Kimberly Key

Inspiration for Changing Careers and/or Creating New Employment

I have a number of posts about job hunting tips, managing your net rep (Internet Reputation), cultivating entrepreneurial success and more (see Career or Business archives--note that articles date back to 2006). Today I thought I'd share some links to articles that would give you some inspiration.

One is a story that a reporter wrote that I find truly inspiring. While, yes, she may have quoted me in the story--let me tell you what she's doing with her career. An accomplished reporter who has covered business and technology for Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and MIT's Technology Review  to name a few, has taken the brave move to pursue a newfound dream brimming with passion and meaning for her--she is going back to school to pursue veterinary medicine. I'm so thrilled for her and think she's an inspiration for many who feel like it's too late to switch careers. To read the article she wrote after interviewing dozens of other brave souls that took a similar turn, click here http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Changing-careers-means-tolerating-risk-and-doubt-1413412.php. To follow her success and adventures in vet school, see her blog here jessicamintz.wordpress.com.

While Jessica provides inspiration for those who are thinking about changing careers, how about the folks that are trying to find a job and are feeling neck deep in despair? I wrote a post for Psychology Today on the topic. I shatter some myths about job and career security and try to provide some ideas to help. See my article, "Overcoming Unemplyment, Reclaiming Spirit."

As always, please let me know what you think of anything I write--and please share any ideas for topics you'd like me to address.

 

How Marketing is Ruining Our World

I feel frustrated and have decided to use this blog as a way of voicing my concerns about the detrimental effects of current marketing practices.

Earlier today I decided to go on my neglected Facebook account and peruse around. I saw a bunch of posts touting people's opinions, services or current mood. I felt disconnected from everyone and a bit dismayed by the superficial interaction--then I decided that I should participate to get more out of the experience. You know that old adage, you only get out of something what you put into it. So, I reached out and made comments and connected with folks. It felt rather good. Then I decided to up the participation by posting a status update--and it was in the update that made me realize all of the growing discontent I've had with the current influence of marketing. I'll even go so far as to say that we've let marketing turn into a dictator-ish  monster that is ruining our quality of life and freedom.

Let me explain.

First, you may be wondering what was in my status update that revealed this upsurge of marketing mayhem? 

Here it is (see if it hits you too)...

"What does Art do for us? It 'gives shape' to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them..." from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog." Great read and most excellent point. Long live art & emotions (aka LIFE). The more we numb, the less we live and the less art we produce and appreciate.

Did you get it?

Well, let me expound upon it a bit more. Art captures our emotions. Art is the embodiment of what makes us human. It's humanity in form--and it's a cherishable tribute to life. My frustration with marketing is its influence on art.

As an example that I have heard countless times, a recent interview on NPR's Fresh Air described that films are produced only when marketers deem them valuable. Marketers. Marketers who look to see if there will be enough revenue generated to justify production. Marketers who conduct surveys and allow people's impulsive opinions in the moment justify what sells. They reduce art down to the lowest common denominator where it no longer represents anything, just hum drum human impulse--which IS NOT the same as human emotion.

Perhaps that's why some truly great films were originally flops at the box office, only to become a hailed as art by all. Ever see "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Somewhere in Time"?

Going back to those impulses that marketers prey upon--I give workshops on overcoming procrastination. I share how our 'primal' reptilian portion of our brain is wired and why/how it gets us off track and distracted from the plans initiated by the frontal lobe portion of our brain. I tell people very clearly that marketers are manipulating our primal brain, so learn how to manipulate your own primal brain before they do.

That's right--manipulation. Yes, people CAN make you do things you don't want to do, especially when you're not aware of how the processes work. You think you're in control and you're not. Marketers are controlling you like the puppeteer controlled Pinocchio and the way Iago influenced Othello. Moreover, EVERYONE is on the marketing bandwagon and ingesting manipulation techniques the way guppies gulp brine shrimp flakes (or any other flakes for that matter). We're ingesting CRAP and we need to wake up.

Politics is infected the most. Did you notice that fundraising emails never stop--and it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you reside. You are being driven to believe that you need to douse some fire by sending in your money. Again, the lowest common denominator wins and what really helps people seems to fall by the wayside.

Healthcare, once an ivory tower of trust and healing, is now polluted by marketing. Pharmaceutical companies, once banned from advertising, now feed the airwaves with drugs that will cure your whoas, your sex drive, your bladder, and your fatigue. (Of course some of these commercials are followed up by class action lawsuit ads by law firms--did acne-fighting Accutane give you Inflammatory Bowel Disease or did you take anti-inflammatory Celebrex only to have heart issues?) Who do people turn to that they can trust? The only information that's peddled has usually been influenced by marketers.

Even churches are under the influence. Give. Give. Give. Convert. Convert. Convert. Where does anyone go to just rest, relax, breathe, and connect? Churches are under pressure like everyone else and just trying to do what they can to survive. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a place where people can just be without being hit up to give money.

We've truly lost something when marketing practices become the norm. With the rise of small business, people worldwide are succumbing to manipulative marketing practices in the false belief that they're successful entrepreneurial habits. Using people as a means to profit IS NOT successful business. It's a sign of the times that we've lost touch with what matters.

I implore you to pay attention when you feel manipulated and are responding out of an impulse or urge. I doubly implore you to denounce practices that feed on people's impulses or urges (you know the feeling...or the so called "hot button"). Focus on what matters. Find and cultivate your values. Go to a museum and refill your spirit by looking at art. Remember your humanity and feed it to the world free of charge and I'll bet your needs will be filled in ways you could never imagine.

As a closing thought, maybe you could also take in some old movies that feed the soul. One of my favorite's is "Keys to the Kingdom" with Gregory Peck. Another great film that was fortunately restored, is the '37 Capra classic "Lost Horizon," which most poignantly captures the state of our world with this line, "When those that hunger for power devour each other, the meek shall inherit the Earth." (Meek, by the way, in Hebrew translation refers to spiritual humility, not material poverty.) My hope is that this tide of marketing hunger will subside and that it will be our combined spirit that will stand up and demand quality of life, not the tyranny of mass popularity. 

 

Check Out My Posts on Psychology Today

I realize I've neglected my blog for a couple of months. I'm sorry to anyone that has missed new content. I just posted a piece on tips for managing a listserv (see below) and I promise to add more of my usual material on various counseling and psychology topics. To let you know, I'll also be focusing on evolution trends to correspond with my new venture, Keys to Evolution. If you have any requests for content, please don't hesitate to contact me at Kimberly@EncompassWF.com.

If you're wondering what you're missing on my Psychology Today blog, entitled "Counseling Keys," here's a peek. Please visit it and be sure to check back here soon. Thanks and Happy 2011!

Children’s Expectations: What Your Child Would Tell You if They Could

President Barack Obama says to live up to our children's expectations. Learn the top three myths about children and what they really expect--if they could tell you.

Read More

December 13, 2010

In Defense of Marriage

 

Examining why 50% of people stay married and what they get out of their lifetime commitment.

Read More

 

 

 

Tips for Managing your Listserve and Facilitating Clear Communication

Do you belong to a listserv that has gotten out of hand? Do people take things personally and attack? Are misunderstandings abundant? Life and human to human communication can be like that. However, it seems to get worse in email as that critical body language that conveys up to 85% of our communication is absent. Thus, people misinterpret messages. Add groupthink on top of that and it’s no wonder listserves can be a hot bed for contention. To curb contention and increase productive teamwork, here are a few tips to making your listserv communication clearer and smother.

 >    State purpose of listserv clearly and succinctly in a way that provides an umbrella framework for communication parameters. This purpose statement can be set up as an automatic “signature” that is displayed on the bottom of each reply to reinforce and remind listserv members to make appropriate posts according to the purpose. (e.g. The XYZ listserv is to discuss research, trends, and provide collegial assistance and support to counseling professionals on common practices, procedures, and ethics in counseling along with typical client, classroom and curriculum support.)

 >    Set-up listserv guidelines (a list of do’s and don’ts) that can be followed by the listserv owner and must be agreed upon before a member can join. This serves as a reminder of what is allowed and not allowed and can be referred to by the listserv owner when mediating a dispute or removing someone from the listserv. Typical guidelines can include items like use of language, political and commercial discussion bans, directives to personal disputes offline, privacy of member information, and references/limitation to Constitutional rights.

 >    Listserv owners strengthen group communication when they act neutral in disputes. When disputes arise on a listserv, simply remind members to take it offline before it gets out of control and then urge them to respond to listserv with any solutions. This serves as a template for future conflict resolutions. It is also beneficial if the listserv owner does not jump in to discuss the issue, but only serve as a facilitator. This aids the listserv owner’s credibility and neutrality, much like the role of a presiding office in a meeting as described in “Robert’s Rules of Order.”

>    For further ideas on member communication, seek out the organization’s by-laws, “Robert’s Rules of Order,” or even the U. S. Bill of Rights. Remember, however, that keeping guidelines simple and flexible is always the best rule of thumb to elicit the beneficial effects of honest and open communication. Also, keep in mind that even a little conflict can serve a purpose and lead to enhanced changes and learning opportunities for members.

 

What is the Difference Between Counseling and Psychology…and Where in the World Does the Term “Shrink” Come From?

For a discipline that’s only around 130 years old, psychology has a lot of practitioners sporting a number of different titles (and I’m not talking about the local bartender down the street, although they can sometimes be quite excellent listeners). I’m talking about psychotherapists, therapists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, marriage and family therapists, and counselors. What’s the difference and why so many titles?  

This post aims to provide a little more clarity about the differing psychological services among practitioners and describes how one discipline grew to focus on mental health while the other focuses on mental illness. In addition, there are answers to some of the common questions about the people who have taken on psychology.

While many think of Sigmund Freud as the first psychology practitioner, it was Wilhelm Wundt who opened the first psychology lab in 1879. Wundt sought to examine human consciousness using an experimental method he called introspection (for interested researchers, he did not use the scientific method as experiments weren’t able to be duplicated). Like its shaky scientific beginnings, the field grew to have a varied background –some of it contains a solid scientific background and others are a bit more airy-fairy, so to speak. 

Perhaps the ethereal aspect of airy-fairy isn’t so far off as psychology literally means “study of the soul” (psychē means “soul, spirit or breath” while logia means “to study”).  A more modern definition means to study human behavior and thought, but we’re going to come back to that definition in a bit. A blessing of psychology’s birth as a discipline was how mentally ill (or perceived mentally ill) people were treated. Just prior to the late 1800s in Western culture—long after people with ‘visions’ had been treated as oracles or shamans—it was believed that people suffered from mental illness because God had cursed them. Consequently, mentally ill people were punished with severe beatings, chainings and/or ostracism. Psychology helped change such views and a more holistic (and humane) approach to treatment was adopted.

Many of the first practitioners in the field were Medical Doctors (M.D.s). A medical doctor has attended medical school. Today’s M.D.s in the field are called psychiatrists and they can provide therapy services while prescribing medications. Psychologists are practitioners that have received their Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) or Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.).  A number of other mental health fields offer graduate and Ph.D. degrees in social work, marriage and family therapy, various forms of counseling and counseling psychology—which brings me to the title of this post. What is the difference between counseling and psychology?

Going back to a bit of history, World War II put a big spotlight on mental health as the war had serious mental health impacts on soldiers (war impacts EVERYONE and it has a trickle down effect through the generations). The National Mental Health Act was first passed in 1946 and the U.S. government began funding research and programs related to mental illness and health. In the 1950s, prevention and early detection of mental health problems became a focus. Slowly, a shift in perceptions occurred where people could safely seek treatment for adjustment, transitions, and relational issues without feeling stigmatized. (Clearly, we are still working on shifting those perceptions – in addition to war, old belief systems also trickle down through the generations).

As part of the shift, psychology has generally been defined as treating mental illness and counseling psychology was born to address mental health issues. 

Some of the fundamental tenets of counseling are:

• People should be treated with respect
• If given the opportunity, normal growth will occur
• The goal of treatment is to promote healthy growth
• Counseling is an educational process where the client is part of the process and actively participates
• Counseling builds on strengths as opposed to attacking weaknesses
• Counseling uses empirically validated procedures (scientifically proven via research using scientific method) 

I hope this helps illustrate a little of the history and explains some of the differences in the professional titles and orientations. I could write so much more and may follow up with later posts that address length and duration time of various therapies. For now, let me switch to a few of the common questions I hear.

 

Answers to Some Common Questions

Are you really going to shrink my head? 

No.  Shrink comes from shrinking the issue. Notice how we can sometimes get so overwhelmed by everything that it feels like the sky is falling, so we throw it all out there. Often times a good therapist/counselor can help you SHRINK the issues down to a single root cause. (But now I want a shrunken head for Christmas just to tease folks. ;))

 

Are you analyzing me? (when just meeting me at a social occasion)

No. Well, maybe. Seriously, the therapeutic process follows a particular process of information gathering and analysis. Unless you’re in the office and experiencing that process, you’re probably not getting analyzed. Therapists/counselors cannot see through you or read your mind. :)

 

Have you ever been through therapy?

Yes. Good training requires that you do. Plus, I believe in it. I confess there are some not great folks out there and I’ve seen and paid for their services. Like all fields, there are good people and not so good people. Don’t let the rotten apples deter you from seeking good service.

 

Did you go into the field to work through your problems?

There isn’t a person alive that hasn’t taken a job to work through a problem (e.g. I have bills to pay ;)). I also don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wounded in some way by life. For me, yes, I would call myself a wounded healer. I’ve experienced a number of things in life that I believe ultimately helps me to be more empathetic and understanding of my clients.

 

Do you date your clients? 

No. It’s not like the movies or TV shows. All therapy professionals are prohibited from having dual relationships. If you have had your therapist ask you out or make you uncomfortable with inappropriate flirting, stop seeing them and report them. It’s an abuse of power and your vulnerability.

 

 

It’s International Conflict Resolution Day – How are you Celebrating this Day?

Today is International Conflict Resolution Day. While started by the Association for Conflict Resolution five years ago, it became recognized as the International Conflict Resolution Day in 2006. One of the main goals of the celebration is to recognize that there are ways to solve conflict through peaceful measures.

When receiving my ACR training in mediation, the biggest thing I learned was to look at the problem differently. The key was to find a mutually satisfactory solution rather than drawing a line in the sand and focusing on differences. I was taught the same thing as a psychotherapist. There is a famous example that illustrates the point perfectly:

Imagine a neighborhood with inviting homes, well-tended yards and tall shade trees where children play together and everyone feels safe. You live in one of the homes and one day a new neighbor moves in next door to you. They are from a different country and their accent is so thick that you can’t quite understand them. You observe many different people coming in and out. You aren’t familiar with their culture and find yourself standing back to observe what they’re about.

One day you go in the back yard and begin picking oranges from the tree. The tree sits in the middle of the property line and you’ve always shared access to its sweet fruits. A woman comes out of the neighboring house yelling at you in a different language. You haven’t seen her before. You are flustered because you don’t know what she’s saying. You are in a hurry because you need the oranges for the dinner party you are throwing and oranges are one of the essential ingredients in the meal. You aren’t about to drop them as they are the last four oranges on the tree and you’re in a time crunch.

What you don’t know is that she, the grandmother, is also in the middle of making an urgent recipe that is a healing remedy for her son (the owner of the home). Her grandson just tried to pick the oranges from the tree, but he couldn’t reach them. He went in to get her help and then she saw you taking them and panicked. She also doesn’t speak English very well.

