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The Fractured Minds of Dementia Never Come With The Drama Of A Broken Arm

They Crack Up, First Stealthily, Almost Silently

Dementia, caused by disease much more than disaster, slowly steals pieces of a person’s mind, bits of their identities and abilities, each seeming so inconsequential, until the day comes they can no longer take care of themselves. Be proactive. Understand the absurdities, the heartbreaks, and the frustrations that flow behind each diagnosis. Equip yourself to meet each dying person in each shaving of their mental abilities. Creatively care for them individually. Focus on using more nurturing behavioral solutions and less pharmacological interventions. Sharpen their dull knives as best you can; even if only to use them as letter openers for their closing minds.

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Respect A Dying Friend By Honoring Their Deathly Desires

Take every opportunity to celebrate each day, hour, minute, and second a dying friend has left to live each one to the fullest in the joys of the present. Honor them for their PITA (pain-in-the-ass) personalities, weird wit, constant repetitions of the same old proudest memories, sweet smiles, and set ways. Do not label them by their disease, signs, symptoms, looks, whines, moans, or demands. Never underestimate the healing power of a hug, a caress, a gentle touch, or a kind word.

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People Are Just Like Books

No Single Page Defines Them, But Their Entire Work Creates Their Masterpiece

When all gets said and done, you must appreciate people for their full lives, including the good parts, plot twists, and bad parts, the entire cast of characters they portray from time to time, their self-service, and most importantly, their service to others.

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FOCUS and CONTROL In Action

Have you ever set a goal for yourself and then, when you hit hiccups along the way, just gave up instead of persevering? Yeah, me, too. Then I learned that maintaining FOCUS, Following One Course Until Success, and CONTROL, Correcting Oneself Nicely To Repair Occasional Lapses, requires work both before and after any journey begins.

This morning, my meal replacement bar 5-day weight loss shock plan delivered much smaller results than it did Monday and Tuesday. Sunday morning, I weighed 186. Monday morning, 180.7, which was a 5.3 pound loss. Tuesday, 178.4, which was a 2.3 pound loss. Today, 177.0, which was only a 1.4 pound loss.

Prior to learning how to focus, I would have gotten frustrated after the third day of decreasing losses. But now, I understand what is happening with my program and why and it doesn’t bother me. I prepared in advance for this decreasing weight loss as time runs on by learning how my body would react to decreasing my energy intake while significantly ramping up my physical training. Now that my gains, which are coincidentally actually losses, are decreasing each day, the ever-positive sum total of them is still recognized by me as progressing according to plan.

How did I arrange this? By perceiving my desired objective of practically perfect performance, by perceiving my present performance, and by perceiving what resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people I had to invest in moving from performing how I was to performing how I wanted to.

The most important part of FOCUSing was choosing a proper practically perfect performance goal (10 pounds of sustained weight loss obtained this week and maintained next week) instead of a ridiculous goal (losing 5 pounds a day for 5 days and keeping it off). The second most important part was to understand how the entire trip to success was going to proceed instead of just starting a course and winging it. The third most important part has been using my POWER by Proceeding Only With Every Resource I had available. The fourth most important part was using BALANCE by Building And Leveraging A Nicely Coordinated Ensemble of resources, which includes my wonderful accountability partner.

My partner, however, did not have as good a day as I did yesterday. He didn’t persistently trickle in his food bars yesterday because work got in his way and perceived he had some metabolic issue and then adulterated his food bar regimen by having a big steak last night to compensate somehow. But, to his credit, he exercised great CONTROL and didn’t beat himself up about it, but we talked about it today and he was already back on the food bar plan and continuing on with me despite a small weight gain because of last night’s steak. Even though he’s not being a big a purist about this course as I am, he is sticking with it in the main, correcting himself by agreeing to only having a small piece of salmon tonight, and, hopefully, he will have a better result tomorrow.

Come back tomorrow to see how things proceed.

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How Are Your Resolutions Resolving?

