Living On Purpose

Friday night I heard a presentation about suicide facts by a professional counselor for Second Wind Fund of Metro Denver.  In order to pass on this important information, I took a few notes. Before the age of 20, half of all people have suicidal thoughts. Sixty to seventy percent of those who die by suicide have a drug or alcohol addiction, leaving, of course, 40% of people who die by suicide without any drug or alcohol addictions. More people die from suicide than auto accidents. Colorado ranks 6th in the nation for suicide rate.

Most people who attempt suicide don’t really want to die. They want to be free of their suffering. The people who survived jumping off the golden gate bridge have all been interviewed and a common thread found between them is that they regretted jumping just after they did it.

There are many risk factors for suicide, covered more at length in my ebook Sad for No Reason. A very big risk factor is a feeling of hopelessness in a person’s life. Silence and secrets are toxic to people and they lead to a higher risk for suicide, too. When people start mentioning that the world would be better off without them, or that they’d like to end it all, no matter how flippantly, they need someone to listen to them. If you can’t personally hear their story, refer them to one of the national suicide help telephone lines like 1-800-SUICIDE. The speaker Katie Ford mentioned how important it is to refrain from judging or threatening a suicidal person. An incorrect way to speak to a depressed and/or suicidal person goes like this: “One more comment like that young lady and we’ll have you committed.” The correct way to address a depressed and/or suicidal person is with open ended questions, paraphrasing, and validating feelings. (NOT discounting feelings).

I really resonated with the speaker Katie Ford from Second Wind Fund when she began describing how in today’s society, dysfunctions of the brain are separated and marginalized in favor of body dysfunctions. For instance, if someone has a heart murmur, they can easily get proper medical attention and supplements or medications to correct the problem or keep it in check. However, if someone is suffering from moderate depression, or a brain dysfunction like an amino acid imbalance, they are more likely to be told to “get over it” than to get appropriate help. In this way, mental health has been separated and stigmatized from the rest of the health care field. Dysfunctions of the brain, when left unchecked, lead to mild, then moderate, then severe depression and even suicide.

Don’t be ashamed to seek help for yourself or a loved one if you’re affected by suicidal thoughts or depression. The Second Wind Fund helps get affordable mental health care to uninsured teens at risk for suicide. http://www.thesecondwindfund.org/

With today’s dietary influences of prepackaged convenience foods, high fat foods, foods fried in rancid oils, and non-foods offering no nutritive value, a large percentage of people are unknowingly suffering from brain dysfunction. Often, outside events perceived as negative are triggers to the underlying brain dysfunction. These can be hard to diagnose. I personally found some great books that offer personality quizzes to help you: Food & Mood by Elizabeth Somer, The Mood Cure by Julia Ross, and The UltraMind Solution by Mark Hyman.

I have been caught up in a whirlwind of activity that leaves little time for Twitter or Blogging. I’ve been so focused on arranging the details of moving my household and our family business this month and next that I haven’t written down any inspirations I’ve experienced. Last week I secured a new place to live, signed the lease, and started registering my older son in middle school.  The new school promises to be a much, much better experience for him. Our new place of business will have parking for our mini-fleet of trucks and a very large office space all in one location. Our current office is separated from our parking yard by a quarter mile. Things should be better all around.

If I get too swept up in controlling all the details of a major life transition such as this and things don’t turn out as I want them to, I could become susceptible to depression and anger. Indeed, I’ve had my irritable days. Transitions are where my relationship to God and the Universe really gets highlighted.  During times of change, it’s my job to take appropriate action to get where I need to be. It’s not my job to try to force a situation to become exactly as I wish.  Tricky, huh? The details worked out for me not because I orchestrated the entire apartment hunt, but because I gave the details to God to work out. I was the one hitting the road and visiting about 10 different places to live, weighing pros and cons of each. When I felt overwhelmed and nervous, I went home and listened to Holosync and regained composure after an hour. When I didn’t know what to do, I handed the problem to God. This is a technique to release my worry, because worrying does me no good. Trusting in God or the Universe is difficult but it’s the only thing I can do that helps me sail through life calmly.

