THE COPING CORNER

CHOOSING OPTIMISM

Last week, on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, I spoke of choosing hope in the spirit of what I think he brings to our troubled world.

Today I’d like to go further with that idea. I’d like to talk about choosing optimism as a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life.

Before I do, however, I want to fully acknowledge the difficulty and complexity in this choice. Many tragedies, such as 9/11, wars, and natural disasters, not to mention personal losses and challenges we all experience at one time or another can alter our perception and understanding of any good existing in our lives. Pain and suffering can block our awareness of good all together.

Optimism, I think, goes deeper than just being hopeful, in that it is a belief, an attitude of confidence that there is good among all the bad, and beyond that, a desire to find it. When someone is depressed or grieving or worried about paying next month’s rent it’s really hard, if not impossible, to be hopeful about much of anything. To be optimistic isn’t just turning a switch or denying reality. It is the hard work of accepting that reality, feeling the pain and being willing to work through it with the expectation that there is something good at the end of it, maybe even in the middle of it.

So given all of the above is true, how can I presume that optimism is a choice, when it so seemingly out of reach for so many? The truth is, I can’t presume that at all. I can only offer it. I can only suggest that the sun is still shining in the middle of a bad thunderstorm, when we can’t see it, and that it will be visible to us again.

CHOOSING ACTION

As grand as the inaugural was a few days ago, it was only the beginning. It’s time to roll our sleeves up and get to work. Yes, I said OUR sleeves.

Michelle Obama as called us to volunteer action. This is a very strong, positive directive for of us. First, and most obvious is the fact that we are in dire times, when human needs are great for everything from food to clothes, jobs, education, etc., anything we can do is probably not enough, but is certainly better than sitting by and doing nothing.

There is also a lot to be said for building community. We tend to live in a society where we barely know the neighbors on either side of us, much less down the street. Just maybe, if we knew our neighbors a little better, we could be less afraid to walk down our streets at night. Maybe we’d know who to call when we need something ourselves. Maybe we could just feel better about this small piece of the planet we inhabit.

Beyond all this, I think is the internal benefit there is in doing something, just because it is good and right. Many of us will say I barely can keep food on my on table, keep my job, or keep my own kids out of trouble. And that might be true. Times are tight and we are stressed. But when we are able to reach out of own little corners and actually do something for someone else, no matter how small or who that someone is, we have stretched ourselves into bigger, finer persons. And we have added another drop of sweetener on this thing called humanity.

CHOOSING HOPE

We witnessed today one of the most remarkable events in history, at least in my lifetime. The inauguration of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, goes far beyond race, it makes a much larger statement about all of us: that we are not only able to think beyond the traditional box, but we can also move, reshape and resize that box to include and motivate all of us to move forward with genuine hope and dignity.

This is not a political blog and I will not mention politics often, but today I am so moved by the new breath of hope that has been laid out for us. With the horrible realities around us of international conflicts, a globally depressed economy, and severe financial stress here at home, there is a solid reason for hope. It isn’t just about our new President Obama, it is the message and the real unity that is building around it.

Each of us have the opportunity and the obligation, I believe to be hopeful. That obligation is about first improving our own quality of life, and, just as important, improving the collective quality of life around us. The absence of hope is despair and cynicism, and together they can spread like an out of control virus,

How much hope can any one of us generate and maintain? Given individual circumstances, maybe not a lot. But we’ve been given a jumpstart, and if we choose to grab on to it, internalize it, and pass it on.

CHOOSING THOUGHTS

I spoke last time about choosing joy. This is always a good thing to do, but often difficult, because we just don’t feel joyful.

Today I want to talk about choosing thoughts vs. feelings. Emotions are complicated. Stored in a part of the brain all by themselves, they are more difficult often to intentionally access or change. They sort of just live with us, and are there as we need them, but don’t always change with a push of a button or a click of a mouse. They’re more hard-wired into us, and we don’t always have control over them.

But we do have control over our thoughts. As I’m typing this I’m thinking about what to say as I type and, hopefully, am putting together thoughts that make sense that you will then think about, interpret, agree or disagree, file or throw away. Some of this process is based on emotion, but most is intellectual, giving us more management over it.

