Postcards from the Funny Farm

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe via -or-

Your answer to that question may be the reason you’re not getting what you want.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

-Dale Carnegie

Of all his quotes, this one is the best in my opinion. It’s like the old adage your mother and father said when you were young: “If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend.” Ah if it were only so simple to put into practice. Here’s a gem of knowledge I’ve picked up: aspirers to greatness, get out your pens.

When fettered by the pressures of the day, there is a way out. Well, I’ll call it a way through since “way out” connotes quitting. Instead of focusing on your pressures and concerns, tell yourself on the way to work or whatever it is you are doing: “I will try and help others first today.” You will find this to be a transformative experience that will open your mind more to those around you. As a result, you will be more accepting and your troubles will likely become easier to deal with. I wouldn’t recommend this unless I had tried it. And as always, I write it here in part to remind myself to use it. Try thinking of others above yourself tomorrow and see what happens. I think you’ll be pleased and surprised.

It is admirable to want to rush in and show a relative where she/he is messing up their life but if you are not willing to go the extra mile you might be better off to leave it alone. Take some time first, go do something physical, then make your call. Consider this article when you do:

Do you have relatives? Most everyone does. If you answered yes, do they ever drive you insane making bad choices for themselves and for their kids? Well you are not alone. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: boundaries must be set with family. This is a healthy thing. When you see people in your family consistently doing the wrong thing, tell them if you like but be aware it may hit you back. Did you know that lifeguards are taught not to swim out and hold a drowning man above the water? The reason is because he flails and it could take them down as well. That’s why they carry that red floater, to throw to the one in distress.

In trying to “get something off your chest” however well intended, you may be labeled “judgmental,” “ignorant,” or just plain “stuck up” as the relative inevitably “flails.” Sometimes “letting the chips fall where they may” can injure you. Still, your cares about this relative may keep haunting you like a salesman at the door. In that case you have to deal with it.

NOTE: If you suspect your loved ones are doing something harmful or neglectful to their children, skip the confrontation and please report them immediately to child protective services. I am absolutely 100% pro kids before any psychology-speak comes into play.

If it’s a lesser thing, just remember that it is hard to love sometimes. Before you act in love, make sure it is in love and not as a result of your pride. Most importantly, make sure that you care enough to go a few rounds with your loved ones. It may be you who is the one to “rudely” awaken them from a deep sleep of denial. Like any intervention, bring armor for your emotion most of all.

Last statement: If you don’t care, don’t speak.

Every Christmas, husbands and wives, moms and dads everywhere have that twinge to send out the perfect Christmas card. Then, the reality of getting everyon together in the perfect picture and the other pressures of the season sometimes stifle that spark. I found a solution.

Christmas Cards Direct is a website that gives its users excellent Photo Card Taking Tips and allows them to use their family photos to create Christmas Photo Cards in 4 easy steps. It’s never too early to learn about a Christmas card resource! I’ve already tried a few family ohotos in the template frame there and I can’t decide which on I like better. They give some excellent photo tips so we may go back and retake a photo adhering to those. This site is easy to use, they are endorsed by the Better Business Bureau and they provide a valuable service for a reasonable price.

I find this site appealing because it allows me to dispense with the intricacies of a troublesome printer and getting the right paper and ink etc. All I have to do is choose a design I like (or design one on my own) and then submit it to the website. After that, they do all the work for me and every set of their work I have seen is the highest quality.

Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) is arguably the first cognitive therapy. I’ve been a fan of cognitive therapy ever since I was introduced to it by a licensed clinical social worker in 1999. Got issues? It works. No, it’s not holding hands over the eyes of your partner like the picture shows, I just chose that one because I thought it conveyed closeness and safety.

Reckless emotions and “telling on” people and crying, all that has its place on a therpist’s couch (arguably), But REBT works you through the stuff that is holding you back more quickly.

I wanted to start dialog on this today since I feel it can truly transform your life at work, home, et al. I’m sure to bring it up again since I am that impressed with it for anyone and everyone. By the way, Presently, my wife and I are using it to put an end to some of our recurrent fight issues, and it is working. We are finding that some of our biggest “triggers” come from things that happened to us when we were kids and it is very relieving to be able to understand how to do things better. To feel better about the things that happen to you (even the bad stuff) REBT is worth looking into.

I must give credit to the creator of REBT, Albert Ellis. Mr. Ellis put together a system of cognitive therapy that has literally revolutionized my life, along with millions of others. Let me tell you what it is exactly:

REBT consists of a very simple acronym: ABC

A: This is the adversity that happens to you: boss calls you into your office and it doesn’t seem good, wife yells downstairs to you and it sounds really bad, you hear someone peel out their tires in front of your house and you hear a glass shatter … etc. These things are neutral in and of themselves, you don’t know what they mean right away.

B: This stands for what you believe based on a myriad of past learned experiences and attitudes. Mostly, it means what you have experienced relating to the “A.” If you have been a baseball player for years, a high speed object coming past you may not be as frightening as someone who has had ammo flying past them. Basically, this is how you see the “A.” REBT looks at this closely to determine if the A is really the sole cause of your emotions about it and not “B.” REBT works to remove the B. For example, let’s say your boss calls you into his office. You feel like you should get up and walk in, but something keeps you from going in. It might be because your parent once called you into their office for something negative. You may come to find the incident was only a positive thing.

