Personal Energy

Personal energy is a commodity just like electricity or gasoline. It needs to be managed in much the same way. Sometimes it can be bought or sold. You may give or receive it as a gift. Personal energy is harder to measure. It takes an awareness of oneself that most people don’t have. Those who have that understanding of themselves will tell you that their energy levels become more manageable as they become more self aware.

I have discovered four kinds of personal energy within myself. This doesn’t mean there aren’t others or that my list is universal for all people. It’s my experience. They are: mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy, and social energy. Mental energy is my ability to focus or concentrate on something. I expend emotional energy to process my feelings and reactions to things. Physical energy is self explanatory, it’s the energy I use to make my body do things. Social is about community. It’s what connects me to others. I expend social energy to build, strengthen, and let go of connections to people.

My Experience

For most of my life, I believed I was broken because I couldn’t understand why sometimes I could do an activity for hours and other days I had virtually no interest in participating in it. Other times I would be invited to some kind of function, but the idea of going made me feel exhausted, yet I would often spend hours doing something else instead. When these things happened, it caused me to examine my motivations or believe there was something wrong with me. It almost always caused me and those around me to view me as selfish.

What I didn’t know is that my life contains various kinds of energy. Each one influences the others, but regenerating one does not increase the rest. Each needs to be nurtured and managed individually. I’ve tried for many years to heal my physical body. And at one point, I realized I needed to work on my mental health too. I didn’t learn how to improve both at the same time until very recently. When I did learn that us guys need to give as much attention to our mental health as our physical, I started to see that I had other kinds of energy that didn’t come under those two categories.

I first learned about social energy in a book about ADD. In it he talks about a person’s need for human interaction and relationships and how that leads many people to search for those things in some type of faith based life style. He says that social energy isn’t a mythical energy that originates from some mysterious deity or all powerful force, but it comes from within ourselves and from positive relationships. It’s the energy we use to decide when and how to interact with other people. We spend it on enriching the lives of those around us. Managing it is about learning to limit our interactions that consume our social energy, spending more time with others that feed and regenerate our energy, and being by ourselves to let it slowly regenerate on its own.

Emotional energy is one that I had a tough time believing in. Even once I was convinced of its authenticity, it took me too long to understand its relevance to my masculinity. I consume it by feeling both positive and negative emotions. I’ve discovered that my depression was a result of an empty tank of this kind energy. Emotional energy is the strangest of all the energy pools because it’s built by feeling emotions, but only by specific ones. Confidence in oneself is the easiest way to increase it. Forgiveness is another way to recover it. The only way I know of to increase your capacity for emotional energy is by loving others unconditionally. Loving others is one of the biggest uses of this energy, but loving someone unconditionally actually increases the size of the pool I can draw from.

Mental energy is one of the fastest growing areas of interest on my Facebook feed right now. A lot of people are learning for the first time that it is separate from physical energy and needs to be managed separately too. This is the brain power that contributes to many of us not being able to sleep at night even when we feel physically exhausted. If I haven’t done much that was mentally challenging that day, I might have a surplus when I try to sleep at night and brain wants to use some of it before it will let me go to sleep. At other times, I have used up my pool of mental energy when there is still a lot of day left. On those days, I like to go out and do something purely social and/or physical; dancing, wondering the mall, or walking my dog are all activities that use less of my mental energy.

Physical energy is one of the easiest for us guys to understand and manage. Not all of us know how to do those things though. Eating healthy and proper exercise are obvious to most of us. But regular checkups aren’t so easy to keep up with. Good rest is also important here. But so are limiting our exposure to addictive substances and practices. Most of us can agree that too much alcohol or street drugs will have harmful effects on our bodies. Did you know that food addictions or consistent use of pornography can too? There are a lot of things to keep in mind if we want to manage our physical energy.

The fun parts for me have been identifying situations that might need more than one kind of energy. Witty jokes require just the right mixture of mental and social energy. Sports use social and physical, sometime with some mental energy thrown into the mix. Sex uses the emotional and physical varieties. Family needs emotional and social. And the hardest for most of us, trying to stop being single uses both social and emotional energy topped off with a good helping of mental energy. I have decided to reserve that last activity for when I have learned to manage all my energy levels adequately.

A good, wholesome, restful sleep will regenerate all my energy pools. I have had 3 different naps while writing this article because I used up a lot of them last weekend. It’s taken me a few days to recover enough of it to finish this project. Now that I’m learning to understand my abilities and limitations surrounding my energy pools, I find my moods far easier to regulate.

If this is you

Maybe you are having difficulty trying to understand why you want to do things sometimes and other times just don’t feel like participating in those same experiences. Learning what kinds of energy you use and in what ways you use them will probably help you manage these things better and give you a greater sense of control in your life. You might have the same types of energy that I have, or you may have other ways to divvy up your pools of energy. The important part, though, is knowing that there are different pools of energy for doing different things in your life. Learn what yours are, and learn to manage them. When you do, you will find yourself better able to do the things you want and avoid the things that suck your energy dry.

If This is Someone You Know

You know that guy that you just can’t figure out what he likes and doesn’t like? There’s a good chance the same thing confuses and frustrates him too. Try understanding that he has different pools of energy to do different things. They might not be the same pools of energy that you see in your life. He might really like hanging out with you at the pool hall, but if he’s had very socially heavy day, he may not feel like it this time. Or maybe he has a pool of energy dedicated to drinking booze. If his boss or a client has just spent the whole day treating him to various fine restaurants and pubs, he may have used up his booze reserves. Whatever the situation, you don’t know what is in his head or how much of which types of energy he has left, so please be kind with your judgments. Hell, he might not even know he has pools of energy. To a lot of guys, the word energy means oil & gas or electricity. Just because he might not understand his own pools, does not mean that he doesn’t have them. In fact, it probably means he’s kind of crappy at managing them in the first place. Give him the space to say yes or no and let him know that either answer is OK. It’ll help him feel like his feelings or at least his decisions matter to you.