If you had realized her situation, you may not have felt so threatened. Moreover, you may have felt compassion for her as she was tending to her ill son. You may have gladly given her the oranges and even offered to help her in any way you could. On top of that, if you had realized that she only wanted the juice of the oranges whereas you wanted the zest (the peel), you both could have shared the oranges and been happy. 

Mediation, conflict resolution, peacemaking is about trying to find those solutions. It seeks to understand first before becoming defensive.

Conflicts generally grow out of something so simple – a misunderstanding. Then other people come in to defend you and before you know it, there are two mobbing groups against each other. That’s how war can originate

Please know I’m not saying that there aren’t genuine bullying types of people (sociopaths and other people with more extreme personality disorders) out there that have malice in their heart. What I am saying is that more often than not, people have genuine love in their heart and are motivated by that magic quality. So, the next time you begin to feel enraged or defensive with someone – seek to understand first. Listen with your heart and try to feel compassion for the other person or people. Hearts, by the way, speak all languages, so don’t let that deter you when encountering another person that seems different from you. You just might get love in return, which can only make life greater.

In closing, I want to take a moment to remember and honor Mother Teresa for all the amazing peace work she has done in the world – and for the light she has modeled to the rest of us. She once said that she wouldn’t go to an anti-war demonstration, but she would attend a peace rally, so maybe we can also think of today as Peacekeeping Day. 

(Mother Teresa - 26 Aug 10 - 5 Sep 86)

"Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love."

What We Can Do About Bullying

Bullying hurts. It kills. And it impacts everyone – you can be a victim of it, responsible for it, an observer of it, or somehow related to it. The point is that no one is fully removed from it, so it’s in all of our best interests to understand what we can do to confront it.

This is a blog entry and by no means an exhaustive account about what we can do, however, there are some tips that can consistently help a person that has been bullied. I’m placing them here for everyone. If you are a victim, try them and please also reach out and seek help. If you know someone that is a victim of bullying, please reach out to them, support them, and help them to find help. 

• Breathe - Breathing is often overlooked during anxious situations. We begin to pant or stop our breathing altogether. Take deep breaths (at least four or five of them) and re-center and ground yourself. This will calm you while sending needed oxygen into your blood stream and harnessing your adrenaline, so that you can think and react more clearly. Get in the habit of doing this when waking up and going to sleep along with several times during the day.
• Do not isolate yourself – It is tempting to withdrawal and not share what’s happening to you. Now more than ever you need people around you. Talk to family members. Find support. Join a support group. Find friends that like activities that you like (book reading clubs, outdoor hiking groups, church, gym, other hobby groups, etc.). Make sure to surround yourself with people that help build your self-esteem.
• Realize that you are in control of you – Bullies like to take control by manipulating and scaring you. You can lessen their impact by taking control of you, your actions, your thoughts, and your responses to them. When you take control of you, you fan the flames of inner strength and resilience.
• Make a plan – Find action steps to take to deal with the bullying. Document what is happening and write down what you can do to stop it. Enlist help from loved ones and/or a professional to assist you in figuring out your options.
• Find additional strength in things that matter to you – Think about things, people, places and dreams you love. Cultivate those parts of yourself as that is what makes you unique and special. Feeding your passion takes power away from bullies.
• Learn something new – Take a class at the community center or community college in something new, like pottery, writing, computers, art, yoga, foreign language, cooking, etc.
• Nurture yourself – Remind yourself of your strengths and gifts. Write them down. Do things that you love to do and tell yourself positive things (GET RID OF THE NEGATIVE SELF-TALK).
• Have faith and believe in the power of transformation – Yours and the world’s transformation. Give yourself self-love and find strength to make a difference.
• Keep healthy boundaries – Beware of people that make you feel guilty, less than them, or continually make it about them and ignore your feelings.
• Advocate on others’ behalf – This helps build your strength and makes you feel empowered (and not alone) along with developing your empathy and compassion for others (because the worst way a bully can control you is if they turn you into them).

WHEN TO SEEK HELP

If you or someone you love is continually reliving the abusive event, has become hyperalert and easily startled, has developed a hopeless outlook on life, is dealing with anxiety, nightmares, insomnia, lack of concentration, is gaining weight and/or has lost their appetite, is acting out with self-sabotaging behaviors (cutting, drinking, engaging in risky behavior, sexually acting out, etc.), and especially if you/they are having any thoughts of suicide or killing someone else – SEEK HELP IMMEDIATELY. 

Bullying has numerous victims in schools, workplaces, communities, retirement homes, and even in your home with your loved ones. Most bullies are toxic and are bent on control. They often do not see their victims as real people (dehumanizing them by seeing them as "the other" or even as a possession). They are in a game to win and sometimes their displayed remorse is part of their game. Bullies are usually immature, narcissistic, and highly competitive. They may not genuinely like themselves and be out of touch with their true emotions. They may have mental health issues and can swing from being loving and caring to dangerous and cunning. Keep your boundaries and don’t reinforce their bullying. Don’t laugh when they tease another person and make inappropriate jokes. Don’t engage them or bully with them. Say no and help stop the tide of bullying.  If you see someone bullied, reach out and give them your care because we can all do something to help heal the pain of bullying.

 

October is National Bullying Prevention Month – “Take Your Power Back” Bullying Prevention Seminar this Saturday, October 16 Downtown Austin (4-5:30PM)

Bullying is pervasive. It happens in schools, workplaces, in neighborhoods—and even in your home. Bullying spans across the ages as it occurs among children, in dating and intimate relationships, between siblings, with parents, against the eldery, and the ill. Cyberbulling (using text messages, social networking sites and the internet) has created another level to bullying, making its deleterious effects lasting and almost inescapable. Cyberbullying has become so bad that iSafe foundation statistics have shown that ONE in THREE adolescents have been threatened online.

In response to Bullying Prevention Month and the alarming trend of bullying, Keys to Evolution is holding its first seminar focusing on how to protect yourself from bullying. We’ll look at the evolutionary trait of equity and fairness and discuss what prompts people to bully (the lure of power and control) and what you can do to empower yourself in abusive and bullying situations. We’ll also discuss what you can do to help others that have been impacted by damaging bullying behavior.  You’ll receive practical tips to help you heal, survive, and thrive from bullying experiences. You’ll also learn proactive steps to prevent bullying. You’ll learn how to spot an abuser before they bully and the secret manipulative tricks they use to bully people and how to deal with cyberbullying. You’ll receive strategies for dealing with various bullying situations along with things you can do to help your community. 

This seminar is for anyone that has ever experienced bullying or anyone that wants to learn what to do prevent it from happening in the first place.

The Keys to Evolution – Bullying Prevention Seminar “Take Your Power Back from Bullies” will be held this Saturday, October 16 from 4-5:30 PM at the Austin History Center meeting room on 810 Guadalupe. (Come downtown, get empowered and enjoy a nice dinner downtown afterward.) The cost is $49 per person with a percentage of the proceeds going to iSafe Foundation. Participants will also receive a copy of my book, "Ten Keys to Staying Empowered  in a Power Struggle." To register, see http://nomorebullying.eventbrite.com/.

 

Launching KeysToEvolution.com Today

Dear Friends,

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a new business focus. I am officially launching that business today – www.KeysToEvolution.com.

What has changed and what can you expect?

First, please know I can still meet with clients, however, I have moved out of the Bee Cave Road office. I can offer home visits or meet on Thursdays in my colleague’s office in Lakeway (RR 620, Suite 100F – across from the Spa at the Lake shopping center).

Regarding my new business – I am focusing on the four key evolutionary traits that that help make us more emotionally mature as individuals and function healthier as a society. These four key traits are storytelling and meaning making, empathy, equity & fairness, and love. Please see my links under "The Science” to learn more about the science behind each evolutionary trait. You can also see “My Story” to understand my personal motivation behind the development of this new business. The “U.S. Trends” link under the "Where We are Headed" link also shares a historical perspective about the evolution of U.S. society. 

I have missed getting out my blog posts and newsletters the past few months. Some of you have contacted me and requested to keep receiving them. Thank you and I’m sorry I’ve neglected getting them out. I will now provide a Keys to Evolution newsletter and related blog posts with articles that address the four key evolutionary traits. I suspect you might like these a lot as they’ll cover many of the same topics while adding a new level of depth and research. As the name states, I’m sure it will evolve over time and I hope to hear your thoughts and suggestions about the material and/or my services as well. Thank you!

For now, please do check out my new site as there is a lot of material to read and ponder. 

I will add that the photography is courtesy of my dear friend and therapist in Georgia (and an incredible photographer!) – Tom Query of Wellspring Arts. I also want to thank Deborah Carter-Mastelotto for all of her help and support with my new Website hosting company. There are also a dozen friends and family who cheered me on and told me to “Go for it!” Thank you!

 One more note – evolution means growth. My focus does not exclude spirituality – it includes it. I am looking at the best aspects within us and focusing on how we can keep emphasizing our best parts. So often, we get hung up on our failures and shortcomings – resulting in being frozen and overwhelmed. This new shift focuses on the positive within us, so that we can move forward in confidence. It also provides a light when we feel lost in the emotional and social fog.

First I Ate Chocolate Cake, Then I Ate Pasta - Reflections of an Empty Nester One Year Later

What happens when a single mother becomes an empty nester? I shared what I was experiencing before it happened in a post on  May 28, 2009 (Adapting to an Empty Nest and Sharing Parenting Pearls Learned Along the Way).  In the post, I described that I might have been feeding a few of my feelings with homemade chocolate cake. Today’s post shares reflections of my first year as an empty nester and a few things I learned about grieving, finding yourself, loving from a distance, and letting your children soar when they leave the nest.

Anyone who knows me knows that my daughter is the most important person in my life. We’re extremely close. I feel so lucky to be her Mom. She is my sun and fills me with meaning and purpose for living. My whole adult life has been spent making decisions around her. (What is the best food she can eat?  Do I let her watch TV or do I ban TV? What school is best for her? Which neighborhood is safest for her? What job can I take that provides me with benefits, security and time for her? What can I do to be a good role model? How can I be the best parent ever and not pass on dysfunctions from previous generations…etc., etc.).

You can imagine it was a little painful to see her go – especially when she was moving half a country away. Not so easy to jump in a car and make weekend trips.  Consequently, I felt grief and sadness. I also found myself at a loss for what I wanted in life. Sure, it was easy to fantasize and dream about things I could do in the future while living a practical life today that focused on being a good Mom (which admittedly brought me more joy than anything else I could do in life). Yet, now that “someday in the future” was here and I didn’t know what to do. I also felt too sad and numb to just immediately jump on the “pursue your dreams” train.

As a healthy response to this new phase in my life (after all I’m a counseling psychotherapist and surely know the best things to do in these kinds of situations), I decided to commit to doing everything the same for one year. In other words, I wouldn’t make any drastic changes. I’d allow the internal changes to naturally surface instead. I’d give myself time to grieve or do whatever I needed to do. I would not commit to anything that resulted in an external change as it might disrupt my full healing. It takes a baby 10 months to grow in the womb. Surely, it would take some time for me to grow into this new life phase.

The Change

It did take time to adjust. I kept focusing on seeing my daughter, planning for our visits, and was pretty certain that I hadn’t been impacted by her departure at all. I felt absolutely fine. Normal. Life hadn’t changed. She and I were just experiencing longer trips away from each other.

Denial. It’s a powerful psychological defense.

She and I were both changing. She was finding friends and learning how to adjust. She was blossoming and coming into her own. Her adjustment appeared smooth. Our first visits with each other involved big hugs and extreme joy followed by bickering followed by tears followed by long talks of processing some of the changes that were taking place. We were still extremely close, yet we were on these new journeys that included diverging paths.

I tried to remain busy. I felt like I was living life as I had when she was home. It wasn’t until five months after she left that I realized I wasn’t cooking like I used to cook (I love to cook, so this was a big deal). I was on the phone with my sister one day when I informed her that I was finally cooking. Then I looked down at the saucepan filled with homemade pasta sauce and realized I had only cooked pasta for the past four months, except this time I was making homemade sauce instead of getting it from a jar.

Those are the kind of realizations that shatter denial like a bullet to a windshield. Tears that wouldn’t come before finally drenched my cheeks. I sobbed and realized life had changed. She wasn’t going to come back and be my little girl that I would get to take care of every day. I had to stand up and take care of me now – and let her be the amazing young adult woman she was becoming. 

What I learned

In reality, she and I were both coming into our own. She’s pursuing her passion in school and loving it. I’ve received calls where she excitedly gushes, “Mom, I feel like I was made for this.” There’s nothing that makes a parent feel any better than hearing that kind of enthusiasm from their grown child. In addition, she has inspired me to revisit my own hidden passions and dreams. 

One year later, rather than clinging to the days of yesteryear, I am settled into the now.  The lessons I’ve learned to date are these:

·          Parenthood doesn’t stop, it just changes – and you have to change with it.

·          Dreams don’t die, some dreams just get started later in life.

·          A critical part of parenting means being the positive support to your children’s passion – the world is full of no’s and negativity, so provide the YES in their lives and be their ray of light.

·          Be real, truthful and vulnerable with your children and they’ll be the same way with you.

·          Set healthy boundaries that are consistent and firm and you’ll give your children a foundation stronger than the Rock of Gibraltar.

·          Love heals all wounds and patience is a necessity.

·          Change is part of life – responding to change from the inside results in growth.

·          What you eat can reveal a lot abut what what you’re feeling. 

 

When Things Go Wrong - Travel!

Have you ever noticed that summer comes at just the right time? Exhaustion from life’s demands seems particularly high around this time. It’s as if mental burnout rises alongside the rising seasonal temperatures (as experienced here in the U.S and definitely in Texas).  If you can relate, traveling is your antidote.

In today’s economy, vacations at home (“staycations”) have become popular. The downside to a staycation, however, (and, no, this is not a paid endorsement from a travel agency) is that you may miss something critical that a travel experience provides you—fresh perspective.

We get so wrapped up in daily rituals that we end up getting stuck in a box and then we feel overwhelmed with life. Tunnel vision is the result.

The solution to tunnel vision is getting out of the box of your everyday experiences and changing your surroundings. This allows you to see things from a different point of view and to gain a fresh perspective. You can discover alternative solutions that you would have never dreamed possible. Traveling is the best way to achieve it, as Kent Nerburn points out in his book, “Simple Truths.”

Travel, no matter how humble, will etch new elements in your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back…you will understand that there are a thousand, million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind.

Whether you’re leaving a piece of life behind or an old way of seeing a situation, travel can have a profound affect on you. It can reinforce deep bonds with your family and loved ones. It can open your heart and mind to possibilities. It can connect you to your inner passions and dreams. It can uplift your spirit and restore your energy. It can also serve to foster brotherhood with all of mankind.

Whatever is happening in your life right now—deadlines, relationship troubles, career challenges, grief, money troubles, parenting issues, crisis of faith, general malaise—go out and discover your personal solutions by traveling. Make plans for a real vacation. Leave for a weekend getaway. Learn new cultures. Go explore. Have an adventure. Then drop me a line (KimberlyATencompasswf.com) and tell me how it changed your life.

Bon voyage !

How to Master Dating, Love & Marriage: Cracking the Heart’s Hidden Love Code

Love…
 

Poets describe it as a kind of 3^rd entity, like it captured someone…or someone caught it.

As giddy as love feels, what if I told you that you were responsible for the swooning feelings of love that seemed to have appropriated your senses? Like a great chef creating a wonderful stew, you have put all the ingredients into the pot. Time and temperature have their influences too—yet nothing would be there to cook without your initial configuration.

