I am normally loathe to speak of politics. To spend time trying to convince someone who disagrees with you of your opinion is mostly a waste. To spend time conversing about the issues with someone who already agrees with you is pointless. All too often politics makes for hurt feelings and occasional enemies of our family and friends.  Sometimes we find camraderie in people we never knew we had anything in common with.

On various social media, the political ranting has already started. For some, it has been entertaining to watch the candidates of the same party tear into each other, but soon enough it will come down to conservatives vs. liberals and very mean spirited attacks on each other. This good vs. evil approach to political debate has always made me feel a bit sick to my stomach, like watching hobos in a fist fight.

I have my opinions.  But I have no desire to convice others that my political opinion is the most correct. As I check my email inbox and Facebook updates, I find many, many politically themed posts.  All of the retoric is about simplistic points and idealism which rarely translate to true cause, and true change.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many political ads, slogans, metaphors, and quips that are quite hilarious and/or right on point. What gets me, is that people who I feel quite comfortable with occasionally share a political viewpoint that is somewhat jarring to my perception of them.

Having differing political views than your family and friends can be quite stimulating. Engaging in an intellectual debate as to the merrit or folly of a particular point can lead to futher exploration and sometimes a solution or change of opinion.  But what I more often see is two hardline approaches that challenge each other to a word based, name calling, sword clashing battle that ends with hurt feelings and ruined relationships. Wouldn’t it be nice to consider that there is more than one solution to a problem and perhaps that people who think differently than you do are indeed good people too?

Will Rogers was/is one of my favorite philosophers. He was a lover of politics but from the stand point of being a virulent critic.  He believed that we could do great things but the political ambitions of individuals and parties derailed the process. My favorite political quote from him is as follows:

We all feel overwhelmed from time to time. Sometimes we use the phrase, “ever have one of those days?”  So many times I want to change that phrase to, “ever have one of those lives?” The daily grind can accumulate a tremendous amount of pressure which can paralize us. This environmental, social, mental paralysis can become procrastination of epic proportions.  So much so that we are completely overwhelmed. Even the littlest things can seem like they take too much effort.

My personal experience as well as in my private practice has taught me that it is the individual perspective that matters here. People try to be helpful by offering solutions, even actual help with said projects and responsibilities. However, it is the person who is afflicted, they have lost hope. They have lost courage.

Homework, housework, bills to be paid, yardwork, dog poop to pick up, lose weight, eat better, exercise, letters to be written, phone calls, emails, dinner to cook, clothes to wash, people to see, reports to turn in, and on, and on, and on, and on! The list can seem endless. Most people see the mountain of chores and responsibilities as insurmountable. They fall into despair. And every day the mountain gets bigger. So big the lost of hope turns to helplessness and depression.

I have seen certain animals eat things bigger than one would thing possible. Snakes for instance, can unhinge their jaw to swallow prey bigger than their head! Humans, not so much. I have never once witnessed a human unhinge their jaw and swallow an entire bunch of grapes in one bite. But…I have seen humans eat an entire bunch of grapes, one at a time.

I call this strategy, debunching, which I often recommend to my clients. By taking it one grape at a time we can debunch our overwhelming tasks. Life is a process. One thing at a time. One step at a time. Whatever our responsibilities or our goals, we can accomplish great things if we debunch the problems and take it one grape at a time.

We don’t need the couage to climb the whole mountain, we only need the courage to take one step. We don’t need to eat the whole bunch in one bite, we only need the courage to eat one grape at a time. That is the courage to thrive.

So take a deep breath, and have a grape.

When I write about thriving, it sometimes can seem as if there is an urgency to be constantly productive. Constantly growing can be draining at times.  We must balance our growth and motivation with time for recovery, rest, and reflection.

Over the past week and a half, I have been battling a dreadful head cold. I am not good when I am sick, actually a pretty bad patient. Mostly, I refuse to believe what my body is telling me. I try to tough it out and plow through my day with all its responsibilities. This is not a good strategy.

I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t volunteer to be a human petri dish, a walking bacteria factory with the classy phlegm, mucus, and coughing. I am not allowed to get sick!  I have much to do, so many goals and aspirations.  These things will not get done unless I do them.

Of course, it is my wonderful wife who finally convinces me that I must slow down take care of myself. In fact, she insists. Twice in my life, I have refused to be sick.  I flat out refused to slow down and take care of myself, thinking, that if I was going to feel like crud, I could to that lying down or I could feel like crud and be productive as well. Bad idea.  Both times I have done this, I came down with walking pneumonia! Thank goodness for the miracle of anti-biotics or I would not be here today.

