Once every year, each of us has the opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of our birth. This special day tells everyone that we have achieved another milestone of living.
This week is the first birthday of my grand nephew, McKeehan James Sellers. For 365 days he has brought joy into my life and happiness for many others. I see his birthday as a personal holiday, a celebration for all of the many who care about him to focus their love and attention on him. While being thankful for all that he has already brought into my life, his birthday is also a time to anticipate all of the adventures that lie ahead for him.
Several decades ago, I realized that having only one day to celebrate my personal holiday was far too limiting to myself and to the friends who wanted to be part of my celebration. So, I began to have a birthday week. Over the years, my birthday party has eventually grown into the full month of October.
McKeehan and I shall share this special month though out our lives. Our joint goal will hopefully include the opportunity to spend time with many of the people that we love and care about. We shall have the chance to build new memories each year to add to those from previous years.
Even with 69 years between us, having this common month of October to celebrate our births will always allow a special bond between us.
As I am celebrating this joyous personal time, I am always amazed at the many different attitudes that exist toward one’s birthday. People attitudes and behaviors range from being very happy to being sad and/or angry at the process of aging.
Persons like myself are so happy to have had one more year with the gift of life. We see these milestones as markers of having lived with new experiences full of diverse learning. Each day of the year has given us the chance to give and receive gifts from the people who surround us each day in our world.
As with most things in life, there is always another way of looking at a situation. Some people see the living of each day as a burden that is to be endured, perhaps with psychic and/or physical pain. Birthdays are just another marker of how negative life is or can be.
Many people dislike birthdays because it is a sign of getting older and, for many in our society, getting older is a negative condition. To many the aging process indicates “the end” of living, becoming ill, seeing friends and family die, losing a purpose for life such as working, etc.
Life is what we choose to do with what we are given. Some choose to enjoy playing and enjoying all that they have been given without focusing on what they do not have. Others choose the opposite or someplace between the extremes.
To me, birthdays are an annual reminder of the life choices we make for ourselves and for me to recall and be happy with the ones I have made.
Comments welcome. Email: silverchatline@gmail.com
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Books for Living -- Part 2
There are numerous books for one’s personal growth as a trip to any Barnes and Noble will testify. Many of the ‘new’ books are often rewritten editions of concepts and guidelines for living that were presented in books written decades ago.
Some of my favorite books that have given me guidelines in building the structure of my values and attitudes for my life journey are presented below.
Born to Win, Muriel James & Dorothy Jongeward (1971)
Galileo wrote, “You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.”
Born to Win uses the psychological theory of Transactional Analysis (TA) to provide the basic tools for self-understanding of how we interact with ourselves and with others. Just as we learned to diagram sentences in school to understand word structure, TA teaches us how to easily diagram the behavioral interactions we have with self and others.
Each chapter concludes with gestalt experiments to allow the reader to apply the concepts to their own lives and actively make them real for us.
Topics include the structure and development of ego states, the human hunger for stroking, how we structure our time, how we develop and live out our individual life scripts, psychological games that we play to implement and seek rewards for our life scripts, etc.
This is a book that takes many complex ideas and presents them in an understandable manner. As usual, one can develop many insights about self and others from reading these books; the choice to implement them remains an individual decision.
The Listener, Taylor Caldwell (1960)
Early in my teaching career, I discovered that many of my students needed my listening skills far more than they did the content of the social sciences curriculum for which I had been hired to teach.
I found that these young people had a strong and real need to have someone listen to them. The need was not from a “patient” or even as a “student”, but a human soul. My students would come to my classroom before school, during lunch and after school to seek out a human being who cared enough to listen to the frustrations and bewilderments of their lives, now and for the future.
Like many adults, I had filled my life with activities and tasks that allowed for little time to listen to the needs of others. Reading books like The Listener allowed me to finally see the power of listening and how it can be one of the most valuable gifts we each have to give another.
Taylor Caldwell’s gift in this book is to remind us of who is always present to listen to each of us and accept whatever we have to say without judgment. Her writing had a powerful impact on my spiritual growth.
The Façade, Jim Cole (1971)
This is another small book with a powerful message regarding the façade that we each build to present ourselves in a favorable light to others. It also protects us from the behaviors of being real with self and our society.