Here’s how it works. We automatically categorize all of the experiences with another person and are constantly assessing whether the experiences tally up against our subconscious love list. The heart’s hidden lock opens to the feelings of love when the right amount of experiences takes place with another person and the love list gets checked off.

The high from that initial rush of love is so intoxicating, that it’s no wonder we persist in playing the dating game in order to crack the heart’s code. Our reactions to the properly sequenced code are a forgone conclusion. It’s a pact we made in adolescence, listening to our families, friends, and watching endless romantic movies, and listening to similar narratives applied to an array of musical beats. We were conditioned and we are conditioned to playing the love game. No wonder it feels like a third-person. It is. We disconnect from our conscious mind and go into reactive conditioning mode. We follow and our head doesn’t understand. But, our body and soul have been so trained. They leave our shocked, misunderstood logical brain behind in the dust. It’s almost primal. We lose control because we never had it. It’s simply our pre-wired reactions taking over, almost like in hypnosis. 

Oftentimes, women tend to react stronger to love because they have engaged in more of the narratives than men, which is one reason romance movies get dubbed a “chick flick.” Men’s narratives are more diluted with other “manly/non-emotional” narratives, so they don’t get as lost in the primal reactions. However, they are more likely to get swept up in the primal reactive conditioning of sex. They are trained from birth to ogle a woman’s body and seek pleasure from it. This might explain why women, generally, prefer romance and men prefer sex. But take note that our times are changing and the narratives are also changing, so we may be experiencing a lot of blurred roles and role reversal.

Blurred roles or not, love’s checklist is pretty consistent. Think about your own dating experience and notice how dates that made you feel in love included the following:

>    Trust gets established by sharing personal information, maybe where some pain has been involved

>    Trust is reciprocated by complete acceptance of shared story, along with nonjudgment & support

>    A cat and mouse game is played to find the perfect compatible dance (one party will shirk if the other comes on too strong and vice versa…proper balance is determined through light jesting, debating, teasing, etc.)

>   Showing acceptable vulnerability and caretaking responses

>   Painting an image of future goals to see if there’s a shared match/compatibility between both pictures

>    Physical and intellectual compatibility

The heart unlocks (or primal conditioning kicks in) when these items are checked off. Note - Both parties must feel and meet conditions or else it is infatuation.

Like that simmering stew, these conditions require consistency. Anything that deviates from the picture (an inconsistency, warning signs, etc.) can get immediately dismissed to maintain the illusion of love or it can result in shutting off the feelings of love altogether. For instance, cognitive dissonance (denial) may prevent the mind from engaging to keep the intoxicating feelings of love in place. Conversely, the heart will close and love will evaporate if inconsistencies are examined or when items on the checklist begin to get unchecked (e.g. picture of future isn’t compatible anymore, support has been removed, judgment/criticism takes hold). Logic supersedes primal conditioning and the people move on. This can happen within as little as 10 minutes to as long as 10 or more years. The key is that love can only thrive when the condition of love’s checklist are met.

In closing, consider these conditions if you are in love, falling in love, or looking for love. They comprise the secret formula to a successful relationship and the gift of giddiness that complete love brings. Being aware of your hidden checklist also allows you to appreciate love from the logical, emotional and primal brain. Being aware from all of these perspectives may also help you overcome any denial that is keeping you in a false love/infatuated/dangerous love situations. Remember you are not a victim or a hostage of love—you are the Chef and master of your heart’s love.

 

A Self-Assessment to Help you get the Most from Love & Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Are you ready for it? It’s interesting because I’ve heard people rumbling about it for weeks—almost more than any other day of celebration. It seems to have created a lot of anxiety in people (single folks and those in relationships).

Some complain with “bah humbug” disdain, stating that the day is only a commercialized excuse to sell cards and candy.

Others are sad that they are alone and feel like it’s a day to make single people feel bad.

Still others are in love with the idea of love and seem more attached to romantic gestures and displays of love than the person they actually claim to love. 

There are more scenarios, but you get the picture. People everywhere have an opinion about a day that’s dedicated to the celebration of love. It’s no wonder as love is the essential feeling that ties us together, ensures our continued existence, and makes us feel better than the most high-priced drug. Some even call it a drug. Yet, at its core, it’s the most basic human need that can heal all ails. 

When an infant is given love and a secure environment, that love floods their brain and bodies with all the rich hormones and chemicals needed later in life for resilience, adaptability and intrinsic happiness. No wonder we spend so long chasing after the feel good safe experience—especially if we didn’t get the full dose of comfort we needed as an infant. This isn’t about blaming your mother though. It’s about taking steps now to give yourself what you need, so that you can approach your loved ones and Valentine’s Day with realistic expectations and attain the satisfaction you crave.

The number one challenge when approaching love (and Valentine’s Day) is that we’re often trying to get something we desperately desire that, in actuality, we can only give ourselves. Thus, we feel frustrated by our own unmet needs while feeling taxed by the demands from our loved ones. 

Note the vicious cycle—how can we give something to someone that they can only give to themselves while we feel simultaneously depleted? It’s like two racecars expecting each other’s engines when they were only supposed to enjoy the experience of racing with each other. 

To break the cycle, here’s the self-assessment to help you fill your own engine (your heart) so that you can enjoy the race (life/love/activities/making memories) with your loved ones…

ASSESSMENT - Take a piece of paper and divide it in two columns. In one column, write down all of the loving things you’ve done for others. It can span all time and all relationships. Be sure to include any loving acts and accommodations that you feel good about.  In the second column, write down the loving things you’ve done for yourself. Think about any dreams in your heart and actions you’ve taken to allow yourself to achieve them. Which list is longer? Write about any feelings and reactions you’ve had in examining the two lists.

Why New Years’ Resolutions Fail and How to Make them Succeed

Thinking about making some New Year resolutions? Before you do, consider this: what you focus on expands. Focus on avoiding something (e.g. drinking, overeating, procrastinating) and you just might ensure its continued success. As an example, 98% of people dealing with stress tend to wake up at night ruminating about the thing that bothers them. It might be a fight with a child, an argument with a coworker, burgeoning mortgage bills, illness, or something else. It makes sense to focus on the problem. Yet, like the old adage, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, the problem will get the energy, which only serves to reinforce the rumination. They key is to focus on the opposing force of the problem-the solution.  

To illustrate, let’s use the example of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, sloth, greed, anger, gluttony, and lust). Numerous stories throughout time teach caution about succumbing to these behaviors. The message is reinforced to us at a young age by parents, teachers, books, and the media. For instance, recall Star Wars, episode 3, where Anakin Skywalker transforms into Darth Vader after allowing fear, envy, anger, and pride to mask his heart and intuition. In the episode, Yoda warns Anakin not to focus on the dark side of the force.

Like Darth Vader, human beings focus on the dark side of the force much of the time. I see it in myself, my friends, my family, and my clients. We fall of the bike of positive thinking and start ruminating on the negative and what we’re trying to avoid. Don’t believe me? Look at these top 13 New Year resolutions in the United States. The very first one is to lose weight with managing debt coming in second place. Both of these resolutions focus on the problem instead of the solution. Perhaps that’s why more than 68% of people will give up on their resolutions within the first two weeks.

People would be more successful if they focused on the light side of the force. Instead of making a resolution to lose weight, try making an intention to take care of your body with nourishing food, love and care. That love and care might consist of vitamins, exercise, deep breathing, emollient lotions, uplifting fragrances, plenty of water, and listening. Let your body speak to you about what it feels. A tummy ache might be a red flag that something is bothering you. Maybe putting up better boundaries and treating yourself with respect is needed. You may not hear this critical wisdom if you’re getting mad at your body for not fitting in your clothes.

Regarding managing your debt, can you tell this resolution focuses on lack? Treat your money with love, care and gratitude. Notice everything you have and how fortunate you are that you have the ability to pay for water, electricity, and things so often taken for granted. Debt begins to melt away (and never take hold in the first place) when we manage our money with gratitude. What happens is that people tend to focus on what they don’t have or how little money they or their partner is making, which leads to a vicious cycle of spending to feel better and then regretting. Stop the cycle by appreciating the joy that $1 gives you. The thrill of that hot shower. The warmth of the extra blanket on your bed. The comfort of the fuzzy slippers or soft socks. That is where the magic lives and abundance multiplies.

As for those seven deadly sins, try focusing on their complementary positives—the seven joys. Instead of avoiding greed, think of expanding how much you share. Instead of battling lust, try encouraging people’s soulful dreams. Instead of resisting anger, give yourself nourishing love. Instead of avoiding becoming a sloth (couch-potato syndrome), allow yourself to dance more. Instead of inhibiting your inner glutton, try releasing your inner artist and seek quality over quantity. Instead of hiding from your proud ego, focus on fostering unconditional self-acceptance. Finally, instead of detaining your green-eyed monster of envy, try re-focusing on gratitude in the moment. 

If you’ve gotten anything from this article, I hope it’s that attitude is everything. Please don’t beat yourself up. Take it one day at a time and keep readjusting your sights on the light. It will become natural over time. If you want help, you can try out my new texting tool for free. It’s www.InstantMotivator.com and is designed to help you stick to your positive goals. Type in ACAFreeTrial for your two-week free trial.

Happy 2010! May the next decade bring you joyous light, soulful meaning, loving relationships, and dreams that come true! 

How to Raise Your Child to Survive in Today’s Chaotic World

If you are a parent or have ever felt that emotions were something that could be destructive, please read on. This is perhaps the most important information I can share.

I received a comment about yesterday’s blog post, which triggered this response.  I addressed the concept of “fearmines” (fear buttons that trigger hidden emotional landmines). It may have been a bit oversimplified, but it was also right on target. Today, I’m going to get a little deeper and describe why hidden emotional landmines are actually at the heart of most of our problems today (crime, risky youth behaviors, depression, unemployment, divorce, greed, war) and how it all ties back into our emotional regulation system that was developed in infancy.  I’m also going to share what you can do to help your child develop a healthy emotional regulation system so that they can survive in today’s chaotic world.

Infants (and children) have brains and body systems that are not fully developed (e.g., nervous system, hormones, etc.). Because these systems are still in development, infants and children are extremely vulnerable and highly dependent. As such, babies and children rely on their parent/caregiver as an external system to regulate their care. In other words, imagine having half of a heart, half of a lung, half of a liver, half of a kidney, etc., etc, and needing another human being to compensate and basically act as the missing parts of the heart, liver, kidney, etc., etc. It’s more than co-dependence and completely needed for the child’s healthy growth. Just as the baby depended on the mother in the womb for survival and development, the infant and child STILL depends on the mother/caregiver after birth.

The emotional regulation system becomes disrupted when adequate care is not given to an infant and child. This includes ignoring a baby’s cries, telling them to shut up, or confusing their cries with something else (like shoving a pacifier in their mouth when they want their diaper changed). While we never respond to a baby perfectly 100% of the time, if the number of inadequate responses exceeds the adequate responses, then the baby forms a maladjusted emotional regulation system. This is also preverbal, so later in life some external stimuli can elicit an internal anxiety response that was felt as a baby but now doesn’t make sense for the grown adult to understand. Instead, they feel like something else takes over them (sometimes referred to as an emotional hijacking).

To recognize the symptoms of this disruption in an adult (or yourself) includes common responses like these: 

·                *Feeling like you can’t trust your emotions and that they can get out of control

·                *Denying that you have troublesome feelings

·                *Believing that relationships are not important or, conversely, never being able to be alone

·                *Always trying to be an ideal person that someone (or your parent) will love and finally approve

·                *Cutting off from others

·                *Constant relocating and/or job changes

·                *Battling or overpowering others and/or using others for your own gain

·                *Escaping through drinking, drug use, sexual addictions, food addictions, etc.

The challenge as parents is that we tend to fall back on our own unconscious learning and repeat the same behaviors with our children—which is how such patterns repeat themselves through the generations (generational transmission).

Not surprisingly these symptoms show up in society. Societal symptoms of maladjusted emotional systems form when enough people grow up without healthy emotional regulation systems (reinforcing the problem). Such societal symptoms may include:

·                *Focusing on external productivity over internal emotional states and healthy relationships (like over-focusing on what the child wants to be when they grow up; over-focusing on child’s grades in school; over-focusing on how much money someone makes, what kind of car they drive, etc., etc.)

·                *Chronic relationship disruption and emotional illness (which can be seen in rising divorce rates, escalating depression and other mental health related illnesses, increased crime, increased bullying behaviors, increased self-centeredness, decreased compassion and tolerance for emotion in others) 

A solution to this problem is to work on ourselves and form a new healthy emotional regulation system. Oftentimes, therapy does this because the therapist can sit with the person and affirm their feelings, allowing the person to fully feel their own feelings and then safely respond to them without judgment. This process helps to develop new neural networks of self-care (new emotional regulation systems). In addition, people can do this same thing for loved ones, join support groups, journal about feelings, obtain spiritual support, and do things that provide safe love and emotional healing. 

When the person is able to form a new healthy emotional regulation system, they are able to sit with their feelings (even the uncomfortable ones) and are more able to tolerate other people’s emotions. When that happens, they can also sit with their needy infants and children and better respond to their needs without anxiety, frustration or panic. 

Another symptom of a healthy emotional regulation system is relationship repair. Accepting that no one is perfect and conflict will arise is important to remember. The key is to be able to effectively repair your relationships after a disruption. The more immediate the repair, the more neural networks are formed in the healthy emotional regulation system.

As parents and people, it is critical to comprehend the extent that infants and children are dependent on us. We need to make them a priority and attend to them. This does not mean spoiling them with toys—it means being there, loving them, empathizing with their needs, and helping them to understand and attend to their emotions.

Children become out of control when we ignore them and get angry—putting them in time-outs when they aren’t developed enough to understand consequences. We also run into the trap of referring to punishment as “tough love” when we take away a privilege without taking the time to process our children’s feelings and fears and understanding what motivates them to engage in behaviors that may scare us.   

Finally, understanding that our societal values of productivity over relationships may actually be a symptom of inadequate infant/child care can help us to change the narratives that perpetuate infant/child/human emotional abuse. We are making strides in addressing emotional care as a society, but we’re not there yet. Perhaps the current economic problems, rising unemployment rates, risky behaviors in children (increasingly younger sexual promiscuity in children, “hook-ups”, self-abuse like cutting, bullying, school shootings, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide) will wake us up to the real war that we’re in—the war with ourselves and our own internal emotional regulation systems. Focusing on healing our internal war through love, compassion, empathy, healing, tolerance, awareness, and helping each other as a larger family (instead of isolated individuals in big houses) will surely help the next generations to develop healthy emotional regulation systems. Perhaps when that happens, global harmony (aka world peace) can actually be obtainable.

Secrets of How Successful Entrepreneurs Survive Fear

Behind every successful entrepreneur lay a field of hidden landmines riddled with fear (“fearmines”). Some were stepped on. Others lay dormant, under the surface, affecting the journey just the same. The key is to be aware of them, know where to step, and what to do when you step on one.

The first and most important thing to know is that EVERYONE has fear.

Successful entrepreneurs just know how to work with it. In fact, successful entrepreneurs were once unsuccessful—the difference is that they continued taking steps on their path in spite of the obstacles (the biggest being their own fears).

àStep one is to get comfortable with your fear and reassure yourself that it’s a natural part of your journey’s landscape.

Once you realize that you’re not alone and that fear is normal, you can then employ measures to avoid needlessly stepping on fearmines all the time.

