Chilli is gone

The time came, and Chilli is gone.  I struggled with this.  I didn't want to give up on her, yet I knew she had 2 serious diseases that would eventually make her life of poor quality.  Kept hoping for "a sign."  I knew this would be best to take care of before my surgery next month.  Having her go 2 weeks without fluids, maybe not getting her pills, then coming home to her, myself a cripple and less capable of caring for her, well that didn't sound right.  For her or for me.  I prayed that she simply be comfortable, and I prayed that I would have the strength to take good care of her.  I showed her to Becky, and even Becky thought she looked poor.  Becky put it in the most relevant terms: "Cathy, what would you tell ME if it were MY cat?"  I knew then (Wed. Oct. 27) that I would take care of it very soon.  Went out to dinner with Sherry and Kathy, and they gave me their best take on it.  Sherry was concerned I would be by myself.  She thought I could ask Natalie to do the deed.  I assured her if I thought I needed company I could call my Dad.

My struggle was with feeling like I'd let her down.  Not sure why, because I honestly think I did everything I could for her.  And I would NOT want her to suffer.  I'm not so selfish that I didn't want to be without her so I couldn't let her go.  Then the next morning, when I knew that would be the day, I became verklempt, a little emotionally overwhelmed with it all.  Jeremy at Tall Trainer was very kind to me, but I felt a wee-little ridiculous crying into my hands on my steering wheel, about the death of my cat when clearly it was the right decision.  I realized, in the role of veterinarian, I would never think less of a client for crying like a baby about their pet, or second-guessing themselves about their decision.  Just goes to prove, it IS different when you're emotionally involved.

Thursday Oct. 28I took the materials home that I would need, said a prayer that she allow me to do this, and she walked right up to me when I came  thru the door.  It was quite peaceful, no stress, and I felt right about it, as good as I could feel.  It may have been 14 years to the day that I met her little frozen form on Small Animal Medicine at Cornell.  How completely ironic.

Every person who has loved a pet, and who needs to make this decision about their pet, deserves to be as comfortable with the process as possible.  Even if they let the animal go too long.  I tell people, Oh you'll know when the time is right.  Not always, I am learning. 

Facebook (13) | Today

Today

by Abby Rike on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at 4:19pm

As I sit here on the four year anniversary of the wreck, my mind reflects on where the time has gone so quickly yet so slowly. I must ask myself how have I spent this time? How have I changed? How have I grown?

I found a list of “goals” I made on Caleb’s birthday last year, September 25, 2009. The list included physical, emotional, and spiritual wants and needs. The list showed me that balance in life is paramount to true living. It also shows that my quest for the whole me has been going on pretty much since the wreck. The difference is my understanding those ideas in a much deeper way. You can hear life truths at different stages of your life, but until you assimilate them into your consciousness, they lack true meaning. There is no substitution for experience and reflection.

Physically I wanted to maintain a “happy weight.” I’ve done that. I can still wear my red finale dress, and it looks better now than it did without all the spanx. I’m stronger now because of my wonderful trainer, Marc Danos, having me lift crazy amounts of weight. Now that my stress fracture is completely healed, I’ve been able run sprints at 10mph for a minute. That’s something I longed to do, but was unable because of injury, when I was on the ranch. In the same vein, I’m fully aware that body is not perfect, nor will it ever be, and I continue to be content where I am.... Being fit does not equate to perfection.

I continue to fight the battle of not defining myself by my physical appearance. As I was going through old pictures the other day, I ran across several pictures of Macy and me when she was so very little and I was so very big. It’s hard to imagine that’s how I ‘looked’ at that time. My ‘insides’ were the same.... I loved hard, I had a sense of humor, I looked at the world holistically and in a broad fashion, I found the good in people, I wanted to make a difference, and so fortunately for me, the people in my life saw those qualities and didn’t think less of me just because there was more of me.

Emotionally, just a year ago, I wanted to love myself, for REAL. And while I’m fully aware of my flaws, I can say that I do love who I am today. I’m focusing on the things I have accomplished and continue to accomplish rather than on the things I haven’t.... find it makes for a much more peace existence.

Another goal was to foster healthy female friendships. The people I count among my friends are absolutely amazing. I’m blessed to have friends that have been there for me since before the wreck, friends I’ve made since the wreck, and now friends all around the country I’ve met through speaking. The old adage you have to be a friend to have a friend rings so true. This past year I’ve tried to be the kind of friend I want.

Though I could write a book on the specifics of so many people who have supported, loved, laughed with, and been there for me, today I feel compelled to write about my dear friend, Vicky Vilcan. Vicky has been in my life for the past year and a half, and our friendship has grown so much throughout that time. What started out as two individuals sharing a common experience, has deepened to familial bonds. Vicky is not only loyal beyond measure, a cheerleader for my every accomplishment, a supporter during those times when I fail, and a fantastically fun pedicure/ shopping/ coffee-drinking partner, she sits in the ashes with me. She’s just THERE. I don’t have do or be anything I’m not that day, and it’s perfectly fine with her. She serves as an example of the kind of friend I want to be with others.

Another emotional goal I had for myself was to laugh everyday- heartily. I can say that I do.... most of the time way too loudly, without meaning to... The world’s a funny place, and I’m working on not taking it too seriously. Laughter is good medicine.

Spiritually I wanted to pray without ceasing, point others to the Lord by example, be available and ready to serve, and not press for things to happen but prepare and patiently wait. These things continue to be a work in progress, but for the most part, they stay on the forefront of my mind. The Lord has blessed me beyond measure. In the past year, He has provided me with opportunities that surpassed anything my human mind could conjure. Without any advertising or self-promotion, He has provided the occasion to speak with churches, schools (both teachers and students), grief groups, health and wellness groups, and business communities sharing what He’s done in my life. Also, without any effort on my part, He sent literary agents to allow me to write a book about my precious family, and how His grace is sufficient and made perfect in weakness. He has sustained me in the most hideous of circumstances. As I type these words, I pray they don’t come off in a “churchy” or “pollyiana.” The world’s a gritty, hard place.... grief and heartache are ugly, really ugly at times, but my joy abides despite circumstance.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to sit down and write. All these ‘thoughts’ swirl about in my mind, but I’ve had the hardest time trying to formulate and articulate them into a sensible format. I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded, but they have much more clarity today than in the last few months.

Thank you to all that take the time to read these words, continue to pray for me, and love me from near and far. How I wish I had the time and ability to personally thank each and every person who sends me a kind word of encouragement... Please know that your words serve as fuel to feed my soul in ways you will never know.

Book Report: "The Power of Positive Thinking," by Norman Vincent Peale

Wow! I liked this book. It was just what I was looking for - a "how-to" format with real, do-able, pertinent suggestions. Lots of concrete info.

Dr. Peale is now one of my favorite authors (right up there with Dick Francis!). His material, while very specific and constructive, isn't at all "me" centered, it's humble and not conceited, which I found a huge relief. In the Bio section, it was explained that although Dr. Peale was a minister of the Gospel, and believed in God, he didn't always believe in himself. His faith led him to the conviction that God had placed a portion of His power in all of us (love the thought!). Therefore, each of us is capable of doing great things, so he embraced the Bible as an infallible guide for creative living. This was Dr. Peale's message: If you believe that the power of God within you is equal to any of life's difficulties, then a rewarding life will be yours. Well who wouldn't want that! He went on to explain that by practicing the suggestions in the book, you can have peace of mind, improved health and a never-ceasing flow of energy! In short, your life can be full of joy and satisfaction. Sign me up! The philosophy of positive thinking is one of faith, that does not ignore life's problems, but rather explains a practical approach to life's full potential. The book is broken down into 13 chapters, and I am going to pull the most concrete ideas from them.

