up on what I’m throwing out here. However, I think its important to be able to offer you current, accurate and valuable information on how to manage your stressors.

What do you think? Does your self-help work? What is it? Talk to me people.

So I’m sitting with my wife watching a church service from our home, because we had planned on going to church that morning, but she really wasn’t feeling good, so we stayed in (she’s pregnant, she’s allowed). So I decided to go check out my old church, as they stream their church services every Sunday. During the message, the pastor makes a very strong statement, which is the focus of my post today.

The gist of it is this:

People don’t care about the truth anymore. They only care about what makes them feel good, and what they can get out of a situation.

This statement got me thinking, because I didn’t want to believe it was true. Surely there are some people out there who care enough about the truth, and will do so at the cost of feeling good and being selfish. Then I realized that the truth is relative for a lot of people. I mean, I’m a Christian, but if you don’t believe what the  Bible says is true, then you’re not going to agree with me about my version of the truth when it comes to religion. That’s OK, its a free country, you’re more than welcome to believe what you want.

But aside from religion, how can people come to terms with what the truth is? Some would say you come to this determination through science. Surely if you can prove something with science, then you can determine what the truth is that way, right? Then you lay out the global warming/climate change question, and you have people who have data that show both sides of the argument, and both could be considered to be true based on the information presented.

Then you can think about truth in a court of law, and how we are asked in court to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” How then, is truth determined? By facts and evidence, and upon the weighing of that evidence, the judge or jury comes to a determination about what the truth is, and how the court should proceed as a result of that determination. So it would follow, then, that we can determine what truth is based on facts.

But what if we don’t care about that stuff? What if we throw truth out the window because it doesn’t fit our worldview? Do we then disregard those facts because it feels better to keep our worldview? How then do we determine facts, if our perspective is so tainted that we will take false evidence into consideration?

Then there’s the generation of children in this day and age. You’ve seen them haven’t you? The ones that really don’t care much about the truth, and are more concerned with how their friends and their experiences make them feel, and what they can get out of life from others. I shouldn’t fault them too much, but at the same time, there is a line you have to draw at selfishness, so I usually confront teenagers on this as soon as I think they can handle it.

People have said “the Truth hurts,” and I think that’s because for the most part, the truth is difficult to swallow. The truth doesn’t feel good. Its not considerate of your feelings, and it doesn’t give you anything amazing as a result. I’m not sure that people even believe that “the truth will set you free” anymore, because in many respects, its better to be a slave to your own perspective than it is to be free with the difficult truth.

OK, OK, Jim. I get it. But how does that pertain to my life right now?

Since I can only throw my professional opinion at you, I’ll give you my perspective on the truth. First, determine your sphere of  relevance. Are these facts relevant to your life, and your sphere of influence? If not, then perhaps focusing on this area of truth is not necessary for you right now. So determine what truth is relevant to your life.

Second, do your best to seek out the most pertinent truth to your life. Since everyone’s life is different, the truth that is relevant to your life will be different. Do your absolute best to seek out the most truth for your life.

Lastly, do your absolute best to live your life according to the truth. No matter how hard it may be. Even if it makes you change your worldview, live according to the truth.

If I didn’t believe that what I was sharing with you was the truth, and didn’t follow it myself, I wouldn’t be typing it here. Why? Because I do my best to live by what I believe is the truth. I may screw up, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let my screw ups determine who I am and my continued thirst for the truth in my own life.

So my questions to you, and if you comment, please answer these questions: Does Truth Matter? and If so, how do YOU determine what is truth?

You made it! You got through another holiday season! For a lot of people this was a time of stress, parties, presents for family members, and eating a lot of food that you will eventually regret eating. You got through it, and now here you are on a Monday, sending your children back to school and heading back to work to begin a New Year, hopefully refreshed.

So now that things are back to normal, you can begin to focus on the stuff you put on the back burner to manage the holiday season. This is our Normal Insanity, the stuff we deal with on a daily basis without the holidays to use as an excuse. Its the stuff we now must face, or choose to continue to ignore. If we’re not careful, we could find ourselves in a place where continue to stuff our problems and not manage them.

So here are some ways to ease yourself back into the normalcy of post holiday season bliss.

1. Let go of the holiday season. Its over, which means the stress of it is over. If you have really good memories of that time, then give those more weight than the stress you’ve experienced. Remember, you make it through the season, it didn’t kill you, so you’ve made it through the hard part.

2. Take on a new attitude. Remember that your routine is what it was before, and unless something dramatic has changed, you will go through what you normally go through without the holiday stress. However, you can make it better than it was before the holiday season. Your attitude can make a difference.

3. Your time off was a larger example of a smaller concept. Remember that you can take time off in your average day, so long as you can schedule it well. Don’t feel like scheduling your time so you can have a little break here and there? Hey, its your life, but remember that those brief moments here and there are what brings you through the stressful periods. Take care of yourself so you can manage the negative, and relaxed to enjoy the positive.

Let’s not forget that with a new year people often have concerns and worries about the future. I have to say for one that I am scared to death about being a new parent, and what the future is going to hold for me as I move forward. I will have to say though, that using the WATER Method does make it a bit easier. Sure, I can plan for the future, but until I experience it, I’m not going to know exactly what to do until trial and error shows up. I’m going to screw up somewhere, and as long as its not a really nasty screw up, I’m kind of looking forward to it.

