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Personal Growth Resources 

Strategies for Stress: How to Deal with the Stress of Bad Times

 Changing Habits, Fear, Personal Development, Positive Attitude, Relationships  No Responses »
Sep 272011
 

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Upside of Down Times image

Image Courtesy of Planned Television Arts

While we can’t always avoid negative events in our lives—despite our best Law of Attraction efforts—we can control how we react to the bad stuff that happens to us all.

That’s the theme of Dr. Rob Pennington’s Find the Upside of the Down Times: How to Turn your Worst Experiences into your Best Opportunities! (Resource International, 2011).

Dr. Pennington catches your attention immediately with the opening sentence of his first chapter: “I was shot in the center of the chest by an unknown assailant…It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Most of us manage to avoid being shot, but that’s not all he’s encountered in his life. The hospital bill for his treatment back in 1982 was $36,000. Pennington was self-employed, without medical insurance. Reflecting on this financial problem, he states again, “this was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

There’s a term for people who deny negative events by casting them in a positive light—it’s called being a Pollyanna, after the main character in the 1913 best seller of the same name by Eleanor H. Porter, whose character viewed only the positive side of any event. The Pollyanna term implies naivety and a failing to face reality.

But Pennington isn’t being Pollyannaish. He doesn’t deny the hardships he underwent in facing the events mentioned above, nor in a series of other life events, such as being divorced by his first wife, being fired from his job, being targeted by the IRS in an audit, and being threatened with divorce by his second wife, later becoming her caregiver when she suffered from MS.

Instead, he’s taken the approach of facing life’s negative events with an approach of taking positive action to find opportunities for moving on. He reminds us of the saying, “When one door closes, another opens,” though he notes that finding the open door requires one to turn around and look for it.

Those who prefer remaining in the spotlight often afforded victims of bad stuff will not like Find the Upside of the Down Times. Indeed, they are likely to take offense at the implicit suggestion to get on with your life. Pennington doesn’t render judgment on those in this situation, preferring to focus his advice for those ready to move on, but unsure how to begin.

Strategies for Making the Most of Bad Times

Among the many excellent tips for turning bad events into positive opportunities are these:

  • When you’re stuck in traffic or a slow bank queue and you’re going to be late for an important appointment, why compound it by becoming angry, frustrated, and anxious? Being stuck is a fact you probably can’t change, but you don’t have to submit your body and mind to the stresses of anger. Why compound the problem by hurting yourself even more with your mental state? Instead, use these frustrating circumstances of daily life as a time for relaxation. Breathe deeply and slowly, and think of pleasant thoughts.
  • Follow this three-step process for locating the positive opportunities within negative events:

1. Capture your thoughts about the negative event, such as: If I’m late for my appointment my client will terminate our contract.

2. Identify the negative connotation words and strike them out, such as: If I’m late for my appointment my client will terminate our contract.

3. Restate the sentence with positive, believable words, such as: If I’m late for my appointment my client will initially be upset but will fully understand my unavoidable delay and will recognize the circumstances could happen to anyone. And he’ll be pleased when I back up my apology by giving him a 10% discount on his next order.

  • When you feel stress, consider that stress is your body’s signal that something must be changed. When you take any action to change the situation your stress level will naturally reduce. Pennington provides a five-step process for proactive change to reduce stress.
  • Many negative events involve relationship issues. Pennington suggests reflecting on the annoying behaviors of the other person that are affecting your relationship. Put the behaviors into two categories: Preferences and Requirements.
    • Requirements are just that, behaviors that are required for the relationship to continue. Violating requirements is a deal-breaker. Examples might be physical or verbal abuse, extra-marital affairs, or criminal behavior. If your relationship issues involve requirements, your partner must understand that continuation will dissolve the relationship.
    • Preferences are all behaviors that are not requirements. While you may strongly prefer that your partner clean up after himself, you may decide that behavior can be tolerated in light of the overall relationship benefits. But if you decide this is a requirement, it must be clearly indicated as a deal-breaker if no behavior change is made.

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Find the Upside of the Down Times is a small book, but a powerful tool for learning to recover control when bad stuff interrupts your life. To peek inside and order your copy from Amazon click the cover. For more about Dr. Pennington, visit his website.

Pennington’s book assumes a readiness to consider moving forward. This readiness may require getting past the “why me” questions. Many times when life’s negative events drastically change the course of our lives we have a hard time understanding why, why did this happen to me when I’ve done my best to live a good life? For those struggling with these why questions, I recommend Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People (First Anchor Books, 1981).

