Author: Christina Bruni

Christina Bruni is the author of the new book Working Assets: A Career Guide for Peers. She contributed a chapter "Recovery is Within Reach" to Benessere Psicologico: Contemporary Thought on Italian American Mental Health.

Discarding Goals

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I firmly believe that everyone living on earth has the potential to do some kind of work.

For one person this might simply be doing volunteer work or working on their recovery. For another person yes this could be getting a JD.

We are not to frown on those of us who are less fortunate than we are in this regard.

In two months I’ll be 52 years old–and the older I get it’s become imperative to prioritize what I want to do. You too will turn 52 hopefully at some point if you haven’t gotten here now. Prioritizing goals at mid life is the way to go.

In keeping with setting priorities each of us should know that it’s okay to discard a goal or goals that don’t have the chance to be achieved.

At 52 life is getting shorter thus the requirement of choosing wisely what we focus on.

At 52 I’ve discarded a number of goals that used to burn brightly in my mind as things I really really wanted to do in my fifties.

You like I did will plan at 40 what you want to do in the future. Yet the view is different 12 years later at 52. Thus the beauty of discarding goals that weren’t meant to be.

This doesn’t mean you’ve failed just because you’ve quit wanting to do something. You can only fail at something you’ve actually done that didn’t turn out right. You can’t have failed if what you wanted to do you didn’t try to do to begin with.

Bingo–that’s the difference in succeeding at goal-setting–especially at mid life. When we give up focusing on one thing we can replace it with another thing.

Recovery is the gift of a lifetime that we give ourselves in which to heal and be whole and well and happy.

We cannot rush or cut corners when it comes to achieving our life goals. Better to have entertained a goal or two and not acted on it than to sit home throwing ourselves a pity party and not even trying to set a goal because we think we can’t.

Banish the word “can’t” from your vocabulary I tell you. Replace it with “I’m willing to try to see if I can do this.” That’s more like it even if not everything we try will always work out.

I want to continue to talk about setting goals. What I’ve written here is the short version. A book years ago was published that talked about the benefit of quitting.

The difference is: quit when it’s not to your advantage to continue. Persist when the goal is so life-changing that to not risk trying to achieve it would fill you with regret at “what might have been.”

The quote is: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

The view from the cusp of 52 is grand.

Changeology

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I’m in the middle of getting my second non-fiction book ready to publish soon. I hope to be able to publish this book within two years from now.

For now I would like to talk again about goal-setting.

It’s going to be spring soon and I think new season is the perfect time to make changes.

To this end I’d like to recommend a book–Changeology–about setting and achieving goals.

It’s a 5-Step process that has been scientifically documented in research as being effective in getting results.

The only drawback I find to the book is that it focuses only on changing negative behaviors like smoking and drinking and bad parenting.

You CAN use the book to create other behavior changes that are positive. You just won’t find your particular behavior talked about in the book. Yet you can still use this proven 5-Step process to execute change.

Using this system might indeed help a person stop smoking or drinking or overeating or whatever their unproductive habit is.

I will continue to talk about goal-setting in here in the coming blog entries.

 

Yes You Can

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I’ve changed the quote at the top right of this blog.

Years ago circa 1989 when I was shunted into the day program a woman I met told me: “Not a lot of people with a disability could do what you do.”

It’s true that I took offense at this because I thought it was possible to do these things.

As of today the proof that Yes You Can really is that we are “individuals” living with a mental health challenge. Not “consumers” or “schizophrenics” or any other label.

Each of us has the potential to do the things that give us joy and happiness. Each of us has the potential to heal and have optimal mental health. Each of us has the potential to flourish doing what we love.

Harboring jealousy at other people isn’t the way to live our lives.

Today in 2017 I can adamantly rebut that woman’s decades-ago comment with this:

You don’t have to become an Ivy League lawyer or a famous writer to get on with  a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life after you receive your diagnosis.

That’s the distinction I’ve always made in the various incarnations of my blog:

Often our internal roadblocks limit us more than external factors.

The goal I dare say is to be happy and healthy–that’s the true aim of living in recovery.

Each of us gets to define what happy and healthy looks like for us in our own lives.

Again it goes back to what I’ve written about self-stigma. If you’re trashing yourself or someone else because they’re a cashier in Rite Aid, that’s NOT right.

The woman who commented to me that way in the mists of time was an exceptional baker. She could cook like you wouldn’t believe.

