Building blocks that will bring powerful shifts to your life

• Deliberately become the most generous person you know. This is not about possessing wealth.
• Hold everything you own with an open hand. Share, just as you learned as a five-year-old.
• Empower others. You lose nothing when you help others to gain.
• Say “yes” more than “no” to the adventures that come your way (Ed Friedman) although it’s necessary to learn how and when to say a firm “no.”
• Develop the capacity to “see beyond” the limitations set by your family history, your nationality, and your faith story. (Also Friedman)
• Learn to live within your means. In other words, make more money than you spend.
• Determine to embody forgiveness, freedom, and grace for all who will repeatedly and naturally attempt to sabotage you. You will meet more and more resistance as you become more and more intentional about your choices.
• Acknowledge and embrace your inevitable dark side. Try to understand it and accept it so that it will not try to take you by surprise in response to your denial of its presence.
• Be gentle on yourself as you would with a treasured loved-one. After all, you are all you’ve got.

Adolescent boys can be very unkind to girls.

Teach your sons to stop and your daughters to expose it.

I well know girls can also be unkind, but the following is to parents with girls. Your feedback and additions are welcome:

• Listen for what your daughter is NOT saying. I know this is tough but what she is not telling you will reveal reams about her experience. No – I am not trying to be obscure.

• Affirm your daughter when she advocates for those she considers victims and ask her about if there are ways she may need someone to advocate for her.

• If she is being victimized she may not immediately inform, she may believe she has to tough it out. Like you did when she was younger and learning to cross a street, you may have to assure her that it is safe to speak even though it may be scary.

• Encourage your daughter to show up, stand up, and speak up for herself and that doing so is essential and not selfish. Literally applaud her when she does.

• Repeatedly assure your daughter that you are the only parent she will ever need, that it is safe for her to test everything about life by testing it with you.

Therapy, therapists, and the therapeutic process are often misunderstood.

“I went to a therapist and all he (she) did was listen – he hardly said a word.”

Good. You probably found a good one. He is with you to hear from you and you’d be amazed at how much you may learn from listening to yourself speak.

“My therapist is kinda new-agey – she says things like ‘ah ha’ and ‘hhhmm’ no matter what I say – I could sing a nursery rhyme and she’d be all over me with affirmation.”

Again, good. You are paying a professional to build a professional relationship with you and if you need to sing a nursery rhyme to her to do so then she will be thrilled. The game will end when you decide. It’s your hour, not hers.

“I told my therapist I was tired of my marriage and was thinking about an affair and he just nodded and smiled as if that was a really good idea. Does he not have any sense of what is right and wrong?”

Again, very good. He probably does. What is important in your hour together is what you consider is helpful or unhelpful for your marriage. You are there about your life – not his.

Quotations are not real – just typical.