These two books are perfect complements to each other, providing helpful insights and advice for both the “Why did this happen to me ?” and the “Now what do I do?” questions.

Your Stories

We all face challenges in life and with a bit of self-reflection you may be able to recognize how you’ve grown and benefited by some of the challenges you’ve faced. Pennington seeks your stories at his Find the Upside of the Down Times website.

The Powerful, Extensive Influence of Parents

 Beliefs, Relationships  No Responses »
Jun 132011
 

Image By Colin Brough

The influence of our parents is on my mind right now. Even as we become fully functioning adults and parents ourselves, it’s intriguing to consider how much of who we are is directly attributable to beliefs and experiences we encountered as children of our parents.

I’m reminded of this in reading Into My Father’s Wake, by journalist and author Eric Best. Best leaves his job, buys a sailboat, and sails solo from San Francisco to Hawaii and return in an attempt to resolve his relationship with his parents, especially his father.

A respected journalist, Best’s marriage is failing, he feels dead-ended in his job, and he struggles with alcohol and anger. The 50 day, 5,000 mile solo journey is his attempt to find himself and correct the path of his life.

Adult Children of Abusive Parents

Interspersed with fascinating descriptions of his sailing adventures, Best shares pleasant childhood memories of long sailing voyages with his father and disturbing memories of brutal beatings with a rubber hose at his father’s hands. He recalls his mother’s silent support of her husbands discipline, and struggles to come to terms with both parents’ treatments.

Most children are raised without the abusive behaviors demonstrated in Best’s book, yet don’t we all grow up carrying mixed images of our parents’ behaviors?

Psychologists offer an explanation that makes sense. Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. is a psychologist in private counseling practice who has authored several parenting books exploring the various phases of parent/child relationships as a child moves from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.

Pickhardt explains that the child idolizes and worships her parents, the adolescent criticizes and blames her parents as she begins the process of independence, and the adult rationalizes parental behaviors as she begins to understand the complexities of parental behavior.

Parental Behaviors

The children of abusive parents experience conflicting and inconsistent adult behavior, at times nurturing and caring, at other times abusive and hurtful. Given the child’s total dependence and natural tendency to look up to her parents, the abused child is confused, ceases to trust, and may even assume she’s part of the problem. Best demonstrates how these conflicts carry into adulthood.

Children of non-abusive parents also experience conflicts. We see behaviors that are loving and caring as well as darker behaviors such as anger. We see our parents’ faults, tend to focus on those in adolescence, and may even carry their faults into adulthood as the reasons for our own failures.

Life Purpose and Our Parents

Looking at more positive aspects of parental influence, in The Celestine Prophecy, author JamesThe Celestine Prophecy Redfield suggests that each person’s life purpose evolves from and extends the life purpose of their parents. Intrigued by this, I followed the suggested process of examining what each of my parents stood for (their strong beliefs and values) and where they fell short (weaknesses and limitations).

Sure enough, I could clearly see how my own life extended what each of my parent’s stood for and how I’ve developed interests and strengths which they lacked.

Since this analysis was valuable and informational to me, I added the process to my Purpose in Life Workshop content, expecting that others would also find valuable insights.

I was surprised by the responses of workshop participants. Though some found the process positive and helpful, a majority reacted strongly against the hypothesis, even resisting my encouragement to keep an open mind and explore the possibilities. It seemed a large number of people attribute their life’s problems directly to their parents.

Coming to Terms with Parents

What does this all mean? To me it simply means that parents are human beings, with the full range of human strengths and weaknesses. Parenting is tough work. Our parents made some mistakes along the way, as we have in our parenting roles.

On the road to adulthood, we’re exposed to many examples of behaviors, including the very influential examples of our parents. Whether they were outstanding parents or lacking in many ways, as adults our behaviors are ours alone. We can chose whether to copy behaviors of our parents or discard them. We can chose whether to cherish their parental talents or denounce them.

Personal growth involves insightful—sometimes painful—self-reflection. Personal growthInto My Father's Wake also involves accepting the accountability and responsibility of personal choice for our behaviors.

Eric Best reaches this conclusion near the end of his solitary 50 day voyage, deciding to cherish the love and care his father displayed in teaching him to sail, while forgiving his brutal discipline as a terrible weakness of his father’s own personal struggles.

