Tag: book reviews

Sacred Contracts

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My mentor stayed clean for decades. I think he was motivated to live drug-free because he wanted more than anything to help people.

If you ask me figuring out your Sacred Contract–essentially your life purpose–can give you the motivation to stay healthy and care for yourself.

Caroline Myss believes our sacred contracts are life assignments given to us to carry out in this lifetime.

A client of hers is quoted in the book Sacred Contracts. Liza had dreamed she was in a small rowboat going in circles. She could see an ocean liner in the distance and wanted to be on that ship not stuck where she was. Liza had been paralyzed in an accident and had to makeover her career and her life.

To quote Liza: “The key is to learn to row the boat you were given.”

I recommend you buy these two Myss books. Any kind of self-improvement project that is healthy shouldn’t be frowned on. We should only be competing against how we were yesterday–not against what other people can do today.

I say: “No thank you” to critics who compare peers to people who don’t have MH issues. The size of another person’s ocean liner shouldn’t concern us.

In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk about The Myth of Competitive Employment.

My New Year’s Goal

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The science is clear: people can and do keep New Year’s resolutions.

How is this possible? They start and follow through on a 90-day action plan.

The action plan is executed in a step-by-step fashion. Each stage of the plan must be followed in a specific order: Psych Prep Plan Perspire and Persist.

Following the steps out of order or getting stuck in a certain step–a step mismatch–makes it harder to achieve your goal.

The bulk of the action plan occurs over two months where you’re actively engaged in the new behavior.

You can read the book Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions to see how it’s possible to yes keep a New Year’s resolution.

It’s available as an e-book so you can install it on your iPad or other device.

The author reminds the reader that drawing upon outside support is crucial in making your goal happen.

My goal is to eat more healthful food six days a week.

To this end I have signed up for a meal delivery service.

I’ve ordered chicken with diced sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts, turkey with mashed turnips and broccoli, a side of sweet potato wedges, a side of broccoli, and a side of Brussels sprouts. Plus an apple muffin and chocolate avocado balls and pancakes.

I will report back in here how the food tastes. You simply heat-and-eat the food so there’s no long arduous prep time to get the meals ready.

It’s the KettleBell Kitchen service and available in the New York City area.

I will report back this weekend on my experience.

Weird in a World That’s Not

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I want to give readers hope for choosing the road(s) you want to go down in life.

I’m reading a book: Weird in a World That’s Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures by Jennifer Romolini.

The author is Italian like I am.

It’s a get-ahead book for left-of-the-dial folk.

This guide is for you if like me you felt you didn’t fit in. I was miserable working in insurance office jobs in the 1990s.

Possibly you can relate: I thought that to prove I was normal I had to get a job in a corporation like other people did to make buckets of money.

That particular bucket had a hole in it–so I didn’t make any money nor did I rise up to become a corner-office superstar.

I was forced to change course–to abandon that failed career and do something else. I chose to go back to school to get a Masters In Library and Information Science.

The graduate school coursework was not hard at all (at least not for me). It was simply labor-intensive–not hard work only a lot of work.

I recommend readers consider becoming a librarian in a public library or else working in another job at a public library.

This is because it’s the perfect career for those of us who are Weird in a World That’s Not.

I simply go left when everyone else goes right. (Though I’m not a Liberal party or Democrat or Conservative or Republican party member.)

I align with the Green Party. I listen to alternative music.

I use the word “operate” to describe how a person functions.

I operate differently from how so-called normal people operate. I’m not “in it” in this lifetime for tons of money or tons of fame.

Thus I recommend you read the book Weird in a World That’s Not.

I’m proudly as left-of-the-dial as you can get. So I think I know of what I speak in recommending this Jennifer Romolini career guide.

Lastly: A librarian job has the potential to be bulletproof. Automation is taking over. Audio Engineers for TV with 4-year degrees are being replaced by machines that do the audio engineering without the need of  a human’s skill.

In this climate, work as a librarian in a public library is sweet because no robot will ever take my job away.

So this is the ideal job if like me you are hopelessly different in how you operate.

I say: be weird if you are weird.

Be proud to be yourself in a world of people who covet being normal. Others might value looking, acting, and living like everyone else on the planet.

I do not. And if you don’t relish the homogeneous  nature of how you’re supposed to live in society, I say: rebel.

Be yourself. You’ll be better off.

The Myth of Having Dangerous Gifts

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It’s a myth that mental health issues are “dangerous gifts.”

Trust me there are people who love having mental health conditions.

I’m not one of them.

SZ is a burden, not a gift. It’s hell. It’s painful to bear. More than dangerous it’s simply destructive.

If I could live one minute without SZ I’d take back all the true gifts I was given–like my writing talent and anything else–for one minute of freedom.

I’d like to know what it’s like to be accepted; to be understood; to be given compassion not screw-faced looks.

I take no joy in passing as a normal person.

Meg Jay, PhD wrote a new book about people who compensate for their hardship:

Supernormal: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience.

You can take the quiz in the book to see if you fit the supernormal criteria.

We’re in this camp because those of us who faced hardship work longer and harder to achieve what comes easy to regular so-called “normal” people.

We’ve compensated for our early hardship by yes passing for normal when our lives were anything but ordinary.

There’s a solution to accepting and embracing a life with SZ or BP or whatever you have.

Helping others is the foolproof way I know to help yourself have a better life.

“Service above self” is the antidote to pain.

Just remember: I don’t think our pain is a dangerous gift.

Talking About Treatment Choice

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In my Google Alerts yesterday I received a link to a revolutionary article posted on The Sun website. Now I don’t know the politics of The Sun, yet you can bet I’m more than willing to link to the article that appeared in my inbox.

I stopped taking SZ medication in 1992 under a doctor’s supervision. Yet even though I had a mild form I relapsed within 3 months and had to go back on the Stelazine. It’s why I choose to take a maintenance dose of Geodon every day.

It’s why I’m going to link at the end of this blog entry to an article in The Sun online.

My ancestors arrived here in the 1890s from Italy. Yes, mental health issues have run in my family since the 1890s–no kidding, this is a fact.

The quote is: “Genetics is the gun. Environment pulls the trigger.”

We each of us deserve better than to be told we’re wrong for choosing how we want to live. This choice might include taking medication for those of us who need it. We each of us have the right to choose recovery in whatever form our recovery takes.

Here’s the link to the revolutionary article in The Sun:

Neurotypicals Need to Cool It with the Advice

My Second Nonfiction Book

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I’ve been remiss in publishing blog entries here because I’ve been editing and revising the book proposal for the second nonfiction book I want to publish.

It’s a one-of-its-kind career guide. I will be able to tell you more about this in October.

October is Disability Employment Awareness Month.

Coming up in October I will return to writing about career topics.

As of tonight I’ll be returning to writing blog entries here.

What I’d like to start out writing about this week is a true story.

It goes back to my time working as an administrative assistant in an insurance office.

That was my first-ever full-time job after I stopped collecting government benefits.

Stay tuned.

 

 

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.