What is means

Personal energy comes in all shapes and sizes. It has all kinds of uses. Some of us know what ours are, but most of us don’t. Most guys I know understand the idea of personal energy, but would look at you as though you wore a pink elephant on your nose if you told them he could use one type energy instead of another one. Mine are physical, mental, social, and emotional. Some of you might find my types of energy make sense to you. If they help you understand yourself better and manage the things you want to do and limit the things you can’t do then your world will be a better place for it. The most useful this information has been for me is when I have to explain to someone why I can’t do something I have enjoyed in the past and might still enjoy. I tell them that I want to do those things but I have to manage that type of energy. When I figure out how to do that, I’ll probably return to those activities with gusto. I’m learning new ways of understanding my energy levels every day.

If this or any article on my blog hit a cord with you, drop me a line and join the conversation.

If Suicide, Why Not Success

If a guy is willing to give up on everything in his loves to kill himself, why isn’t he willing to give up everything to make major changes to achieve success. The simple answer, of course, is that he has lost all hope. Look at it from a different angle for a minute before you take the next step toward your death. Many of the most successful people in the world (not all, but many for sure) found success in the depths of despair. Would it surprise you to know that it takes the same level of emotions and commitment to throw everything away and start over as it does to throw everything away and kill yourself? I’m not suggesting that you get a divorce, quit your job, and move to a different country. Most of us that have been on the verge of suicide, though, have already lost one or more of those things. Do you remember the saying “when God closes a door, he opens a window”? It sounds like a lot of spiritual BS to me too, but I eventually figured out what they are actually trying to say there. So, you lost something important in your life and it’s tearing you apart, this is the best time to knock off some of those barriers that have been stopping you from pursuing your dreams. What have you got to lose, besides that which you were willing to sacrifice by taking your own life.

 

My experience

Hope. That’s the emotion that ties essentially all suicide cases together. The person lost hope. In most, but not all cases, they lost ALL hope. Sometimes they only lost hope in the one, most important, dream they had. When I lost all hope in seeing any of my dreams come true, I wanted to die. Not to stop the pain, but to stop being a drain on those around me and the world as a whole. I had nothing to offer that others wanted and, by taking up space and resources, I used up the things others could benefit from if I wasn’t selfishly trying to hold onto a dead dream. But it occurred to me that I judged those that chose to help me based on criteria that they couldn’t consider. Through the loss of all that I held dear, I decided that I was worthless and, therefore, anyone who helped me backed a bad bet. Maybe those that chose to take themselves out of my life felt I was a bad bet, but those still investing in me probably saw something else. And for the first time in my life I started to wonder if I myself listened to the wrong people. As soon as the seed of that thought sunk in to my soul, it immediately sprung into a full-grown tree. I had already coached many of my friends through the same thoughts and feelings so I had nurtured and fully developed it. I just hadn’t planted that same idea in my own heart yet. Of course, I had been listening to the wrong people. Many people I had trusted to have my best interests in mind only saw what I needed to fix based on their own agendas. Once they gave up and left, I realised that there were also some that where trying to help me find my own agenda because they truly believed in me.

This is the point where I realised that I’d be willing lose all those people and things I had been holding onto because I thought they saw potential in me. But all they saw was how to fix me by their own standards. Once I let them go and began to focus on what I had left, wonderful things started to happen. At first, I didn’t think I had anything left, but by not having anything left in my life that I cared about, I found an empty space that I could fill with whatever I chose. I started filling up my life with the things and people I had wanted for a long time but never felt I had permission to pursue. I soon found that most of those things were also just junk to fill up my life and lead me down the wrong path. So, I let go of those people and only kept the ones in my life that I felt truly supported me and helped me along the path to my goals. Then I started trying things that I had more recently found an interest in. I threw out those activities and people that didn’t help me forward my other goals. Each time I iterated this way, I kept just a little more of the people and ideas that fed my other goals and eventually ended up with enough positive things in my life that I could find hope.

The key here is to keep anything that helps you forward a positive goal even if you have some goals that you never find support for. For example: I have been keeping the things and people that help me be a better writer and those that want to share positivity and love in the world, but so far nothing I have kept in my life has helped me find any financial security. So, it’s not about keeping the things that give me the one thing I want most but to keep anything that helped me achieve any of my goals.

 

If this is you

You’ve lost hope. Now what? Do you really believe that it can’t get better? Maybe you just don’t care if it can. Maybe what you’ve lost can never be rebuilt or replaced. Death could allow you to let go of the dream, and the false hope. But why do you need death for that? Aren’t they already gone? Isn’t that why you feel this way? All you’re holding onto right now is the grief and loss. But those aren’t tangible and keep slipping through your fingers. That’s supposed to happen. It’s a process. Let it happen. Reach out to those around you: friends and family if you have them. They care and want to help, but most of them just don’t know how. If you don’t find support there, join a group. Any group will do if you can find a connection within it. Try a depression group, a grief group, a church group, a recovery group, or, if your can find one, a hobby group. If one doesn’t work, join a different one, or join a couple. If that starts to wear thin and you still haven’t made much for connections, try online groups or even just listen to audio books or podcasts. What you’re looking for here, isn’t people who will listen to your grief and sorrow, but people you can relate to who you can listen to. If you can listen to their grief and sorrow without judgement or negativity, then you can build connections with them.