Have you ever made a New Year’s Resolution January 1st, faithfully fulfilled it for a week, weakened in it for a few more, and then completely abandoned it by the end of the month? Yeah, me, too. And we are not alone.

John C. Norcross, Ph.D., the author of Changeology (see my 5-part post on his book by searching my blog for “Changeology”), has researched and found 75% of the people seeking to change fail, but almost all who maintain their change for three months make the change permanent. So, if you’ve had set backs in your 2017 resolutions, don’t quit. Just research what you are not doing and get back to doing it.

For me, I am already off pace for both my 2017 personal, health, and business goals. No need to cry over a month of spilt milk, however. Just time to regroup and move forward. If you find yourself similarly situated, then it’s time to get up and get on with it.

More specific posts in those individual facets will follow. If the volume of posts starts do bug you, then, please, do not unsubscribe. Just hit the delete button on each post you see as a burden on your inbox and, hopefully, the next one will call you more.

[reminder]Have you done all you can to fulfill your New Year’s Resolution?[/reminder]

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The Best Way To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? About half of us do. The other half of us think they are silly. Pie crust promises, as Mary Poppins calls them. Easily made and more easily broken. But, have you ever made a New Year’s resolution at 11:59 and broken it by 12:01?

Mine was, “This year, I’m going to get more and better sleep each night.” I made it about an hour after take off on the flight back from Susan’s and my anniversary think week in Hawaii. Right before midnight. Just as I dozed off thinking how silly New Year’s resolutions are. And then, not two minutes later, something in my subconscious poked me in my third eye and said, “No, they are not.”

So, having quickly broken my pie crust, I switched on the Southwest Airlines wifi and tried to justify how I felt about New Year’s resolutions. Let me tell you what I found out.

Most of us are not quite as fast I was to break resolutions. According to John Norcross’s ongoing research at University of Scranton, about only 70% of us make it for two weeks, only half of us make it three months, and only one in five of us resolvers can say we have successfully maintained a New Year’s change for two years.

Nonetheless, Norcross’s research does show that resolvers are ten times more likely to make a change last than nonresolvers to make change last. That’s 10,000 percent more likely, friends. 10,000%!

So, the question to which everyone obviously wants the answer so they can use it is, “How do they do it?”

Which is exactly why I have just bought John’s book, Changeology, and have started reading it cover to cover. I’ll let you know how it goes. If you want to try it yourself, here’s a link to the book on Amazon. (Note: this is an affiliate link. It won’t cost you any more to buy it through this link, but I’ll pick up a few pennies for recommending it to you. See my FTC disclosure below.)

We’ll talk more after chapter one.

[reminder]Are you a New Year’s resolver? Yes or no?[/reminder]

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Social Media Can Help Your Most Personal Relationships

Post Great! things about each other.Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and their phone beeps, chirps, or plays a musical notification that tells them something is happening in their social media sphere? And they just have to stop, in mid-thought with you, and check it out. Has that ever happened with you?

Yeah, me too. People used to hate it when I did that. So I’ve tried not to do it as much. Almost never now. I solved the problem by setting alone time appointments during which I focus on my social media presence and activity. It’s part of my business work to pay attention to my social media relationships.

Whether we as parents, spouses, or friends like it or not, social media is everywhere. And almost all of us seem to hate it – whenever anyone else is doing it that is. But did you know, properly used, social media can actually help your relationships. With your spouse, your parents, your kids, your other family and close friends, your business relationships, and all the other folks you include in your life’s precious resource of people.

How? By communicating positive and affirming things with and about those with whom we have relationships and for whom and to whom our values make us responsible. The concept is called “public commitment theory.”

Sociology researchers posit people who post positive and affirming things together or about each other are more likely to have better relationships with those they post with or about.

Apparently, publicly testifying about each other as a couple or the other as an individual does several things:

  • It makes the couple’s relationship a larger part of their individual identities.
  • It reinforces the couple’s aspiration for how they want their relationship to be.
  • It drives the couple to become what they have publicly aspired to be.