So it all worked out. I was accepted to the first apartment I applied for, they lowered the price of the unit during my “thinking” time and they made the move in special even less expensive, the unit itself overlooks a public park and tennis courts, I have a pool for the kids on site and best of all I finally have my master bathroom attached to the master bedroom. I think I’ve been wishing for one of those for over a decade.  In regards to the business, my husband was the one to find a new unit that he was wishing he could have for about six months but it was occupied. The landlord promised to call us when the tenants moved out. As it happened, they moved out the very month our current business landlord wanted to give us a month’s notice to leave because another business wanted to take over the entire building where our office space was housed. The entire transition happened smoothly, without incident, though we’re still in the middle of it. Details like these can’t be forced! God takes care of it for us. Call it synchronicity, grace, coincidence, or luck if you like. I’m thanking God.

I went on an extemporaneous hike in the mountains today.  My friend called me up in the morning to see if I could tag along. It was a sunshine and rain experience, to be sure. Colorado weather can turn on a dime, especially in the mountains. Since I live in the suburbs and spend lots of time in the city, I love to get out to the countryside every once in a while. Doing so helps me remember that the whole world isn’t really one big city. I do recommend changing your scenery every so often so your mind can get a bit of a break from the normal problems it’s working on…then when you return home you have a fresh perspective on the same old problems. And if not, at least you have a new experience under your belt and a little break from the norm!

Later today I wanted to reward my four year old for behaving so well on the trip and then coming home and helping clean fingerprints from walls. Perhaps just a sticker would have sufficed. But I decided to go find him the hula hoop he asked for so nicely. In the store, he tested the hula hoop and became frustrated that he couldn’t do it the first time. He changed his mind and wanted something else. I suggested a jump rope. He’s never tried to jump rope before. Once we got it home he tried it and couldn’t do it. He melted into a quivering heap of tears. The rope came with a jacks set and I taught him how to bounce the ball and pick up one jack at a time. He was also very frustrated with that. Whoops, the packaging said for five years old and up. He had an emotional meltdown because he couldn’t do these two new things right away.  Oh, how the family tried to convince him that practice makes perfect. He would hear none of it and insist rather that we throw away the toys.  We told him the story of how he took many weeks to learn how to arm-fart…you know, that trick where children stick one hand under their armpit and flap their arm to make that ‘froggy’ sound. He’s very proud of this skill; he likes to show it off to anyone who will listen. But, no, he’d rather just instantly grow up or else throw away the toys he can’t use perfectly.

I gave him lots of empathy while he was upset. This is so important for children; to know adults care about their feelings and actually feel for them. In this instance, a rational approach simply wouldn’t work on a four year old. The best thing I could do was to say, “aaaaaw, you look so frustrated. How do you feel?” This opened up a new conversation where he revealed he’d like to simply skip the painful growing up process and turn grown-up right now. Wouldn’t we all like that?

Aaaah, to skip all the painful parts of maturing! Heaven? Not quite. It’s how we respond to adversity that makes our character. Building character takes practice, like all things. These are painful words for a juvenile mind. Deep sigh, we’ll try again tomorrow or the next day.

I have returned from visiting my parents in the pacific northwest.  I want to share with you a fun little miracle story from my trip. I vowed to myself to not leave my parents house without a picture of a quail. I have never seen a town like this one, where people decorate their houses and mailboxes with images of quail. In fact, I’d never seen quail until I visited my parents house for the first time about ten years ago when they bought it. These birds are so common to the area that you see them in front yards of residential neighborhoods just hanging out. But I had never been ready with a camera at the moment I came across one of these birds during my previous visits.