Into My Father’s Wake is a good story of a man’s journey of self-discovery. Those without sailing knowledge may struggle a bit with the sailor’s terminology, but all will appreciate the vivid imagery Best conveys as he describes the beauty and danger of solo-oceanic travel. I found that sharing Best’s struggles with the human frailties of his parents stimulated useful self-reflection on the influence of my own parents on my adult life.

The Ultimate Grief–Death of a Child

 Love, Personal Development, Relationships, Spiritual  4 Responses »
Jan 052011
 

The ultimate grief for a parent—the one thing every parent fears the most—is the death of a child. It seems almost unnatural for a child—especially a young person—to die before the parent. But it happens and the effects can be devastating.

This is a very difficult topic, but an important one for those suffering the loss of a child. If you know people who have lost a child, please forward this on to them.

It’s been my good fortune to avoid this dreaded experience, but having friends who have lived through this—and come out whole—I jumped at the chance to review a new book devoted to the topic of losing an only child: Losing Your Only, A Guide to Recovery from Sorrow by Dr. Debi Yohn.

Rather than attempt a review myself, I asked for input from those who have experienced living with the death of a child and are qualified to write about their journey.

Judy Lennon, hospice social worker and bereavement counselor lost her son, Mark, to cancer at age 28. Brenda Layman, published author and popular outdoor writer, lost her daughter, Carol, at age 14.

For both women, writing about the experience has been therapeutic. Lennon’s book of her son’s poetry and musings, Shaping the Whole, is in pre-publication. Lennon reviewed an early draft of Losing Your Only and commented, “it’s an excellent draft and will be very helpful to many people.  I especially liked the artful way Dr. Yohn weaves the story into her into her teaching on death, grief and spirituality.“

Song of JoyLayman’s book, Song of Joy: A Guide to Recovery from Sorrow, chronicles her journey from deep sorrow to a hope-filled life. For more about Layman or to purchase Song of Joy, click the book image.

Layman provides the following review of Losing Your Only, The Parental Journey through Grief, by Dr. Debi Yohn.

“The healing that comes with the sharing of grief is universal.” Dr. Debi Yohn

The pain parents feel upon the death of a child is excruciating. When that child is the only one, the loss is even more devastating. In Losing Your Only, The Parental Journey through Grief, by Dr. Debi Yohn, the author explores her personal experience, her son’s death, with the clarity of a professional therapist and the emotional immediacy of a bereaved mother. The result is a book that is objective without being cold, and compelling without being weepy. Yohn’s writing strikes chords of empathy, not just with parents who have experienced the deaths of children, but with any reader who has walked the path of grieving for a loved one who is with them no longer.

Yohn explores her changed life circumstances, wondering if, with no living child, she is still a mother. The answer, she finds, is yes. Parents are always parents. The bond between child and parent is not broken at death, only changed. This changed relationship is the crux of Yohn’s experience, the understanding of which she seeks to share with readers.

The sudden death of Yohn’s son, Levi, plunged her into grief and confusion. Her journey of healing led her down new paths as she explored a wider understanding of spirituality. Her loss became a source of personal growth, and from her pain and sorrow grew a deeper connection with life. These are the lessons she seeks to share. Hers is a voice that carries the conviction and quiet humility of experience.

Experiencing grief so suddenly and deeply shakes the foundation of a life. Overnight, Yohn went from a professional counselor whose knowledge of such overwhelming struggles was academic, to a person whose own life was changed forever by tragedy. As she was forced to realign her understanding of herself as a mother, her identity as a therapist also underwent a change. It is apparent to the reader that Yohn has become a mother in an even more profound sense, with her ability to nurture grieving souls becoming greater as the depth of her understanding of sorrow grows. As she writes:

“As the cloud of grief clears I find I am smiling and I do feel joy. I want others in their initial stage of grief to know that they too will smile and will find joy.”

Losing Your Only, The Parental Journey through Grief, is a deeply comforting book. Yohn’s words are like a warm shower of compassion, running over the reader, seeping into the places that are raw and painful, healing those wounds with understanding and hope.

Brenda Layman,  Select Author

Editor’s Note:

Thank you for your interest in Losing Your Only, by Dr Debi Yohn. This is a very
personal story which helped Dr Yohn discover her purpose—to motivate and support
parents and others to live life to their highest potential. To learn more about Dr. Yohn or to purchase the digital version of Losing Your Only (currently available), please click the book image, where you can also register to be notified when the print and audio versions are available.