1. Believe In Yourself! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy. But with self-confidence you can succeed. You can develop faith in yourself. How? First, it is important to discover why you have feelings of inferiority. That requires analysis and time, and may require treatment. Next, as you carry on, repeat certain words with an attitude of faith and you will receive ability to deal with this problem. "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me" (Phil 4:13). Of the various causes of inferiority feelings, many stem from childhood, or the consequences of certain circumstances, or something we did to ourselves. Part of your solution is realizing there are God-given abilities in each of us, and we must acknowledge them and know that we can rely on them. Using these principles releases the powers which have been inhibited by feelings of inferiority. The greatest secret for eliminating the inferiority complex (another term for self-doubt) is to fill your mind with faith. Develop tremendous faith in God and that will give you realistic faith in yourself. This is accomplished by prayer, by reading the Bible, and by practicing its faith techniques. The ability to possess and utilize faith must be studied and practiced to gain perfection. To build up feelings of self-confidence, practice suggesting confidence concepts to your mind. It is possible, even in the midst of your daily work, to drive confident thoughts into consciousness. Write concepts of faith and courage onto index cards and review them throughout the day. By filling the mind with affirmations of God, you can put an end to your sense of insecurity. I discovered when I began working in Canandaigua, I lost my faith in myself like never before; I didn't trust myself or my ability to meet responsibilities. It was an enormous let-down and very frightening. I was beset within myself with a vague and sinister fear that something wasn't going to go right. I did not believe that I had it in me to do what I needed to do or be what I had to be to be successful. My personal power was frustrated, and I was defeated and afraid due to the blows of life, the accumulation of difficulties, and the lack of appropriate support and reinforcement at work. I did learn a lot, but the true status of my power was obscured, and I was spent and discouraged. Occasionally this fear still grips me. Dr. Karl Menninger observed, "Attitudes are more important than facts." Any fact facing us, even the most hopeless, is not as important as our attitude toward that fact. A confident thought pattern can modify or overcome the fact. Make a list, not of the factors that are against you, but of those that are for you. Mentally visualize and affirm and reaffirm your assets, and you will rise out of any difficulty. Your inner powers will re-assert themselves and, with the help of God, lift you to victory. A sure cure for lack of confidence is the thought that God is actually with you and helping you. o practice it simply affirm, "God is with me, God is helping me, God is guiding me." Go about your business on the assumption that what you have affirmed and visualized is true. Affirm it, visualize it, believe it, and it will actualize itself. The release of power which this procedure stimulates will astonish you. 
2. A Peaceful Mind Generates Power. The essence of the secret lies in a change of mental attitude. One must learn to live on a different thought basis, and even though thought change requires effort, it is much easier than to continue living as you are. The life of strain is difficult. The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence. The chief struggle, then, in gaining mental peace is the effort of revamping your thinking to the relaxed attitude of acceptance of God's gift of peace.
3. How To Have Constant Energy.  How we think we feel has a definite effect on how we actually feel physically.  Religion functions through our thoughts.  It is a system of thought discipline.  By supplying attitudes of faith to the mind, it can increase energy.  Religious faith suggests that you have ample support and resources of power.  Every great personality with the capacity for prodigious work has been a person in tune with the Infinite.  Invariably they are extraordinarily well organized emotionally and psychologically.  It is fear, resentment, the projection of parental faults upon people when they are children, inner conflicts and obsessions that throw off balance the finely tuned nature, thus causing undue expenditure of natural force.  If a person practices the creative and re-creative principles of Christianity, he can live with power and energy.  The practice of Christian principles will bring a person into the proper tempo of living.  The conservation of energy depends on getting your personality synchronized with the rate of God's movement.  If you are going at one rate and God at another, you are tearing yourself apart.  To avoid tiredness and to have energy, feel your way into the essential rhythm of Almighty God and all His works.  To accomplish this, relax physically.  Then conceive of your mind as likewise relaxing.  Follow this mentally by visualizing the soul as becoming quiescent, then pray as follows: "Dear God, You are the source of all energy.  I hereby draw energy from you as from an illimitable source."  Then practice believing that you receive energy.  Keep in tune with the Infinite.  People who lack energy are disorganized by their deep, fundamental emotional and psychological conflicts, such as guilt and fear.  But healing is ever possible.  The surest way not to become tired is to lose yourself in something in which you have profound conviction.
4. Try Prayer Power.  Hard work, positive thinking, fair dealing, right treatment of people and the proper kind of praying always get results.  Prayerize.  Picturize.  Actualize.
1. Prayerize: A daily system of creative prayer.  When a problem arises, talk it over with God simply and directly in prayer.  He's always nearby as a partner.  Ask Him, "What will I do about this, Lord?  Give me a fresh insight on this, Lord."
2. Picturize.  The basic factor in physics is force.  The basic factor in psychology is the realizable wish.  When either failure or success is visualized, it strongly tends to actualize, equivalent to the image pictured.  
3. Continue to surrender the picture to God's will, and follow God's guidance.  Work hard and smart, thus doing your part to achieve success.  Practice believing and hold the picture in your thoughts.  You will be astonished at the strange ways in which the picture comes to pass.
5. How To Create Your Own Happiness.  Who decides whether you shall be happy or unhappy?  You do.  When I get up in the morning, I have two choices - to be happy or unhappy.  I just choose to be happy.  Abraham Lincoln said, "People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  To become a happy person, have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child's heart and spiritual simplicity.  It is necessary to drive off thoughts which make for depression and discouragement.  This can be done first by simply determining to do it, and second by utilizing a booklet called Thought Conditioners.  Read one thought every day, commit it to memory.  Base your actions and attitudes upon fundamental principles of happy living.  Express human love and goodwill.  The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry.  Live simply, expect little, give much.  Fill your life with love.  Scatter sunshine.  Forget self, think of others.  Do as you would be done by.  Happiness will stay with you as long as you live a God-centered life.
6. Expect The Best And Get It.  When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.  When you put your trust in God, He guides you so that you do not want things that are not good for you.  Every great thing becomes for you a possibility.  Saturate your mind with the great words of the Bible.  Spend one hour a day reading the Bible and committing its great passages to memory, allowing them to recondition your personality, the change in you and in your experience will be little short of miraculous.  Belief, positive thinking, faith in God, faith in other people, faith in yourself, faith in life.  This is the essence of the technique the Bible teaches.  If God be for me, who can be against me?  If with all your heart and the full complement of your personality, you reach out creatively toward your heart's desire, your reach will not be in vain.  At least 10 times every day, affirm, "I expect the best and with God's help will attain the best."  In doing so, your thoughts will turn toward the best and become conditioned to its realization.  This practice will bring all of your powers to focus upon the attainment of the best.  It will bring the best to you.
7. I Don't Believe In Defeat.  There is no difficulty you cannot overcome.  Cultivate a positive idea pattern.  What we do with obstacles is directly determined by our mental attitude.  Perhaps you know your problems are real.  Your attitude toward them is mental.  What you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do with them.  When your mind becomes convinced that you can do something about difficulties, astonishing things happen.Visualize yourself achieving success.  Believe that Almighty God has put in you power to lift yourself out of trouble by keeping your eye firmly fixed on the source of your power.  Affirm to yourself that through this power you can do anything you have to do.  Believe that this power is taking the tension out of you, that this power is flowing through you.  Believe this, and a sense of victory will come.
8. How To Break The Worry Habit.  You were not born with the worry habit.  You acquired it.  To eliminate abnormal worry, empty the mind daily of all anxiety, fear, sense of insecurity.  Then thank God for freeing you of fear, and go to sleep.  Practice then refilling the mind.  Say such affirmations, "God is now filling my mind with courage, peace, calm assurance.  God is now protecting my loved ones from all harm.  God is now guiding me to right decisions.  God will see me through this situation."  Fear is the most powerful of all thoughts with one exception: faith.  Faith can always overcome fear.  Faith is the one power against which fear cannot stand.  Day by day, as you fill your mind with faith, there will ultimately be no room left for fear.  One man broke the worrying habit by praying, "Lord, You gave me this day.  I did the best I could with it, You helped me, and I thank You.  I made some mistakes.  That was when I didn't follow Your advice.  Forgive me.  I had some successes too, and I am grateful for Your guidance.  But now, Lord, mistakes or successes, this day is over and I am through with it, so I'm giving it back to You.  Amen."  He set his face to the future, expecting to do better the next day.  The man's sins of omission and commission gradually lost their hold on him.  He was released from the worries that accumulated from his yesterdays.  To break the worry habit, try this worry-breaking formula:
1. Say to yourself, "Worry is just a very bad mental habit, and I can change any habit with Gods' help."
2. First thing every morning before yo arise, say out loud, "I believe," three times.
3. Pray: "I place this day, my life, my loved ones, my work in the Lord's hands.  Whatever happens, whatever results, if I am in the Lord's hands, it is the Lord's will and it is good."
4. Practice saying something positive concerning everything about which you have been talking negatively.  With God's help you can do anything.
5. Never participate in a worry conversation.
6. Mark every passage in the Bible that speaks of faith, hope, happiness, glory, radiance.  Commit each to memory.  Say them over and over until these creative thoughts saturate your subconscious mind.
7. Cultivate friendships with hopeful people.
8. See how many people you can help to cure their own worry habit.  
9. Every day of your life conceive f yourself as living in partnership and companionship with Jesus Christ.  If He actually walked by your side, would you be afraid or worried?  Say to yourself, "He is with me." 
9. Power To Solve Personal Problems.  Conceive of God as a partner.  When Jesus was born, He was called Immanuel, "God with us."  In all the difficulties, problems and circumstances of this life, God is close by.  One must go past believing this, to actually practicing the idea of His presence.  Practice believing God is as real as your spouse, workmate, closest friend.  Believe that He hears and gives thought to your problem.  Assume that He impresses on your mind the ideas and insights necessary to solve your problems.  Definitely believe that in these solutions there will be no error, but that you will be guided to actions according to truth which results in right outcomes.  Take the Lord as a partner.  Tell Him, "Lord, I can't offer much in the way of a partnership, but please join with me ans help me.  I don't know how You can help me, but I want to be helped.  So I now put my business, myself, my family and my future in Your hands.  Whatever You say goes.  I don't even know how You are going to tell me what to do, but I am ready to hear and will follow Your advice if you will make it clear."  The God-Partnership method is the way to get your problems solved right.
10. When Vitality Sags, Try This Health Formula.  Resentment, hate, grudges, ill will, jealousy, vindictiveness, are attitudes which produce ill health.  Honestly ask yourself if you are harboring any ill will or resentment or grudges, and if so, cast them out without delay.  They do no harm to the person against whom you hold these feelings, but every day and every night of your life they are eating at you.  Emotional ills turn your body against itself, sapping your energy, reducing your efficiency, causing deterioration in your health.  And of course they siphon off your happiness.  What is the antidote?  Obviously it is to fill the mind with attitudes of goodwill, forgiveness, faith, love, and the spirit of imperturbability.
1. Remember that anger is an emotion, and an emotion is always warm, even hot.  Therefore, to reduce an emotion, cool it.  Deliberately oppose the heat of this emotion with coolness -- freeze it out.  Reduce your tone.  Unclench your hands.  
2. Anger expresses the accumulated vehemence of a multitude of minor irritations.  Added together, they can blaze.  Make a list of everything that irritates you.  Listing it will dry up the tiny rivulets that feed the great river of anger.
3. Every time you feel anger, say, "It isn't worth it to spend $1000 worth of emotion on a five-cent irritation."
4. When a hurt-feeling situation arises, get it straightened out as quickly as possible.  Go to someone you trust and pour it out to him until not a vestige of it remains within you.  Then forget it.
5. Pray for the person who has hurt your feelings.  Continue this until you feel the malice fading away.  Sometimes you may have to pray for quite awhile to get that result.  This is positively Guaranteed to work.
11. How To Get People To Like You.  You can attain popularity by practicing a few simple, natural and easily mastered techniques.  
1. First, become a comfortable person, one who is easy-going and pleasant.  Christianity teaches that one basic trait will go far toward getting people to like you.
2. Do not assume the reason other people do not like you is because of something wrong with them.  Assume, instead, that the trouble is within yourself and determine to find and eliminate it.  Think of each person you have met that day.  Think a kindly thought about that person.  Then pray for each one.  When you pray for others, it tends to modify your personal attitude toward them.  You lift the relationship to a higher level.  The best in the other person begins to flow out toward you as your best flows toward them.  Granted, some people are more likable than others.  Nevertheless, a serious attempt to know any individual will reveal qualities within him that are admirable, even lovable.
3. Conquer feelings of irritation with other people by making an exhaustive list of everything you could possibly admire about each person who annoys you.  Daily attempt to add to the list.  You may discover that people you thought you did not like prove to have many pleasing qualities.
4. Practice building up the ego of other persons.  Whomever you help to build up and become a better, stronger, finer person will give you his undying devotion.  Build up as many people as you can.  Do it unselfishly.  Do it because you like them and because you see possibilities in them.  Do this and you will never lack for friends.  You will always be well-thought-of.  Build people up and love them genuinely.  Do them good and their esteem and affection will flow back toward you.
12. Prescription for Heartache.  What will reduce inner suffering?  One element is physical activity.  Avoid the temptation to sit and brood.  Resolve to get back into the mainstream of life's activities.  Employ healthy, mind-relieving busyness, but be sure it is of a worthwhile and constructive nature.  Superficial escapism through feverish activity merely deadens pain temporarily and does not heal.  Be as normal and natural as possible.  The deeper remedy for heartache is the curative comfort supplied by trust in God.  Inevitably the basic prescription for heartache is to turn to God as an attitude of faith, and empty the mind and heart to Him.  Perseverance in the act of spiritual self-emptying will finally bring healing to the broken heart.  Another curative element is to gain sound and satisfying philosophy of life and death and deathlessness.  Read and believe the Bible as it tells about the goodness of God and the immortality of the soul.  Make prayer and faith the habit of your life.  Learn to have real fellowship with God and with Jesus Christ.
13. How To Draw Upon That Higher Power.  Practice resting yourself in God.  Practice depending upon Him for His support and power.  Believe He is giving it to you now and don't get out of touch with that power.  Yield yourself to it.  Let it flow through you.  Learn to take a positive, optimistic attitude toward every problem.  In direct proportion to the intensity of the faith which you muster will you receive power to meet your situation.  There is a Higher Power.  State your problem.  Ask for a specific answer.  Believe that now, through God's help, you are gaining power over your difficulty.  Why be defeated when you can draw upon that Higher Power?