Those connections are important because that’s where you will start to see who you actually are instead of what others want you to be. You’ll begin to see characteristics in them that you can relate to. Out of those characteristics, you can sort through and pick out the ones you haven’t felt free to pursue before. With a little development, they can become your new direction and even a source of hope.

This is where the choice becomes important. What are you willing to give up in order to find hope? What are you willing to give up on to consider suicide? Are you willing to give up the expectation that someone will come to your rescue? What about your sadness? Can you let go of those people that expect you to fix yourself based on their own formula? If your answer is yes to these questions, why do you need to die? Letting go of these things will also free you up to pursue hope. The hardest part is keeping your commitment to let go. But the upside of change instead of death? You won’t hurt as many people and those you do hurt are probably the ones you need to let go of anyway. Yes, you might still die. You might lose everything. You might hurt all those same people. You may end up on the street fighting to find food. But you might just find your place in this world. You might find love. You might find the money you need to support yourself. And you might find success. In death, you’ll only find failure.

 

If this is someone you know

First, although it’s true, they are seeking attention, it isn’t that simple. Refusing to give them the attention so they’ll “just grow up” will most assuredly confirm for them that you really don’t care. It will push them further into their depression and closer the real act of suicide. Even if you tell them a million times how much you care, refusing the attention they are seeking will deny those words a hundred times over. They need that attention, and far more than that, they need your love. The true love that lets them vent their hurt, especially the hurt you might have caused. Even the hurt you didn’t cause but they blame on you anyway. They need to know that their hurt counts. That it means something because it does mean something, especially the misplaced blame and anger they have. It means they need help. Help they don’t know where to find. Help they may not believe exists. They need the attention of someone that will listen without judgement. Someone who doesn’t always have the answers, but will stick by them and support them while they search for those answers. Someone who won’t try to “fix” them.

Be the first connection they can trust. It might look like they have other support systems in place, but if they are contemplating suicide, they don’t trust them. Be that connection for them. Build the trust they need to open up about the real hurt. They don’t have to cry to be talking about the real feelings, but if they’re just ‘telling their story’, listen and let them talk, that isn’t the hurtful stuff. Don’t dig for detail and don’t get them to ‘talk about their feelings’. Just listen, respond when its appropriate, and keep the conversation open. It doesn’t happen all at once. In fact, it probably won’t happen in the first sitting. They got to the point of suicide because too many of their ‘friendships’ didn’t turn out to matter at all when they really needed them. Be the guy they can count on. Set your boundaries and stick around for the long haul. At some point, they will start talking about things they like and dislike. That’s the beginning. As they sort through the hurt and pain, they will eventually start to remember the good things. They need to process that pain and they aren’t capable of doing so alone. They will come out of it, and when they do they will begin to see who was still there when they needed them. Be the foundation they build the rest of their life on. Or, if that is too much responsibility, with proper boundaries, you will be the support they need to build their own foundation that won’t depend on you.

 

What it means

When you get to a point in your life that you’ve lost hope and you’re prepared to sacrifice everything and just die, remember there are more than one way to put and end on something. Death is only the most commonly thought of solution. It’s not the best, or even the easiest, solution. I promise that some of those people that haven’t helped or listened to you would still be greatly saddened by your departure. Death is admitting failure. It’s quitting. Maybe that’s ok with you. But, just for a moment, imagine what you could find if all your dreams came true.

If you let go of those same things that suicide removes you from, you can find the freedom to finally pursue those passions and dreams that were out of your reach while you held on to people and things that didn’t support you. By filling your life with the things that support and forward your goals, you begin to create positivity in your life. Eventually the only people you will have in your life are those that help you chase your dreams. As you reach for your stars, you’ll have the support, happiness, and money that you need to reach even further. Do me a favor when you get there: remember that others are still struggling to find hope. Help them see it. Be their last hope if you must, but help them.

If this offered you some hope, or showed you how to offer hope for someone else, drop me a line and open the conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sick ‘n’ Tired

What does sick time look like when you are working for yourself? Well, for starters, it looks different than when you are working for someone else. Down time of any sort is unpaid time. Sick time is usually unplanned and varies in it’s length and intensity. Each person has a different sickness tolerance level before they let themselves be sick for a while. For a large portion of us, it’s a momentum killer. If you have been trying very hard to get something going, finally hit a stride and start to feel optimistic about the future then suddenly come down with an energy draining, motivation sucking, doozey of a cold/flu, it will often kill any forward motion you have created. Even when you come out of it and begin to feel normal again, the motivation is usually gone.

These are the moments that separate truly successful people from those that are simply lucky enough to have a great start. The person who is naturally motivated, has a great support system of friends and family, or just never gets sick doesn’t know the real struggle that a depressed person goes through. We have to remind ourselves of the reasons we had for doing our thing in the first place. That becomes harder each time we have a setback because we have already achieved the initial high that comes from starting something new. When that high is no longer able to sustain us, and we haven’t seen the huge success that we secretly wanted but knew we wouldn’t get, that’s what tests our true resolve. That’s when most of us fall short. We don’t quit because it stopped being fun or some other random accusation we usually get from our “kick in the ass” support group. It’s because we have a very hard time picking ourselves up when we get stopped by something beyond our control. It seems like nobody cares anyway so what’s the point. This is the point when we need the most encouragement and usually get it least often.