Working on doing such public testimony together has an even greater effect on your mutual relationship. Investing the resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people in taking and posting positive and affirming pictures of people shows your “other” is on your mind. Telling positive and affirming stories online about yourselves and each other all shows how much your relationship means to the both of you.

Showing your bond with another to the entire world of third parties “out there” shows you are proud of your relationship, you are making it a priority in your life, and you want the rest of the world to share your relationship. Saying nice things about the other person in your relationship to the other person is nice. Saying nice things about the other person and your relationship to the rest of the world is even nicer.

Properly used, social media can help your most personal relationships.

[reminder]When was the last time you posted something nice about someone else online?[/reminder]

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Two Ways To Help People Close To You Who Are Suffering – Part 1

Have you ever had a relationship with someone who was truly suffering? Did you feel helpless to do anything about it? Did you choose avoiding that suffering person instead?

Yeah, me too. I know how you must have felt, because I’ve felt the same way at times myself. In addition, from June 26 to September 26 last year, those who know me well know I suffered a debilitating quarter enduring a relentless and very painful illness. But let me share with you two better ways I noticed my best friends helping me and what I in turn learned about how to deal with people who are suffering.

Most of us caring people are problem solvers. When we see ourselves or our loved ones having a problem, all we want to do is help them solve their problem. When most people cannot help solve someone else’s problem, they tend to avoid that person and their problem all together.

The proper things to do to relate with someone about their suffering, however, are:

  1. To turn toward the sufferer
  2. To share with the sufferer their work to reclaim and refocus their suffering.

We will discuss how to turn toward the person and his or her problem in this Part 1 and then discuss refocusing and reclaiming in Part 2.

Turning toward the suffer and the suffering means doing the following things:

  • Recognize the sufferer and the suffering
  • Express an interest in the person’s suffering
  • Meaningfully become more present and engaged

Recognizing a person’s suffering is not always as easy as it sounds. Some people try to suffer silently. So taking the first step of recognizing that person and their suffering takes a bit of doing. You have to scratch down below the surface of your relationship dig a tunnel so to speak between the two of you to be a conduit to enter that person’s world of suffering by doing the following things:

  • Look at the person
  • Listen attentively to what he or she is saying
  • Transition to the second step of turning toward the person and expressing an interest in his or her suffering

Expressing an interest in the details of a person’s suffering is not always easy for either you or the sufferer. He or she may be discomforted talking about their own suffering because they feel stygmatized or shamed by it. The best thing to do is jump all the way to the chase and ask, “What’s the worst part of this whole deal for you?”

The third part of turning toward your person’s suffering, meaningfully becoming more present and engaged, is the most important and most difficult part of all. You have to immediately and intentionally focus on the person’s suffering as they experience it even when it is horrible and troubling to both of you. Do not try to objectify it, reorient it, or recategorize it. Instead, do this things:

  • Be with the sufferer
  • Bear witness to his or her suffering
  • Stand fast in compassionate solidarity with your person even as he or she is suffering
  • Be humble by never saying “I understand,” because unless you are feeling the suffering, you cannot possibly understand it. Instead, say something like, “I can only imagine what you are going through.

Dealing with suffering is not a light and happy thing. It is, however, part of life. The name of this blog is Great! All the Time!; not just Great!, But Only When It’s Easy!

Some of our people suffer. Sometimes we suffer. It’s how we apply all our types of resources to the suffering that makes us Great! All the time! even despite suffering and despair.

[reminder]When was the last time you saw someone suffering?[/reminder]

Until we meet again in Part 2, remember, you GOTTABGATT!, so go out there today and be Great! All the time!

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The 1 Trick To Figuring Out How To Be All You Want To Be

[button href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU” primary=”true” centered=”true” newwindow=”true”]Click Here To Be Happy![/button]

Have you ever greatly wanted to be something, but you just couldn’t figure out how to do it? Yeah, me too.

A wise man once said, “If you want to be something, then do the something you want to be.” To which I almost always asked, “But how do I figure out how to do that?

To which he almost always told me …  Continue reading “The 1 Trick To Figuring Out How To Be All You Want To Be”