Book Report: Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"

August 8, 2010 Book Report: Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I have owned this book for a long while. Decades? Has "always" been on my reading list. Well, I started it last night and finished it this afternoon. It was that interesting, plus I really wanted to have it checked off my list. Pronto.

From the preface, Dr. Gordon Allport summarizes, "The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose it. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds, he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.."

He and his fellow inmates were stripped to their naked bodies. He said at that point he struck out his entire former life. After so many atrocities, they eventually acquired a grim sense of humor and a sense of curiosity, both as forms of protection. Disgust, horror and pity gave way to apathy, after the atrocious suffering became so commonplace. He observed that it was not the physical pain that hurt the most, but the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all, applying this also to the reaction of unjustly punished children. The most painful part of the beatings was the insult which they implied.

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Inmates retreated from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. It occurred to him while imagining his wife that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deeper meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. This allowed him to escape the desolation and spiritual poverty.

He had at least one opportunity to leave on a transport of sick passengers, but declined and said instead that this was not his way, that he had learned to let fate take its course. This was ultimately in his favor because he stayed safe where he was, and the others perished. He described being fearful of making decisions, because they could be for life or death. They felt that fate was their master, so they allowed it to take its own course.

The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. Apathy could be overcome, irritability could be suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, tho choose one's own way. There were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision whcih determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom. In the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him, mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. The way in which a man accepts his fate, and all the suffering it entails, the way he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life.

They found meaning and inner strength by pointing out a future goal to which they could look forward. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. This is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task. The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. He also lost his spiritual hold, let himself decline, and became subject to mental and physical decay. What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which in constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. "Life" does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. It was important to realize life was still expecting something from the prisoners; something in the future was expected of them. Each individual is uniqu and single. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility that a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. Then also,no man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour.