My Experience

It’s been two weeks since my last post. I wanted to make this a bi-weekly thing, but a fever got in the way of that. At least that is the reason for missing the first post. I had written some of my next post before the one week mark, but I let my cold be the excuse for a second time and forgave myself for missing two in a row. By the time is came to missing the third scheduled time, I had to start admitting to myself that I was letting my goals slip through my selfish, procrastinating fingers. I had rethought about the purpose of my blog and decided on a couple evolutionary changes, but thought and planning are pointless without actually writing anything. The difference this time is two-fold. First, what I’m writing about is something others want to know and I have the experience to share it. And second, it’s something I can write in a day or two and publish to my blog, then I’m done with that piece. It isn’t like my novel that will be years in the making before I can even see the end of the project. I can go from concept to published post in a matter of days, usually a week or two from start to finish. My need for immediate gratification is satisfied.

This blog satisfies my need for instant satisfaction because my goal with it is just to contribute consistently. Of course, I have further goals of eventually supporting myself with my writing, but that is still something I’m working out the details for. The goal here is only to be consistently posting. Essentially, I want to make a habit of writing that no other formula I’ve used has done yet.

It comes down to goal setting. At first my goal with my writing was to write something that the world really wanted to consume in such volumes that it would rocket me to stardom and make me enough money that I would never have to worry about it again. It would support my family, put my kids through college and pay for my retirement while still leaving enough behind that it could do those same things for my kids too. Nothing too greedy. Eventually, reality set in. First, I didn’t actually write that much very often. It’s hard to take the world by storm when the story they really want to read is still in my head. I talked about writing far more than I actually wrote. Then, I had to admit that my writing kind of sucked. While I had moments of pure brilliance, by the time they got from my head to the blank page, they seemed more like slightly better fertilizer than the crap around it. That really killed my motivation pretty hard. It was a few years before I could even find the courage to put my fingers on the keyboard again. Eventually I started hearing that I should break my goals into smaller goals. Then I had to translate that into something other than breaking my novel up into chapters and scenes. I’d already tried that and it didn’t give me enough to keep me going. I struck on the idea of short stories. That helped. I wrote a few and even finished three. But then life got in the way again. Other things needed my time, my wife and I fought about what I did locked up in my little writing closet, and I got sick. In the end, I just couldn’t find the point any more.

When my wife left, I decided to try again, this time as a copy writer doing marketing writing for clients. Again, the goal was to use my writing to earn a living. Although I found many clients that seemed to want to pay me for what I wrote, they all ultimately fell through. By that point, I had joined a writers’ group because I really wanted to find a way to make this into a career. After a bout of depression last fall that nearly killed me for the third time, I iterated again and decided to write more of these articles I’d written over the past few months. This turned out to be a good thing because I could do one in a short time and go on to the next one without having to go back again to the old ones.

I’m back to writing again after two weeks of not posting anything, so this just might be the thing I needed to give me the motivation to restart after stalling. Hopefully, I have made my goals small enough that I can feel like I’m reaching them and keep going. Maybe this is the thing that will get me writing on a regular basis.

If This is You

If you have gotten sick and are having a hard time rebooting and getting back into it, this might be a good time to revisit the reason you are writing in the first place.

Is it the money? Are you making enough to keep going? If not why? Most writers find that money is not motivating enough to keep going. It isn’t usually much, if any, for most of us. If you want to write for money, you need to learn what will actually earn money. Most of what you see online to make a living as a writer is other writers trying to sell you their own success plan. While that may work for you, its far more likely that you will simply end up paying their bills but making nearly nothing yourself. The simple truth is that you need to just write, and write a lot, then write some more, and eventully, you will learn what sells and maybe start to earn a living. It’s a long and dedicated process, but a few have made some money this way.

Is it for recognition? Are friends and family enough? Do they even notice? The writer’s I know don’t get a lot of recognition from their friends and families. A few of them get some from their social media networks, but that’s usually because they’ve put a significant amount of time and energy into cultivating their social media for that purpose. You can get recognition as a writer, but you have to put the effort into finding the people that want to read what you write.

Is it to get a message out there? Do you have an audience? Do you know what they want to hear/learn? The hardest part about this purpose is remembering that your content isn’t for you own entertainment or enlightenment. If you have a message you want to get out there, you need to be sure you find the audience that wants to hear that message and that they haven’t already heard it too many times to care. For example: if you are going to write about climate change, make sure you find an audience that agrees it needs to change and that they haven’t already heard enough to desensitize them to the message. If you are going to write about mental health, find an audience that wants the information you are writing about. Then give them information that is helpful to them.

Is it simply because you have an inner need to write that no amount of TV, Netflix, Facebook, reading, or music will ever satisfy? This is usually the easiest one to restart after a bout of sickness. It almost reboots itself as soon as you can sit up long enough to get the words down. These are the natural writers out there. You don’t have to try, you just write. You aren’t trying to please anyone or get anything from your writing. Your writing is an end of its own. The blank page is where you are most at home. Welcome to it and enjoy the ride.

For each of these reasons and others I neglected to list here, you need to remind yourself why you are writing in the first place. If the reason you have isn’t enough to get you back to the keyboard after a setback, then maybe you need to do a little more soul searching and see if “being a writer” is still in there, or if you just put it in there as a way to reach another goal. Either way, the soul searching should help you find what you are really doing here. If you want to keep the motivation going, you need to find something close to your heart that will kick you back into gear once you get back to your ‘normal’ life.