Fearmines often look a little different. They tend to leave a little bump on the surface and can easily be seen IF you take the time to look. Once observed, you’ll recognize it as some old sensitive wound.

Maybe the wound was something your parents told you (“Get your head out of the clouds!” when you were daydreaming or coming up with new inventions.) Or perhaps it was from being ridiculed by your peers, the ones who insisted you’d never amount to anything and would be doomed to poverty.

àWhatever the wound, take time to recognize it so you can avoid stepping on it and repeating the damage (e.g. like when you repeat the damage by yelling at yourself “Get your head out of the clouds!” after you’ve experienced a let down).

Another common fearmine includes control. Being able to adapt to change and uncertainty is the prerequisite for succeeding as an entrepreneur. People who need a high degree of control will tend not to be as spontaneous, imaginative, flexible, and inventive. Usually they’re like this because of fear.

When we feel out of control and overwhelmed, we tend to take control. However, control is a tricky illusion. The irony is that our fear reaction tends to make us take control where we don’t have it and give up control where we do have it (with ourselves).

àTake stock of your feelings and recognize if fear is making you overcompensate with controlling and/or self-sabotaging behaviors.

A couple of common fearmines have been addressed, but what do you do when actually you step on one?

Failure (getting lost in the fear) is part of the process. Fully feeling the fear and moving through it builds your resilient muscles—and it’s exactly these muscles that make you thrive as an entrepreneur (and as an artist, as a human being, as a parent, as a soul). What counts is taking that deep breath and continuing on the journey knowing that unresolved issues will still be there, but you’ll be stronger the next time when you inevitably reach them again.

àRecognize and repair once you’ve stepped on a fearmine. Honor it. Feel the feelings.  Control your part and avoid overcompensating. Then get back up and keep going. 

By now you’re seeing the pattern that fear creates action (even if inaction)—actions which aren’t always healthy for our self-worth or our entrepreneurial ventures. Understanding how your personal fearmines influence your behavior and how best to compensate for them makes the difference. Knowing this is a normal process helps you to keep going. Recovering from a fearmine is the success. 

Remember that everyone has felt like a pretender and questioned their talent and venture. It’s fundamental human nature to seek understanding, desire approval, and dream of complete acceptance—and fear when we don’t have these things. To fear is human and to recover from it, divine. When treated properly, fear can propel us into depth, growth, and inventiveness beyond any of our perceived limitations.

If you would like coaching with this issue or any other area in your life, please take advantage of Encompass Work & Family’s FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL –

A trio of sessions (3 hours) PLUS our proprietary and most sought-after Key Essential Life Balance Assessment (an MRI of your life that helps you learn exactly where you’re overcompensating and under-focusing and how to get back on track in each area of your life)…

The trio of sessions and assessment is only $299 ($675 regular) through the end of 2009. 

You may be redeem your paid gift certificate now or at anytime through April 2010. 

Veteran’s Day: Honoring the Forgotten Hope of 11-11

I cried as I prepared to write today’s post. It rekindled some painful memories. However, proceeding to write this renewed my faith and hope. I hope reading it has the same effect for you.

Today is November 11, Veteran’s Day in the United States. It is a little more somber and poignant this year as our Nation continues to battle in a “war on terrorism” and attempts to recover from last week’s tragedy at Fort Hood when one man (a psychiatrist) engaged in his own battle as he allegedly shot down 13 people and physically wounded 42 others, and emotionally wounded so many more.

How does one heal? What can one do?

Last night I heard a quote by Benjamin Franklin that appalled me, “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” I disagree. Research shows that hope is one of the key ingredients to resiliency and healing. I say it’s the opposite, “He that lives with hope will die fulfilled.”

Of course, I also recognize that hope is only one ingredient. We need direction and action. The obstacle is when our direction and actions are based on reactivity, revenge, fear, and self-deception.

Perhaps that’s what happened November 11, 1919 when Germany begrudgingly signed the armistice agreement that ended World War I (at the 11^th hour of on the 11^th day of the 11^th month). The total number of deaths from that war, The Great War, was considered to have been 8.5 million soldiers, 6 million civilians, and 21 million being wounded (imagine the millions more impacted emotionally and through the generations).

A possible sliver of silver lining from all this destruction (the hope) was the creation of the League of Nations. While it didn’t stay in formation, it’s focus on communicating worldwide about issues that impact global human rights and public health set a precedent for the United Nations.

What does all of this have to do with Veteran’s Day? A few things.

First, because of the armistice agreement, this day was originally called Armistice Day. Ironically, armistice means “a temporary suspension of the warring parties by agreement.” Armistice Day, as its name implies, was only temporary. It was changed to Veteran’s Day in 1954.

While we remember veterans today (living and passed), I want to point out the astronomical number of civilians that have been killed in war (remember that WWI casualties alone totaled approximately 8.5 million soldiers and 6 million civilians). That doesn’t include all of the civilians directly impacted by war.  Today is not so different as civilians are targets of terrorist attacks around the globe.

As a counselor, military brat, and veteran, I feel compelled to express my sympathy and extend loving and healing thoughts to all people worldwide on this day, not just my fellow veterans. In fact, I urge all people to think of this day as a day of peace and to hold the intention of peace throughout time. 

Change happens when we change our foundation. That foundation is created by our intentions and the words we use. Mother Teresa expressed it best when she described that she wouldn’t attend and anti-war protest but she would show up to a pro-peace rally. The original seed of today’s history is based on the hope of worldwide peace. Please don’t forget it—honor the hope of today and the people around you. Namaste.

Three Secrets of a Healthy Mind

There was a legendary story in a corporation where I once worked about a person who suffered from a “nervous breakdown.” Apparently, they had a panic attack right before they were going to give a speech at a company event. I was told that the corporate “bigwig” quit right after that and was never heard of again. The story circulated among the employees as a kind of warning to not lose your sanity (or show any emotions) while on the job, lest you suffer the same fate.

Have you ever heard of someone having a nervous breakdown? Do you remember how it felt to hear about it? To date, I’ve heard a number of such stories. It seems each time I have, the person that shares the account of someone who “lost it” fell into a whisper and then shuddered in fear.  As a counselor, I have a different outlook and knowledge that allows me to understand these experiences. I’ve also learned key factors that contribute to mental distress and some things that can be done to overcome them. As a follow-up to last week’s post, here are the top three factors for keeping your cool and self-regulating (the three secrets that healthy minds already exhibit).

1.     1. Listen to your feelings. The first and most important tip of all is NOT to keep your emotions at bay. Paradoxically, it is being able to be in tune with our innermost feelings that provide us with the ability to heal them. Our downfall is when we deny feelings for so long that a giant backlog of unexpressed emotion wallops us when least expected.

2.     2. Express emotion in balance. This ties back into the last post. Sometimes we have been trained/conditioned/raised to experience our feelings in a not so healthy way. If not raised to embrace and understand our emotions, we may avoid them, overdramatize them, express them without restraint, or swing from avoiding to over-expression. A balanced expression of emotion occurs when there is continual mindfulness about your inner state.

3.    3. Develop healthy relationships. Healthy relationships support and encourage you. Research shows that healthy relationships have a significant impact on your health, emotional wellbeing, and overall quality of life. Healthy relationships provide accommodation, respect, support, love, and commitment. The unhealthy range of relationships cultivates anxiety, negativity, conflict, verbal aggression, and withdrawal.

Please seek help immediately if you’re having troubles expressing balanced emotion and/or if your relationship(s) fall into the unhealthy range. There are a number of resources (along with free counseling clinics in your area) that can assist you. Please check out the links on the side bar of this page for resources.

How the Hidden Blueprint of Childhood Directs Your Career

How can a damaged upbringing hurl you into career greatness?

You’ve probably heard of numerous examples where people have beaten all odds and succeeded in accomplishing their dreams. The subtle message in these cases seems to suggest that rough beginnings and hardships are the secret ingredients to success. That’s why I laughed and laughed when I heard the line “Don’t fix your Daddy issues!” on Samantha Who?, a former ABC sitcom starring Christina Applegate as an amnesiac who finds herself in a successful job but learns she wasn’t a very nice person to many people. The friend that cautioned her from getting to know her father better said that those initial family problems were exactly why she was so good in her job. (Clearly this advice isn’t so good for my job. But if you watch the show, you’ll learn she’s a much happier person by reuniting with her emotions and changing her former greed at all costs approach to life.)

Similarly, I’m often asked how our childhoods can affect our jobs—especially the risk-taking nature of an entrepreneur. It’s highly individual of course, but here’s a theory that can satiate your curiosity a bit. See if you can identify yourself in any of the following categories and learn how it impacts you, your loved ones and your career and  business ventures.

The attachment theory is one of my favorites and a lot of empirical research has given it more validity over the years. The simple description of attachment theory is how you initially bonded with your primary caregiver (Mother? Father? Adopted parent?) forms the basis of how you will interact (or attach) to everything else in your life. This can be a relationship, hobby, home, career and/or your business venture. 

Secure Attachment – The person who has a secure attachment received the perfect balance of love and nurturing from their parent. The parent was attentive to their needs and empathetic (could feel their feelings). The parent was not intrusive (bugging the baby even if the baby expressed displeasure) or neglectful (not paying attention to the baby). The securely attached person grows up with a sense of confidence, trust, and wisdom. They do not stay in situations that do not work. For example, they would move on if a relationship or venture showed clear signs of failure. Conversely, they would not just give up either. They would make the appropriate amount of effort. (Not everyone has this attachment style, but it’s something we can all learn to cultivate in life.

Avoidant Attachment – The avoidant person had a parent that was more neglectful. The parent could not empathize or was just so busy that they could not be as responsive to their child. Consequently, the child learned that being alone was normal. The avoidant adult is not as good with empathy. Moreover, they do not handle intimacy very well as it can feel suffocating and provoke anxiety. They prefer to keep a distance. This can translate into getting into relationships but not being very close (perhaps traveling or working a lot to maintain adequate distance). It can also mean growing tired of ventures and needing new things to do more frequently.

Insecure Attachment – An insecure attachment simply means that the parent swung from being available to not being available, leaving the baby confused and feeling more anxious about losing and/or attracting the parent. The insecure adult brings this underlying anxiety into their relationships and constantly battles with the fear of losing relationships and the desire to have distance. This person most experiences the tension of the togetherness and separateness continuum. In their venture, they may vacillate about what to do as a consequence.

Paying attention to your anxiety is key to healing the wound if you find yourself identifying with the latter two styles. Re-nurturing yourself can help shift you into a more secure attachment style. You can also go to a counselor or coach as this is one of the secret reasons such processes work. The bond you develop with your therapist or coach can form a new attachment style when your interactions are trusting, open and positive. 

(Stay tuned for the next blog post as it will discuss ways you can self-nurture and self-heal.)

Can Your Relationship be Saved? Signs Your Relationship is in Danger and What You can Do About It

There is no greater pain than the loss of a loved one. When a loved one passes, their death has a way of completely incapacitating you by enveloping your entire being with an unyielding suffocating pain, overwhelming sadness, and intense despair. But what happens when the one you love is still alive and the flame of your love – your relationship – is dying? I once had a friend cry to me and exclaim that her divorce was more painful than a death because the man she loved and ached to be with was still alive, right there before her eyes, but he chose to love another. It took her two years to heal. Now she’s remarried with children and living the blissful dream so many desire. But what if her relationship to her first husband could have been saved? Would it have been worth it? And if it could have been saved, at what point could things have changed?

The ending of any relationship, whether friendship, lover, even a relationship with a former job, can be devastating. Sometimes old abandonment wounds resurface when a relationship ends, making the pain even greater. In addition, people grieve the loss of a dream. People also blame themselves and/or the other person in an attempt to understand and logically deal with the loss. I’d like to suggest that no one is particularly to blame when a relationship ends. Rather, some relationships simply catch a disease. The key is to recognize the symptoms of the disease and try to catch it early with treatment. (Note-89% of couples seek help after it’s too late-preventative help works best.)

To describe the symptoms of a diseased relationship, I’ll point out John Gottman’s findings. Gottman and his colleagues have studied relationships for over 20 years and have been able to articulate exactly what goes wrong in a relationship. It is this research that lets him identify—with 91% accuracy—which couples are headed for divorce. It’s not magic. He just understands the symptoms of a relationship in trouble. Following are findings from his research that clearly indicate the presence of what I refer to as a diseased relationship.

Relationship Disease Stage One-The couple begins to complain about each other. The honeymoon is over and now the little complaints begin to show up like fatigue. Getting treatment at this stage means recognizing the symptom, talking about it with each other, and making an effort share your feelings in a way that doesn’t come off like a complaint. If complaints persist, remedy immediately with acknowledgement of the hurt, and a kiss, tickle, laughter or some form of positive reinforcement of your love. Counseling at this stage is highly effective for curing the disease.

Relationship Disease Stage Two-Like a tickle in your throat and a low-grade fever, complaints have now escalated into down right criticisms. Now you’re attacking each other with little darts. Such criticisms sting more than complaints. Worse they leave little scars on your heart. Treatment is critical at this stage. Recognize and talk about it with each other. Try to reassure each other. Understand where the little scars have been placed and take responsibility for treating them. Give love, healing and support to each other. If a criticism has been launched, make immediate steps to repair or else you’re in danger of the disease taking hold. Counseling at this stage is effective for treating the disease.

Relationship Disease Stage Three-The fever has heightened and the disease has taken hold when criticisms turn into contemptuous remarks and silent treatment (Gottman calls it stonewalling). Grenades are launched at each other and repairs aren’t being made. Get help immediately if you’re experiencing these deadly symptoms. When left untreated, the disease takes over and sours everything in your life. The more you run from confronting the disease, the more it controls you. Worse, it truly begins affecting your health. Communication, love, healing, and genuine sharing are critical at this stage. Taking responsibility for the deep scars your grenades left in your loved ones heart is essential. They, too, need to take responsibility for the wounds they left in your heart. Healing cannot occur until the scars are illuminated and treated. Counseling can be effective at this stage for putting the disease in remission. 

Relationship Disease Stage Four and Five-This is where many couples seek help (if they seek help). The disease has taken its toll and is ready for emergency treatment. Contempt and silent treatment have now escalated into arming oneself with a perpetual defensive wall. Worse, damaging memories from former diseased interactions (unhealthy and hurtful fights that were never adequately repaired) have now cast an unfavorable light onto the entire relationship. You both talk about your problems more than you have fun. Dirty looks or unhappy expressions occur one out of five smiles or happy expressions (yes, Gottman has revealed that one bad apple needs at least 25 good ones to keep couples happy…one to five odds are a very dangerous sign). At this stage, serious attention needs to be placed on the relationship. Can it be resuscitated or are attempts to heal it futile? Seek help from a professional immediately. If there is danger in the relationship (the attacks have crossed into physical confrontations, threats, abuse), get immediate help to get out as the diseased relationship is now affecting your health and wellbeing. Please call 911 if you are in imminent danger.

If you’re experiencing a disease in your relationship or would like help preventing a disease from occurring in your relationship, please call me (Kimberly Key) at 512-617-6356 to discuss the best treatment method for your situation.

When Social-Media, Cell Phones and Instant Messaging Hurts Your Relationships

If The New York Times can print seven errors in a leading story about legendary and fastidious journalist hero, Walter Cronkite, why do we expect perfect communication from each other? Face it, human beings are fallible. Communicating is a challenge. Hoping your message will be accurately received by others can be a lot like gambling. People often hear their own interpretations—especially if there is any emotional current in the conversation. Add depending on tech forms of communication (text messaging, emails, social-media updates, etc.) where the critical 85% of nonverbal communication is missing, and getting a clear message across is like playing Russian roulette. 