There are many similarities to the writing of John Powell. Maintaining our facades takes lots of energy, tends to be hurtful for us, and is often rationalized to avoid realizing that this defensive façade is frequently for protecting me from fully knowing myself.
The Façade also helps us become aware of the many games we play to help others maintain their facades so that neither of us is allowed to drop our defenses and be real with other. We settle for superficial relationships.
The Knight in Rusty Armor, Robert Fisher (1990)
Using a fairy tale style of writing, the author takes the reader on a journey, which offers many insights into how we protect ourselves from the joys and pains that come with self-knowledge. The knight finds himself so well protected by armor developed over his life that he has no awareness of his feelings and how to learn from the gifts received by interacting with others.
This book relates the journey that the knight takes when he realizes that he is the basis of his own problems. Merlin is his facilitator, guide, questioner, and friend. Together they take the Path of Truth that takes them through three castles: silence, knowledge and will/daring.
Eventually the knight reaches the Summit of Truth where he sees “his life clearly, without judgment and without excuses. He accepted full responsibility for his life, for the influence that people had on it, and for the events that had shaped it.”
Each of these books has shaped me in many significant ways. I hope that you will find personal value from any that you choose to read.
Comments are welcome. Email: silverchatline@gmail.com
Some of my favorite books that have given me guidelines in building the structure of my values and attitudes for my life journey are presented below.
Born to Win, Muriel James & Dorothy Jongeward (1971)
Galileo wrote, “You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.”
Born to Win uses the psychological theory of Transactional Analysis (TA) to provide the basic tools for self-understanding of how we interact with ourselves and with others. Just as we learned to diagram sentences in school to understand word structure, TA teaches us how to easily diagram the behavioral interactions we have with self and others.
Each chapter concludes with gestalt experiments to allow the reader to apply the concepts to their own lives and actively make them real for us.
Topics include the structure and development of ego states, the human hunger for stroking, how we structure our time, how we develop and live out our individual life scripts, psychological games that we play to implement and seek rewards for our life scripts, etc.
This is a book that takes many complex ideas and presents them in an understandable manner. As usual, one can develop many insights about self and others from reading these books; the choice to implement them remains an individual decision.
The Listener, Taylor Caldwell (1960)
Early in my teaching career, I discovered that many of my students needed my listening skills far more than they did the content of the social sciences curriculum for which I had been hired to teach.
I found that these young people had a strong and real need to have someone listen to them. The need was not from a “patient” or even as a “student”, but a human soul. My students would come to my classroom before school, during lunch and after school to seek out a human being who cared enough to listen to the frustrations and bewilderments of their lives, now and for the future.
Like many adults, I had filled my life with activities and tasks that allowed for little time to listen to the needs of others. Reading books like The Listener allowed me to finally see the power of listening and how it can be one of the most valuable gifts we each have to give another.
Taylor Caldwell’s gift in this book is to remind us of who is always present to listen to each of us and accept whatever we have to say without judgment. Her writing had a powerful impact on my spiritual growth.
The Façade, Jim Cole (1971)
This is another small book with a powerful message regarding the façade that we each build to present ourselves in a favorable light to others. It also protects us from the behaviors of being real with self and our society.
There are many similarities to the writing of John Powell. Maintaining our facades takes lots of energy, tends to be hurtful for us, and is often rationalized to avoid realizing that this defensive façade is frequently for protecting me from fully knowing myself.
The Façade also helps us become aware of the many games we play to help others maintain their facades so that neither of us is allowed to drop our defenses and be real with other. We settle for superficial relationships.
The Knight in Rusty Armor, Robert Fisher (1990)
Using a fairy tale style of writing, the author takes the reader on a journey, which offers many insights into how we protect ourselves from the joys and pains that come with self-knowledge. The knight finds himself so well protected by armor developed over his life that he has no awareness of his feelings and how to learn from the gifts received by interacting with others.
This book relates the journey that the knight takes when he realizes that he is the basis of his own problems. Merlin is his facilitator, guide, questioner, and friend. Together they take the Path of Truth that takes them through three castles: silence, knowledge and will/daring.
Eventually the knight reaches the Summit of Truth where he sees “his life clearly, without judgment and without excuses. He accepted full responsibility for his life, for the influence that people had on it, and for the events that had shaped it.”