If This is Someone You Know

You have just nursed your spouse back from the dead and they are driving you mad with all the ideas that keep spilling out of their mouth that used to go onto the blank page. This can be a difficult position for you if you, like most spouses, have been trying to keep the household from falling to pieces as your significant other has taken themselves out of the world to make an attempt at the zombie life style for a while. You may have run out of patience days ago. You probably have issues coming up that is their area of specialty. You just don’t have the energy for their neediness anymore. They’re perfectly fine and you need them to just get their shit together and participate for once. But you know from past experience that if you said anything close to that, it would destroy their fragile ego and cause more pain, fighting and dissention than you can deal with right now.

So, what do you do? You pull out the loving kindness they fell in love with and you gently encourage them to get back to the passion that lets them express their inner self in ways that won’t tax your already short temper. You patiently listen to their dreams and quietly assure their insecurities. You stroke their ego just a little. You bake them some reward cookies; they get one for each chapter/article/short story they finish. You help them reconnect with the other writers that have been asking after their health. You remind them why they wanted to write in the first place. Essentially, you become the super support system that so many writers lack. For so many of us writers, our spouses are the real reason we have felt safe enough to pursue this insane passion in the first place. We count on your grounded reality to keep us from floating away on our dreams.

What is Means

Every writer has different ways of dealing with sickness. The secret to getting back to writing when you are better is to know why you write and caring enough about that thing that you will reboot yourself even when you don’t have the normal motivations that go with starting something new. When you find yourself stopped because of a cold/flu, the proof of your passion is what you do with it once you can function enough to put words in writing again. If you find yourself stalled and can’t restart, it’s time to dig deeper and find what you’re really made of. Is “writer” deep inside you somewhere or just a cool idea that you had when you were drunk one afternoon. If you really want to be a writer, this is the point you prove it. Not to your mom or dad, not to your wife, not to your boss, but to you, the one who won’t be convinced by delusions of grandeur. Nobody will be hurt if you aren’t a writer except your inner writer. If this is what you are, dig it up and get to it. Find a reason, find a way.

If this or any other article in my blog has hit a cord with you, write me and open the discussion. I’d love to hear from you.

The Encouragement Gap

We all know someone that needs encouragement. Most of us can also think of someone we admire. But, have you even stopped to really consider the point of view of those people that we disdain or out right condescend? How about from the other side of the picture? I’m sure you can remember times when you have felt the encouragement of the people around you: often when you were trying something new or hard. There’s probably a few among us that have felt the praise of others for the success we have reached. Can you remember the support you got after you had shown you could do something, but hadn’t yet mastered it enough to be recognised for success? In my own life that is the point I have given up on the things I could have been good at.

Can you remember your own children or kids you have known as they learn to do new things? While we see them learning something new or hard, we encourage them to “try your best” and “just keep going”. Once we’ve seen them do it for the hundredth time, we don’t give them the same attention. They might be lucky to get any acknowledgement at all. “Yes dear, that’s a pretty picture,” is the response many kids get while mom or dad doesn’t even take the time to actually look at the 20^th piece of art their child has brought them that day. Worse yet, some people look at the pictures and think, usually to themselves, “There’s nothing there. Why would you praise that? It’s just scribbles on a page.” However, things change again if that same child keeps drawing and coloring and, one day a few years later, they present an accurate representation of their favorite cartoon character. Suddenly that child deserves national attention and a specialised art school where he/she can culture those talents. But have you wondered where that talent came from and how they stayed with it long enough to get that far? Most parents would like to take some of the credit here, but let’s be honest, do you really think “yes dear,” is enough encouragement for a heart hungry for mom and dad’s admiration? Not for a second. Why do you think so few people who have real talent ever develop it? Because “yes dear,” isn’t enough for most of us. God forbid one of those kids actually hear someone call their ‘art’ “just scribbles.” You can almost watch their little hearts crushed under that ugliness called criticism that they don’t even understand.

How about when we notice someone we know has a talent or skill we think is valuable. If we’ve just noticed or they have recently started exploring that gift, most of us are very encouraging. What is your reaction when it’s their 50^th big sale, or their 30^th interesting blog post. I’d be willing to bet that it’s significantly smaller than the first few times. After all, it’s become the new norm. Who recognises normal. Even if each one is slightly better than the last one, we probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Some of us look at someone who is ‘faking it till they make it’ with their talent and we might call them pretentious or arrogant. Isn’t that the point of ‘faking till you make it’? Pretending we are good at something until we actually become good at it? Us artists don’t believe we can do it either, but someone early on told us to ‘keep at it’ and ‘push through’, so that’s what we are doing. That’s why it seems we are pretending, because even we think we are. The recognition returns when a milestone is met, but even that recognition is usually short lived until the person reaches a point that is impressive even amongst their peers. That is when the encouragement and recognition returns on an on-going basis, but by then we are so used to pretending that we still don’t believe the praise.

In my own experience, I’m usually able to find a lot of encouragement early in the process. As I get better at it though, I find it hard to stay motivated because my support group usually loses interest so when I share my achievements, it seems as though nobody cares. I sometimes even hear, “your writing isn’t all that good” or “the subject isn’t very interesting.” Take this blog for example. When people first find out I have it, they are all encouraging and most even read an article or two. Sometimes they will like or comment on them, I might get a phone call from them if they know me personally. But so far, no one outside my writers’ group has even recognised most of the articles I post. This is the hard part that I have to just ‘push through’ according to all the writing advice I’ve gotten. Most of the encouragement I get these last few days is the shallow ‘that’s cool’, kind of comments that carry no sincerity and even less commitment. I know that if I stick with it long enough that I will eventually gain an organic audience that wants to consume my writing. But how does a guy with very little self esteem find the motivation to do something when it seems like few actually care? I feel like I’m hitting the encouragement gap right now. That point where those closest to me have fulfilled the obligation to get me started, but I haven’t reached enough milestones to gain sincere appreciation from my own audience. More to the point, where can you get the motivation to persevere when your support system fails to hold you up?