C: This stands for consequence. As a result of behavior, there are inevitably consequences. Usually when people get to therapy, their C has not been positive.

The place to point in REBT is B: belief. What you believe about what happened must be separated from the true meaning of A.

Hmmm, when people told me I was doing a bad job, they always fired me after that. This could be an imagined belief. Therefore, my boss yelled at me so therefore I will be fired soon.

This is not necessarily the case and a responsible person who wants to live a life outside the funny farm will work to examine the b in light of a. The end result?  Ellis actually calls the next step “D” which stands for DISPUTE of the previously held, if indeed held, self-defeating Belief.

The next time you get in a fight with your spouse or have any form of self-defeating thought,  remember the ABC’s of REBT:  A) Adversity, B) Belief, C) Consequence, and D) DISPUTE steps of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Not only could it save your life, it could make it better than you dreamed possible.

*Works Consulted: Wikipedia, my own life, my own cognitive therapy sessions.

My wife invited me up as she was painting our son’s room. She’s sort of “owned” it as her task and art project and up to now she hadn’t invited me into the mall of plastic, masking tape, and drop cloths that is Brandon’s room.

As I saw her virtually collapsed under the window, I asked her what I could do to help finish the job. I could tell she was feeling overwhelmed so I started showing her how it would be easy for me to finish the last wall. It needed tape on the base and the top and it needed primering and then a couple coats of paint on top of that. At the time I had just received a $30 writing offer which for me is huge. I’ve been trying lately to get blog jobs that pay, but here my wife was virtually collapsed. I decided I’d be quite the selfish idiot if I put this job off.

I sent my wife downstairs with the order of getting some food. It was after noon and she was a little shaky from not having eaten yet. After she left I learned a great lesson. I looked at all the stuff that needed to be done and decided instead of trying to do it all, I would select a small part and do it perfectly. Then I did that. After that, I picked another one and so on. Within an hour, I finished the room. When my wife came up to check on me with a piece of toast in her hand, she was astonished at all I had accomplished.

She went out to the jacuzzi with our one and three year old, and I went downstairs where I was able to finish that big writing job. Victory! Lesson learned?

When painting, or life, gets overwhelming, map out chunks at a time to finish. Don’t get overwhelmed. Before you know it, you’ll be victorious.

I was out watching my two girls play by the pool and an interesting thing happened. My youngest reached for an inflatable ring next to some car covers that was being blown away from her by the desert winds. I told her to hold on and daddy would get it. She persisted in reaching for it as if it was the most amazing item in the world. I couldn’t help but wonder why such a vanilla, plain and unexciting object would be so important to her. There were three others like it by her and a life jacket as well. Then I got to thinking: she has gotten used to that faded plastic ring that probably cost us less than a dollar. To her, it has become an object of fun. I started remembering all the bikes I had as a kid and some of the stuff I really loved but wasn’t worth much.

A lot of times in my life I think along the lines of “They just don’t make them like they used to.” This is because I am naturally nostalgic about the things of my past, namely: of my youth.

We’d do well to remember two things based on this ring:

1. Things have no “value” to our lives apart from the meaning we assign and pour into them. This is especially true for kids. -and-
2. Instead of drawing close to things we should open our minds to all things. If you like IBM computers, try MACS and vice versa. Etc.

My daughter showed me with her ring today that what I do is just as good as what my parents did for me and life is simple to a child. She may remember that ring for years as a simple of playing in the pool with dad based on the meaning she assigned to it. I think probably this afternoon I would have expired it to the recycle bin had she not shown me it was special.

Do you have an object or a memory of one that you assign(ed) meaning to?

I don’t know about you but in my house a coupon has become a valuable thing these days. I don’t know any families in my circle who couldn’t stand to save a few bucks. That’s why I am so excited to share this link with you today. 1-coupons is a website that brings you the best and most current coupons on many of you favorite stores. Three examples of coupon pages I use are:

• 123 Ink Jets
• Amazon

-and-

• Gamefly

Check the many other stores and coupons to choose from here.

My wife is a big coupon collector and I’m thankful for it! One problem though is the time it takes to find and save and clip. With 1-coupons, you can get the latest coupons from your favorite stores all in one stop and it’s online! Make this site a favorite and check in daily since the great deals are updated often. Once you find a couple and use them I think you’ll agree with me that this is an invaluable resource for a family, couple, or even a single non-parent on a budget.

One last bit of info: Do you order flowers? Guys I know you do and gals … there are reasons you do as well I am sure. This company offers floral delivery deals from leading Internet floris.... Definitely check that one out!

Last time I wrote to you about the Power of Mantra. Before starting this as part two, Listen for Half a Day, I went back and read it again. I also took a nice long walk around my neighborhood admiring lawns and pink flamingoes, trying to make sure the next post was helpful and relevant to the series. The subject I realized today is another key tip in practicing an open mind.

As creative, enlightened people, we should actively practice an open mind by listening as much as possible.