Each of these books has shaped me in many significant ways. I hope that you will find personal value from any that you choose to read.
Comments are welcome. Email: silverchatline@gmail.com
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Books for Living -- Part 1
During my journey through life, I am aware of several books that have had a significant impact on the ways that I see others and myself through the prism of life. Each book gave me gifts to better understand the complexities of self-understanding as well as ways to interact with others in a more positive and healthy manner.
I call this type of reading a “book for living”. It provides guidelines that are as unique and individual as the person who reads it. None of the books of this type attempt to provide “the answer” to the questions that come from the process of living. They all are “thinking” books and are most useful when read over a period of time and when one has the opportunity to reflect and ponder what is written.
Each book provides the foundation for group study as well as for active interaction with one’s journal or personal retreat facilitator. Like counseling, what one receives from the experience of reading this type of book is entirely the choice for the individual reader. No book by itself changes the reader, but it does offer the chance to learn and accept responsibility in making life choices.
Many in this “books for living” group were published a couple of decades ago. This reinforces a personal and professional belief that we as humans tend to remain the same in how we think and behave year after year. One may rewrite some of these basic concepts with a new cover and offer it as “new and improved”. I believe that the contents are as valid today as when they were first written and will be just as useful for guidance decades after I have left this planet.
Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am, John Powell, S.J. (1969):
Each of us begins life with the learning socialization, the process of learning what others expect us to be to ourselves and to the people around us. We learn what is “normal” so that we can be content with ourselves and be comfortable around others as well as allow them to be comfortable in our company.
When we discover that we are a unique person and that some of our thoughts and feelings do not fit into the norms of the people around us, we tend to be afraid to tell others.
Why? “I am afraid to tell you who I am, because you may not like who I am, and it’s all that I have” says author John Powell.
Powell’s encouragement comes with: “I can only know and understand that much of myself which I have the courage to confide in you”. He continues with: “We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships”.
His confronts the reader with: “I’m sorry, but that is the way that I am, is nothing more than a refuge from self-honesty and a delusion.”
This book concludes with a catalog explaining 37 diverse roles and games that we play to protect ourselves from being our real selves.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (1970)
JLS is a small book with a powerful message of pushing one’s personal limits to a state of excellence through the taking of risks with self and others in our society.
Jonathan is a seagull who learns that being normal in his society is the easiest route to take. The society focus is on getting enough to eat, stay alive as long as possible and behave as every other gull does. There is no encouragement to be unique, learn as much as possible about the unknown by uplifting one’s self out of ignorance without fear, and push one’s self to fly higher with no limits.
Bach has Jonathan encourage other seagulls by stating: “We are free to go where we wish and be what we are” and “break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body, too.”
This book concludes with: “Don’t always believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your own understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly”.
These words are as valid for our personal growth today as they were in 1970 and will be in 1070.
Comments welcome. Email address: silverchatline@gmail.com
I call this type of reading a “book for living”. It provides guidelines that are as unique and individual as the person who reads it. None of the books of this type attempt to provide “the answer” to the questions that come from the process of living. They all are “thinking” books and are most useful when read over a period of time and when one has the opportunity to reflect and ponder what is written.
Each book provides the foundation for group study as well as for active interaction with one’s journal or personal retreat facilitator. Like counseling, what one receives from the experience of reading this type of book is entirely the choice for the individual reader. No book by itself changes the reader, but it does offer the chance to learn and accept responsibility in making life choices.
Many in this “books for living” group were published a couple of decades ago. This reinforces a personal and professional belief that we as humans tend to remain the same in how we think and behave year after year. One may rewrite some of these basic concepts with a new cover and offer it as “new and improved”. I believe that the contents are as valid today as when they were first written and will be just as useful for guidance decades after I have left this planet.
Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am, John Powell, S.J. (1969):
Each of us begins life with the learning socialization, the process of learning what others expect us to be to ourselves and to the people around us. We learn what is “normal” so that we can be content with ourselves and be comfortable around others as well as allow them to be comfortable in our company.
When we discover that we are a unique person and that some of our thoughts and feelings do not fit into the norms of the people around us, we tend to be afraid to tell others.