Here’s my point: we can’t always change how we feel immediately, but we can change what we think about it. For example, if you say something rude or hurtful to me, I may not get out of my mad or hurt feelings for a while, but I can change my thoughts around it. You were probably having a rough day, or maybe you didn’t mean it the way I heard it or I might not choose to hang on to that negative message.

When it comes to joy or happiness, we might not be able to pop ourselves right into one of those moods, but we can learn how to change our thought processes around that mood. We can think about the people or memories that truly make us smile with gratitude, and thereby guide our present mood or feelings into a different place.

CHOOSING JOY

There’s a morning newscaster here in Austin where I live who routinely ends his newscasts with, “Make it a good day,” vs, “Have a good day.”

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is the intentionality of it. Beyond being a very overused and tired out cliché, “Have a good day” is passive. Many things in life can stop that from happening: bad weather, traffic, a bad boss, fighting with your spouse or teenager, or both. Or there may be bigger issue on your plate like chronic illness, loss of a loved one or severe depression. How can anyone be expected to have a good day with THAT going on?

You can’t always smile. There are plenty of good, solid and legitimate reasons people have pain and suffering. I’m not here to minimize or trivialize any of them.

People have often called me Pollyanna because I tend to seek out the proverbial silver lining in every thundercloud, which can really nauseate some. I do not do this to in any way deny the gravity or intensity of any given situation. Instead, my intention is to counterbalance, to find as much light as possible to see something beyond the pain and misery that is worth the effort of enduring. Sometimes you just have to accept pitch blackness for a little while, but there is usually some small candle somewhere, if you keep looking for it.

Most days, for most folks are not really that dark and heavy. We tend to hang on to things that are really disposable like the finger someone gave you in traffic, or the comment someone made as you passed the water fountain, even the fight you had with your partner last night. Plenty of bad stuff happens in life and we need to address them appropriately, but we tend to be collectors of it, letting our attention drift towards it.

My point here is to suggest that we choose to look for and actually see the more beautiful, more joyful things in our daily, crazy, busy, hectic and sometimes, maddening lives. I want, selfishly every single little pearl I can find in this sandy, gritty, rocky thing called life. I hope you do too.

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BETTER CHOICES, BETTER WORLD

In my last post, I spoke about making better choices rather than resolutions. The difference here is perhaps not too unlike splitting hairs, except that making choices is more of an ongoing process. It is about dealing with a series of issues with or without any significant declarations that are hard to live up to. The whole idea of having choice can be scary, because the results of making bad ones can produce unwanted, if not devastating results. A very large and present example is what to do in this present economy. On many levels we have fears and doubts about what to do. Should i sell or buy stocks? Should I spend or save? What if I lose my job> my house? Everything? This economic crisis came upon us so quickly that very few of us saw it coming. The bailout packages came from nowhere, it seemed and the media has had a frenzy hay-day around all of this. Stock markets are plummeting, unemployment and foreclosures are sky-rocketing and the sly is falling. Panic and fear can become monsters unto their own. This is not to take way any of the real pain felt by many now caught in this crunch, but it does seem to me that the domino affect of one loss creating another is in fact, somewhat driven by fear. Stampedes happen when a few cattle are spooked. Again, I’m in no way trying to minimize the realities of this current situation, but I am suggesting that we have some choice about joining that stampede and being driven by fear. I am in no way an economist and don’t pretend to understand the complexities of what’s happening here, other than some very bad choices, apparently based in greed and corruption were made.
That alone can make us all feel victimized and jittery about what’s going to happen next. But fear will only make things worse. When afraid, we tend to isolate, not spend, and not trust. That behavior leads to more stress, more economic downturn, and more aggression, depression and anxiety. What is the better choice is also the more difficult. Choosing to not be the victim of hard times is choosing to “think outside the box,” to be open to more possibilities, to get more education or training, to be willing to change career paths or start your own business.
Most important, I believe is this is not the time to isolate from one another. It’s time to unite, support one another, give a lending hand and/or be willing to accept one when needed. We can choose to not accept failure by making small decisions, one at a time, for a more cohesive, respectful and thriving world.