So with much reluctance I have rolled into bed and forced myself to be non-productive. I have taken care of my basic responsibilities, even accomplished a few events. But for the most part, I have done not one bit of Thriving in the last week and a half. Instead, I have listened to my wife, and my body and mostly rested.  By giving my body the rest it needs in order to heal, I am hoping to avoid further degradation of my health and a speedy return to vitality.

One of my dreams is to someday run a marathon. 26.2 miles! Over the past few years I have made some half hearted attempts to take on this challenge and begun a program of running.  I have run quite a few 5K races and one 10K race.  But something always comes up that derails my ultimate training goals. Just when I thought I was in a fantastic training groove, this head cold hits.  I crave my morning runs. Lying in bed seems like a luxury but all I keep thinking is that I am wasting valuable training time. And my goals get further away.

When I tell my ego to take a rest, I realize that taking this downtime is not the end of the world, or the end of my training. It is a minor setback. So many people have set wonderful goals for this new year and as soon as they hit a wall, they use it as an excuse to give up.  We will NOT allow these minor setbacks to derail us from our goals. The courage to thrive means that even in the face of resistance, we dig deep and find the courage to continue our quest. Of course, that will have to wait until after my bowl of chicken soup and another nap.

It’s not easy for me to take time off. But sometimes, by taking some downtime, we can recharge and be better prepared for the opportunities that are just down the road. This has been a good time of reflection. Yes, I am a victim of this dreaded cold bug. But I refuse to let it kill me. I will survive. My body’s defenses are well equipped to wipe out this army of invaders, but I have to let them do it in their own time. Then and only then, will I charge forward with vigor in my quest to ever Thrive.

Blood.  I’ve spilled a lot of it over my lifetime.  Skinned knees, cut fingers, bloody noses, bicycle accidents, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, cut bare feet, fist fights, fell off a telephone pole, four surgeries, rose thorns, split lip, even a friendly rock fight as a kid that left a really nice scar on my head (it’s another story)!  But I am most proud of the blood I have spilled by donation to the Red Cross, our local hospital, and United Blood Services.

My son, Devin, was born 3 months premature in 1999. Back then, I was in graduate school and felt that I was giving everything I had to keep my life together.  With a sick child in intensive care I was struggling to keep my head above water. School, work, home, and family in hospital all conspired to rob me of nearly every ounce of energy.  One day, my son’s doctor asked me what blood type I was. “ O positive but why?” I answered.  He asked if I would be willing to give blood as a “directed donation” to my son who needed a blood transfusion.  YES! Anything I could I would do for him. So right then and there I donated blood for the first time.

Since then, I have donated on average 3 times a year. Most of my donations have gone to anonymous people but occasionally, I can still do a directed donation.  A couple of years ago, I received an email asking for blood donations for a little girl with leukemia. She was 9 months old and needed weekly blood transfusions until she could get a bone marrow transplant.  I am what they call CMV negative.  This means that I have never been exposed to the cytomegalovirus, and can donate to premature infants, and babies. 60% of people age 6 or older have been exposed and by age 80 it is over 90%.  Even the anti bodies are found to have negative effects on premature infants.

Having donated to specific people and had a helping part in saving their lives is one of the greatest feelings ever.  I highly encourage you to give if you can. And if for some reason you are not a good candidate to donate, then find a way of getting involved somehow. Volunteer, donate money, something.

One of the most important concepts in the courage to thrive is finding the reason to act. An action can come from one of four motivations. 1: reward. 2: punishment. 3: self mastery. 4: Altruism.  The first two, reward and punishment, are extrinsically motivated. One is avoiding some form of punishment or pain, or one is seeking a reward. It is how we motivate children and puppy dogs.  But the later two, self mastery and altruism, are intrinsically motivating. The most mature, deepest meaning, and profound personal impact comes from being selfless.  The giving of oneself without any expectation of reward, takes us to a higher plane of existence. In that moment we Thrive!

January is national blood donor month. To give the gift of life is about the most selfless thing you can do.  The courage to thrive means that you have so much to give, you cannot keep it to yourself.  Your body is capable of producing extra blood. When you donate, your bone marrow and other systems engage to replace the lost components, plasma, platelets, and red blood cells. One pint of donated blood can save 3 lives! Please give blood. Save lives and Thrive! And they give you free cookies.

To make an appointment to schedule a donation contact; American Red Cross http://www.redcrossblood.org/, or United Blood Services www.unitedbloodservices.org

I recently began re-reading The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch.  If you have not read it, put this book on your manditory to do list.  A wonderful explanation of what Randy learned about life in his short term on this planet. In the end, he wished to leave a legacy for his children which he knew he would not be there to teach them as they grew up.