Why? “I am afraid to tell you who I am, because you may not like who I am, and it’s all that I have” says author John Powell.
Powell’s encouragement comes with: “I can only know and understand that much of myself which I have the courage to confide in you”. He continues with: “We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships”.
His confronts the reader with: “I’m sorry, but that is the way that I am, is nothing more than a refuge from self-honesty and a delusion.”
This book concludes with a catalog explaining 37 diverse roles and games that we play to protect ourselves from being our real selves.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach (1970)
JLS is a small book with a powerful message of pushing one’s personal limits to a state of excellence through the taking of risks with self and others in our society.
Jonathan is a seagull who learns that being normal in his society is the easiest route to take. The society focus is on getting enough to eat, stay alive as long as possible and behave as every other gull does. There is no encouragement to be unique, learn as much as possible about the unknown by uplifting one’s self out of ignorance without fear, and push one’s self to fly higher with no limits.
Bach has Jonathan encourage other seagulls by stating: “We are free to go where we wish and be what we are” and “break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body, too.”
This book concludes with: “Don’t always believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your own understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly”.
These words are as valid for our personal growth today as they were in 1970 and will be in 1070.
Comments welcome. Email address: silverchatline@gmail.com
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Journey Into Self
When asked the simple question “who are you?”, most people answer with labels that they have learned from others such as : parent, wife/husband, profession/skill, Georgian, Democrat, etc.
Much of what we know about ourselves comes from a script written by other people. Starting with our parents and other family members, followed by teachers, employers, friends, etc., we learn who we are by what others tell us.
Of all that we study during our lives, the study of self receives little attention. We accept what others tell us about who we are; we act out the script taking our lines from what our society writes.
Most of the time, this works out fine. The challenge comes when we ask that famous Dr. Phil counseling line “How is that behavior/attitude working out for you?” and we respond with something about it not doing a good job to solve our life problems.
For those persons who eventually become dissatisfied with the labels imposed on them so they can be ‘normal’ and accepted by the various worlds in which they live, they seek better understanding and appreciation of their unique humanness. They strive to learn and value how they are special creations.
As a retired psychologist, I have found two major approaches that worked well for many people: a self-directed study using techniques such as journaling and a personal retreat process with an objective companion.
A personal journal is built along the same unique methodology as developing a close friendship; we develop a process that works for us. There is no right or wrong way. “To thy own self be true” is the goal of our journaling process.
A journal is not a diary. It is not a recording of daily events like a calendar. It is our own personal creation that focuses on the creation of styles that challenge and encourage us to focus on our inner thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings, etc. It needs to be deeply honest and intimate to have maximum value. Unfortunately, being either is a process that most of us have not had the privilege of learning, since our society encourages us to be ‘normal’ and similar to other people around us.
Understanding the limitations of self-study through journaling, some individuals seek out a personal retreat process. The major criterion for effectiveness is to have a companion who can be objective and caring about your uniqueness as a human and someone with whom you can be open, honest and vulnerable.
This companion will assist you to minimize the distractions of your world, usually in a remote setting. He/she is not part of your usual environment so they have the objectivity needed for the challenges of self-study.
This journey into self-study is a personal treasure that is difficult and yet priceless for our life enrichment.
Comments welcome: silverchatline@gmail.com
Much of what we know about ourselves comes from a script written by other people. Starting with our parents and other family members, followed by teachers, employers, friends, etc., we learn who we are by what others tell us.
Of all that we study during our lives, the study of self receives little attention. We accept what others tell us about who we are; we act out the script taking our lines from what our society writes.
Most of the time, this works out fine. The challenge comes when we ask that famous Dr. Phil counseling line “How is that behavior/attitude working out for you?” and we respond with something about it not doing a good job to solve our life problems.
For those persons who eventually become dissatisfied with the labels imposed on them so they can be ‘normal’ and accepted by the various worlds in which they live, they seek better understanding and appreciation of their unique humanness. They strive to learn and value how they are special creations.
As a retired psychologist, I have found two major approaches that worked well for many people: a self-directed study using techniques such as journaling and a personal retreat process with an objective companion.
A personal journal is built along the same unique methodology as developing a close friendship; we develop a process that works for us. There is no right or wrong way. “To thy own self be true” is the goal of our journaling process.