I hope that will make perfect sense to you after I have given you many ways to do it through the course of this series. Please feel encouraged to subscribe to this series via -or- . I’m excited about how valuable this is in opening ones mind.

To make a quick example, listen to this “open mind” tip on traveling:

Usually cheap flights have no issues in the flight performance but are a part of an economical deal, and hence cheap. The deals usually promote hotels. But if one does want to travel cheap, the best way is to stay at a travel lodge instead.

Here, you see having an open mind can save you money, and peace of mind.  I learned this deal because I took the time to listen.  In doing so, that which I thought was impossible is possible.

We’ve all heard the statistics about how women have larger brains and how they are better listeners and better at many other things than men. I am not here to argue that at all. My wife knows full well how much I believe she is playing with a larger emotional deck that I am. What I want to stress is that I believe women and men, based on my experience of family, work, and life, are all generally poor at listening. In fact, it might be a cultural thing that we as Americans do not like to listen. Many are like me, we like to talk, fast, hard, and loud, no matter who gets hurt or shut out.

What if you could be more enlightened about what the people around you think?

The other day I caught myself lecturing my son on how his things were in every room in the houses where they didn’t belong (including a shoe at the bottom of the pool). As I rambled on and watched his bulbous brown eyes begin to well up tears, I listened to myself and it was not the ideal I have for myself. Ever done that?

It is phenomenal how much our mind is opened when we listen fully to someone else. Active listening is when you say back what the other is saying periodically and that is a good idea. But can you listen to people for half a day and not have a response? I’ve tried it and friends it aint easy. Just let what they are saying penetrate your mind, don’t respond except for the normal, OK etc. This is crucial to the experiment.

I could give you many statistics on how listening makes you a better person and such, but let’s just try the experiment what do you say? Starting right now at 11:26am until 6 or 7 tonight when I am doing my evening laps and jacuzzi time, I am going to listen. We haven’t been to church in a while and we decided to go to Saturday night services tonight … I might have picked the perfect day ;)

At any rate, whatever you do and whoever you interact with, this is a good exercise. I think you will be blown away at the paradigm shifts you experience and the broader, more open mind that you enjoy as a result. If you are a blogger you might try interviewing someone you respect. Heck, we may all decide to never speak again! …probably not, but it sounded like a good close. Whether you do this experiment or not, I’d love to get your comments on the concept of listening.

Remember: The goal of each of these posts is to give you a more open mind.

I just read that 460 million vacation days went unused last year by American workers … no wonder we have so many mental problems in our country! To all those people so worried about missing work I say this: “Be responsible, go on vacation!” This post was inspired by a discussion at Loose Suits.

Of course people with jobs that don’t offer sick days, like freelance writers and the like, might not click on this article. Theirs is a different dilemma that I could discuss at length as well. Having said that, we are all faces with the importance of taking vacations. So if we know how important they are, why aren’t we taking them? In my opinion, folks with vacation days would be “sick” not to use them!

Any problems we have at work and at home will get worse if we don’t use our vacation days.

I look at vacation days as a time to regroup. It’s a time to get romantic with your spouse. Vacations are a time to find inspiration in even those “nothing” moments. How many times have I taken a simple walk in a new place and had tomes of inspiration flood into my mind. It can heal what you thought was impossible stress. I have written my best songs while taking vacation time.  It can be really tough to find the flights you desire, that’s why it is helpful to plan way ahead.  If it is a priority and you are willing to wait you will fare better!

Looking for timely new york flights is even harder than looking for cheap flights to germany. However the flights to thailand can be bought at the last minute too. This is true for a number of other flights as well.

I’ve been highly stressed out at work before. (hasn’t everybody?) It can feel like radioactive heat burning you up … it deserves you a day off. After a “mental health day” the heat goes away. I get fresh new ideas that ironically make me more valuable to my employer. What? More valuable by taking time off? Yes. It’s a time to sharpen my axe.

I think the paranoia many have of getting in trouble at work for taking sick days is unwise. People need to get over it and just take those vacation days like clockwork. It just might be the difference between a promotion or being written up for lack of productivity. The article I read on this was truly staggering. The best argument for this is simple: Look at pictures of your loved ones over the past few years. When you do so you will see just how fast this thing called a lifespan is passing by. Is work that important to Americans? Do people think a real man doesn’t call off work ever? Do that many Americans really think they are heroes for not taking a vacation? Getting any getaway locations in mind yet? I am. Here’s a place to buy your travel supplies. Enjoy.

1. Other fears pale in comparison: For example, if you are having trouble with your boss, he’s nothing compared to facing the loop-de-loop!
2. You escape life (if temporarily) and bring back stories.
3. You feel accomplished and can blog better.
4. You relax beside something much bigger than yourself: Remember Leeann Womack’s song, I Hope You Dance: “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean(Riddler’s revenge?).”

5. You see views that take your breath away (Then you drop 20 stories on Superman).

6. Your heart gets pumpin.’

7. You become less important and more creative.

8. Prove you’re no baby you can put away the crib bedding. Father and son thing.

9. You become a spaceman breaking speed records.

10. High altitudes, increased endorphines (alertness, well-being, happiness …)