One morning I decided to walk the dog for exercise instead of working out with my Gilad DVD. I walked her around the neighborhood carrying nothing but her leash. Unfortunately, she decided to poop on a neighbor’s manicured lawn. I wanted to be a good neighbor and clean up after her, but I had no bag. It was trash and recycle day and everybody had bins out on the curbs. Sneakily I took some newspaper from a recycle bin nearby and scooped up her mess, then I looked both ways and deposited the whole thing in another neighbor’s trash bin, hoping no one saw. This isn’t the miracle part of the story. This detail is simply here to show I didn’t bring anything on the walk.

When I arrived back at my parents house there was a single quail standing motionless on their driveway. I made a wide girth around it. The dog and I snuck into the house without disturbing it. I grabbed my camera, prepped it up and went outside to find the male bird still standing there, evidently posing for me. I shot two photos while slowly stepping towards it. Before I could get the third shot it flew away. But what a gorgeous shot the last one was! It was a miracle that I did get those two photos. Imagine that, there were enough batteries in the digital camera for just those photos. The batteries died the next time I tried to take a picture. Ant the handsome quail seemed to know it had a job to do: stand still long enough for me to get the camera and click it. I did give thanks to God for that.

Below is a detail from this photo, a close up of the beautiful plumage of the male quail’s head. I adjusted the color quality on the close up and I wish I had done the same thing for the above full body shot, but that’s okay. I’m leaving the color as it is.

The next day I saw this fella again, hanging out at a nearby house. I caught him on camera as he strutted away from me.

I’ve never seen one of these birds in Colorado, or Maryland, or Virginia, or in New England, or Hawaii, or Seattle. They are right at home and almost domesticated here in the tri-city area of Washington, beyond the cascade mountains, on the nearly desert flatland.

Some would say this story fits with the Law of Attraction. Make a clear statement to the universe and watch miracles happen as the universe bends over backwards to make it happen for you. I did make a clear internal statement that I was going to get a photo of a male quail before I left. I see little miracles like this happen all around me all the time.

I needed a time out! I’m staying with my parents for a time, letting them get to know their grandchildren. What a blessing for them to know each other, and what a blessing for me to be able to travel out of state to visit my parents. Travel has gotten difficult and expensive. I have not been on a plane for four years, and the last time I checked, you didn’t have to pay extra at the airport to have bags checked. Now on Alaska Airlines it’s $15 per checked bag, each way. I wanted to come home two days early, but changing travel dates is now harder than getting into the dentist on short notice.

I listened to Janet and Chris Attwood give a very long presentation today. They have a new program called the Passionate Life Secrets. To kick it off, they hosted “9 hours straight of passion, purpose and prosperity” streaming live online. I only heard about an hour in bits and pieces over the day. Here is the invitation to their new program, and it is not an affiliate link. The passion test is a way to define what your life purpose could be based on your talents, skills and passions. Once you learn how to bring these three aspects together for the purpose of bringing value to other people, you’ll be able to monetize your passions, they say. Can you imagine saying to yourself giddily, “I would do this for free and they actually pay me to do it!” I’m in no way affiliated with these programs, I’m just bringing this info to you as an fyi.

I did get to rent Alice in Wonderland during my trip. I have a new favorite phrase: “Lost my muchness, have I?” And I have a new favorite day, “Framptious Day.” I have not been paying attention to Alice in Wonderland all these years and had completely forgotten the storyline. So I see the similarity…I think I’m on a quest to find my muchness, too.

I have been contemplating some more on a favorite theme of mine. Now I wonder if a study has already been done to find the correlation between a person’s tendency to treat themselves badly with drugs or overeating or undereating and their sense of self worth. I’d perchance a guess of 98% correlation between having a low sense of self worth and a high rate of self mistreatment. I’m wondering about this because I’m wondering about choosing a new line of study. If, for instance, I study nutrition, I’d only be able to reach the supposed small percentage of people who would be able to listen and change eating habits without being hampered by their inherently low self worth/esteem. If, on the other hand, I study a psychological or therapy line of thinking, I’d only be able to help the people who are actually reaching out to therapists for help. If  I become a performance artist, I could reach random people, whether they knew they were looking for help or not. Hmmm.