A journal is not a diary. It is not a recording of daily events like a calendar. It is our own personal creation that focuses on the creation of styles that challenge and encourage us to focus on our inner thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings, etc. It needs to be deeply honest and intimate to have maximum value. Unfortunately, being either is a process that most of us have not had the privilege of learning, since our society encourages us to be ‘normal’ and similar to other people around us.
Understanding the limitations of self-study through journaling, some individuals seek out a personal retreat process. The major criterion for effectiveness is to have a companion who can be objective and caring about your uniqueness as a human and someone with whom you can be open, honest and vulnerable.
This companion will assist you to minimize the distractions of your world, usually in a remote setting. He/she is not part of your usual environment so they have the objectivity needed for the challenges of self-study.
This journey into self-study is a personal treasure that is difficult and yet priceless for our life enrichment.
Comments welcome: silverchatline@gmail.com
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Rare Gift
As we grow older and have more experiences, we generally find ourselves changing in what we value in giving and receiving with our family and friends.
When asked, what we want to receive most from others, our society encourages us to answer with a focus on material items. I eventually realized what I am truly seeking is rare: an accepting and non-judgmental listener, a person who truly allows me to be myself.
My experience shows that most are looking for that person who will offer the gift of listening hospitality. We seek a person who will actively listen vs. the person who keeps quiet while their mind wanders or is busy composing their own reply until we pause. We seek a person who understands the feelings and importance of our psychic joy and pain.
When many of us enter a room, we can usually see who offers a positive atmosphere and is carrying an invisible sign that says, “I want to listen to you and understand your story”. Equally noticeable is the invisible sign that says, “what I have to say is more important than what you want to talk about”.
I believe that we all carry these invisible signs that convey to others our values and what others can expect from us. And, we are more skilled in reading these signs from others than we may realize and are attracted to certain types.
Listening is far more than being quiet while another talks. It requires an active focus on the other person’s words and non-verbal language, avoiding distracting thoughts or preparing what to say when the other person pauses for air.
When we give the gift of listening to another, our conversation is not a competitive event where the loser is declared the listener. Our gift is to behave and believe that what others have to say is as important as what we have to offer. We have no need to demonstrate our wit, knowledge and intelligence in true active listening.
One guideline that may be helpful is to remember that seldom do people care about how much we know, but they do know and value about how much we care.
When teaching I would sometimes stop in the middle of a thought and ask a student: “what did I just say?” This exercise of question-asking gives each of us the opportunity to evaluate whether we are truly listening to other people or just passing time with our minds focused elsewhere.
I have not covered the various psychological games that people play with themselves and others to manage psychic pain such as the person who needs to exercise control and dominate others through talking. But, we can save those psychological mind games for another day.
For now, let us practice giving the rare gift of listening hospitality. Listening is a life-energizing gift of joy for all.
Your comments/reactions are welcome.
Email: silverchatline@gmail.com
When asked, what we want to receive most from others, our society encourages us to answer with a focus on material items. I eventually realized what I am truly seeking is rare: an accepting and non-judgmental listener, a person who truly allows me to be myself.
My experience shows that most are looking for that person who will offer the gift of listening hospitality. We seek a person who will actively listen vs. the person who keeps quiet while their mind wanders or is busy composing their own reply until we pause. We seek a person who understands the feelings and importance of our psychic joy and pain.
When many of us enter a room, we can usually see who offers a positive atmosphere and is carrying an invisible sign that says, “I want to listen to you and understand your story”. Equally noticeable is the invisible sign that says, “what I have to say is more important than what you want to talk about”.
I believe that we all carry these invisible signs that convey to others our values and what others can expect from us. And, we are more skilled in reading these signs from others than we may realize and are attracted to certain types.
Listening is far more than being quiet while another talks. It requires an active focus on the other person’s words and non-verbal language, avoiding distracting thoughts or preparing what to say when the other person pauses for air.
When we give the gift of listening to another, our conversation is not a competitive event where the loser is declared the listener. Our gift is to behave and believe that what others have to say is as important as what we have to offer. We have no need to demonstrate our wit, knowledge and intelligence in true active listening.
One guideline that may be helpful is to remember that seldom do people care about how much we know, but they do know and value about how much we care.