After their release it was difficult to re-assimilate in public. Men needed to be slowly guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to him. The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore - except his God.

Book Report: Norman Vincent Peale, Positive Thinking Every Day

August 7, 2010 Book Report: Norman Vincent Peale, Positive Thinking Every Day

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It's small, large-print, easy to read, pages flow past really quickly, and every page has pertinent information on it. There is an index to search for topics. -The entire book is worthy of study. I will undoubtedly end up with 2/3 of the content here in my summary. However, the thoughts are really that important. Read on.

• STRENGTH: You can be greater than anything that can happen to you. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have. Constantly reemphasize the great fact that God built potential strength into your nature. By affirming it and practicing it, this basic strength will toughen up as muscles do.
• SELF-AFFIRMATION: Every day remind yourself of your own ability, of your good mind, and affirm that you can make something really good out of your life.
  
• PLENTY: Stress the thoughts of plenty. Thoughts of plenty help create plenty. If you think lack, you tend to create a condition of lack. Shift your thought pattern to one of abundance and believe that God is now in the process of giving you the abundance you need. Never think or talk lack for in doing so you are decreeing lack. Every day flush lack thoughts out of your mind and refill with dynamic thoughts of abundance. Expect generous benefits in never failing supply.
• SELF-KNOWLEDGE: The great secret of getting what you want from life is to know what you want and believe you can have it. Always do something for others, then ask God to help you, and get at it! Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously. There is a reason why you do what you do, and it is an important day in your life experience when at last you discover the reason. Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-correction.
• WILL-POWER: Cultivate will power, that massive creative force that God the creator built into you. Do not let it remain flabby but strengthen it by use and exercise.
• DEFEAT: Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory. Why be defeated when you are free to draw upon a Higher Power that can do everything for you? When you emphasize and reemphasize a positive attitude, you will finally convince your own consciousness that you can do something about difficulties. Do not let circumstances defeat you. You can if you think you can. Never bog down in defeat psychology. Always, in the midst of defeat, keep looking for victory. Think defeat and you are bound to feel defeated. But practice thinking confident thoughts, and you will develop such a strong sense of capacity that regardless of what difficulties arise you will be able to overcome them.
• ENTHUSIASM: Life's blows cannot break a person whose spirit is warmed at the fire of enthusiasm. Cushion the painful effects of hard blows by keeping enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle. Act courageous; act happy; act enthusiastic. When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. Never forget that all the enthusiasm you need is in your mind. Let it out - let it live - let it motivate you. Go at life with abandon; give it all you've got. And life will give all it has to you. The secret of changing one's personality, regardless of the problem, is to think in new categories, reeducating your thought pattern so that enthusiasm is put into the top-priority category. To keep the magic of enthusiasm working for you, have an eye for the charm and romance of living and practice aliveness. If you are out of enthusiasm, get reborn spiritually. That experience will make you come alive. The vital secret of successful living is to get turned on with self-repeating enthusiasm, in-depth enthusiasm, and to keep the positive principle going. At least 10 times every day, affirm, "I expect the best and with God's help will attain the best."
• GOD: Let go and let God. Let Him take over your life and run it. He knows how. You'll like the results better than your own self-management. (Amen!) Know that with God's help you can take what you have to take courageously and victoriously. God will always take care of those who love Him and trust Him and sincerely do His will. Take God as your partner in every enterprise. Know for a fact that you are never alone. A great Someone is with you always. Contact with God establishes within us a flow of the same type of energy that re-creates the world and that renews springtime every year. Commit the following statement to memory and say it now and then: "I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears." (Psalm 34:4). God's peace deeply embedded in your mind can often have a tranquilizing and healing effect upon nerves and tension. God's peace is itself medicinal. Do not spurn God's help, for He has broad shoulders, strong arms, and wonderful ideas. Pray big; God will grant big things if you ask for them and are big enough to receive them. Practice believing that God is as real and actual as your spouse, or your business partner, or your closest friend. Practice talking matters over with Him; believe that He hears and gives thought to your problem. Persevere in your search for God. When you find Him, zest and enthusiasm will fill your mind to overflowing. There is only one real security in this world, only one: identification of the soul with the ultimate reality - God, our refuge and strength. To help reduce tension, practice "the peace of God which passeth all understanding." Then note the quiet power that wells up within you. If you sit and relax and get yourself in tune with God and open yourself to the flow of His power, then sitting is not laziness; in fact, it is about the best way to renew power. Keep your mental and spiritual "contact points" cleaned so that God can operate through your mind. Simply practice thinking about God. This will make your mind spiritually receptive. Develop a tremendous faith in God and that will give you a humble yet soundly realistic faith in yourself. Trust God and live a day at a time. The secret of having prosperity and enjoying life is the unshakable conviction that God will take care of those who love and trust Him. Put your trust in God and just go calmly on your way. One of the greatest techniques of human well-being is surrendering yourself to the recuperative power of God. Do your best and leave the results to God.
• PROBLEMS: Help other people to cope with their problems, and your own will be easier to cope with. One of the few greatest satisfactions of this life is to handle problems efficiently and well. In every difficult situation is potential value. Believe this, then begin looking for it. Break the tension of a problem by shifting your thoughts completely from it and instead think only about God. When you return to the problem your insight will sharpen, your understanding deepen. The more problems you have, the more alive you are. How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself - so always think positively! Don't let any obstacle stop you. Always remember that you have spiritual and mental qualities within you that can overcome even the seemingly impossible. The attitude you take toward problems and difficulties is far and away the most important factor in controlling and mastering them. Always affirm there is an answer to any problem and that you can find it; indeed, that you are now finding that answer. Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will. Believe that problems do have answers, that they can be overcome, that you can solve them. These positive belief thoughts strongly tend to bring back belief results. Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles; they toughen and make strong. The tough-minded optimist views any problem as a challenge to his intelligence, ingenuity and faith. He keeps thinking, praying and believing. He knows there is a solution and so he finally finds it. Organize your difficulties and problems. Then you will have half the solution, and the rest will come more surely and easily. The positive thinker is a hard-headed, tough-minded and factual realist. He sees all the difficulties clearly, but he sees more than difficulties - he tries to see the solutions of those difficulties.
• HAPPINESS: Our happiness depends upon the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast. You have not only the right but the duty to be happy and successful. The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised. When you get up in the morning, you have 2 choices - either to be happy or to be unhappy. Just choose to be happy.
• POSITIVE PRINCIPLE: Thoughts of a kind have a natural affinity. The positive thinker activates the world around him positively. Become a positive thinker. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities - they're always there. YOU CAN IF YOU THINK YOU CAN (powerful 7 words). The positive thinker constantly sends out positive thoughts, together with vital mental images of hope, optimism and creativity. He therefore activates the world around him positively and strongly tends to draw back to himself positive results. The positive principle creates, believes, goes for victory.
• BELIEF: Believe that all the resources you need are in your mind. That is a formula that really works! First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, "I believe," three times. God wants to give you great things, but even He cannot give you greater blessing than you can believe in. You can make your life what you want it to be through belief in God and in yourself. Practice believing in people and SHOW them that you believe in them. Believe that you are bigger than your difficulties, for indeed, you are.
• SELF-ESTEEM: It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself, you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship. If you've never really found the extraordinary person within you, do so. Then you'll start liking yourself, and with good reason.
• AFFIRMATIONS: Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes, and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful. Go to sleep using the conscious thought and affirmation that whatever you may be called upon to handle the next day, God and you will be able to do it together. Make a mental list of happy thoughts and pass them through your mind several times every day.
  