In my last post I was thinking about doing some soul searching, emotional healing work with real masks. This post isn’t about that.

I hosted a party this weekend. It was in celebration of my 40th birthday, though it wasn’t my actual birthday; it’s still coming up.  I’m not a party person. Not a hostess. There are families I know that have parties every month. There are families that make a habit of cooking enormous amounts of food just for kicks and invite all their friends over for no special reason other than to share food together. I’m not that kind of person. Usually the thought of hosting a party triggers an increased heart rate as I panic over the state of my house, the amount of preparation and money needed, and the amount of cleanup needed afterwards.

For my 40th birthday I decided to “just get over it.” I hadn’t had a party for me since my tiny little baby shower five years ago, and before that….ummmm…..not since I was turning 21 and invited some girlfriends to go hiking with me in honor of my birthday.

I was internally driven this month to make papier mache masks and had a moment of inspiration as I said, “heeeey wait a minute, I actually like doing this. I bet my girlfriends would like painting these masks. I bet their children would like painting something too.”

So I did what no one I’ve met has done before with a party. I turned it into an arts and crafts party. I took a week to make about seven or eight masks. I bought 20 plaster of paris figurines for the children to paint.  I gathered paintbrushes, paints, sequins, feathers, yarn, hot glue for the glue gun, and 5 plastic masks for backup.

This party went so well it was unbelievable for me. I invited mostly married couples and they all had children so the kids started painting figurines first. Then I invited the grownups to paint the masks and two jumped right in. Later during the evening about four more ladies decided to paint masks. I was impressed with the amount of concentration and creativity shown. The adult men stuck close to the grill where my husband was making carne asada. But two teen boys asked for masks to paint and they impressed me with wrestling masks.

Here is yours truly, Jessica, wearing my mask. I made this mask before the party as an example and a prototype. I wanted the camoflauged, blending right into the woodwork look. That’s the figurative mask I wore as a teen, barely able to speak up. So I plucked some leaves and painted the veins, then pressed the leaves right onto the mask. Then I hot glued silk ivy leaves to the sides during the party.

This mask above is awesome.  It was designed with paint, sequins and feathers by the mom of the girl in the picture. Those store bought molds, the only ones in the craft store, were sized for a three year old’s face, so it fit her daughter perfectly. This is one of the masks I made with papier mache. Above this photo is an example of a store bought plastic mask fully decorated.

On a final note, the woman pictured in this photo thought she wasn’t creative. She didn’t believe she could paint a mask nicely. I think her mask turned out wonderfully, and she thought outside the box. To get the sequins to line the top of the mask, she put a thick coating of glue and scooped the sequins onto the mask by the handful. Any that didn’t stick went right back into the jar. I think a creative themed party really helps people tap into their natural abilities and sometimes hidden & buried creativity.

Mask collection at Dennis Pendleton's studio

During January this year I was attending watercolor painting classes. Currently I’ve been compelled to create papier mache masks. I’d like to start the next sentence with “It all started with…” but in truth, I just don’t know how far back down memory lane to go in order to pick a starting point for my current phase.

I’ve made things all my life. When I was a latchkey kid in 4th grade, I’d come home to an empty home and decide to do a drawing or craft project. One time I made a 3D rainbow with rolled colored paper going into a bunch of cotton balls to represent a cloud. My father took it to work the next day and there it stayed. Ten years later when I visited his office, the rainbow mobile was still hanging from overhead cabinets. “Dad, you STILL have that?” I protested. Now I know how he felt. I still display the basket one of my children made in jr. high seven years ago.