When teaching I would sometimes stop in the middle of a thought and ask a student: “what did I just say?” This exercise of question-asking gives each of us the opportunity to evaluate whether we are truly listening to other people or just passing time with our minds focused elsewhere.
I have not covered the various psychological games that people play with themselves and others to manage psychic pain such as the person who needs to exercise control and dominate others through talking. But, we can save those psychological mind games for another day.
For now, let us practice giving the rare gift of listening hospitality. Listening is a life-energizing gift of joy for all.
Your comments/reactions are welcome.
Email: silverchatline@gmail.com
Friday, October 2, 2009
Two C's: Our Choices To Handle Changes
As a retired counseling psychologist, I have often been asked what are some key things that I have learned about others and myself that can aid one to have a healthy life as a senior.
One of the key aspects of human behavior that I have observed over the years, and usually is confirmed by conversation, is that there are two basics in our lives that most of us continually struggle with in some form: change and choice, the two C’s.
Everything in our life is constantly in a process of change. Some times the process is slow, while others times it happens so rapidly that we are stunned and find ourselves wondering what happened. Sometimes the changes are pleasant, understandable and bring happiness to our world; sometimes the opposite occurs.
By the time we have reached our senior years, we have frequently become very skilled at resisting the changes taking place in ourselves, our friends, our families, our health, our finances, etc. We invest a great deal of energy in seeking to have our worlds remain in what we see as a ‘normal’ state. We want the world and the people in it to behave, as we believe they should!
The reality of change is a given in our lives. The choices we make to manage these continuing changes are frequently the largest personal challenge we each face as individuals. We have so many varied choices and sometimes lots of people who are eager to tell us what we should choose to think, feel and behave in leading our lives as we get older.
Usually the major choice for most people is whether to accept or reject responsibility for the individual choices each of us makes. Frequently we find that our ‘problems’ are usually not the changes that are taking place all around, but what decisions do we make when faced with change in others and ourselves.
As we talk with people in our world, it usually does not take long to learn to what degree an individual has chosen to be responsible for the choices he/she faces. Many choose healthy, positive and nurturing attitudes and behaviors. Others may choose to react to change with denial, displacement to others, rebellion, or victimization.
The easiest path is often to choose to not embrace changes and rely on habits and experiences from earlier years. However, the healthiest route for happiness is usually to accept that we are free as individuals to decide to accept or resist the reality of change by the choices we make in how we feel and think about our world and ourselves.
How we handle these 2 C’s tend to make us the individuals we are at any stage in our lives.
Your responses and questions are most welcome.
Email at: silverchatline@gmail.com
One of the key aspects of human behavior that I have observed over the years, and usually is confirmed by conversation, is that there are two basics in our lives that most of us continually struggle with in some form: change and choice, the two C’s.
Everything in our life is constantly in a process of change. Some times the process is slow, while others times it happens so rapidly that we are stunned and find ourselves wondering what happened. Sometimes the changes are pleasant, understandable and bring happiness to our world; sometimes the opposite occurs.
By the time we have reached our senior years, we have frequently become very skilled at resisting the changes taking place in ourselves, our friends, our families, our health, our finances, etc. We invest a great deal of energy in seeking to have our worlds remain in what we see as a ‘normal’ state. We want the world and the people in it to behave, as we believe they should!
The reality of change is a given in our lives. The choices we make to manage these continuing changes are frequently the largest personal challenge we each face as individuals. We have so many varied choices and sometimes lots of people who are eager to tell us what we should choose to think, feel and behave in leading our lives as we get older.
Usually the major choice for most people is whether to accept or reject responsibility for the individual choices each of us makes. Frequently we find that our ‘problems’ are usually not the changes that are taking place all around, but what decisions do we make when faced with change in others and ourselves.
As we talk with people in our world, it usually does not take long to learn to what degree an individual has chosen to be responsible for the choices he/she faces. Many choose healthy, positive and nurturing attitudes and behaviors. Others may choose to react to change with denial, displacement to others, rebellion, or victimization.
The easiest path is often to choose to not embrace changes and rely on habits and experiences from earlier years. However, the healthiest route for happiness is usually to accept that we are free as individuals to decide to accept or resist the reality of change by the choices we make in how we feel and think about our world and ourselves.