So if you are a creative chef creating culinary wonders that’s your version of happy and healthy.

I thought about this woman’s comment today because I was talking with my literary agent who’s as visionary as I am in championing mental health.

Years ago when I first started blogging I had the audacity to claim that most people could recover and go on to have your own version of a full and robust life.

Frankly I’m tired of so-called experts claiming that no one can recover. I’m tired of getting attacked because I choose to focus on on the positive instead of dwelling on symptoms and lack and deficits.

The point is: if you can bake a souffle you’ve got that over me.

Any questions?

Self-Advocacy

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You shouldn’t ever apologize for your existence.

You shouldn’t feel that your diagnosis limits you forever.

I coached a guy who found out one of his top forty careers might be a race car technician.

I’m going to be excoriated for telling readers that we can’t always listen to what so-called experts advise us is the right thing to do.

They haven’t met us and aren’t living our lives. Only you and I know what’s the right thing to do on any given day.

You’re an equal partner with your treatment provider(s). You deserve and have the right to have input into the decisions being made about your life.

Today circa 2017 we have more options and better options for what we can do in recovery. If no option exists, you can create an option for yourself.

The Aveeno skincare advertisement gets it right: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Each of us can create a life of our own design.

It’s our right to be self-advocates. You aren’t any longer relegated to being a passive recipient of services.

That’s why I always detested using the word consumer to describe a person. You consume soft drinks. You don’t consume healthcare.

I’m going to end here with this:

You diagnosis doesn’t limit your choices forever.

Yes you can.

 

Cigarette Smoking

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We should each of us love each other and protect each other and our planet.

It’s because I care about everyone living on earth that I implore readers of my blog to resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.

I’ve always detested cigarette smoking. From the time I was a young kid–easily only nine years old or so–I’ve detested cigarette smoking.

My mother and my aunts–her sisters–smoked two packs a day for forty years. No surprise–they now sleep and travel everywhere with oxygen tanks and use inhalers.

I judge no one living on earth. Good people often make the choice to start smoking cigarettes. Illness doesn’t discriminate–it strikes good people as well as evil people.

You will become disabled if you smoke cigarettes.

You’ll have to sleep and travel with an oxygen tank. If you care about vanity, and choose to smoke, you’ll get wrinkled early and lose your looks and have yellow teeth. Chances are, you’ll lose your teeth at some point and need false teeth.

If you do only one positive thing in your life and nothing else quit smoking if you’ve already started. Only doing this–quitting smoking–is the best thing you could ever do.

I’m losing my aunt now after losing my father to colon cancer in 2015. It’s unimaginable yet true–a good person taken out because she smoked cigarettes for 40 years.

You’ll think it’s over if you’re 60 and quit smoking yet you’ll remain in compromised health forever. Fare better to quite smoking at 30 than to smoke for your whole life. Yet I implore you to quit now even if you’re 60.

I don’t take this lightly. I don’t care if a person wants to stay at home watching TV all day. I don’t care if a person chooses jealousy or hate over love. I don’t care how anyone else lives their life.

I do care about health. I care that everyone living on earth has the chance to be healthy. I care that good people make bad choices.

It’s because I’ve seen the perils in my own family of smoking cigarettes that I implore readers now: resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.

You don’t deserve to be hooked up to tubes, comatose, and barely breathing after you have an operation.

You don’t deserve to have limited romantic choices because no one wants to date a smoker.

You don’t deserve to add a smoking-related disability to the mental health disability you already have.

You deserve to have a long, healthy, prosperous life.

You deserve to meet the man or woman of your dreams.

You deserve to save money on your healthcare.

After all, why not make yourself rich instead of making Phillip Morris rich?

It’s something to think about dear readers.

If you smoke, the people who care about you are living in pain watching you make yourself ill. You’re not the only one you’re hurting by making yourself ill. Those of us who watch you light up are in agony too.

We care a lot.

I care and I haven’t even met you.

I’ll end here with the hope that you can read what I’ve written and take it seriously.

Numerous options exist for helping you quit.

You might not stay quit and it could take a couple of times.

Yet now is the right time to try.

I’m rooting for you dear readers.

New Ideas About Goal Setting

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If you ask me the best way to achieve a goal is to focus on the process not the outcome.

A lot of us will have to start from the premise that it might take longer and harder to get where we want to be be.

Just knowing this can help us feel better instead of expecting quick results.

That’s why I use the term lifelines not deadlines.