The answer, for now, is from where ever you can find it. Join a club that you can share that activity with. Most hobby centered clubs I’ve been a part of are very encouraging to all the members regardless of where they are in the journey. I get a lot support from my writers’ group and dance club. I’ve also made some friendships from each one. When I get validation from one of those hobby groups, it feels real and sincere; having friends among these groups giving me that encouragement hits it home just a little harder. I think this is why nearly every podcast I listen to lists writing peers as the greater part of their friendships, because they were the ones to support them when the non-writers in their circles lagged in the encouragement department. Also, the podcasts I listen to feel like another community all together that I can rely on to always be there and be encouraging. The most valuable relationships for this kind of support are the ones the artist doesn’t need to earn.

If you are one of the non-artist types with an artist friend, this is the part where you can be most helpful. Don’t let your encouragement dwindle. In our quest to get better and better we have to make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes our quality will actual drop for a time as we learn the craft of our chosen discipline. Even when it does, keep the excitement up. Be genuinely happy to see what we present to you. Regardless of the end product, we have usually poured our heart and soul into the creation of it, but we never really believe it’s good enough for public consumption (just ask any successful author). The best ones among us join like-minded clubs to practice, get feedback, and improve. What we need you for is pure, plain joy. We share our passions with you because we really want you to appreciate what we have done. We don’t need you to critique it (unless we specifically ask for that, even then it’s best to direct us to a club or group), what we really need from our non-artist friends is unadulterated admiration or, in other words, unconditional love.

We are soft creatures, us creators. We need people that will help us protect our squishy insides from the harshness that is the public. Our best writing comes out when we manage to open our vulnerable hearts to the refreshing air and the healing rays of the sunshine. While we are trying ever harder to get in touch with that pure creativity at our core, we need our friends around us to ensure the air we expose ourselves to is actually clean and pristine, and not the fetid corruption of a waste dump in an industrial area. As each of us strives to let the sun shine on our creative embryo, it’s the job of our peers to provide a little water and shade to make sure we don’t burn up in the brilliance of our pure genius.

All pretty words aside, everyone who is trying to develop a talent needs to feel that they can screw up and still be noticed. That’s where you come in. Encourage them, especially when it seems they are lagging in motivation. Support them when they get past the joyful stage. Be the reason they keep going. You’ll only benefit from it in the long run. Wouldn’t like to say you know someone famous? I know, we’d all rather be famous than just say we know someone who is. But being the reason someone else followed their dream to fruition is a feeling like no other. Even fame and fortune can’t give you that.

If you need some encouragement drop me a line and tell me a little about yourself. If you’d like to help me out, share this post with your social media friends and help me get my message to more people like you. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.

Epiphany

My last post about unconditional love changed my purpose a little bit. It was by far the most responded to post I’ve had yet. I can’t stop thinking both about the post itself and the comments by the people who read it. The level of passion it stirs in me, coupled with the discussions it has spawned in my own social groups show me that this is a hot topic that I can build on. I’ve thought of many additional points I want to add to that article. It also created in me a whole line of related subjects I want to write about.

I listened to a podcast last night that said something like “the thing that you want most to change about the world around you points you to your purpose,” and “the activities you do that makes time and your troubles disappear for a little while is the talent you should use to fulfill your purpose.” Those two things sound all new age and full of spiritual BS, but if I take them purely at face value and ignore the spiritual implications, they become something I can action. The thing I most want to change is how we, as the human race, view and treat ourselves and each other. And the activity that makes time disappear is translating from vague clichés and technical jargon into plain, relatable language. That’s what motivated me to start this blog in the first place. I want to share my experiences and be as transparent as I can so that just maybe I’ll be able to find the unconditional love and acceptance I believe every person deserves. I also want to show others what unconditional love looks like, as well as how and why each of us should give it.

I won’t get into the subject of unconditional love much in this post except to share my epiphany about my purpose. I will start with a little background though. A year ago I lost my wife, job and home all in a matter of a couple months. And although everyone would agree that those things hurt, I already saw the end of each of them coming months earlier. My subhuman self image didn’t let me believe I deserved any of them anyway, so I wasn’t surprised when they all came crashing down at once. I believed at the time that it only proved how worthless I really was. So, yes, those things hurt, but only in that they reinforced my opinion of myself. What I hoped for beyond all reasonable hope was for unconditional love. I couldn’t love myself because of how much I had betrayed myself and let myself down and hurt those around me, so my only hope to get love was to be loved despite my worthlessness – unconditionally – so that I couldn’t wreck it or lose it. Everything crashing down like that only served to dash those hopes for unconditional love. Yes, I responded with the usual depression, feelings of hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts, but not because I felt unloved or worthless. My response was to give up on myself. My last, best hopes of finding my place in the world all vanished at the same time with such finality that I didn’t even feel most of the pain. I spent the next few months in what I’ll call ‘emotional shock’. I didn’t start to feel the hurt until months later. All my suffering, I believed, could have been prevented, or at least mitigated, if my wife, my boss, and/or my landlord would have had some unconditional love for me instead of ending our association. I understand that, logically, I had nothing to offer any of them. Hell, I didn’t then believe I had anything to offer anybody. So, I agreed with all of them ending things. They weren’t going to get anything from me anyway. This all might sound like I’m blaming others for my pain and suffering. I’m not. What I’m saying is that by offering unconditional love to people, we might help them feel lovable at times in their lives when they are unable to love themselves.