Even so, social-media outlets like Twitter and Facebook are growing in popularity more than ever. People of all demographics are signing up and trying out these new forms of human connection. Books and articles on how to use social-media to improve your business, your relationships, and manage your public relations are in new abundance. Even serious minded people, news outlets and more have online profiles somewhere. But what are the costs associated with these forms of online communication?

In the past, I have advocated that technology-enhanced communication can augment your existing relationships and help to establish new ones (see Sep 07 post). However, the key word is augment, not replace. Human beings need a sense of belonging (which is why joining a social-media outlet can feel good). But we crave intimacy and social-media creates a false sense of intimacy. Moreover, solely relying on non-intimate forms of communication (where again, 85% of required nonverbal communication is missing—yes, words only make up 15% of communication) will wreak havoc on your relationships.

How can it wreak havoc?

First, miscommunication is going to happen. You will infer a good tone if you’re feeling good that day. But what happens when you’ve had a bad day or you’re under the weather and/or you simply misinterpret a tone? That small misunderstanding will lead to increasing frustration and a regrettable reply. Not surprisingly, the situation will escalate and your relationship could be irreparably damaged.

Second, if there is a problem in the relationship and it’s unbalanced (more online communication than intimate in-person communication), deep-seated abandonment wounds will be enflamed. When this happens, prolonged time periods of not receiving a reply from someone will hurt to the core. It will feel more painful than normal. Anxiety will increase and that ancient hidden gene that secretly whispers “rejection means death” will grow louder. You then run the risk of experiencing the person as the enemy by the time they finally reply.

Third, you can become so overloaded and overwhelmed by the sheer number of online responses that you have been requested to make that some will simply fall through the cracks. You will feel like you have some sort of attention or memory problem. You will desire to be available to everyone, but simply cannot. As such, you might subconsciously rebel. Maybe you won’t be as responsive. Perhaps you’ll abandon one of the social-media outlets you’ve joined. Or you will decide to call a time out from your email and/or phone. The downside of this reaction is that people won’t be able to reach you in a timely manner and you’ll be branded as undependable (which then alerts the “rejection means death” gene and reignites the vicious cycle of making you logon and send your replies).

To break the cycle, try to make sure that you have a good and balanced ratio of healthy and intimate relationships in your life. 

à Make sure that more than half of the relationships in your life are in-person.

à If you utilize technology with closer relationships, make sure that 75% is strictly dedicated to in-person interactions.

If most of your relationships are online, step away from your computer right now and talk to someone in person. Maybe go for a 15-minute walk outside with someone and get your needed Vitamin D. Talk and spend time with people. Laugh. Cry. Make memories. As for the folks in your online network, urge them to do the same…and if you’ve missed some replies or been untimely in your communications, maybe you can emulate The New York Times and start your own “corrections” page.

 

Heed the Warnings of Your Internal Alarm System (aka Feelings!)

Have you ever gotten overwhelmed by your feelings? Maybe you thought they were negative feelings and wanted to get rid of them right away. If so, you might want to stop and heed the message the next time you have any of these three feelings (fear, guilt, anxiety) because they might be trying to tell you something.

As counselors, mothers, teachers (and hopefully your heart) tells you, feelings have a purpose. They tell us if a situation or a person is safe. They inspire us to do greater things (like the love story behind the creation of the Taj Mahal!). They can also alert us to change. As you can guess, difficulties arise when people ignore their feelings - or when they focus so much on one feeling that they become stuck in it. This is especially true when negative feelings like fear, guilt or anxiety rise up. Yet, before you dismiss these feelings (or get stuck in them), try to examine their underlying message and see what change is called for in your life.

FEAR: Fear can warn us about the gravity of a situation. It encourages internal change. If you feel stuck in fear, try meditating on courage. As you cultivate the courage, you’ll be able to make the necessary internal changes to adapt to a situation and the fear will melt away. 

GUILT: Guilt provides insight and helps to better understand ourselves and others, allowing us to re-examine the root causes and responsibility for given situations. Too much guilt can be caused from a lack of internal boundaries. If you experience frequent guilt when you’re not responsible for it, try meditating on self-love and reassurance. It’s like the Golden Rule, but flipped. Treat YOURSELF as you treat others. By noticing your own self-talk and replacing self-criticism with love and reassurance, you’ll let go of taking too much responsibility for situations that you don’t control—and the guilt will subside. 

ANXIETY: Anxiety also helps to motivate us to change. It signals action. Problems occur when anxiety creates paralysis. In addition, it becomes tempting to judge oneself when you’re experiencing anxiety, which can lead to feeling more anxious. If this occurs, try meditating and finding peace of mind. Relax, take deep breaths and allow peace to override the anxiety. Oftentimes, a call to action will reveal itself when we let go of the anxiety. Then moving into action will decrease the original need for the anxiety.

The Biggest Reason Entrepreneurs Fail

I’ve seen companies succeed and I’ve seen companies fail. In fact, I’ve been part of companies that were able to sustain steady growth and still thrive today while others collided as soon as they took off. One company, in particular, that comes to mind never should have failed, but it did. It’s also the reason I transitioned out of engineering and got into entrepreneurial coaching in the first place.

Their cause of failure was caused by relationship strive and power struggles (see my book at www.TenKeysToPowerStruggles.com if you or anyone you know is experiencing this problem). Yet, this post is entitled the biggest reason entrepreneurs fail and although I believed at one time that businesses failed because of problematic human interactions, I’ve now come to realize that there’s an even lower common denominator than that—and it’s something most business experts have missed.

Take a moment and think about what you’ve heard, read, or experienced as the leading cause of business failure.

Are you listing them?

Let’s see if any of these are on the list: 

Did you come up with inadequate or lack of planning?

How about marketing? 

Did you say stupidity? (Well, surely you’ve had that sentiment from time to time.)

Okay, what about not having enough capital?

Or, as my previous experience revealed, how about relationship challenges (this can include battling with a partner, investor, staff, or just plain overlooking the customer’s needs).

According to entrepreneurship author and Case Western University professor Scott Shane, there’s even the possibility that failure is a measure of a good economy if your venture folded. He purports, “Having fewer entrepreneurs means that we are experiencing economic growth. The more developed a country is, the fewer people work for themselves.”

This post isn’t about telling you to go work for a high growth company. (Although it’s cool if you do.) This is about providing support and insight so that you can make your entrepreneurial venture succeed—and maybe even turn it into one of those high growth companies that Shane says is good for our GDP. If that interests you, then please read on.

I listed some of the common reasons people say that businesses fail. There’s a lot of research out there that provide reasons and many of the stats contradict other researchers’ findings. There’s also the discussion about teasing out superfluous data and accounting for confounding variables, etc. However, What I’ve found to be at the core of most of my client’s issues is this one basic human flaw that undermines even our best intentions.

This flaw explains why smokers can’t seem to quit even when the doctor says it’s going to kill them and they desperately desire to quit.

It also accounts for the billions of dollars that are spent on gym memberships, self-help programs, and other health and wellness miracles that end up unused and untried as soon as the commitment was made.

I believe this flaw translates into business start-ups and reveals why most business fail (8 out of 10) within the first year (64% by the fifth year).

This flaw, while seemingly simple, is the disease responsible for ruining your best intentions. It’s why you can’t focus—and, unfortunately, it’s worsened with the advent of video games, microwave ovens, and microblogging sites like Twitter.

It’s not ADD or ADHD, but it is this distracter gene’s ancestor and it resides in ALL of us. 

It’s our primal reptilian brain that causes us to be so immediate focused that it takes us right off track from our original agenda. It’s the source of procrastination. It’s the source of emotional hijacking. It’s why the best-laid plans go awry.

The primal reptilian brain feeds off of distraction, drama, and holds tight to emotional traumatic triggers that transform wisdom and grace into momentary flights of rage and despair. 

The good news is that the primal reptilian brain can be your best ally. You just need to learn how to harness your inner power and make your primal brain work for you rather than against you. 

For instance, let’s say you want to make X number of marketing calls a week, but you never seem to get it done. Basically you keep finding yourself procrastinating. You might loathe the task. Maybe you have some fear of failure or rejection. You could even have fear of success. Or you get distracted with all of your other responsibilities. Whatever the reason may be, your primal brain is working against you if you’re not making the calls—and it’s feeding off the energy from the fear, loathing and/or distractions.

The trick to making your primal brain assist you in making those marketing calls can be two-fold. You can employ that good old-fashioned work ethic that says you have to make X number of calls a day before you can relax or have some type of reward. Secondly, you can also up the ante by offering a penalty payment to your assistant, colleague, mentor, or a family member each time you don’t make the required calls that week. However, in order for this last part of the trick to work, it needs to be realistic but painful enough to make you miss the money that was doled out as your penalty payment.

This last tricks works because it makes your primal brain want to protect you from the pain of the money loss. Before that, your primal brain sensed the pain from the fear and loathing and worked hard to keep you off your task no matter how much you tried to motivate or convince yourself.

Did you get that? Your primal brain is motivated to protect you and any sign of fear of loathing activates your primal brain, causing it to rescue you from the source of your pain.

Now think about what happens when you start a business. That’s right—fear of failure. Fear of those looming statistics that say you’re probably going to fail. Fears from your family, friends and colleagues who shake their head at your decision. Fear from the loss of security, benefits and support staff that makes you feel safe when you’re working for a stable company. Fear of your own decision-making skills. Need I go on? The inherent and pervasive fear from kicking off an entrepreneurial venture can activate your primal brain to protect you and make you abandon your venture (either through procrastination of a needed but dreaded task, overwhelmed helplessness, poor relational functioning, etc.).

However, your primal brain can be your most powerful ally and loyal protector. The key is learning how to make it work for you so that you can accomplish the goals your frontal lobe creates (e.g. business plans, entrepreneurial ventures, networking, writing a book, losing weight, going on dates, listening, eating healthy, etc., etc.). 

If you would like to learn specific methods for harnessing your inner ally and making your primal brain work for you rather than against you, please join me for a special-request seminar focused on entrepreneurial coaching methods that will help you harness your inner power and achieve greater success in accomplishing goals based on your passion and purpose. This is an intimate gathering of pre-screened committed entrepreneurs only with limited spots available. If you’re interested in attending, please contact me at 512.617.6356 to discuss where you’re at in your business and how this seminar can help you.

Harness Your Inner Power Seminar

Jun 26-27 

(NEXT SEMINAR in SEP 2009)

What to Expect: Presentation with interaction among group members sharing their experiences with the common pitfalls of entrepreneurship, life management and ineffective habits. Bring a list of the challenges you want to overcome in your business, life and even your family, and learn customized approaches to harnessing your inner power and making your primal brain work for you rather than against you. You’ll leave with renewed energy, motivation AND real applicable strategies that will make you overcome the procrastination and devastating habits that cause 8 out of 10 businesses to fail within the first year (64% by the fifth year).

Adapting to an Empty Nest and Sharing Parenting Pearls Learned Along the Way

I ate chocolate cake for breakfast today. I fed my sadness. I’m not proud of it (although it was an exceptionally delectable piece of my homemade specialty). Yes, I break down and succumb to unhealthy measures to escape my feelings from time to time. As a counseling psychology professional, I’m just a little more aware of the implications when I do it. The trouble today? Looming empty-nest syndrome brought on by my daughter’s impending graduation.

My daughter and I are extremely close and I’m profoundly proud of her. I knew one day she would grow and flee the nest, but even now it’s surreal to me. We’ll get through it and I’ll be strong. I owe her that. She’s going off to college to pursue her dreams and I can only imagine how frightening it is for her to move away.

That’s where I draw my strength. Being strong and reassuring will help her when she’s feeling homesick. I say this because I know there are other mothers out there who are feeling just as crushed as I feel. I’m also a single mom of an only child, so I deeply understand the secret desire to hold on. Don’t. Let them fly and be proud. If you’re struggling, find support with other moms (in fact, feel free to contact me and let’s start a support group together!).

Having stated that, I want to take a moment to share some parenting pearls that have worked wonders for me these past 18 years. These pearls haven’t always been supported by my colleagues, but I felt convicted about how I was raising my daughter and followed my heart and instincts. Seeing her success and emotional maturity today confirms my choices.

1.             Love your child unconditionally.

Some professionals have suggested that I have loved/love my daughter too much. NEVER. I believe you can NEVER love your child ENOUGH. It is not enmeshment; it is a parental duty to put your child above and beyond everything else. Choices and decisions you make should be carefully weighed against their impact on your children.

Sidney Poitier brilliantly describes such sentiment in a scene from the 1967 drama, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” when his father complains about the sacrifices he made for him and Poitier’s character retorts that it was his job as a father to work so hard for his kids and family.

2.             Kids are spoiled by things, not your love.

Children become demanding when things (toys, money, monster-sized lonely houses, overstuffed playrooms, etc.) are thrown at them in place of the love and nurturing they need. Happy Meals have taught kids that they need to be entertained and given toys with each meal. You can teach them the opposite.

A trick I tried that seemed effective was when visiting a fast food restaurant (only on rare occasions did we go to such places), I’d share a burger with my daughter. No Happy Meal with toys and games. We’d get one burger and enjoy it under a tree at some park. She’d learn to share, spend quality time with me, and to not expect some flimsy toy with each meal. To this day, she still raves about our memories of getting a “big, juicy burger.” 

We also have formal dinners every night (most nights) and cook together. Lighting a candle at dinner makes it extra special. Such routines inspire joy, gratitude and reverence for life’s gifts.

3.             Consistency is critical when raising children.

Kids will naturally manipulate if they experience inconsistency. However, what most people don’t realize is that children actually feel insecure when rules are slippery. Therefore, reinforcing and being consistent with your rules helps to make your children feel safe and secure. They might still test your rules to see what they can get away with, but that’s just to know that they can count on you and a safe world.

Similarly, they need your yeses to be consistent too. Love and praise them and don’t back off of the good things you’ve promised them. Don’t say you’ll go to their game and not show up. Don’t promise to take them to the movies and then not go. Doing so shows slippery rules and you’ll teach them to be just as slippery and noncompliant (along with feeling heartbroken).

4.             TRUST your kids - even your teens.

If you’ve raised your children in a manner of loving consistency and not spoiling them, you’ve raised emotionally mature kids. As teens, you need to listen to their feelings and create empathy. Sure, they’ll go through emotional up and downs. Who doesn’t when one’s body is rapidly changing and hormones are fluctuating beyond belief? Love, support and listen to them.

If you distrust everything they say and set up a power struggle, you are sure to have a rough ride. Too many parents expect the worst and also expect their kids to be perfect. They see emotional reactivity as noncompliance when most of the time, kids really just need a hug and some reassurance to get through the changing chaos of their growth. My daughter’s and my conflicts have just melted away when we stop, hug each other, and mutually share what we’re really experiencing. After all, trust is a two-way street and empathy is the only bridge to peace and healing.

Writing this has been therapeutic for me as it allows me to look back on my daughter’s life, smiling and remembering all of it. Like eating the chocolate cake this morning, I haven’t been a perfect parent. I’ve been inconsistent at times and have definitely engaged in some battles of will. Overall, however, it’s been absolutely amazing. My daughter is the joy of my life and I know I did right by making decisions around her best wellbeing. She’s given back 1,000-fold too.