Over the years I’ve done ceramic painting, advanced bead work, needlepoint, a homemade craft pillow, some consigned portraits, wall stencils, custom framing, photo retouching & printing on a wall plaque, ceramic tile design, silkscreening, paper making, and countless Christmas ornaments. I like to avoid idle hands, but I also delved deeply into meditation during my twenties. That doesn’t count for being idle, even though you’re not moving. You’re giving your brain a challenge during meditation.

Back to today. I have recently read the book Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation by Jeff Brown. It is kind of like a self help book, but much more like a roadmap illustrating one man’s journey into healing old emotional wounds to attain higher levels of emotional freedom. It got me thinking about the masks all humans figuratively wear during different phases of our lives. For example, say you’re wearing the mask of bravado and don’t even realize it.  If you stop acting the part of overconfidence and allow your vulnerability to show through, are you still you? Are you so attached to your mask that you identify your SELF with it?

I’ve decided to spend a week to actually create physical masks that illustrate this point. I made a nonedible bread mold of my face from an aluminum foil impression of my face. I varnished it after a week of drying time and can use it as a template to make a set of similar papier mache masks to paint in six to nine very different personalities. In case you haven’t heard of it, “papier mache” is a technique where you rip newspaper and dip it in a mixture of flour and water with the consistency of pancake batter. Lay the wet paper over the mold and let it dry. Repeat two to three times, let dry, then cut out eye holes and holes for elastic with an exacto knife. Then decorate with colored paints, sequins, feathers, yarn, raffia, or whatever you please. As you can see, this is a very labor intensive project I’ve taken on.

If I remove the mask from my face, I’m still there. Who am I, really? If I put on a mask that looks like the wounded child, perhaps it will allow me to access the deeply buried wounded child within me and heal some old emotional wounds. Of course, I could just do standard voice dialog and access my wounded child without the show/play/drama of using a prop, but I have a deep inner knowing that this particular prop would really accelerate my progress. What about you? Would wearing the mask of a particular part of you help you access memories you had previously buried?

Three masks from Dennis Pendleton's collection

The more I estimate houses for gutter replacement, the more I liken rain to thoughts, and gutters to critical thinking skills. I can’t help it.

You know, it drove me nuts that when my husband first started his rain gutter company, all he would talk about when driving through residential areas was gutters. He would point to that house and say, “They need new gutters.” He would point to another house while driving 35 mph and notice that it didn’t have gutters at all. Or he could even notice when downspouts were missing from the gutter installation.  This is selective vision at its finest.

Now I’m doing it, too. “Oh, their gutters are leaking. ” “Sheesh, none of their neighbors have 3×4 downspouts, but they do.”

In theory, you need gutters on your house to safely direct the rainwater away from your foundation.  Water has a way of damaging concrete, especially standing water or constantly dripping water that forms puddles at your foundation. Without gutters, before you know it, you’ve got cracks in the walls and your front porch has sunk several inches.

Critical thinking skills are needed to help your decision making abilities. Meditation is needed to help quiet the mind and direct thoughts.  If you let your mind run amok with every distracting thought, you’ll damage your values, ethics, morals, etc. (Don’t they call these traits a good foundation? See where I’m going…)

Gutters are installed on a house near the end of construction, yet they are critical to guarding the safety of the first thing constructed: the foundation and walls. Critical thinking skills are developed late in youth; I’d guess around the time a child becomes a teenager or a little before that.  It is critical thinking and meditation together that actually guard your mind from falling prey to false logic. Cracks in the “foundation” of the mind appear as a mismatch between values and behavior, inappropriate acting out, inappropriate risk-taking, inability to deal with anger and fear constructively, which then could lead to depression.