MAKING BETTER CHOICES

This time of year it’s fashionable to talk about making resolutions and setting goals. While I think there is great merit in taking stock of one’s personal and professional direction on a regular basis, I also think that this show for annual declarations becomes too ceremonial and doesn’t really address our needs for corrective change in our lives. It is in our day-to-day choices that we make and the ways in which we go about making those choices that tend to map out our pattern of living.

We all make decisions we later regret. For many of us, myself included, this happens much more frequently than we like to admit. In fact, I think we generally waste a lot of valuable time and effort NOT admitting our mistakes. Our culture supports, defends, even molds this behavior by holding up in our face, through media, advertising, etc., the concept that mistakes are bad, that indeed, idealistic perfection exists, and we can all have it if we all look just like the emaciated models, buy the right car, have the right job and friends, live in the right neighborhood. Most of us know that this is myth and marketing deception, but we get ourselves wrapped up in it to some degree anyway.

It is, in my opinion, when we can let loose our tight grip and angst for perfection, when we can start admitting our mistakes to ourselves and others, that we can then have the freedom to make better choices. Not only can we learn from our mistakes, we can clear out the emotional space to be more able to make more rational choices. When we are able to clear out shame, guilt and overburdened regret, then we have potential for self-forgiveness, acceptance and confident humility.

Now, you ask, “what about making those better choices?” The next step is believing in choice itself, that is, believing in the possibility of good choices with positive outcomes. I am not proponent of magical thinking, “just think it hard enough and it will come true,” as some current pop psychologies would suggest. This is a real set up for failure if not followed by thought out, responsible action. But, as Norman Vincent Peale put it so well many years ago, there is a lot of power in positive thinking.

Giving credence to positive possibility in our lives opens the door enormously to making better choices. Are we going to continue to make mistakes? Absolutely. Embrace them, learn from them, use them wisely in the future. Short of mistakes, there going to be many hard decisions, not necessarily labeled good or bad, which, unfortunately, involve sacrifice, pain and/or loss. But so is there much greater chance for real, sustainable and substantive joy and peace when we are willing to believe in ourselves enough to take risks, that are not completely calculated, but also based on our faith, sense of values, a daring expectation for good to come from it and, always, the willingness to attach responsible action behind it.

Only you can ultimately determine the value of your choices in your life and how they impact the world around you. The awareness of having choice is fundamental to intentional change.

In the weeks and months ahead, I will focus more specifically on the kinds of choices we can each make to improve the quality of our lives.

Introduction

Happy New Year! I’m thrilled to be starting my very first blog as we bring in 2009. I’m honored by each of you reading this launch into a new endeavor and hope that you might be interested in coming back and telling your friends about me and what I intend to offer here.

Let me start out by telling you a little bit about who I am and what I do professionally. My name is Susanne Slay-Westbrook and I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of TX. Please feel free to check out my website,www.aworldofrespect.com to get further professional background.

I’m also a wife, step-mom and use a motorized wheelchair for my mobility. My life has been anything but a predictable straight line. I didn’t get married till I was 48, and immediately began helping my husband raise his then 10 yr. old son.

Born with Cerebral Palsy in—well, a long time ago—I went through a combination of public and special schools, long before PL94-142, (so maybe you can begin to guess how old I am) jumping grades and being put back, struggling with issues of physical and social barriers, as well as trying to define my personal identity to incorporate my disability yet not be defined by it.

In graduate school, I learned more about the sharp nature of prejudice, spoken and silent, but in my studies of psychology and counseling, I learned much more about choices I could make for living more positively. I began the journey of learning personal coping skills and how to help others develop their own.

I’ve now been in the mental health field 27 yrs.(now you can really do the math!) and have had a chance to work with a great variety of people, learning more about the shared human struggle, pain and resilience we all possess. Based on what I have learned from my clients, several years ago I wrote a book called A World of Respect, and center my therapy around respect, because as I see it, respect is as basic as air or water for any relationship to thrive and is seriously lacking in many relationships.

I also wrote a column in a local newspaper for several years called “The Coping Corner,” which I wish to expand and continue here. The future posts will promise to be much shorter and less about me, focusing on coping strategies around a myriad of life issues we all face, such as the difficulties in relationships, parenting, grief and loss, work stress, depression, and anxiety. I plan to post twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays for now, about these and other issues. I look forward to your readership, comments and questions. Please share this blog with anyone you know who may benefit. Thank you for your time.