So I say–set a goal that’s within reach. As you rack up wins challenge yourself to do something slightly beyond what you think you’re capable of.

Jim Afremow in his book The Champion’s Comeback writes that the goal shouldn’t be to lighten our load–the goal should be to seek to have broader shoulders.

Living with a mental health challenge isn’t ever easy. We can have times when our lives ARE easier so we must appreciate these times when they’re here.

As is quoted: “You have two hands: one for helping yourself. One for helping others.”

In this regard I’ve become so inspired because of the Women’s March on Washington.

If you want to read about this March I’ll be posting a review and my impressions of it on Saturday to the Left of the Dial blog.

Drinking Plenty of Water

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I’m on a big kick now to get people to drink plenty of water.

Divide your weight in half to get the number of ounces of water to drink each day.

I’m as guilty as anyone of resisting drinking water.

If you don’t drink enough water you could wind up needing to go to the ER for hydration via an IV drip.

Without enough water you could get so fatigued that you can’t get out of bed.

If drinking water doesn’t appeal to you, try using a bigger glass and filling it halfway so you’re not overwhelmed. Or use only a 10-ounce glass and fill it all the way.

I’ve ordered one of the Ellen DeGeneres Joy mugs to use throughout the day to drink water.

Drinking water flushes out toxins. Drinking water gives you clearer skin. Drinking water keep you hydrated. Thus drinking water helps you maintain your energy level.

What’s not to love about drinking water?

Continuing in Recovery

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The older you get in your life it’s possible to have a better recovery.

My point exactly is that engaging in goal-seeking behavior can make all the difference in the quality of your life.

God didn’t put me here on earth in this lifetime to judge anyone else. Yet it’s my philosophy that watching TV all day and isolating in your apartment can breed ill health.

The term “actively alone” I’ve coined to describe the benefit of doing positive healthy things–whether in your apartment cooking a meal or going to a coffeehouse to read a newspaper and drink a latte.

Sometimes all it takes is getting out of your house and your head to improve how you feel about yourself.

The further along you are in your recovery you can make new strides along the way. The goal is to not stop growing and improving. If you ask me staying in the same place mentally will lead to a stagnant life.

It’s January–which in my book is the perfect time to do early Spring Cleaning.

The first article I ever got published was in 1990 in the Women’s Forum of the Staten Island Advance newspaper. My article in appeared in January and was titled Time to Start Spring Cleaning.

Indeed–over and over through the years I’ve made the case in the blog for doing spring cleaning in January, in the actual spring,or at any time of the year.

Clearing the cobwebs out of your head as well as clearing items out of your closets is to me the perfect technique to segue into taking new risks.

Go at your own pace. Recovery is not a race nor is it a competition.

My friend and I count down the weeks to spring not the endless winter days. Right now there’s just over only nine weeks to spring.

Spring will be here in due season.

Using Lifelines Instead of Deadlines

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I coined the term lifeline to describe the time frame one should use when setting goals.

Too often wanting or expecting to do something quickly leads to failure and thus feelings of low self-worth.

That’s a crummy way to keep living your life over and over: trying to hew to impossibly strict deadlines that even an Adidas champion couldn’t live up to.

For all of us it’s possible that faith and doubt battle it out in our minds. Which one will win today? Which one will win tomorrow?

It’s natural to doubt that you’ll ever be able to achieve the goals you set. Then when you don’t achieve a goal it’s a crushing defeat.

Use your doubt as the catalyst for envisioning what is possible. Think of the times where you doubted something in the past and it worked out just fine.

Instead each of us can set a lifeline in which to accomplish what we set out to. I’m not a big fan of five-year plans insofar as most of them take longer and that’s okay.

Isn’t it beautiful to know that we can be victorious down the road–not just today or tomorrow or a year from now?–we can be victorious five or ten or fifteen years from now.

That’s the beauty of having a lifeline to measure our ability to achieve a goal: we don’t have to give up just because the end isn’t in sight.

Oftentimes we need to come at our goal differently or change our goal when the original goal is no longer achievable.

Instead of throwing in the towel and extrapolating that “I’ll never be able to do anything I want”–we can frame it differently–“I can’t do this and have this thing yet if I research what I can do and have I can take different steps to get that.”

Faith and doubt are well-suited to be lifetime boxing partners.

I say: acknowledge the doubt and use it as a springboard. Be grateful when you’re able to have faith. Doubt shouldn’t be feared.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk more about the different types of goals.