My best presents, my best memories, and my best accomplishments have been with and because her. Some might argue it’s enmeshment and I disagree.  It’s parenthood - the most important job I, and you, will ever have. My daughter is strong, loving, compassionate, communicative, mature, independent, and confident. She is also quite talented and creative. She needed love to feel safe. She needed trust to trust her own internal guidance. She needed freedom to learn independence. She needed consistency to learn self-discipline. She needed gratitude to grow spiritually and fuel her creative gifts. She is ready to flee the nest and achieve her dreams. So am I—with a deep breath, a broad smile, unshakable support, gigantic applause, and maybe a couple extra pounds.

Are You Profiting Off Someone Else's Pain?

Today I was asked how it felt to profit off people’s pain. It’s not the first time I heard this question. The other time came from a busy male CEO that seemed to sneer at my decision to leave engineering and become a counseling therapist.

Today’s question came from a similarly successful male executive. I felt sad and a little misunderstood. I also couldn’t help but recognize the irony that each of them has a net worth far greater than mine.

Stepping back and looking at the big picture, I began thinking about all of the layoffs around the world; the state of our health from unhealthy fast food and inactivity; the quality of our relationships that compete with technology, addictions, and a relentless desire for instant gratification; and this ubiquitous thing called the “rat race” that deems a large net worth and array of material possessions as a measure of success. Am I profiting or are the people that have created and sustained this “rat race” culture?

The effects of this “rat race” culture are frightening. Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, cites data that indicates narcissism is escalating by 30% since the 1960s. Childhood poverty in the U.S, has also been on the rise since 2000. In fact, almost half of our children are living in families that range from low-income to poverty level. On top of that, our uninsured rate continues to climb. Unemployment is at staggering rates. Not surprisingly, insecurity and the anxiety that stems from this current environment is at an all time high.

The silver lining can be summed up by the adage, when one door closes, another one opens. This national and global crisis is an opportunity to re-focus on what matters. We need to change the “rat race” culture and focus on how we are raising the next generation.

Rather than profit off people’s weaknesses (providing fast food that people can eat in a car…knowing that people procrastinate and will unlikely cancel their subscriptions that renew automatically…manipulating people to reciprocate and purchase a product when given something for free…selling them cosmetic surgeries that feed their insecure-based self-obsession…capitalizing on their fears with unnecessary products…etc., etc.), we all need to come together and make our character and relationships - not money - the measure of our success. When we do, we cultivate empathy and compassion for people. When we do that, we don’t even think of business schemes that hurt people (Ponzi schemes, etc.).

In closing, I am struck by an example Benjamin Franklin gives in his autobiography about how he was raised as a child. During instruction, they were told not to notice the food they were eating or any of the table settings (external items that money buys) but to focus on the lessons and what was “good, just and prudent in the Conduct of Life.” Perhaps that is something we can all practice. Don’t focus on profit in business, but on what is good, just and prudent in the Conduct of Life.

(Please note-All members of the American Counseling Association, American Psychological Association and similar professional therapy organizations have a strict code of ethics that focuses on the client’s well-being over profit. All professionals must also provide a certain percentage of pro-bono and community work. In addition, most of my colleagues, and myself included, have frequently extended our services and waived fees on a case-by-case basis with our clients as needed.)

The Answer to the One-Minute Personality Assessment (Goof or Nerd?)

There are a lot of goofs out there! At least that’s what people shared in their emails in response to my last post (Would you rather be a goof or a nerd?). 

This question first came up when I was conversing with the chairman of the board of my old company and teasingly called him a goof. My friend and I said that to each other so often that the “You’re a goof” comment slipped out of my mouth almost by accident. However, the usual smile that accompanied the comment didn’t appear. 

Instead, he shot me an incredulous stare as if I had given the worst blow a person could give and retorted, “A goof??”

 I stammered for a second and attempted a little humor with my reply, “Well, would you rather be a goof or a nerd?” 

He straightened his jacket, cleared his throat, and then proudly stated “A nerd of course!” 

“Oh” I mumbled and didn’t pursue it any further. 

After that, I began quizzing people everywhere. The president of the firm preferred to be a goof. A top salesman preferred to be a goof. A researcher clearly wanted to be a nerd. Another senior executive absolutely preferred to be a nerd. Hmm, I began detecting a pattern. Was it sense of humor? Extroversion? The degree to which one took themselves seriously? 

Then I hit my first anomaly. A life of the party, funny, witty, gregarious, top performer wanted to be a nerd. It didn’t make sense. Everything fit perfectly with him being a goof. After some discussion, he said that he felt like a goof but wanted to be a nerd. 

Ohhh. Different subtleties exist with my new assessment. 

Now, I’ve come full circle. Life is complex and it’s difficult to lump people into a category of personality types, let alone an over-simplistic dichotomy. Having said that, I realize now that the best answer is a both/and, not an either/or. Thus, as my good friend, Reid Walley, stated in his comment, we are all probably a little bit of nerd and a little bit of goof—and we’re better for it that way. 

Most people can behave very goofy at times and can be quite nerdy at other times. It’s a good thing to be that way. Balance doesn’t exist in either extreme. For instance, if you are just a nerd, you might never enjoy the humor and light side of life. Or, if you are only a goof, you could miss out on the satisfaction gained from intellectualism and serious life issues. The answer to growth is in finding balance between the extremes. Therefore, if you find yourself answering in one definitive category, you might want to try cultivating the other side of yourself to stay in balance. Try being a goofy nerd or nerdy goof and feel good about it. The shift can be empowering.

Take My Fun One-Minute Personality Assessment

After reading through piles of psychological research and academic articles for today's post, and to be honest, feeling a little down about some of the findings, I've decided to write something a little fun and light. It's the first psychological assessment I ever developed - before grad school - and it only takes sixty seconds or less of your time. 

Also, PLEASE share your comments, so I know I have readers out there. I promise there is no wrong answer and it's meant to be fun... :)

Would you rather be a goof or a nerd?

I'll share my unofficial description of the two categories after I get some comments. If you really want to take it but strongly desire anonymity, go ahead and email me at Kimberly@EncompassWF.com with your preference. 

How to Stop Yourself from "Losing It" During Stress and Crisis

A couple was celebrating their 11^th anniversary. It was an extra special occasion for them because each of them came from divorced parents whose marriages ended before ten years. The couple felt they had crossed a major hurdle and were proud to have overcome so many obstacles in their relationship.

To celebrate, one of them got off work early to prepare a special romantic dinner. No detail was spared – hours were spent preparing an extravagant gourmet meal, dozens of candles were lit, fragrant flowers filled each room, soft jazz favorites were selected on the music player, and a warm crackling fire cheered the fireplace. Even a chocolate fountain was invitingly placed on the bar. Everything was prefect.

Then the phone rang and the other celebrating partner began apologizing and explained that their company was having an emergency with an audit, so they wouldn’t get home until very late that night. The phone slammed down and was flung across the room knocking over the chocolate fountain. Sobs could be heard as footsteps ran down the hall and ended with a slammed door.

Have you ever had an experience where something “took over” and you lost control? Perhaps you had something to legitimately be upset about, but your response to the situation made it worse. Usually “hindsight” provides numerous alternative responses that would have improved the situation instead of worsening it. Yet that’s what happens when our primal (reptilian) brain reactions take over. We temporarily lose control – and often damage the situation even more.

One interesting way to overcome this loss of control is to actually balance your primal reactions. In other words, let other primal reactions have a turn. 

Most people have a dominant reaction – fight, flight, freeze, sex, or food. To balance, first find out your dominant reaction. Second, try to incorporate the use of other reactions. Third, try to actually overcome the reactions. 

To assess your dominant reaction, answer the following:

1. If you were told you had one day to live, would you:

1. Fight back and find a way to stop death from occurring.
2. Ignore it and act as if nothing happened.
3. Throw a big party feast, enjoying the best food money could buy.
4. Throw a big party and make love to as many partners as possible.
5. Sit alone, practically paralyzed in shock and fear.  

 

Answers:

a Fight ; b Flight ; c Food ; d sex ; e freeze

Want help getting in balance and managing stress and crisis? Call me (Kimberly) at 512.617.6356 for a free initial phone consultation. 

A Counselor’s Commentary on the Caveats of Twitter

“Sunrise in Austin is fabulous today!” Weather reports. That’s pretty much what my Twitter submissions disclosed when my friend and Twitter King, David LaPlante, introduced me to Twitter back in 2006. Now it seems like EVERYONE is Twittering these days. There are even courses on how to Twitter to improve your business. Boy, did I miss something??

Based on my personal experience with Twitter, here are a few of the caveats for those who want to jump on the Tweet-Tweet bandwagon. Keep in mind that I supported and promoted the cool new micro-blogging tool as a way to stay in contact with friends and loved ones in a post on Sep 6, 2007. Still, there are downsides that you should know—and I’ll share those warnings in the only Twitter-esque way possible—David Letterman style!

Top 10 Reasons to Not Join Twitter

10.           People will see that you can’t spell.

9.            You don’t have a good photo to put on your site.

8.            You haven’t learned to text on your phone.

7.            You didn’t know you could send Twitters from your phone.

6.            It might jeopardize your witness relocation program.

5.            You are married and/or dating more than one person.

4.            You are a hermit and don’t want people knowing a thing about you.

3.            You don’t want anyone to find out what you really think of them or your stinkin’ job.

2.            You loathe cyber-voyeurism, cyber-exhibitionism, and cyber-stalking.

1.            Your life is SO dull that you can only tweet about the weather.

 

For everyone that keeps asking me about my Twitter, I’ll submit a post now. But just this once.  You can check it out at Tea4Soul (my Alias) if you’re that interested in Austin’s weather.  Who knows, maybe if I keep Twittering I’ll get lucky and someone will want to hire a counselor as a weather blogger. 

What You Can Do to End School Violence

The recent shooting and killing of 15 people by a teenager in Germany this week brought back haunting memories of the infamous gun shootings at school campuses here in the U.S. Like so many who were alive to experience President Kennedyʼs assassination or the horrifying terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, I have vivid recollections of my exact whereabouts when I learned about the shocking school shootings at Columbine, San Diego, and Virginia Tech to name a few of the bigger ones. Living in Austin, I also shudder at the recollections of the 1966 shooting from the University of Texasʼ tower. Then I read a National Crime Survey that reported a whopping three million crimes occur at or near school campuses in the U.S. every year. Two million of these crimes involve violence.

 

What can be done?

 

I believe the answer is three-part - It includes biology, family and community.

 

It has been reported that many of the assailants suffered from some sort of mental health issue. For instance, the teenager in Germany was said to have been treated for depression. While some mental health issue may exist, I want to make note that there is danger in blaming biology as the primary cause for violence. First, it can falsely imply that people who are being treated for a mental health issues like depression or schizophrenia are violent. That is generally not the case in these specific conditions. There are other mental health diagnoses that reveal more anger and violent tendencies, but those werenʼt reported in the media. The key is to get an accurate assessment and proper treatment. Having stated that, while an underlying genetic predisposition can exist, such conditions flourish in certain environments - which brings me to family and community (and what you and I can do).

 

As parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, we are all modeling behavior in front of children. Children thrive when we listen to their feelings and when we praise them for what they are doing right. One bad apple spoils the barrel and many adults are guilty of heaping a barrel of bad apples onto kids. Try to put your noʼs in check and treat children like you want to be treated. Respect their feelings, their boundaries and try showing more empathy. Be sure to do this with the rest of the family as well because kids will imitate your behavior. Parents that fight, ignore, belittle, and/or treat each other with anything less than love and respect are basically telling kids to treat people the same way (remember - action speaks louder than words).

 

The reality is we could all do a much better job. When I see rising divorce rates (50% for 1^st marriages, 64% for 2^nd marriages, and 73% for third or more marriages) along with ugly custody battles and endless blame-gaming between parents, I canʼt help but wonder about the connection to this alarming research finding among high school boys - many boys thought it was okay to hit their girlfriend if she angered him.

 

Have we just stopped teaching our children about the basics of life? Do we send them off to school, buy them toys and gadgets, plop them in front of televisions and computers, and ignore their basic needs of love and affection? Have we stopped playing and sent them into competitive sports instead? Do we hound them about grades and getting ahead? Have we forgotten the simple pleasures and larger priorities?

 

We set the priorities at the family and community level. Right now we are undergoing economic turmoil. People have lost jobs, retirement, and savings. Thereʼs a shuffle to figure out what to do. This is an opportunity to readjust our values and priorities. If you are a parent that has been living in the rat race, stop now. Look at your kids. Find a way to focus on their basic needs first. I guarantee that your time and love is far greater that any toy or material item that you could buy them. Perhaps losing a rat race job could be the biggest blessing to rediscovering a real life with your family and finding work that matters. Maybe if you do this, there will be less angst in the world and more peace and love in our childrenʼs schools.

What to do if the Weather is Bringing You Down

 

  

Short overcast days and long cold nights can make you sad. There’s even a psychiatric  diagnosis that uses sad as an acronym – Seasonal Affective Disorder. It happens when you lose energy, can’t seem to focus, crave sugar and “bad” carbohydrates, and have a sense of defeat with feelings of worthlessness. Some say that people with this response are in tune with nature and are empathically experiencing a kind of winter period alongside the trees and shrubs (when winter land is kind of glum and non-fruitful too). Yet, the world goes on and doesn’t seem to allow for hibernation in humans. Perhaps that’s why western medicine has stepped in to help the half a million Americans that complain about SAD every year.

 

The solution is light therapy. People can receive up to 30 minutes of light at an intensity of 10,000 lux (in lumination measurement). To contrast, your household lamps generally put off about 100 lux whereas a bright sunny day can dose you with 50,000 lux or more. Researchers are investigating different timing periods and different light sources. In one study, Columbia University researchers discovered impressive results by calibrating light exposure to natural melatonin rhythms. The difference shows improvement in 80% of the patients that were timed appropriately as opposed to 38% (Mother Nature must be really good as most of these patients’ SAD symptoms improve with the onset of spring).

Still, if you can’t wait for spring, check out the Society of Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms to learn more. But before you run out to get your light therapy, know that certain medications and conditions can cause retinal damage from light therapy. This includes: St. John’s

Wort (a natural herb for treating depressive symptoms), Lithium (used for bipolar treatment), Melatonin (a natural sleep aid), antipsychotic medications, and conditions like diabetes and retinal conditions.

The Danger of Getting Stressed Out by the Current Economy

No matter what country you live in, you most likely feel effects from the current global economic difficulties. People are losing homes, jobs, relationships, and security. When this happens, desperation and despair takes over. Stress thrives and is contagious.

According to a survey by the by the American Psychological Association (APA), 58% of people take their stress out on their loved ones. Other APA research reveals that stress manifests as illness in the body for even more people—up 77% of people in stress report having physiological symptoms and 73% of people in stress reported psychological symptoms. When this happens, more people are impacted by stress and a viscous stress cycle continues to grow and expand.

What can you do to keep stress at bay? Take time to heal yourself before stress gets out of control. Take time to breathe throughout the day (deep breathing can be a miracle cure for many ailments). Remember what’s important. Get back to basics. Stress thrives in chaos and confusion, and tends to diminish in simplicity. Live simply—from the heart—and you will feel better. So will the people around you.

 

If you are experiencing serious side-effects of stress, please seek help with a therapist or counselor immediately. Stress gets worse if left untreated. If you're out of a job and can't pay, many will work with you if you ask them. Please feel free to contact my office if you would like to discuss your needs.