Guiding our thoughts is like directing rainwater safely away from the foundation of a house. The rain falls on everything indiscriminately. We all have all sorts of thoughts. Some are happy, naughty, fearful, angry, loving, regretful. Just as you’re not afraid of the rain (uh, unless it’s acid rain but that’s another analogy altogether…), don’t be afraid of your thoughts. Develop your watcher during meditation and then continue watching your thoughts with curiosity during the day.  You’d be surprised how much emotional progress you can make by simply making observations about your thought process.  The rain gutters don’t judge the rain that flows through them. The purpose of a gutter is to reduce the stress to the foundation. The purpose of meditation as well as critical thinking is to reduce stressful thinking.

Gutters full of muck

Sometimes leaves and muck fill up the gutters and stop the flow of water. You clean the gutters out and then rainwater can once again be directed safely away from the house instead of spilling over the top of the gutter reservoir. Respectively, our mental health and emotional health needs attention every once in a while, too.  Clean out the muck every once in a while and you’ll be happier in the long run!

I’d like to thank Mary Kay of Spa for Your Soul Coaching for yesterday’s chat. We discussed issues related to parenting and step-parenting. I’ve been a step-parent for about fourteen years. Mary Kay is an encouraging spirit and we found ourselves talking about many topics. When I shared my story-saga of step-parenting she suggested I have something that others in my position don’t: experience in what works and what doesn’t work. She shone a light in a direction I’d never looked by suggesting that novice step-parents may like to hear my story. I’ll take that advice to heart, Mary Kay. She put it like this: “Make your mess the message,” meaning that while my learning curve may be sloppy and I may have made some mistakes with my parenting decisions, I still have something to offer to first time step parents.

One topic we covered was the obvious issue about what defines family. One of my stepsons went through a phase where he insisted I wasn’t family to him, even though I’d been step-parenting him well over a decade.  He was a young teen and quite impulsive.  Mary Kay’s intuitive comment on that: “It is much easier for him to hurt you by lashing out than to feel his own pain.” Teens go the path of least resistance. A wise step parent will see this and take a step back rather than engage in a verbal battle over who is family to whom.

Mary Kay’s Spa For Your Soul main site Bringing calm and comfort to Mom’s busy life. Take a look around! She has a 5-day e-course, a blog, and a coaching business targeted to moms. Remember, moms, self-care is very important to your well being and the well being of your whole family! I found that out yesterday. That one hour chat with a coach was self care time for ME, and Mary Kay urged me to give myself credit for everything I’ve accomplished during my story-saga of step-parenting. Aaah, I pat me on the back.

Long before I started this Living on Purpose blog, I had an internal mantra: “I am not my thoughts.” I knew in a conceptual way that thoughts were things and they were not the same as ME. For instance, I don’t have to believe I am a bad person if I notice a “bad” thought float through my brain. I don’t have to believe my thoughts. Most of them are not even my own, anyway, if you buy the concept that the brain is like a radio thus making thoughts like stations.

This was only the groundwork, or a foundation, for some more “unlearning” to take place. As we grow up, we learn the types of behaviors that we can do to get us what we want. Then when we realize these behaviors don’t serve us anymore, we have to drop them or stay stuck. I like to think that I’m in the middle of “unlearning” how to behave.

Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is, recently said in a teleconference interview: “Smoking quit me, overeating quit me.” Why? Because she faced her own truth and questioned her own thoughts. She looked long and hard at her own beliefs and realized that it’s optional to believe debilitating thoughts about yourself or others. Once chronically depressed, she now describes her life as “heaven.” She has done the work of self introspection and now teaches others how to do the same so they can experience freedom from toxic thoughts and beliefs, too.

Last year I interviewed Carol Skolnick about her work as a facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie. If this topic interests you, I invite you to read the interview here:

Interview with a facilitator of The Work

Here is the main Byron Katie web site, full of video interviews of people going through the self introspection process:

The Work of Byron Katie

On this resources page, find the sidebar that says “downloads” and print the worksheets there. Have several “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheets available and the next time you’re mad or irritable or depressed, fill it out and do The Work for yourself!

Resources page at The Work