• WORDS: Practice word therapy - serenity, urbanity (refined courtesy or politeness), imperturbability, equanimity. Say those powerful, mind-healing words to yourself every day. Let them recondition your stressful attitudes. Thoughts and words form your mental image. And since we become what we picture, be sure your thoughts and words express prosperity and blessing rather than poverty and defeat. The power of words to change your life comes to top helpfulness in the 7 magic words: "I can do all things through God." It isn't always necessary to say words when you pray. Spend a minute just thinking about God. Think how good he is, how kindly, and that He is right by your side guiding you and watching over you.
• HOPE: For the next 24 hours, deliberately speak hopefully about everything, about your job, about your health, about your future. Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit. Always maintain hopefulness, especially when the going is hard.
• FAITH: Faith plus dynamic dreams plus real working at it is a go-ahead formula that gets you where you want to go. The unconquered and unconquerable in this world are those who hold ever fresh in their hearts an abiding faith in a Higher Power and in their own destiny. Never participate in a worry conversation. Shoot an injection of faith into all your conversations. Faith is the most powerful of all forces operating in humanity, and when you have it in depth, nothing can get you down. Nothing. Directly in proportion to the faith that you have and use will you get results. Two great forces operate in the mind: fear and faith. Fear is very powerful, but faith is more powerful. The greatest power available to a human is in-depth faith, the force by which you can move mountains of difficulty. Faith produces results. You can become free of worry by practicing the opposite and stronger habit of faith. With all the strength and perseverance you can command, start practicing faith.
• CHANGE: Change yourself and your work will seem different. The great secret of successful living is to change your thinking from wrong to right, from error to truth. If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.
• HELPING: When you become detached mentally from yourself and concentrate on helping people with their difficulties, you will be able to cope with your own more effectively. Somehow, the act of self-giving is a personal power-releasing factor. To be successful is to be helpful, caring, and constructive, to make everything and everyone you touch a little bit better. The best thing you have to give is yourself.
• MOTIVATION: To keep motivation going strong, begin at once the mental practice of seeing yourself as an altogether new individual - one who is always vital, vigorous ond excited. In adversity keep motivated, for often the best comes from difficulty.
• ENERGY: The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. Prayerize, visualize, energize, actualize.
  
• LOVE: When you are in an upsetting situation, try loving everyone involved and pray for them, hard as that may be. Loving doesn't mean sentimentality but rather a rational esteem for them as persons. If you love people, you inevitably get back love in return and thereby experience a joy that makes you a happy person. Love life and life will love you back.
• MIND: The mind can only give you back what it was first given. So fill your mind with all peaceful experiences possible, then make planned and deliberate excursions to them in memory. It isn't important what the condition of your body is; the important factor is the condition of your mind and soul. To make your mind healthy you must feed it nourishing, wholesome thoughts. Take the best into your mind and only that. Nurture it, concentrate on it, visualize it, prayerize it, surround it with faith. Make it your obsession. Spiritually creative mind power aided by God power will produce the best. An effective technique in developing a peaceful mind is the daily practice of silence. Feed your mind with thoughts that cause it to be peaceful. To have a mind full of peace merely fill it full of peace. It's as simple as that. Quiet your mind so that inspirations may rise from its depths. An inflow of new thoughts can remake you regardless of every difficulty you may face now. Practice emptying the mind. At least twice a day, empty your mind of fears, hates, insecurities, regrets, and guilt feelings. When you actually learn to release the potential power of your mind, you will discover that it contains ideas of such creative value that you need not lack anything.
• THOUGHTS: Every night empty your mind of unhappy thoughts as you empty your pockets, and come alive. What you think you will become - good or bad, weak or strong, defeated or victorious - so practice being a positive thinker in a time like this. The world in which you live is not primarily determined by outward conditions and circumstances but by thoughts that habitually occupy your mind. Give thanks daily for your blessings. Get the habit of thinking happy thoughts. Go out of your way to make other people happy. There is your formula for real happiness and enthusiasm. Take the bright view that if you do your part, the very best you know how, and always think and work positively, bountiful supply and abundant living will come. Take charge of your thoughts instead of allowing them to control you. Rid yourself of all sick thoughts - hate, resentment, inferiority, and the like. Try living one day without any unhealthy thoughts. It may be very difficult, but try another day, until it becomes habitual, and life will move in the direction of becoming healthy, vital and alive. Old unhealthy thoughts can block off inspiration and motivation. Dropping them releases a strong flow of power through the mind.
• HURT FEELINGS: The minute your feelings are hurt, do just as when you hurt your finger. Put some spiritual iodine on the hurt at once by saying a prayer of love and forgiveness. When a hurt feeling arises, apply grievance drainage to your mind. Pour it out to someone you trust until not a vestige of it remains within you. Then forget it.
• PEACE: Saturate your thoughts with peaceful experiences, peaceful words and ideas, and ultimately you will have a storehouse of peace-producing experiences to which you may turn for refreshment and renewal of your spirit. To drop tension from your life, practice the getting of tranquility by passing peaceful words and thoughts through your mind daily and nightly. They have a strange healing quality. The chief struggle in gaining mental peace is the effort of revamping your thinking to the relaxed attitude of acceptance of God's gift of peace.
• ADVERSITY: When you become mentally convinced that you can make a comeback from any adversity, then all of your creative forces will come to your aid. As you develop and hold the thought that any adversity can actually be turned to your advantage, you then have an immense mental asset going for you. To every disadvantage there is a corresponding advantage.
  
• SELF-CONFIDENCE: Tackle life with abandon. Go all out, hold nothing back. Your self-confidence will draw results. We are not meant to be worms crawling defeated in the presence of a difficult situation. We are men, women and children of God, who can take charge of our thoughts and do what we will with them. We may live victoriously, not because we have any power within ourselves, but because when we give ourselves to God, He gives Himself to us. This is the great key to humble self-confidence. If you have lost confidence in your ability to win, make a list, not of the factors that are against you, butof those that are for you. Your inner power will reassert itself and lift you from defeat to victory.
• THANKSGIVING: Start and end every day, and in between times too, by thanking God for everything. Always let your prayer take the form of thanksgiving on the assumption that God is giving you great and wonderful things; for if you think he is, He surely is. Whatever you do, do not make all your prayers into the form of asking God for something. The prayer of thanksgiving is much more powerful. Do not always ask when you pray, but instead affirm that God's blessings are being given, and spend most of your prayers giving thanks.
• LACK: Stand up to any defeating lack thoughts and tell them to get out of your mind!
• BLESSINGS: As you go through life, do not practice subtraction; but instead add up your blessings, opportunities, possibilities. In doing so, you will be relaxed, outgoing, and successful.
• PRAYER: Prayer can freshen you up every evening and send you out renewed each morning. It releases and keeps power flowing freely and seems able even to normalize the aging process. The secret of prayer is to find the process that will most effectively open your mind humbly to God. So experiment with fresh prayer formulas. Practice new skills and get new insights. When you pray, ask the Lord for directions as to what to do and how to do it. Then believe what he tells you. Do as He says. Instead of trying to destroy all your anger, snip away by prayer each annoyance that feeds your anger. In so doing you will weaken it to such a point, that presently you will have control over it. Never start a day or any job without praying about it. You will get some of your best ideas that way. Pray for people you do not like or who have mistreated you. Resentment is blockade number one of spiritual power.
• WORK: Tell yourself that you like your work. This will tend to make it a pleasure instead of a drudgery. Don't write off the importance of hard work, the guts to keep at it, a definite goal, and the ability to have fun in the process. If there's no fun in it, something's wrong with all you're doing.
• FEAR: While fear thoughts can destroy creative capacity, and bring to pass things that are constantly feared, faith and positivism can create and develop. Take a long, straight look at your fear. Know it for the ghostly thing it is and stand firmly up to it. Then practice strong action. When you are afraid, do the thing you are afraid of and soon you will lose your fear of it.
• PROSPERITY: Prosperity is not always or even usually to be conceived in terms of money, but as a constant flow of God's blessings. Do your honest best, think prosperity, and the Lord will, for a fact, provide. He will do the providing through you.
• HEALTH: You can make yourself sick or well by the habitual thoughts you think. Don't drain back into your body the diseased thoughts of your mind. Right eating, right exercising, right thinking, right praying, right living - these tone up vitality. God has arranged two remedies for all illness. One is healing through natural laws applicable by science, and the other brings healing by spiritual law applicable through faith. For health, vitality, and aliveness, keep on affirming that the powerful life force of God is flowing through your mind, your spirit, your body.
  