 

How to Choose the Perfect Valentine

Valentine’s Day is almost here. Have you singled out your special sweetheart yet? Well before you start sizing up the candidates in your little blackberry, consider this: How you select your Valentine may very well indicate how you choose your life partner—and how you choose your partner can reveal your overall relationship success.

 

Rule #1 is to be selective—be VERY selective—don’t just run out and find a Valentine (or life partner) because a holiday is here; because everyone else is doing it; because you’re lonely; or because you feel ‘fond enough’ of someone.

 

To enhance your selectivity, use these tips for choosing the perfect Valentine (and/or life partner):

 

• Friendship & Trust—you must feel safe with your Valentine and have a strong friendship that allows you to be your real self.

 

• Laughter & Lightness—no relationship can endure non-stop seriousness. Find a Valentine that loves to play and laugh with you.

 

• Attraction & Tenderness—love blooms with mutual attraction, but it also needs tenderness to keep your Valentine’s love alive and thriving (cuddling, caring about each other’s feelings and desires, genuine interest, real listening, etc.).

 

• Values & Depth—your Valentine needs to match your values and depth level to keep balance in the relationship. Any imbalance in this area is destined to implode.

 

• Meaning—you and your Valentine connect best when you have a shared story, purpose or reason that makes it feel as though you’re somehow destined to be together.

 

Be patient if you don’t have a Valentine that fits the bill. Remember, nature abhors a vacuum, so make room in your heart to allow your perfect Valentine to enter.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

The Secret Recipe to Living a Peaceful Life

Now and then I receive a flood of comments about something I wrote that touched people in numerous ways. I wanted to take a moment and share one of them. It's an excerpt from my company's newsletter and is dedicated it to all my soul friends, new and old...and to souls I haven't met...blessings, healing thoughts, and peace to all of you...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ultimate Relationship

At the heart of the most successful recovery and healing models is the honoring of spirit. Spirit, which means “breath” or “breath of life,” addresses the essence and meaning we find in life—and can have a religious aspect for some, but is often seen as separate from religion.

Spirit compels us to look beyond and see outside of ourselves. It’s what makes us smile at a beautiful sunset or little children playing at the playground. It’s what makes us weep when a loved one passes. It’s why we play with Mother Nature when we go camping, skiing, surfing, boating, golfing, hiking, gardening (and all the other “ings”). It’s why we fall in love, give love and feel grateful in spite of life’s ups and downs.

 

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d take a moment to honor that ultimate relationship—the spirit within each of us. Here are 12 Signs of a Spiritual Awakening from Hamilton & Jackson:

1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
2. Frequent attacks of smiling.
3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experience.
6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
7. A loss of ability to worry.
8. A loss of interest in conflict.
9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
10. A loss of interest in judging others.
11. A loss of interest in judging self.
12. Gaining the ability to love and not worry about receiving anything in return.

Getting a Job after Being Laid Off…Stage Three: Employing Top-Notch Interview and People Skills

As discussed in the previous series of posts, by now you’ve been working through the grief of your lost job, did some soul-searching, identified your skills and job desires, polished your résumé boilerplate and customized it to fit each job opportunity, networked, and now you’ve landed a job interview for that job you really want. What do you do?

 

This is where I point you back to stage one. Grief. You may still have some unprocessed grief that can make you a little extra panicked about the job interview. It’s normal. Take a moment to feel the feelings of any fear or panic and then breathe and reassure yourself that you WILL be okay if you don’t get this job. Yes, you read that correctly. Let it go and feel the feelings that everything will be okay if you do not get the job. Clinginess and desperation often repel people, so releasing any of these feelings will make you more approachable.

 

When you go into the interview, you may be asked a series of questions about your background and why you are the best match for the job. Some of the questions may even be ridiculous, like what kind of animal you would be in your career. Don’t worry about those. There are no wrong answers. The key is to be Genuine, Present, Respectful, and Real. Listen to the interviewer and hear the question behind the question. For instance, you may be asked why you spent such a short amount of time at your previous jobs when what they really want to know is whether you’ll be committed to the company and dependable for the long haul. If it is the job you desire (and it must be if you’ve followed the steps in this series) then you can look the interviewer directly in the eye and assure her/him that you are completely committed and would like to see yourself working with them for years to come.

 

This brings me to my next point. The interviewer is a human being—not a judge. Build a relationship and make Contact with them. Connecting to them as a genuine person and professional can reap rewards beyond the job. It will help you to settle in the job if you get it, as you will have an inside team member advocating for your success. Or, if you both discover the job is not a mutual fit, you can still ask for their assistance, referrals or even work with them down the road.

 

To recap, being Genuine, Present, Respectful and Real leads to making Contact – which provides you with one of the most essential skills the U.S. Department of Labor says is needed in today’s global economy. To aid your memory, your interview and “people relations” formula for success is: G+P+R+R=C

 

Sometimes contact gets broken because of other factors, like power struggles. People tend to fight for their turf and want to feel that their sense of worth isn’t being trampled by a new person. Interviewers and managers can also suffer from such struggles—especially if they’re new at interviewing or managing and not very confident in their own skin. They might tend to overcompensate and act controlling or micromanaging. If this is the case, you might want to utilize some proven power struggle cures.  They are in my new eBook, Ten Keys for Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle, which many are praising as a powerful tool for curing conflict. You can access it at www.TenKeysToPowerStruggles.com.    

Getting a Job after Being Laid Off…Stage Two: Tips for Developing Your Résumé and Networking

The first stage after getting laid off involves attending to your grief (see post on 12/17/08). I cannot stress this part enough as the grief of a layoff can haunt you in your next job and can cause you to behave in ways that can sabotage your success (which is not that dissimilar to being heart-broken and carrying those wounds into the next relationship). Please feel free to contact me or another counselor or coach if you’re experiencing any of these issues right now. Now moving on to the second stage…

 

Is your résumé or CV (Curriculum Vitae) ready? Are you networking and meeting people? Or are you dreading both of these and wishing you could put your head under the pillow and just sleep it off? Or maybe you’ve decided to take a little control and start your own business. Whatever the situation, there are some methods to consider that will better align you in your search.

 

1.         Values…

First, take a moment to prioritize your values. Fear of losing one’s home and lifestyle often rises up when someone loses their job, causing a kneejerk reaction to look for the first thing that pays. This is normal because you’re trying to get your basic needs met, but what if you accept something that contradicts your values? It could leave you in an even more vulnerable place because then you’ll want to leave a job right after getting laid off a previous one. Having a short job tenure like this could scar your career track record—even if you leave it off of your résumé. Why? The undisclosed job can decrease your self-confidence and, like a ghost, haunt you with an inner sense of shame. Thus, figure out your values first and use them to filter out jobs that don’t match.

 

2.         Setting goals…

Second, now that you’ve assessed your values, it’s time to consider your goals. To develop realistic and personalized career goals is a two-step process. One, take a moment to consider your dreams and aspirations. What really gives you meaning? Make a list of your desires. Is it working with people? Working alone? Fold a sheet of paper in half and on one side write out a list of all of the things you like to do at work. On the second side, write out a list of your existing skills (can you use a computer? Can you write? Can you sell?). When possible, quantify your skills (sold $100 thousand of product in last year…made 40 appointments that resulted in acquisition of 16 new clients…). Now, place the skills and desires at the top of the list that are most meaningful for you. Connect both and create career goals that best capture your career desires and skills.

 

3.         Building a résumé that fits…

The next step deals with résumé building. Your résumé is not just about writing a chronological list of jobs you’ve held. It tells a story about you and works best when written in a way that lets the reader get a glimpse of your journey, but really tells them about your future goals and values. People hire people that are motivated and passionate. As long as you are seeking jobs that are aligned with your natural skills and desires AND in a workplace that is congruent with your values, you WILL be motivated and passionate. You can let that come through by writing a quasi proposal about how your goals are their goals and how you will implement them. Create a boilerplate of material that you can pull from and then arrange your material to fit the advertised job description (or UN-advertised job description). Look at the businesses where you want to work and contact them. Share ideas on how your skills can help them. Don’t be afraid to make cold calls—you’re pursuing jobs that are aligned with your passion, skills and values after all. Even if people don’t hire you, you’ve made contacts and earned respect for pursuing your passions.

 

4.         Networking…

The fourth step addresses networking. If you’re making cold calls and finding businesses that match you and your personal philosophy, then you’re making contacts. Ask those people where they network. Ask them for referrals. Look up professional organizations in your industry(ies) of choice and visit them. Talk to your friends and neighbors about your goals. When you let the world know what you want, it has a way of gifting you. The clearer your goals are articulated and the more aligned they are with your inner yearnings, the more amazing the results.

 

Again, please feel free to contact me for assistance with writing your résumé, defining your goals, or uncovering your inner passion.

 

This is the second post in a three-part series. The next post will cover interview skills and “people relations” strategies.

How to Make New Year’s Resolutions that Stick

Happy Holidays to everyone out there. I hope the peace of the season is able to find its way into your and your loved ones’ heart, mind, spirit and body. Best wishes for 2009! I hear it’s going to be a good one, so spread the word.

 

If you’re taking a break from your revelry or hard work to read this right now (or if it’s just a way of procrastinating), let me try to offer a little inspiration to help you make your New Year’s resolutions last throughout 2009.

  

First, I’ll start by sharing an experience from graduate school. I was taking an advanced counseling class and a student was crying after recounting the pain he felt during Christmas because his mother was deceased and it was their first Christmas without her. You could feel the heavy longing in his heart as he described his immense love for her. We all hung on his every word and began to tear up with him when one student reached over to hand him a box of Kleenex. Then out of nowhere the professor intercepted the student with the Kleenex and commanded her return to her seat. It was startling and took me by surprise. All eyes were now on the professor as he explained that handing a Kleenex to a crying client interrupted the release of their pain and really indicated a counselor’s discomfort with heavier emotions.

 

What does that have to do with making New Year’s resolutions? The answer has a twist in it.

 

When you think of New Year’s resolutions, what comes to mind? Losing weight? Quitting smoking? Increasing exercise? Being on time to appointments and with deadlines? Increasing your bottom line?

 

Have you noticed what many of the typical resolutions have in common? They are remedial in nature and tend to focus on weaknesses. They are like dictates from our inner slave-driver that is disgusted by us and is demanding improvement. So we respond by setting the prescribed resolutions as our goal and then try to adhere to them a bit begrudgingly. It is no wonder that more than 2/3 of Americans polled have abandoned their New Year’s resolutions by spring.

 

So, how can you make New Year’s resolutions that stick?

 

This is where the twist comes in.

 

Typically, this time of year brings up a host of emotions for people. Many experience grief—grief over a lost loved one; grief over an unfulfilled dream; grief over money; grief over lost career or market opportunities; even grief over the lack of sunlight. Grief has a stealth way of getting you if it isn’t completely processed—which is more frequent than not. We put it aside. Friends hand us Kleenex and tell us to cheer up and that it will get better. So we repress. Then, I believe, we beat ourselves up a bit and demand a few ridiculous resolutions (maybe they’re not ridiculous, but we feel a little rebellious by our inner slave-driver).

 

Would you like an alternative suggestion that will result in New Year’s resolutions that stick?

 

One, don’t be afraid to take a little time-out to grieve this season. It’s normal and healthy. Take some time to walk by yourself and allow the feelings to flow. Maybe write about it in a journal. Talk and process it a bit. Look at old pictures, former goals, re-read old diaries…whatever it is that helps the feelings come up and flow out. Taking a little time for this can provide you rejuvenation. It also makes you a little more alive.

 

Second, after you’ve given yourself time to grieve and you’ve nurtured yourself. Attempt to make resolutions that focus on the positive. Try assessing your strengths and resolve to enhance what you’re already good at and love. Whatever you commit to, do it from a place of self-care and not inner slave-driver. Then use this year as a test to see if the resolutions stick.

 

Good luck and best of care throughout 2009!

 

(this is a post from my new blog series on the Club E NETWORK, the online gathering place for entrepreneurs. It's a great resource and free to join, so check them out if you're an entrepreneur or considering starting your own business and want to learn from others.)

 

 

 

Getting a Job after Being Laid Off...Stage One: Overcoming Grief

 Losing a job can be one of the most painful losses a person can experience—especially when it is unexpected. Losing a job creates an indescribable grief for many. The knee-jerk reaction is to jump back up as quickly as possible and start looking for a new job. However the uncertainty and fear that is produced from the job loss, if not illuminated, can creep up (even in a new job) and potentially cause a downward spiral in the person’s career and overall life. Understanding this and working through the grief is key to getting effectively and satisfactorily re-employed.

Handling the job loss

First, if you haven’t been let go, but fear that it’s imminent—try talking to your employer about cost-effective alternatives that would allow you to continue your contributions to the organization. This could be a part-time position, contract work, or even limited part-time volunteer work in exchange for office and/or computer use. Often times the organization doesn’t want to lose a valuable employee that they’ve trained, so they are often open to creative solutions like this. In addition, maintaining a connection with them can decrease your grief a bit while enhancing your job search opportunities.

 

If you have been dismissed and cut-off from the organization, know that it is completely normal to experience deep grief, shame, loss of identity and meaning, fear, and other negative feelings even if part of you is glad to be away from the company drama. These feelings tend increase and to be in direct proportion to the length of time you were at the organization and the higher your position.

 

During this stage, you may also find that you are reaching out to other former employees and discussing problems and people in the organization at length. This is part of the grieving process. However, this situation becomes a problem when it slips into obsession (can’t stop thinking or talking about the job) or when it never appears (the job loss is immediately replaced by another job…maybe even across the country…but then the grief gets displaced onto family members (via a divorce) or shows up in affairs, addictions, and other escapes).

 

In order to completely process the grief, try working with a counselor. Join a support group. Write about your thoughts and feelings in a journal. Understand how your job was connected to your identity. For instance, do you consider your identity as an individual person with unique thoughts and feelings or do you think of yourself more by your career (Engineer nerd, nurturing teacher, artist, over-achieving doctor, high-powered CEO, etc.)? If your identity seems to be steeped in your career, try cultivating the other hidden aspects of your identity. Get in touch with your inner child. Discover what makes you laugh, cry, curious, scared. Heal the wound of the job and identity loss through nurturing yourself with loving self-care and positive self-talk. Cultivate inner peace by realizing that you are not your job and find acceptance for yourself where you are this very moment. Doing this can heal your grief while gaining a self-identity is less fearful, more courageous, compassionate, and wise—and just the kind of person everyone wants to be around and hire.

This is the first post of a three-part series. The next post will address tips for packaging and marketing your résumé.

 

 

 

Managing Your Net Rep

Do you know your Net Rep? It’s that little impression that comes up when someone searches your name in Google or Yahoo. Advertisers call it brand image and work hard to give a good impression or feeling of a product they want to sell. Your Net Rep (Internet Reputation) gives a similar impression and feeling about you. But it can be positive or negative, depending on how you’ve managed it and IF you’ve managed it.

 

First, how does a Net Rep get built in the first place? With the widespread usage of the World Wide Web, people across the globe have used the Internet to join social networking sites (like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse and more). They have posted their résumés on various job search sites. They have joined special interest networking group sites (such as photography groups, hiking groups, and other network groups centered around various hobbies). People also ask questions and post responses to other inquiries on topic-related sites (think medical support groups, diet groups, book reviews, movie reviews, etc. where some, but not all are anonymous postings). Every time a posting or profile is made, Google and other search engines’ spiders take note. The more your name is posted on various sites, the higher your search engine results are going to be. That means everything you post on the Internet paints a picture about you and all of the pieces of that picture will be seen by one simple search on a search engine.