How we handle these 2 C’s tend to make us the individuals we are at any stage in our lives.
Your responses and questions are most welcome.
Email at: silverchatline@gmail.com
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Silver Listener Introduction
POWER FOR POSITIVE LIVING
http://power4positiveliving.blogspot.com/
How does one begin a personal introduction to people that one may not know?
It seems that most of us like to begin with some impersonal factors about ourselves and then, by degree, move on to introducing those characteristics which make us the unique human beings that we are.
My name is James; I call myself a silver listener. I am a retired counseling psychologist and teacher who has learned much about human behavior, both from a personal as well as a professional view. I have been a licensed psychologist in the states of North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.
I am a seeker to learn from my own life experiences as well as whatever I can from interacting with the thousands of people that I have met during my life journey.
As I have grown older, I have been urged to write a book by many who were in my psychology classes, those who learned from counseling and personal retreating experiences, listened to my personal growth radio shows, attended enrichment lectures given on cruise ships sailing the world, etc.
My own opinion is that there are plenty of books, which have already been written. I see no need to add to the pile. One may say the same about blogs, but I going to try this experiment for a while and see where it leads me.
There are plenty of people in our world who like to talk and often feel frustrated that so few people choose to listen to them. Most of my life I have attempted to offer this gift of listening hospitality to those I meet. It has been a gift that I have freely given and have been pleased to offer.
In my retirement years, I have decided that I am going to practice a new behavior while I still have my body/mind health. Using the process of a blog, I want to share with others some of what I have learned about life by many years of listening. Also, I am going to experiment with being a ‘talker’ rather than be entirely a listener.
So, about once a month, I shall write a brief commentary about some aspect of Hugheyism, named by a student many years ago. Hugheyisms are guidelines which I have found useful for myself and others as we journey through this gift of life. The sources for many have been lost over the years. Hopefully, you may find some thoughts that you may use in your own daily life.
Also, you will be encouraged to share any comments and/or reactions to these articles with others and me. I want to continue to learn until I take my final breath on this planet.
While I shall start by writing some articles, I hope that this process will allow me to continue learning from some of my readers, if they wish to write and share their own life adventures.
In advance, thanks for listening to me!
Comments/Reactions welcome.
Email:
http://power4positiveliving.blogspot.com/
How does one begin a personal introduction to people that one may not know?
It seems that most of us like to begin with some impersonal factors about ourselves and then, by degree, move on to introducing those characteristics which make us the unique human beings that we are.
My name is James; I call myself a silver listener. I am a retired counseling psychologist and teacher who has learned much about human behavior, both from a personal as well as a professional view. I have been a licensed psychologist in the states of North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.
I am a seeker to learn from my own life experiences as well as whatever I can from interacting with the thousands of people that I have met during my life journey.
As I have grown older, I have been urged to write a book by many who were in my psychology classes, those who learned from counseling and personal retreating experiences, listened to my personal growth radio shows, attended enrichment lectures given on cruise ships sailing the world, etc.
My own opinion is that there are plenty of books, which have already been written. I see no need to add to the pile. One may say the same about blogs, but I going to try this experiment for a while and see where it leads me.
There are plenty of people in our world who like to talk and often feel frustrated that so few people choose to listen to them. Most of my life I have attempted to offer this gift of listening hospitality to those I meet. It has been a gift that I have freely given and have been pleased to offer.
In my retirement years, I have decided that I am going to practice a new behavior while I still have my body/mind health. Using the process of a blog, I want to share with others some of what I have learned about life by many years of listening. Also, I am going to experiment with being a ‘talker’ rather than be entirely a listener.
So, about once a month, I shall write a brief commentary about some aspect of Hugheyism, named by a student many years ago. Hugheyisms are guidelines which I have found useful for myself and others as we journey through this gift of life. The sources for many have been lost over the years. Hopefully, you may find some thoughts that you may use in your own daily life.
Also, you will be encouraged to share any comments and/or reactions to these articles with others and me. I want to continue to learn until I take my final breath on this planet.
While I shall start by writing some articles, I hope that this process will allow me to continue learning from some of my readers, if they wish to write and share their own life adventures.
In advance, thanks for listening to me!
Comments/Reactions welcome.
Email:
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