I did keep my membership to the dance club I was in, I also joined a writers’ group. Both helped me to start seeing value in myself. It wasn’t long before I started to feel the unconditional love I had been longing for all my life. Not in the intimate way I had been searching for all the years before I met my wife. Nor in the ways I thought my wife and family should give me. Instead, I started feeling the innate love most people have for each other. More than that though, it felt as though it didn’t matter who I was or what I’ve done, it felt unconditional.

During this same time period, a couple old friends contacted me to catch up. One of them was especially concerned for my personal health and safety. He has kept in regular contact with me ever since, regardless if he was the one initiating most of the contact. Eventually, I started feeling the unconditional nature of our friendship. It turns out it was there all along, but I didn’t know it.

Over the past year, I’ve held onto these feelings and used that to build some self worth. I’ve began to see myself as deserving of self love simply by existing as a human being. Through that, I’ve started to believe that other people might find real value in my company and talents. That helped me a lot when it came to writing. I know I can write, and write well. Just because I can write, though, doesn’t mean anyone will care. If I want to make a living as a writer, someone needs to want what I’ve written enough to pay for it. However, I won’t get to the point where anyone will care about my writing if I don’t write. If I keep writing, eventually I will write something that someone will pay for. I recently started to focus on my blog as the next step on that journey. I have written a few posts sporadically over the past few months about my personal and professional experiences with depression and other mental conditions. The content always hits a cord with the writers’ group, so I decided to focus on that and make a regular thing out of it.

My epiphany comes just last night when I listened to that podcast. When they said a person’s purpose comes from the one thing they most want to change in the world, a light went on in my head. I want people to love each other unconditionally. The post I wrote a few days ago hit a soft spot in my social circle and started a lot of conversations. The post is about unconditional love. Many of my friends had something to say about the subject. That tells me that people do have an investment in their perception of what unconditional love means.

The new direction I’m going is to talk about different mental conditions and personality types and include the why and how to love them unconditionally. Most of that isn’t new, although, most of what written is by women and is less relatable for men like myself. What will set my blog apart will be how I write them as well as the point of the articles. They will be why you should show unconditional love to the different people in your life and how you can do so without undue risk to yourself or those around you. And I will write from a more masculine point of view so that men will relate better and hopefully break the pattern of silence us guys have around mental and emotional disorders. Although, by all means ladies, please enter the conversation as well. It’s not open conversation if it excludes anyone at all.

If this or any other subject stirs you to conversation, drop me a message. I’d love to hear from you.

Love Is

So, here it is. Love is unconditional. Point blank and simple. No if’s, and’s or but’s. Love isn’t a commodity to be bought, sold, earned, lost, or found. That’s the reason it’s the one thing most of us crave more than anything else. It’s the single strongest attachment we have. It’s also the one thing we, as humans, have the hardest time understanding. It isn’t just that warm fuzzy feeling we get when a stranger smiles at us. It’s far more than that. What many of us don’t get is that love is active not simply a feeling in our hearts. It makes us whole.

Unconditional love is the hardest concept for many people to grasp. Some compare it to the love of their children. It doesn’t matter what mistakes our children make, most of us will love then till the day we die. Even if that means we have to love them from a distance to protect others around us from the hurt they can cause. But we always love them. Some compare it to the high school sweetheart that we can never quite forget. Even many years later, they still hold a special place in our heart. Still others might think of their grandparents and the years of commitment and happiness they represent for us. For some of us, unconditional love is an imaginary concept that only happens in fairy tails.

Some confuse love with trust, as though it can be betrayed or mishandled. Love doesn’t belong to the person you love. It belongs to the you. So, it’s up to you to show your love or keep it to yourself, regardless of how the one you love acts. Some might confuse love with respect, to be earned or lost based on a person’s worthiness to it. If you wait for someone to earn your love, I promise that you’ll be waiting a very long time. Even your soulmate will have had experiences different from yours that change how he or she shows love. Still others confuse love with devotion. Although similar, devotion is the act of dedicating oneself to the pleasure or needs of someone else. By that definition, some of us believe we are loved only when the person we love devotes themselves to us. Let me rephrase what I said earlier, the love someone has for you isn’t yours to own or dictate the terms. It belongs to the person that loves you. It is theirs to determine how to show it. These are some of the reasons love must be unconditional to truly be called love. Just because you don’t feel love from someone doesn’t mean that person doesn’t love you, so love them regardless of what you feel from them. Eventually you will both learn what love means to each other.

Love isn’t lust either. Some treat love as something they can own or maybe just rent. It’s true that some people use their money, fame or power to earn someone else’s love. While this does happen, it’s only love when those factors don’t influence the feelings. Someone with power, fame or money can increase their chances of meeting people and thereby raise the odds of finding that special someone, but love isn’t swayed by those things. Lust can be of course. Some people are turned on by many different things, but true love is between hearts. Some people pay for the experience of sex, thinking to fulfill a need for love, but it doesn’t provide the same satisfaction. Love simply can’t be owned or traded for.