I also have to say that finishing my book seems a bit daunting, but I’m going to break it up in small increments to make sure that I accomplish it sooner rather than later. I figure if I can crank out a page every two days, I’ll be on the right track, and should have it done sooner than I think.

So don’t let the new year and the adjustment back to normalcy get you down. You will move on and forward, provided you have a plan in place to keep your wits about you. I know I need one. What about you?

Happy New Year! New Year’s Day is one of my favorite days of the year, because people all over the country and all over the world put the past behind them, and focus on moving forward toward positive change. We like to use this change in date to signify this decision, and it seems like a good place to start.

But let’s face it. How many times have you made a New Year’s Resolution, and then dropped the ball and let it slide. You’re still smoking. You’re still trying to lose that Holiday weight. You’re still trying to set better boundaries at work so you can spend more time with your family. Change can be scary, and sometimes its easier just to do what you’ve been doing all along, rather than try to come up with a plan to change AND actually use the plan to make the change.

Well, in a rare moment, I am going to go all crazy self-promotion today, in order to illustrate a point. As of today, I’m offering the New Year’s Resolution Revolution! This is my way of trying to help you set goals and achieve them through the power of the internet.

Now why the heck am I doing this? Because I’m sick and tired of seeing people set goals for their lives and not achieve them because they can’t stay on top of the resolution. So I’m setting something up to try to help you stay on task and not let those goals go to hell where all good intentions go.

In addition, I’m going to set my own New Year’s Resolution right now, so you know that I actually buy into my own baloney. Here are my resolutions as follows:

1. Every week I am going to finish at least 5 pages of my book, The WATER Method.

2. I am going to help at least one person achieve their New Year’s Resolution.

3. I am going to stick to my blogging schedule, and post every Monday and Thursday (like I did before).

So there you go. I will be updating the status of my New Year’s Resolutions weekly, so you know where I’m at, and you know that I mean what I say. If I don’t do it, call me out. I’m a big boy, I can handle it. 

Do you have a New Year’s Resolution? What is it? Do you need some help making it work? Click here to check out my New Year’s Resolution Revolution!

If you’ve listened to a song within the last 10-20 years, you’ve probably heard this old saying. Time heals all wounds. Does it really? See, I’m not so sure. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve run into that hold grudges, have family members that hold grudges, and how time really hasn’t done much for the wounds that people have felt.

Do me a favor. Go to your next holiday gathering where there are family members that have held grudges for years, and some even decades, and tell them that time heals all wounds.

It seems to me that its time for:

CORRECTED FAMOUS SAYINGS!!

You know what these are: Famous sayings that people have said over time, that made a lot of sense earlier in life. They were short and sweet, and profound all at the same time. Some examples are Knowledge is Power, and Don’t Just Think You Can, Know You Can. If You Fail To Plan, You Plan To Fail. While these are all well and good, each of them have to take into consideration context. Each person’s life is not so eaily mapped out and resolved with each of these catchphrases. Heck, knowledge isn’t power, Applied Knowledge Is Power. Don’t Just Think You Can, Know You Can and Do What You Can.

You see where I’m going with this, right? So Time Heals All Wounds is one of those sayings that is just begging to be Corrected!

So here’s my correction: Time Heals All Wounds, But Only If We Allow It To. This comes down to choices. Choosing to forgive. Choosing to move on with your life. Choosing to be a survivor and not a victim. This comes down to Actions, the A in the WATER Method.

The more power we give to the wounds we’ve felt in life, the less we allow time to affect them. The less power we give over our wounds, the more we allow time to affect them. I’d love to come up with an equation for this, for you analytical folks out there, but I’m not smart enough to come up with one (though if you can think of one, send it my way).

So consider how much power you give to your wounds. If you’ve given them that much power, what can you do to remove that power from them? What have you tried?

So while meeting with a client this week, we were talking about how he could change who he is. Now why would he want to do something like that? Because a lot of times when I work with people, they don’t like the behaviors that they’re doing, and as a result, they sometimes feel as though this is “who they are.”

In reality, its not “who they are,” but the patterns are so strong, its hard to see your life in any other way. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I believe that people develop patterns of Thoughts and Actions. After you’ve made a choice about these Thoughts and Actions, those choices become automatic. You stop thinking about whether or not you should do something, and you just do it.

So breaking that habit is pretty tough, right? Well, for those of you out there who are analytical, and less touchy feely, this one’s for you. Its an equation we came up with in session, and I think it works if you’re trying to take action toward changing who you want to be.

When + How = Who You Want To Be

In order to make sense of this equation, we have to define the variables right? So let’s do that:

1. Who You Want To Be: This should be your target right off the bat. You’re thinking about this because you don’t like who you are, or what you’re doing. As a result, you have an idea in mind as to who you want to be. Get really specific about this, because if you don’t have a specific plan, its possible you could be running around in circles. Heck, its pointless to even think of When and How until you have this in order.

2. When: This has to do with the time of day you choose to make changes, and how frequently you make those changes. So many people make plans to change, but don’t set a timeline for making those changes. In order to change, timing is key.

3. How: This is your plan. If you know when you want to change, but don’t have a plan, well, good luck changing. “How” also follows the same method as “When.” What are you going to do? Does this plan involve you doing it more often each day, or do you have to do it once?

So who the heck do you want to be? How and When are you going to get there? Have you thought about it? I know I have, and its got me thinking about what else I can do to help people. If I want these things to happen, I need to have a plan for When and How I’m going to do it (The WATER Method Book, anyone?)

Got a plan and implemented it effectively? Share your story here!