Sometimes we believe that the point of aquiring wisdom is to make our own lives better. Certainly that can be a wonderful effect, but I feel the point is to pass on wisdom, to share what we collect and advance our species. Each new generation does not have to reinvent the wheel. We continuously build on the previous generations’ efforts. In the case of cars, most of us wouldn’t know the first thing about the inner workings of our modes of transportation. But we can operate them just fine (for the most part!).

With regards to life wisdom, each generation seems to either wish to build their knowledge through personal experience alone, or depend entirely on ancient wisdom from books and traditions going back thousands of years. Right here, right now, there is wisdom to be discovered.  Our current times demand a different kind of adaptation to not only survive but to Thrive!  Of course experience is a wondeful teacher, but we will never live long enough to experience everything we need to know. Therefore, we will need the past wisdom of our ancestors.  Balance is what is called for. Neither totally depending on the past nor totally depending on experience.

Randy Pausch knew he was going to die. He had a defined period of time to collect all that he had learned and deemed worthy of sharing to others, especially his kids. We are all going to die. Most of us do not know when. Wouldn’t it be a special gift if we could write down what we know and share it with our children? Our grand children? And beyond?

This is the first blog entry that will seek to document some of the journey I have made thus far in my life.  Thank you for joining me and becoming part of my experience. The various tragedies, accidents, abuses, and self-imposed punishments have served to make for a very interesting life so far. And yet I have also been able to craft for myself a life filled with joy and accomplishment. Many people would be surprised by my darker inner world because for the most part I appear to be and very much am a positive jovial person.   I have chosen, through a lifetime of personal growth, to make each moment a lesson. When I was much younger I embarked on a journey to discover the meaning of life. But what I found was that I alone, must find meaning IN life. I have suffered through pain that most people could not imagine. And yet, here I am, living a full, exciting life filled with love and adventure. I want to share with you what I have learned thus far.

Each time life has handed me an unfair amount of pain, I have felt crushed to dust, burned to ashes, and yet I continue to rise again stronger and more energized, reborn like the fabled Phoenix.  My belief is not that I am special in any way but rather that each of us is stronger and more resilient than we believe. Symbolism is important, which is why I have taken the Phoenix as a personal symbol. A symbol of triumph over adversity. To continuously rise from the ashes filled with hope and strength.

When we are met with abuse, tragedy, accidents, etc, we are clearly in victim status. Through the passage of time, we can be considered “Survivors.”  It is great to survive, however, why would we wish to identify ourselves as merely survivors? The goal is to create, for ourselves, a state of “Thriving.” When we are thriving, we are really living.

Victim. Survivor. Thriver.

Clearly there are events in our lives that are out of our control. When bad stuff happens, we can correctly identify as a victim. Being the victim is a cruddy place to be. Many times, we are incapacitated to some degree, and if we stay a victim long enough, we develop maladaptive behaviors to cope with the pain. Drinking, drugs, escapism in many forms, even the dreaded defense mechanisms of dear Dr. Freud rear their ugly head. Over time and some healing we can shift into survivor mode. Being a survivor is good, however, it is limited by our previous injuries and we are kept there by our maladaptive behaviors and defense mechanisms. If as a survivor we are challenged or hurt again, we decline rapidly into victim status once again.  We become victims and stay vulnerable our whole lives. But, if we can truly Thrive, then the next insult to our lives will merely knock us back to survival mode rather than victim status. The journey then is to eliminate the maladaptive behaviors, escape behaviors, and defense mechanisms that keep us as victims or just surviving.

They say that “whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.”  I refute this statement vehemently. I have at times been crushed by the weight of tragedy and did not become stronger.  I have witnessed many people annihilated by an unfair world. Life is incredibly unfair. I wish the concept of fairness was never articulated, because it is an illusion, a dream, an unobtainable ideal. However, despite the unfairness of life, we are charged with determining some form of meaning from our lives. By doing so, we step out of the victim role and begin to become the architect of our own destiny. We are not alone. We can and must seek help from our fellow humans.  Therapists, friends, teachers, coaches, clergy, and mentors all contribute to our new knowledge. I humbly submit myself as a source, to share what I have learned thus far. Through each of these blog entries, I will attempt to articulate one or more concepts of how we can regain our personal power.  But the most important attribute we will need on this journey is the Courage to Thrive!

I am a psychologist, husband, father, friend, and person. Thank you for joining me, this is going to be a fun ride!