You might not be able to move mountains, but you can move part of one for someone, even if it is handful of rocks and stones and a shovel or two of hindrances. 

Might not be able to turn water into wine, but you can offer sustaining food and beverage to someone who is in desperate need of recognition and who also may be hungry.

You cannot raise the dead but you can bring enthusiasm and enliven someone’s day with your call, your card, your good wishes, your loving thoughts expressed directly to him or her. 

You probably cannot restore hearing to the deaf or sight to the blind, but you are able to listen even to the most desperate attempt to communicate with you, and you are able to see the person who might never have been truly seen.

You may not feel overly empowered to make a significant difference in your immediate environment, but you can forgive those who have hurt you and set free those whom you believe may owe you something, and makes a huge difference in their lives.

You’re probably not set up to bring peace to conflicting world powers but you are capable of living in peace with your neighbors.

It’s no secret that many men avoid deeper intimacy with other men. I suggest it would be helpful for men to form intentional support “MWE groups” or “Men Without Egos.”

While “WWW” for “Women Without Walls” is not original, I did come up with MWE.

Here are some guidelines to establish such a group:

1. Meet for a decided period of time, say monthly for 10 months, and for two hours. Begin by phoning and inviting 9 or 10 men you already somewhat know. This act makes you the facilitator.

2. Try to create a group that is diverse with age, race, and belief. I’d suggest every group have at least two members who are from different generations in the same family.

3. You may not discuss your career, achievements, sport, or politics.

4. Read a book together and talk about it for at least 15 minutes of each meeting. I’d suggest you begin with David Scharch’s Passionate Marriage which will challenge every aspect of every relationship you have.

5. Laugh a lot, cry sometimes, listen more than you talk, and call each other between meetings, and never discuss someone not present (not even your wife).

What is office or church or family gossip really about?

Why do people do it? 

I am not referring to the content, the messy details. 

Some people “enjoy” or feel the need and cannot resist speaking about others in degrading terms.

The gossiper does this because he or she feels uncomfortable with you – yes, the one to whom he or she unloads the gossip. 

Sharing juicy details about an absent person gives the speaker a sense of importance, a feel of being in on something with you, closer to you than you really are, a false sense of intimacy. You have been verbally trapped in a toxic, harmful manner.

You are “in the middle” and the gossiper has the sense that you two are close and the victim is on the “outside.” 

Gossip is never glue. Gossip never leads to deeper friendships.

Want out? 

Try:

“Have you talked directly to him about what you are telling me?” 

“Why are you talking to me about someone who is not here to speak for herself?” 

“What’s wrong with our friendship that you think I will join you in gossip?” 

“If you can talk this way about her when she’s not here, I wonder how you talk about me when I am not around?”

Do you have a pencil and paper and an hour or two to do yourself a huge favor? 

Mental health, getting healthier, than you already may be will require determined effort. Here are some questions to consider and things worth doing to stimulate yourself toward greater or higher functioning than you currently enjoy….

What do you want? What kind of person do you want to be? What are you going to do with your life?

Take a few months to answer the 3 above questions in written form. 

Review your responses and update it regularly. Things change, we change, life has quite a different look as we go from stage to stage and age to age. 

Become an expert in your behavior  – not your wife’s or husband’s or children’s, or in-laws’ – and focus solely upon improving your level of functioning within your many areas of involvement and influence. 

Try to get “above” all of your important networks and entanglements in order to think them through. 

Try to act upon your insights so you have greater freedom in each of your relationships. 

As you are thinking things through, take no sides with or against anyone. Have no victims to blame and create no heroes. 

If you do all this with a few pieces of lined paper you will ultimately participate in writing yourself towards greater wellness.

A note to single or solo parents OR things i am still learning…..

Your children, from babies and all the way up to off to university or marriage, want you to be fearless or at least honest about not being fearless at times when you are not. 

Your children have little or no interest in what brought you to this joyful privilege of single or solo  parenting and certainly will reap no benefit if you are carrying guilt or shame for what brought you to this honored place. 

Your children are going to regard what you have as normal, as the way life is supposed to be, so get comfortable with your family as it is and play it to the full. 

Your children are capable of much but not of meeting your needs for adult companionship or easing your loneliness and to expect that from your children is more than unfair.

You children want to feel safe and have fun and engage in story-telling and lots of play and lots of eye contact with you. Hold off on all manner of screen-sitting for as long as possible.

Your children are not a means to complete your unfinished or unhappy childhood. This is their turn and parenting is the ultimate adult challenge.

Have a full, meaningful life before you conceive, adopt, or foster a child. Do this so the child is unlikely to become the center of your universe and therefore have to occupy a place in your life, and have power in your life, that no child is designed or equipped to hold.

Have a life outside of your child. Children who are least important to their parents’ salvation (success, reputation, happiness) are more likely to enjoy healthy adult lives than those who are faced with the unreasonable task of making their parents happy or appear successful.

Allow natural, reasonable consequences to occur so that your child may appreciate the power of cause and effect, as imperfect as it sometimes is.

Get out of the way as much as possible so your child learns to show up, speak up, and stand up and self-advocate as early in life as possible. Be this way especially with the school.

Try to do fewer things for your child so that your child has to do more and more for him or herself. Self-sufficiency is among the holiest of gifts you can give your child and it is truly a gift that keeps on giving.

Your day (and mine, of course) begins in your head, in your thinking.

Then, it “becomes flesh.”

It becomes real, day-to-day stuff expressed by the things you say and do. 

Telling yourself, on waking, that you will be generous today, sets a tone and lines you up to see opportunities for generosity. Chances are, after such self-talk on waking, you will act on the opportunities for generosity you see. 

It works similarly if you want to be a grouch.  

Telling yourself that you are going to be hospitable to strangers and welcoming of “new people” sets your sights on seeing people in new ways and equips you to see hope and opportunities in yourself and in your environment. 

On such days everything will look a little rosier.

If you wake and rehash some squabble you had with a neighbor or former friend or ex-partner you spent years avoiding you’ll probably go to bed tonight disappointed.

You’d be amazed at exactly how much power you have to shape the kind of day you want to have.

You have all of it.

All the power over your day waits for you to say the word and release it and find expression through your voice and hands.

“How will I be today?” is a powerful and beautiful question.

It is up to you.

Caring for others is an Art.

Be it as informal as helping a friend out through a time of grief or illness, or as formal as being a paid care-giver, when the art is perfected, it enhances and empowers both parties and robs none.  

Helpful care – not all “care” is care or helpful – requires planning, skillful beginnings, and open discussions about how to know when the season of informal or formal care can end.   

Caring too much, over-functioning, being constantly aware and anxious, when caring depletes the care-giver, may indicate confusion as to  who is caring for whom and we can legitimately ask, “Who is this really for?” It gets murky when the carer takes on responsibilities not his or her own or when the recipient of care “throws in the towel” or hands it off to the carer. 

Caring is not primarily adherence to a set of routines or rules although it may indeed involve guidelines and expectations and rules and the spectrum of those who may be in need of care is wide, almost endless, tied to age and degrees of awareness and what resources are or are not available.

These many variables aside: the carer who neglects self-care and neglects to regard self-care as a priority will be depleted until he or she becomes  no source of care at all.