• JOY: Get with the philosophy which teaches us to "Rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy" (1 Peter 1:8). Joy increases as you give it, and diminishes as you try to keep it for yourself. In giving it you will accumulate a deposit of joy greater than you ever believed possible.
• LIFE: The secret of life isn't in what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you. The tests of life are not to break you, but to make you.
• VISUALIZATION: Picture yourself as the kind of person you wish to be, affirm that you are that, then practice being it. Hold the image of the life you want, and make the image become fact.
• HUMILITY: Be humble, be big in mind and soul, be kindly; you will like yourself that way and so will other people.
• WORRY: See how many people you can help to cure their own worry habit. In helping another to overcome worry, you get greater power over it within yourself. Say to yourself, "Worry is just a very bad mental habit. And I can change any habit with God's help."
• ABILITY: Every day remind yourself of your own ability, of your good mind, and affirm that you can make something really good out of your life. Thinking positively about your abilities tends to release positive mental forces that produce effective action. Make a true estimate of your own ability, then raise it 10 percent.
• MISTAKES: Never let any mistake cause you to stop believing in yourself. Learn from it and go on.
• PAST: Don't waste mental energy brooding over past events or worrying about the future. Live a day at a time and do a job at a time.
• SELF-ACTUALIZATION: Keep probing for the tremendous quality built into you which has not yet emerged. Each of us has a big piece of good news deep within us - the fact that with God's help we have what it takes to meet all upsetting situations and react creatively to them.
• EFFORT: You will never know what great things you can do until you try - really try.
• SPIRITUALITY: Get the spiritual experience that really changes things: the in-depth type that brings you alive and keeps you alive every day all the way. Spiritual commitment is not for oddballs but for "with-it" people.
  
• DARING: Dare to be what your best self knows you ought to be; dare to be a bigger human being than you have ever been. The more you venture to live greatly, the more you will find within you what it takes to get on top of things and stay there.
• CRITICISM: Never react emotionally to criticism. Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified. If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business.
• RESENTMENT: Never allow sick attitudes to poison your thinking, nor let ill will make you ill. Avoid making your mind "sore" by that painful rehurting called resentment. Resentment or grudges do no harm to the person against whom you hold these feelings, but every day and every night of your life they are eating at you.
• ARGUMENTS: Avoid arguments, but whenever a negative attitude is expressed, counter with a positive and optimistic opinion.
• REBIRTH: Follow a steady program of renewing and revitalizing your positive attitudes. Never allow your reactions to become dull or insipid. Keep them new, fresh, vital.
• OPTIMISM: Go out of your way to talk optimistically about everything.
• MEDITATION: Sincere and practical meditation upon God and His truth acts as a medication for the soul and body.
• RELAXATION: The relaxed person is the powerful person.
• MIRACLES: Know that you are yourself a miracle, and believe you can make miracles happen - by thinking, praying, believing, working, and by helping people.
• FORGIVENESS: Remember that you will never be spiritually blessed until you forgive. Good will cannot flow toward you unless it flows from you.
• LISTENING: Practice a daily quiet time in which to listen intently for God's direction; listen more deeply than your own thoughts.
• BOLDNESS: Be bold, and mighty powers will come to your aid.
• POWER: One can impel his personality powers into action by intense desire, intense belief, and intense prayer - "intense" differentiating these factors from the usual bland attitudes of so many.
• DECISIONS: Never force a decision. Let it simmer. If you properly condition the mind the decision will emerge when completely done.
• SUCCESS: Success requires a humble yet real sense of adequacy, a normal sense of self-respect, and with it the conviction that you can accomplish what you want to do. By acting as you wish yourself to be, in due course you will become as you act.
  
• ACCEPTANCE: Ask for what you want, but be willing to take what God gives you. It may be better than what you ask for.
• NATURE: Take pleasure in the pattern of sunlight falling through the trees or the sound of the crunch of snow under your foot. Relish these things which are the essence of life and they will make your heart sing with in you. Nature siphons off boredom.
• KINDNESS: Do kindly things for people, for nothing can so completely erase gloom and create new vigor as the practice of caring and goodwill. Select a few people to be particularly kind to today, those you were a little harsh with yesterday.
• EMOTIONS: Never react emotionally to what happens but always look for and find in every circumstance the good that's surely present there.

Book Report: Robert Bramson, Coping With Difficult People

August 4, 2010 Book Report: Robert Bramson, Coping With Difficult People

Overall I really enjoyed and appreciated the content of this book. Very concrete instructions, which I found refreshing. I highlighted a lot of material, but the most constructive I found in the first third. The author defines a Difficult Person (person with habitually troublesome behavior that affects most of the people with whom they come into contact), and describes the patterns of Difficult Behavior (Hostile-Aggressives, Complainers, Silent and Unresponsives, Super-Agreeables, Negativists, know-it-All Experts, and Indecisives). He defined the concept of Coping. Coping means contending on equal terms. People behave in difficult manners because they have learned that to do so keeps others off-balance and incapable of effective action. In this way, Difficult People gain control over others and put them at a disadvantage. Effective Coping is the sum of those actions that you can take to correct the power balance, and minimize the impact of others' difficult behavior on the immediate situation in which you find yourself.

The good thing about coping is that it provides an alternative to acceptance, and to trying to change personality (yours or the Difficult Person's). Acceptance causes martyrdom in the aquiescer, and reinforces difficult behavior in the other person. Trying to change another's personality is the world's greatest hard-luck story. When the motivation for change comes from outside of the person, it is quite costly and unlikely to work. Coping allows you and the Difficult person to get on with the task at hand. Coping works because it interferes with the "successful" functioning of difficult behavior. The purpose of the coping methods is to balance the power the Difficult Person has over you.

I am going to stop the book report here - the material is rather too detailed for the quick summary that is appropriate for here. I am more inclined to come back to the book to refresh my memory on its contents. Highly recommended.

Great article on Work-Life Balance!

http://www.entrepreneur.com/worklife/worklifebalanceadvice/article207342.html

Five Steps to a Positive Attitude

5 Steps to a Positive Attitude By Robert Masello

Sometimes simple changes can make all the difference when trying to achieve an optimistic outlook. Here are some steps you can take to promote a positive attitude.

1. Play the Part. Act happy—even if you aren’t (yet). It will cheer you and everyone around you.
2. Seek Out Positive Distractions. Think about what always gives you pleasure and do it. Don’t wait for the activity to come to you — buy the tickets, call your friend, get on a bike.
3. Keep It Simple. Do one thing at a time—at least for one or two hours a day. Multitasking can make you feel tense. Focusing on one activity is calming and allows you to enjoy the experience fully.
4. Focus on Family & Friends. Spend more time with friends and loved ones. Enjoying close relationships is the No. 1 predictor of happiness.
5. Take Action. Passivity tends to make you feel worse. Choosing to change, even with a very small step, is itself a mood-enhancer.

Running Into a Brick Wall: How I Learned How to Appreciate Adversity | MyEVT

Running Into a Brick Wall: How I Learned How to Appreciate Adversity | MyEVT

25 books for your summer reading - Veterinary Business Style

Ramp up your management skills

Dr. Peter Weinstein, MBA, is the executive director of the Southern California Veterinary Medical Association. He’s also a former president of VetPartners, a partner in Veterinary Success Services, and a former practice owner. Dr. Weinstein recommends:

How to Win Friends and Influence People (Simon and Schuster, 2009). Excerpt

First written in 1937, business guru Dale Carnegie’s guide to people skills is just as pertinent today as it was 70-plus years ago. It’s the ultimate time-tested guide on how to communicate with virtually everybody: staff members, clients, vendors, and even family members.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (Harper-Collins, 1995).
Learn to fight the myth of the entrepreneur with Michael E. Gerber. Gerber provides a great vision of the small business world that will make you think seriously about how you run your practice. Can you create a practice that’s so well organized and systematic that you don’t need to be present for it to be successful? After reading this book, you just might.

