Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
— George Bernard Shaw
Halderol, Depakote, Aricept, Lexapro – these are the new words that I’m learning these days. Never did I think that I would be increasing my vocabulary so quickly. Welcome to the wonderful world of pharmaceutical mood enhancement.
To be fair, I had heard of all these drugs before because my friend May has a son who is bipolar and these drugs had been prescribed for him as they were trying to help him with his OCD and bipolar disorder. The thing is, I had never really understood what each one did – I didn’t need to.
What has caused my newfound knowledge of all these meds is that my father went on a 4-day Continue reading » Doing What Must Be Done
What do you think: Can we change people’s behavior for the better by making whatever they need to do fun?
The problem with the designated driver program, it’s not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house.
— Jeff Foxworthy
Recently I’ve found it necessary, in order to get my “steps” counted, to change my walking routine – I’ve had to hit the gym’s treadmill. And I gotta say, BORING! Until I remembered “the fun theory” which asks the question: Can you change people’s behavior for the better if you make whatever they need to do fun?
Well, I’m happy to report that the answer to this question is a resounding YES! And for those of us interested in resilience and persistence that’s GOOD NEWS! Why you ask? Because it offers new ways for us to stick with something that becomes tedious on the way to being done.
And because, if you can get people to do things because they’re fun, well then, you have a recipe for Continue reading » Are We Having Fun Yet?
How do you deal with your own version of writer’s block?
I am officially STUCK.
I’ve started and stopped seven or more posts… I’ve sat, I’ve been still… and I’ve rocked my ideas, rocked and rolled them, to and fro. To and fro I’ve kneaded them like strings of play dough… And STILL my post page is blankity blankity BLANK! Tossed some… Kept some… And, per Clarissa Pinkola, American poet, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist, I “need do no more.” Obviously SHE didn’t work to a deadline!
I’m solution-searching, looking for a bounce to get me back on schedule. And here’s what I’ve decided to do: I’m going to string together some words of wisdom from OPs (numerous “other people”) and see if I can crochet together the ideas, theirs and mine, into a comforter that will warm my chilled resourcefulness and cover this next post.
So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. — Brenda Ueland
Well now, there’s a dandy and creative word to play with: “moodling”. I’ve been doing my share of it; I’ve endured long, inefficient stretches of dawdling, but the “happy idling” aspect escapes me and my imagination stays stuck. So, let me ask you, how could moodling bolster your resilience?? I suspect the thoughtful answer will probably be, “I suppose it could… let me moodle on it a bit.”
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Continue reading » blankity blankity BLANK STUCK!
Oops, I Forgot to Follow My Own Good Advice. That ever happened to you?
It started so innocently – I could have things exactly as I wanted, when I wanted, and there was a $26.22 fee. “Small price to pay for making things march,” I thought and happily authorized the charge. Pleased with myself, I checked off one really important item from my huge and urgent to-do list. Later an official-person-who-knows-these-things advised me, “You shouldn’t have to pay for that, it’s supposed to be free; I will fix it.” And so began my tempest in a teacup – a little problem blown all out of proportion.
Conveniently, (or perhaps not) the person who took down my credit card number wrote it wrong so the company started sending me bi-weekly dunning-recorded messages about paying my delinquent $26.22 which, of course, I now knew I shouldn’t-have-to-pay. So I ignored the irritatingly polite messages while I waited for the official-person-who-knows-these-things to fix the problem. Eventually I called everybody who was anybody trying to fix this charge I shouldn’t-have-to-pay.
Continue reading » Tempest in a Teacup – It’s All About Perspective
What are your questions – and how many right answers (and interesting futures) can you discover?
Recently, Freddie, one of our blog members, shared a very pragmatic resilience strategy:
I agree entirely that we learn more by failing, falling down and picking ourselves back up. Doing everything correctly the first time makes it so that we only know how to do what we were attempting that one way. We never even consider doing it any other way since we never had to contemplate it. One of my managers when I first started my career told me, “there is a wrong way and there are fifty right ways. Your job here is to improvise, adapt, overcome and get it done one of the right ways.” That told me that I am not expected to do it “perfectly” but to use my own experiences, knowledge and skills to find a way to make whatever needs to happen, happen. That mantra “improvise, adapt and overcome” has empowered me over and over to find a way to do it, find something that will work or make this situation/day/week come out mostly positive. With that idea in my head it is easier to actually find a solution.
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