 

Marketers know the power of Net Rep building and purposely try to place a product or client’s name all over the World Wide Web in strategically advantageous places. You can do the same, but first you need to figure out what your existing Net Rep reveals. To do this, reexamine the content on your social networking sites from the prespective of a boss, employee, or client. Consider what your information reveals about you and how it may impact your professional reputation and credibility. 

 

An example of how social networking content can backfire on someone is by using sites for dating searches. A senior executive was borderline harassing employees and potential employees through public sites. The behavior was observed by investors and became an issue for the company, along with almost costing the executive’s job.

 

One more cautionary note is that privacy locks on your sites do not always work. Member profiles still show up on “friends” and group lists along with any comments that have been made on other people’s sites. Basically, a trail of Internet bread crumbs leads anyone back to a site that is even marked private, so be cautious about the friends you accept and the posts you make.

 

The upside is that you can use the Internet bread crumbs in your favor by posting positive material that reinforces the image you want to convey. People like to see the humanity behind a person’s name, so posting favorite quotes, movies, and philosophical views can be positive if that’s the image you want to convey—especially when it’s congruent with your inner self. Sharing a personal story through your site profiles and revealing what you care about can go a long way. Even microblogging updates about what you are doing right now can enhance your Net Rep as long as they are true and not too abundant (e.g. Preparing for marathon to help abused children; Finishing grant proposal for mental health study on career mobility; Attending professional economic conference; Going on hike and smelling the flowers.).

 

Managing a Net Rep can be a lot like tending a garden. Plant good and healthy seeds and maintain upkeep. Revisit sites you’ve joined and keep the content positive. If people have posted negative things about you, make positive public comments or delete the profile if you’re getting harassed. You can also combat a negative posting through increased positive postings by colleagues and friends. Ask for public referrals, recommendations, and testimonials. Be professional and courteous with all of your postings—even in listserves. People across the world are watching, so communicate on the Internet with caution and wisdom.

Can Love Cure War? Examining Biology of Love, 12th Century Rules of Love & Evolved Love

In honor of the anniversary of the end of WWI (90 years ago on November 7, the “war to end all wars” ended), this blog entry looks at love (the hopeful antidote to war) microscopically, across time and into the future.

Love is by far the most influential feeling a person can experience. Love has an extraordinary way of knocking people off their feet, away from their path, and causing them to behave in the most unexpected ways. It has been opposed to war (think 60’s slogan “Make Love, Not War”), has incited war (Helen of Troy myth) and street fights (West Side Story). Of course, many spiritual leaders say jealousy is not love. They say real love would not cause war, fighting, or anything negative. Real love rises above conflict and wants the best for everyone. If that’s the case why is love so crazymaking for so many people? The answer might be two-fold. There are some biological aspects to falling in love that actually create a chemical imbalance in people. There are also some perpetual myths about love that reinforce love’s dark side.

Biology

A quick look at the biological underpinnings of love reveals that the early stages of falling in love (or infatuation) triggers a release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. This increase of dopamine creates feelings of exhilaration, heightened focus, and increases one’s energy—which explains why, when people are falling in love, they might lose weight, become more active, can stay up all night talking with each other, and feel euphoric like they’re walking on a cloud.

One-way love (unrequited love) or rejected/abandoned love can wreak havoc on the impacted person’s serotonin levels (displaying significant drops in serotonin as high as 40%, according to research by Donatella Marazziti). Such drops in serotonin mimic obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and probably explain the stalking behavior of some jilted or obsessed lovers.

Long-term, committed love reveals an increase in the bonding hormone oxytocin and is responsible for feelings of security and contentment. At this stage, dopamine returns to normal, but oxytocin levels are heightened. This could explain why people don’t feel that excited rush of first love in longer-term relationships and often differentiate feelings of being “in love” with feelings of “love”…or confusing the chemical shift as an absence of love.

Enduring Myths?

On top of our ever-changing chemical reactions to “love," humankind is also conditioned to beliefs and rules about love. These norms/myths/narratives create behavioral responses that are deemed acceptable or non-acceptable by society. For instance, divorce was once unacceptable but has increased as society has accepted it as less taboo. Pursuing individual happiness is a new norm. Nonetheless, some myths are enduring throughout time. To illustrate, here is an excerpt of “rules” about love put forth in the 12^th century. See how many apply today.

“The Rules of Love” by Andreas Capellanus, 1185

1. The state of marriage does not necessarily excuse anyone from loving.
2. He who does not feel jealousy is incapable of loving.
3. No one can love two people at the same time.
4. It is well known that love is either growing or declining.
5. Whatever a lover takes from his lover’s will has no savor.
6. A male does not fall in love until he has reached full manhood.
7. A mourning of two years is required by the survivor.
8. No one should be prevented from loving save by reason of his or her own death.
9. No one can love save by the eloquence of love.
10. Love is accustomed to be an exile from the house of avarice.
11. It is unseemly to love anyone whom you would be ashamed to marry.
12. A true lover only desires the passionate embraces of his beloved.
13. Love that is made public rarely lasts.
14. Love easily obtained is of little value; difficulty in obtaining it makes it precious.
15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of the beloved.
16. On suddenly catching sight of the beloved, the heart begins to palpitate.
17. A new love drives out the old.
18. A good character alone makes someone worthy of love.
19. If love lessens, it soon fails and rarely recovers.
20. A man in love is always fearful.
21. The feeling of love is always increased by true jealousy.
22. A suspicious lover and the sensation of love is increased.
23. A man tormented by the thought of love, eats and sleeps little.
24. Everything a lover does ends in the thought of the beloved.
25. A true lover considers nothing good but what he thinks will please his beloved.
26. Love can deny nothing to love.
27. A lover cannot have too much of his beloved’s consolations.
28. The smallest supposition compels a lover to suspect his beloved of doing wrong.
29. A man troubled by excessive lust does not usually love.
30. A true lover is continually, without interruption, obsessed by the image of his beloved.

My thoughts

I believe there is another level of love—an evolved love—that many people are now experiencing. This kind of love can cure war. Through knowledge and psycho-spiritual growth, we can override our basic biological and cultural drives toward jealousy, insecurity, lust, and discrimination. By understanding the natural biological and cultural underpinnings of the dark and light side of love, we can step back and realize how our ‘primal’ brain and prevailing culture influences us and then separate those responses from a more higher-functioning and evolved response. That is where evolved love thrives—and we as a collective whole can unite and overcome war. As Blaise Pascal suggested, “The more intelligent a person is, the more originality is found in others. Ordinary people see no difference between men.” Evolved love is expansive, not constrictive or jealous, and let’s you love someone special while also seeing and loving the “originality” in people worldwide.

Your $5 a Month Personal Coach for Health, Wealth & Happiness

What one thing do clients get the most out of our sessions? New positive thought processes. While I can work with clients on issues that are unique to them and their circumstances, I have found repeating patterns among many - especially in these current economic conditions. Fear has been at an all time high right now as people fear losing their savings, jobs, homes, and primary relationships. This is made worse because fearful thoughts form deep neural pathways of negative thinking that reinforce and actually manifest the very thing that's feared ("self-fulfilling prophecy"). The flip side is that you can focus on what you want and create it in your life, like Walt Disney's famous quote "If you can dream it, you can do it."

Many know this, but few achieve it. Why? There are a few reasons. People get distracted and respond to issues in the moment. Fear and negative thinking are difficult to override. The negative messages in the environment (sometimes referred to as the "real world") compete with positive intentions. Over time, people go back to their normal way ("set point") of thinking and believing. For those who can afford it, coaching helps and keeps people on a path that overcomes these obstacles. Yet, not everyone can afford a coach. In addition, coaches cannot be with their clients 24 hours a day.

I'm so excited to share that we have a NEW SOLUTION for you! We have developed InstantMotivator.com to serve as your personal coach. Simply visit the site and create an account to send a motivational message as a text message to your phone at any time interval you select. Some clients have used "I have more money than I can imagine" and had it sent to their phone every three hours. They meditate and imagine it's true every time they see the message...and guess what? It's been working for them. Others have used it to connect to and nurture their inner child, creating peace and healing old emotional wounds. Still others have used it to reignite the love and passion in their relationships. The service is limitless and you can change the message any time to work on a new manifestation or healing. Please visit the site and see the affirmation examples as well. For $5 a month, it'll be the best investment you've made for yourself.

Good luck with InstantMotivator.com and happy healing & manifesting!

P.S. Please share the good news about InstantMotvator.com with other people you know. It's also a great and affordable gift that can really help someone.

Power Struggles in the Hood

When the Racheal Ray show asked me to be one of their experts on an upcoming segment about neighborhood conflicts, I confess I panicked a little. Trying to solve feuding neighbor issues can be a little like trying to tame wild cats. Attempting to do this on national television would surely undermine any credibility I had achieved. At least that was my fear. To my relief, the show was cancelled and I helped them on another issue. Still, I was asked to let them know if I came across any feuding neighbors for future segments. I didn’t have any candidates for them. But wouldn’t you know that life has a funny way of providing ironies. I have watched turmoil grow in my neighborhood over the past year. In the past three days alone, about two hundred emails have been posted on our neighborhood listserve. The issue? Traffic. That’s the surface issue that has ignited a bunch of personality clashes and power struggles. This is even more ironic, because I just finished writing and launching my new eBook on power struggles (“Ten Keys for Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle”). But alas, I am just a neighbor in the neighborhood. I don’t have a neutral voice, so the nuggets of communication suggestions that I could share may not have the same effect. Still, I will try my best to communicate in a manner that promotes reconciliation and peace. To any of my neighbors that read this blog, please feel free to check out a copy of my eBook and consider that maybe everyone does want a safe neighborhood with calm traffic. Maybe people are being defensive with each other and the more offensive you get, the more defensive they’ll get. Guess that’s why Grandma always said “you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.”

Is Fear Driving Your Life?

Confronting fear is the number one challenge you’ll face in every moment of your life. Fear holds us back, controls our behavior, and leads to self-sabotage. Fear is also at the core of hatred, violence, oppression, self-deception, hopelessness, anxiety, and failure. You probably already know some of the common fears:

fear of rejection (keeping you from asking that special somebody on a date or applying for that promotion);

fear of failure (which keeps you immobilized and in constant procrastination mode); and

fear of intimacy and trust (you’ve been burned so you keep people at a distance lest you get hurt again).

The difficulty is that we often have no idea which fear is at play and how it is silently manipulating us into self-sabotaging acts. That’s why self-examination can be so powerful because we can uncover secret destructive fears and then confront them head-on with courage and awareness. Thus, the first step is to identify the fear that is in the driver’s seat of our actions and the second step is to move through the fear and take back control of our lives.

So, what if I were to tell you that there is one main fear that’s holding you back according to your personality type? Wouldn’t that be helpful? You could then confront that particular fear in every moment of your life and, in doing so, achieve greater success, peace, and happiness. According to the Enneagram, a personality assessment with roots that date back more than 2,500 years, there are nine major personality types and each type is driven by an underlying fear which needs to be identified and challenged. See if any of the following nine fears apply to you. Perhaps you can relate to all of them, but try to see if any one in particular resonates with you the most.

1. Fear of being bad, evil or corrupt.

2. Fear of being unloved and unwanted as you are.

3. Fear of being worthless and without value apart from your achievements and external status.

4. Fear of having no identity or no personal significance.

5. Fear of being helpless, useless, and incapable.

6. Fear of having no support and guidance—not being able to survive on one’s own.

7. Fear of being deprived or trapped.

8. Fear of being harmed or controlled by others, violated.

9. Fear of loss and separation, of annihilation (extinction).

If any of these fears speak to you, examine how they might be controlling your life. We tend to compensate for our fears by engaging in exaggerated behaviors in the opposite extreme. So, you might become a perfectionist if you fear being bad. The cure is to 1) recognize the fear 2) reassure yourself that you’re okay and 3) take control by living life from your heart and life purpose and not in reaction to your fear. Then you will be in the driver’s seat of your life and fulfilling the dreams from your heart.

Motivation

Family psychotherapists have long known that a person will underfunction if the other person overfunctions. The same holds true in business. To illustrate, did you know you would kill a baby chick if you helped it crack its shell while it was trying to break free? The baby chick needs the muscle development from cracking its shell to survive and thrive in the world. Life experience and failures create that same thriving muscle in humans. Kids need to be able to fall in order to learn. Employees need to be free to fail in order to succeed. Simply put, failure leads to success.

If you’re experiencing a little failure right now, take comfort that goodness can come out of it. Hang in there and keep cracking that shell because there’s an exciting world on the other side.

If you’re watching someone failing and feeling a little anxious because you want to help them out of their struggle, find strength in knowing they might just be developing some great success muscles without your intervention. However, you can offer them your support, caring and then cheer them on when they succeed.

Secret to Entrepreneurial Endurance

Entrepreneurs take risks. Good entrepreneurs take the right risks and reap rewards. Some of these rewards include monetary success, freedom, satisfaction, meaning, purpose and a bunch of other highly individual aspects that come from reaching one’s goal. However, not all is rosy for any entrepreneur. Taking risks has costs. Families may not be as supportive. Friends can frustrate through cajoling and competitiveness. Even the entrepreneur can get deflated with their own internal voice that chides in the middle of the night, “When are you going to settle down and get a REAL job?”

If you’re an entrepreneur and can relate to any of this, you might be wondering if it’s possible to decrease the costs of risk-taking while increasing the benefits. It IS…and the secret lies in HOW you take the risk.

First, and something I see with A LOT of entrepreneurs, is the ENORMOUS amount of TIME that’s put into busy work. STOP. I understand that taking risks as an entrepreneur can be scary. It feels worse when people around you don’t understand and can’t offer support (which is critical and essential for anyone to succeed). Busy work makes it worse and increases the costs of risk-taking. To avoid this, you’ll have to understand why people engage in costly busy work.

Typically, when people feel any form of anxiety, they try to decrease the anxiety with some kind of action. Often, it’s just plain busy work that’s not really effectively productive. Rather, it’s an anxiety release that just feels productive. It’s actually not too far off from obsessive-compulsive disorder (as displayed in the show, Monk)…one feels anxiety about something like, say, germs on their hands, so they “obsess” about the germs and then “compulsively” wash their hands repeatedly to relieve the anxiety about the germs. Not that dissimilarly, an entrepreneur can fear lack of money or success from the risk-taking nature of their entrepreneurial pursuits…and then obsesses about it…and then compulsively engage in busy work to relieve the fear/anxiety.

Examples of these anxiety-relievers (busy work) include:

• Spending way too much time writing volumes and volumes of a business plan instead of getting in front of faces of investors

• Spending a lot of time making calls to unqualified leads

• Wasting more time than necessary on elaborate filing systems, detailed databases, and other minutiae (remember, the devil is in the details)

• Talking to the same people over and over again instead of meeting new people and making new leads

• Cleaning, filing, procrastinating, and other time-consuming activities that are not resulting in sales

Here’s the secret—and it’s a paradox—when you work EFFICIENTLY, you actually INCREASE your FREE TIME. Having more of that allows you to spend your time with loved ones and nurture relationships so that those relationships can then provide you with the necessary support to keep you going. It’s that simple—prioritize your time and use it efficiently and wisely. If you’re still having difficulty with fear and busy-work or you’re not getting the critical support you need, feel free to contact me for a little coaching and we’ll work on a plan of action that fits your specific needs and situation.