The One Minute Manager (William Morrow, 1982). Excerpt
This is one of the most celebrated books on management, and it begins like a business fairy tale: “Once there was a bright young man who was looking for an effective manager.” This insightful parable by Kenneth Blanchard, PhD, and Spencer Johnson, MD, simplifies business to its most basic activities. If you need to learn how to work with your team to accomplish your goals, you can start with this book. Though you can read this in one sitting, you’ll find yourself going back to it again and again.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (Thomas Nelson, 2007). Excerpt
The title of this book by John C. Maxwell says it all. Our success is forever tied to the people who make up our teams. To achieve anything, we need to know how to motivate them. This book by a leader with more than 20 years’ experience is a must-read if you want to be a effective leader—not just in your practice but also in life.

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (Twelve, 2009). Excerpt
Dan Senor and Saul Singer explain how a nation of 7 million people surrounded by hostile neighbors continues to grow its economic base. Why do some of the highest-tech companies in the world have offices in Israel? Find out in this unique story of how one country’s military philosophy has influenced its business acumen.

Develop your leadership style

Dr. James E. Thomas is an owner of Veterinary Emergency Center, a multispecialty practice in Richmond, Virginia. Here are his top picks for business reading:

Leading at the Speed of Growth: Journey From Entrepreneur to CEO (Wiley, 2001).
This quick read by Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews outlines how to transition your business from a mom-and-pop shop to a successful organization that can survive long after you leave.

If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently (Second River Healthcare, 2004).
Fred Lee has written probably the best book on establishing a culture of exceptional customer service. This motivating book on Disney’s best corporate practices should be mandatory for every member of the veterinary team.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 2002). Excerpts
Every boss and manager will recognize himself or herself as a contributor to team dysfunction in this quick but powerful read by Patrick Lencioni. Fortunately, the author spends much of the book presenting lots of great ideas for improved and effective team-building.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t (HarperBusiness, 2001). Excerpt
In this leadership and management classic, Jim Collins shares compelling insights about how narrow the margin is between being good and being great. The choice is ours.

Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic: Inside One of the World’s Most Admired Service Organizations (McGraw Hill, 2010).
Leonard L. Berry and Kent D. Seltman provide a phenomenal illustration of the power of collaborative medicine in which culture dictates that the client and the patient are priority number one. This is an excellent read, particularly for those involved in multidisciplinary practice.

Nurture your relationships

Dr. Donald J. Klingborg is associate dean at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. He actively engages in preparing his students for the financial and business aspects of the veterinary profession that await them. Here’s what he’d place on your bookshelf this summer:

Fabled Service: Ordinary Acts, Extraordinary Outcomes (Jossey-Bass, 1997).
Author Betsy Sanders reminds us of the importance of great customer service. Veterinary medicine is a profession operating as a service business—and it is the pet-owning client, not the veterinarian, who defines whether the service is good or bad.

Encouraging the Heart: A Leader’s Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others (Jossey-Bass, 2003).
Out of the plethora of leadership readings available today, this short book by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner gets to the heart of the biggest issues surrounding great leadership and focuses on effective recruiting and supporting of “followers.” After all, a leader without followers doesn’t accomplish anything.

An Edible History of Humanity (Walker and Co., 2009). Excerpt
Tom Standage—the author of A History of the World in Six Glasses—has written a fantastic book that will stimulate your thinking about civilization, social preferences, and the influence of food on our culture.

Skills for Communicating With Patients (Radcliffe Medical Press, 2005).
Jonathon Silverman, Suzanne M. Kurtz, and Juliet Draper provide the authoritative reference for effective doctor-client communications. The detail is fantastic for those who like sequential information. Dr. Klingborg uses it in chunks and finds it extraordinarily useful.

How We Decide (Mariner Books, 2010). Excerpt
Jonah Lehrer’s book about the psychology of decision-making has the potential to positively affect all our relationships. Understanding how our brains work can help us understand behaviors—our own as well as those of our staff and clients.

Learn from history with Dr. Stephens’ picks

Dr. Jack L. Stephens is the founder and president of Pets Best Insurance. He’s also a former practice owner and the founder of Veterinary Pet Insurance. Dr. Stephens recommends these historical books:

Truman (Simon and Schuster, 1993). Excerpt
David G. McCullough expounds on the life of Harry Truman, an underrated president who, in the author’s view, made more important, far-lasting, and critical decisions than any president since George Washington. Truman’s leadership style shines in this book, which portrays him as plainspoken, honest, and willing to accept the sometimes negative political consequences for his decisions.

Customer Mania! It’s Never Too Late to Build a Customer-Focused Company (Free Press, 2004). Excerpt
Ken Blanchard, Jim Ballard, and Fred Finch collaborated on this important read for all current and future business owners. They draw lessons from the rejuvenation of the world’s largest restaurant company—Yum! Brands, the owner of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s, and A&W Restaurants—to show how companies large and small can become customer- centric and build fans, not just clients.

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton and Co., 2005).
In this Pulitzer Prize winner, Jared Diamond provides remarkable insights into what causes nations and countries to evolve. He argues that the success of Western nations is due in large part to environmental differences between countries, not moral goodness or intellectual superiority.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin, 2005). Excerpt
A companion to Guns, Germs, and Steel, this book by Jared Diamond explores the geographic and environmental reasons that some populations have flourished and others haven’t. Diamond’s two books have been available for several years. If you haven’t read them, they deserve your attention.

15 Stars: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Marshall—Three Generals Who Saved the American Century (NAL Trade, 2008). Excerpt
Stanley Weintraub takes a close look at three remarkable generals who each attained the rank of five stars during World War II. The book also details exactly how these powerful generals affected the outcome of the war and the postwar construction of Europe and Japan. In Weintraub’s view, the lesser-known Marshall realized the greatest achievement.

Push the boundaries

And last but not least: I’m a partner with Gatto McFerson CPAs, a financial consulting, management, and business-appraisal firm specializing in the veterinary profession. Here’s what I think you should be reading this summer:

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Back Bay Books, 2007). Excerpts
Many people point to Outliers as their favorite book by Malcolm Gladwell, but I prefer Blink. Gladwell firmly believes that your initial gut reaction to a situation, place, or person (such as a potential hire) is usually the correct one.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Wiley, 1998).
Peter L. Bernstein discusses the evolution of risk. And risk is a major component of the veterinary practice appraisal process. The riskier an investment, the less a buyer is willing to pay. In this book, Bernstein teaches you how to capitalize on that risk.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Harper Perennial, 2009). Excerpts
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner shine a light on economics and certain trends in a unique and easy-to-read way, with wide-ranging examples: sumo wrestlers, the Ku Klux Klan, drug dealers, and parents.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Broadway Business, 2010). Excerpt
Chip Heath and Dan Heath delve into the counterintuitive psychology of change, such as why life-altering transitions are often easier to make than smaller ones. Have you ever wondered why your staff reacts to a new computer system with a shrug, but a near riot breaks out when you switch brands of coffee? This book explains why.

Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie (Scribner, 2005). Excerpt
This book is for those who have a football fanatic in their lives. In it, Mark St. Amant exposes fantasy football and its addictive nature. I gave this book to my wife with a card that read, “See? You could have had it worse.”

Veterinarians often look to other veterinarians and veterinary consultants for the best thinking on business, customer service, and the like. But you can see from selections like these that some of the best ideas for managing, communicating, and learning about the world can come from outside veterinary medicine. Grab a book or two here, and satisfy a curiosity or solve a problem you have.

Tom McFerson, CPA, ABV, is a partner with Gatto McFerson CPAs in Santa Monica, Calif. Share your summer reading picks on our Community—visit dvm360.com/summerreading. Send questions or comments to ve@advanstar.com.

Book Report: Joyce Meyer, Peace

July 7, 2010 Book Report: Joyce Meyer, Peace

This was a quick read - large print, few pages. Good book to kick off my summer program. If one had time to sit down and knock it off, would take a few hours to complete. Joyce's modifications can sometimes be distracting, and I did get more out of the material when I skimmed back through to take notes for this summary.