Why do we feel a deep warming feeling when we hear “I love you” in a favorite movie or book? Because it means the character has finally ‘made it’. The hero ‘gets the girl’, the heroine ‘gets the guy’, the love interest comes to a happy ending. No matter what else happens in the story, for that moment, we feel that satisfying empathy for a love found. That’s because, subconsciously, we believe that love is an end of its own. The words “I love you” make us feel whole and complete. Deep down we feel love unconditionally, so hearing those words makes us believe the search is over.

“I love you, man!” Famous words of drunken buddies from all walks of life. It’s what one man says to another man when he believes he can say what he really feels without someone thinking he’s just being weird. Why don’t we say, “I respect you, man!” or “I like you, man!” or “You’re really strong!”? The truth is that some of us do say those things when we’re drunk. But the final stage when we really want our buddy to understand how important he is to us is “I love you, man!” That’s because, when we get so drunk that our last inhibitions have vaporized and we are most in touch with our truest feelings, the strongest feeling we can express is love. It’s not the same love we might have for our spouse, but it is just as strong, and it’s unconditional. An example of this kind of love: my best friend when I was much younger has slept with a girlfriend of mine while I was dating her as well as my wife while we were engaged, yet I still have to fight the urge to want to be around him still years later. I love him as much as I ever did. I don’t trust him, and I don’t like him very much, but I still crave his company and the memories we share are some of my fondest. Love is like that. No rhyme or reason, just unconditional.

I do believe in love at first sight, but most of the time what we feel ‘at first sight’ is simply an affirmation, maybe even an attraction. When someone smiles at us we might feel a connection with that person. If that person engages us in conversation, the connection grows. And if we manage to plan a future meeting, the connection becomes chemical. These connections are even stronger if that person fits into our idea of ‘attractive’. But don’t mistake these connections with love. Love is unconditional. Although you might feel like you would do anything for this person (that connection can be pretty strong), love goes much deeper. What if you or they are already committed to someone else? Would you throw away your existing connection to pursue a new one? What if you found out that they manipulated that connection to take advantage of you in some way? That’s the main tool of conmen. They create connections to get you to do things you normally wouldn’t do. It’s best to take it slow with those you’ve just met, love at first sight does happen, but since love is unconditional, it will outlast any time or obstacles put in its way.

Ok, so love is unconditional like the love of our children or the love we see in our grandparents. Love can’t be owned or traded. It isn’t trust or respect. It’s not lust for power, money or sex. So, what is it then? It’s that feeling we get when our favorite characters say or hear “I love you.” Love is that awkward, slightly embarrassing feeling when our wasted friend slurs “I love you, man!” It’s is the connection that stands the test of time. Love is unconditional.

If that’s all love was, we could simply sit back and soak up the warm fuzzies from the people around us. But love stirs us to action. It makes us want to do things to help those we feel that connection with. Love motivates us to do things outside our comfort zones. If Red Bull gives you wings, love gives you the courage to fly. That’s the difference between love and all those other motivations. Gaining power, money or fame only makes you want more. Finding love is truly fulfilling and satisfies our need for it.

If you want to share your love story or just ask someone for a second opinion, drop me a line. Join the conversation.

The Writing Experience

This is my journey with depression as a writer. This is not a solution, but my experience.

I talked once about the association between writing and depression. This last week has been an education for me. I haven’t posted anything on LinkedIn or Facebook (my other side) for a week although I felt pretty happy during that time.

So why didn’t I post something when this is a key part of my branding strategy? Anxiety. I’ve felt happy on the surface, but I realized today that I was choosing to be happy and ignoring an imminent and game changing personal problem. Ignoring it might be too strong of a word. I have been thinking about it almost every waking moment and I haven’t been able to come up with a solution, but I’ve continued to act as though I had not a care in the world. I talked to my friends to get support, I went out into the world to connect to people and humanity, I sat down at my computer to write, I took my dog for walks almost every day, and I took some self-time to reward myself for making it this far. All of those activities seemed empty and fruitless though and just couldn’t seem to get anything productive done. The one moment of clarity I had yesterday, I did complete one important task, but when I went to write something – blocked, my laptop ran out of battery but the coffee shop I was in had no power ports, neither did the next one and by the time I found a place that did, I lost the drive to finish and I just sat and zoned out on my phone. I felt as though God or the universe or karma or something was stopping me from taking another step.

I sit here in Tim Horton’s today trying to piece together a solution through writing about it. I’m fighting the desire to just give up and play some more phone games. Or maybe I should edit this article and make sure I get it just right even though I know that doing that before I have finished writing it will only distract me from finishing it and likely succeed in corrupting the point of writing it in the first place.

Push through I must. If I want to believe in myself, I have to prove to me that I can do the hard stuff when it counts, when its hard, and especially when I don’t want to.

My psych defined depression as the ability to feel only sadness or frustration. He defines anxiety as the act of worrying about a problem so much that it affects how much time and attention is given to other activities. In my case, anxiety is what triggers my depression. One problem I can’t solve leads to other problems being ignored which leads to believing I can’t do anything right. Depression.

Here I am writing this out more as a journal than the post I wanted to write. I wander what my point is or is the act of writing it the point. I know journaling is good for my soul, but it isn’t enough to just help my soul. I want to help others that struggle the same way I do. I want to be a ray of hope and I don’t think I will be as bright if I wait until I have the solution before sharing my experiences. This is me working through the hard stuff and sharing it with the world.

Please message me if you also experience obstacles in your professional life that make you feel stuck or suck the energy out of you. Maybe we can help each other.