I was optimistic this book would offer some clues on how to have peace in my life, not so much strife. The passages mentioned are comforting. Jesus offers a special peace, unlike the peace the world offers. Worldly peace = "feeling" of peace experienced when everything in your life is going your way. It flees when things are not going your way (which let's face it is most of the time). Jesus's peace = good times and bad, in the middle of a storm.

It would be wonderful if everything went your way all the time. To effect this, we can try to remove anything and everything that we don't like or doesn't "feel" good. The real key is, We need to use our FAITH, not to remove unpleasant things or people, but instead to calmly and peacefully go thru the storms and trials of life. Be prepared to deal with the trials peacefully! Because we can't always avoid or eliminate the trials. They will always be there.

John 14:27: Stop ALLOWING yourselves to be agitated and disturbed. You are doing it to yourself. Are you frustrating yourself trying to make things happen? God has a perfect timing for everthing. Believe this. Trust Him. You must wait on His timing; this brings him honor (that you trust Him and have faith) adn brings you PEACE.

Are you trying to change the people around you? People cannot change people. Only God cabn get inside a person's heart and cause him to want to change (so pray that God touches that person). If we force people from the outside to show different behavior, by maKign demands on them, it ends up stealing everyone's peace. You will not have peace if you try to get what you want the wrong way.

You cannot change YOURSELF. The Holy Spirit is bringing you into perfection or maturity. You should be resting in God, waiting on Him and His timing, trusting Him with the other people in your life and even with your own self.

Many people do not enjoy peace because they are out of the will of God. They follow their own will rather than God's will. They do what they feel like or what they think is right rather than following God's word and being led by PEACE. Be led by peace. You will be sorry if you go against the leading of the Holy Spirit. It may not make sense to you at the time. God will reveal His reasons in time. Many times Peace as Compass is all He will give you to let you know if you are "in" or "out" of his will. Later you may know why, or you may NEVER know why. But you will NEVER know a peaceful life, if you disobey His leading and follow your own will.

Satan knows me, maybe better than I know myself. Satan knows what bothers me. Satan sets me up, to get me upset. Be careful in these times not to lose your peace (patience, prudence). Avoid areas that are known to irritate. Get to peace then look there for the Holy Spirit. If you have a problem and the devil cannot drive you to be upset over it, he has no power over you. Your power is in maintaining a calm, peaceful, trusting attitude. The devil's power is in causing you to be upset and fearful. When you find yourself in a troublesome situation, let your goal be to simply stay calm. (When I recognize being upset or fearful -> devil at work.) Keep Mouth Shut if you are about to add fuel to the devil's fire. Recognize it; do not add to it. Watch for his scheme, and do not play into his hands. Be smarter than the devil. Each time you begin to feel upset or frustrated, STOP - try to recognize what the devil is trying to do. (What the devil's going on here??) If I give a place to these negative thoughts and emotions, what will the result be? Don't stay upset. In Quietness and in Confidence shall be your strength. Disquiet = Weakness. The Holy Spirit does not work in turmoil; the devil works in turmoil.

Luke 22:46: Jesus teaches to wake up and pray that I won't be tested. Do not rely on yourself or your strength to resist the devil. Pray daily that God will give you grace to resist the devil when he tries to steal your peace. Ask the Lord to strengthen you and help you. Do not try to do it by yourself! Ask for help. You can do all things through Christ, but nothing by yourself. You must have a humble attitude if you want God to help you.

In times of trial, do what God leads you to do, then take your position in Christ and watch Him work on your behalf. When you are attacked, stay in peace. This tells the devil he is defeated. He does not know what to do with you if he cannot get you upset. Showing God this attitude of peace and rest shows you are operating in real faith, and assures you of being delivered by God.

Go ahead and enjoy your life, while God works on your problems. The Bible says, God will meet our needs, so why should I worry about it? Worrying solves nothing. Ask God to take care of your problems. Ask God to show you if there is anything else he wants you to do. Pray and stay in peace (instead of pray and worry =}). Enjoy your life - God will come through in the end.

God will give you grace for today, but will not give you grace for tomorrow until tomorrow arrives. People (Cathy) worry about things that never happen. We receive God through faith; we receive the devil through fear. Do not waste today's grace to enjoy today, by worrying about tomorrow.

*No regrets. Trust God to make it work out all right. He has the capability to clean up our mistakes. Ask the Lord to let others know your heart was right even though you said the wrong thing.

Turn situations around and look at things in a more positive light. Things could ALWAYS be worse. Keep a positive perspective.

Pray to God. Make your requests known to God, and the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When, according to circumstance, you should be upset, yet you have peace, it is a wonderful experience. You cannot buy this kind of peace. It is yours when you accept Him as your Lord and Savior and learn to operate in His principles.

Commit your problems to His loving care. Do this as soon as the Holy Spirit makes you aware that you are worrying or that you have lost your peace. Do this at the onset, right away, at the beginning of the attack. Refuse to worry. Cast the care of the situation on God. Change your thinking pattern. Instead of one, do the other.

In order not to worry, you must not think about the problem. You cannot think about your problem if you are thinking about something else. When you do need to think about it to make decisions, you will have to think positively about it and not negatively. You can be realistic about your problem and not be negative.

Do Not Worry - Just Pray. If there is anything worthy of praise, think about that. Grace is the power of the Holy Spirit. Grace can help put these principles into practice in my life so I might enjoy the blessedness of a peaceful life.

My Day Zero Project (101 things in 1,001 days)

http://dayzeroproject.com/user/Chilli

Puke Stories (compilation for my book on cat puke)

• The one about the emergency room
• The one about the white shirt in the laundry basket
• The one about my clean sheets
• The one about my carpets
• The one about the scratching pad
  

Balance

Philosophical topic for my FB Friends... tell me about BALANCE in your life. Everyone has busy lives, important work, big decisions, people to please, bills to pay. How do you achieve and maintain BALANCE?

• I make sure I make time for ME. That means I go work out a few times a week, as well as having a glass of wine, and time to go see silly accordion players when they are in town. I play as hard as I work. I figure that if I am not taken care of, I can't be on my A game to do all those other things. I've been a pretty happy person most of the time--but the last year has been particularly great...and a lot of it was finally realizing that the situation I was in work wise wasn't something I could fix, and it was OK to walk away from it.
• Personally, I think balance fluctuates. If you figure out how to find it AND maintain, let me know. But, you can't stress about it, cuz then you will be out of balance....
• Setting realistic goals - Instead of saying - I'm going to clean the entire house today, I think, I'll be happy if I get 2 rooms done. Instead of saying - I'm going to exercise every day this week, I think, I'm going to exercise at least 3 days. I say I'm going to work until 7 each night this week and really get a lot done instead, I say - I'm going to work until 7 on 2 nights and try to get out of there by 5 on the other nights etc........that way, I'm happy for what I've accomplished instead of mad at myself for what I didn't get done and I get a lot more done.
• A long time ago I realized that a good motto to try to live your life by is "don't sweat the small stuff"....this puts all things in perspective and allows one to realize just how many things can be thought of as the small stuff, especially compared to others troubles.
• I immerse myself in the WORD of God it is consistent, always there, never changes
• Only try to control the things you can, let go of the others....spend time with people who make you happy, let loose of (or minimize time) with those that suck the life out of you, do the things you enjoy doing, do things for others that need and appreciate your efforts, keep a smile on your face, don't take any crap from people, businesses, etc,... RESPECT... expect it and don't take anything less, be good to yourself and do not forget that you are special! It is a struggle, but oh so rewarding because the better you feel, the more you can accomplish and next thing you know....you are closer to balance. Good topic!
• I don't know! I thought it was talking with my husband about EVERYTHING but I am enjoying MY time right now learning to run and being by myself - I think it changes! Thanks for letting me ramble!
• From Joyce Meyer, Peace: First Peter 5:8 says: "Be well balanced, be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring, seeking someone to seize upon and devour."