WISDOM

My grandmother is suffering from dementia.  While there still hasn’t been a formal diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, she suffers from many of the symptoms – loss of cognitive functioning—thinking, remembering, and reasoning – for perhaps as long as the last 10 years. 

She is not the same person she used to be.  A vibrant and energetic woman who lived independently, driving herself to church; enjoying social activities such as dancing and having family gatherings; sewing clothes for every member of her extended family from bolts of raw fabric; planting and harvested an incredible garden – knowing what it truly meant to harvest the land – making jams, canning vegetables, baking pies, and cooking everything hearty under the sun; growing the most beautiful natural garden of flower; and living life fully with the personal motto:  “A hard day of work never killed anybody”, she has slowly lost significant parts of her life. 

Recently, as I visited her in hospital – for a newly diagnosed kidney condition which will inevitably take her life, she lies in bed wistfully – staring out the window watching the sunset.  And yet, I don’t see her really watching.  Instead, it looks as though she is lost inside her mind even though she typically can’t remember what she is thinking when asked.

It is unclear as to whether she knows who I am or who my sister is.  And yet, here is the astonishing thing.  She remembers  l o v e.  This strong-minded, rather opinionated woman who could put anyone in their place (sometimes without any particular reason), remembers what it means to be loving and to love.  She is quick to return gestures of love and affection, to look lovingly onto others, and to say the words, “I love you” to us. 

She may or may not know where she is at any given moment, why there are several tubes connected to her body, or what is really wrong with her, but she knows love.  She immediately knows and feels it because the look in her eyes – the one I know so clearly …..that I have seen thousands and maybe millions of times growing up with her in my life – is there.  She understands, comprehends, and feels love.

The interesting thing about the concept of love is that we seem to inherently know it.  You may argue that it is something that is taught – that we learn it while still a baby, and experience many moments throughout our childhood in which to build upon this foundation of ‘knowing’ love. 

I should like to think that the ability of us all to love is limitless and transcends formal learning. 

We have, regardless of the poorest examples of being loved and nurtured as children, the inherent capacity to love others – to be loving and to show and display love.  This is what makes us (the human race) so unique.  This capacity to love is what we are meant to hone and to share with the world.  This ability from within to provide even the simplest of gestures that demonstrate love is within all of us.  We may only need to be reminded by someone that it is there….

What I still see that resembles the grandmother I have always known  – is the love.  The love that she shared endlessly with me, the love that said I was special to her, the love that was expressed in all that she did for me.  It is her capacity to love and her knowing of love that is still within her.

Facts and Information about Alzheimer’s Disease:

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.  It is the most common cause of dementia among older people. Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning—thinking, remembering, and reasoning—to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities.

The 2009 World Alzheimer Report, released by Alzheimer’s Disease International, a non-profit federation of 71 national Alzheimer organizations, estimates that the global prevalence of dementia, predicted to be more than 35 million in 2010, will almost double every 20 years to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.

See that what you create you imagine and vice versa.  See that the biggest lessons and experiences of your life come with the “imagined perception” that it is yours to create.  This is the most incredible thing since we know that the world in which we exist is all consuming at times.  To be real and to imagine the life that you want – to acknowledge that this life is perfect in all ways – is to know that everything is possible.

When you consider what it means to live a purposeful life, you might first think about the privilege of living a life that allows you to somehow make a difference.  It may mean knowing that, through your acts of kindness, your knowledge, skill, or generosity of spirit – that you have made a difference – a positive impact on another or on many. 

The idea of living purposefully doesn’t mean that you have to invent the cure for cancer, find distant quasars, or cultivate world peace.  Living purposefully starts with what you are prepared to do in this moment – to acknowledge that there is significant meaning to what you can do right now -  and to live your life knowing this.

Once you acknowledge that it is each of the single moments of your life that are magical – then it becomes easy to begin contemplating how you might make each moment worthy of something more.  This is where the concept of a ‘life purpose’ comes in.

Clients who I see are at various places in their life.  Some have chosen therapy specifically because they are feeling unhappy – miserable in fact – with the state of their lives.  Creating a purposeful life doesn’t mean you have to be world famous….it does mean that you need to contemplate what your innnate gifts are, your interest, talents, and most of all – what you love.  These, together with the poignant questions I ask in my book, “Live Your Life’s Purpose: A guidebook to defining and living a purposeful life” gets you to define your specific purpose and reminds you of how easy it is to begin living each day with meaning and fulfillment.

After all, it isn’t the money that reminds us that we have done well in the world.  It’s what we do with the money – with our intention to want to help that leads us to living and feeling…on purpose.

Live Your Life’s Purpose (Insomniac Press, 2009) is available at all major bookstores and online from www.amazon.com and www.chapters.ca.

Going within doesn’t mean we are expected to sit for hours in sukhasana (seated meditation pose) rather sit for a few minutes focused on our breathe – which is by far the simplest (and quickest) way to focus the mind – while our mind begins to slow down.  And remember, the faster the pace of your thoughts, the longer it will take to watch as these begin to slow.  Your goal initially may simply be to observe that you can slow down the rate of your thoughts – even quiet the mind completely.  Then, with some dedicated practice, you create the stillness even more easily – and in less time.  Using the breathwork meditation in my book: ‘Live Your Life’s Purpose: A guidebook to defining and living a purposeful life’ (Insomniac Press, 2008) adds a compliment of using visualization and felt sensation as two tools that help keep the mind focused.  Once you begin to experience even moments of quiet – you begin to hear what is within.  You begin to hear the quiet that opens up to the wisdom that has always been there – waiting to be heard.

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Your sense of self is your knowledge and awareness of who you are.  Sense of self requires a level of consciousness that predicates honesty (to yourself and others), about what you believe in, ascribe to, value, and uphold.

Sense of self also implies evolution.  To develop your sense of self requires ongoing introspection, self-awareness, and self-responsibility.  Out of our heightened awareness, comes the potential for self-improvement.  You begin to take a hard look at those qualities that you are less happy about and say, “I want to change that about myself.”  

Because sense of self encompasses self-esteem and self-worth, developing one impacts positively on the others.  Having a strong sense of self means that you authentically feel inner contentment and happiness that comes from feeling good about who you are.  It also means that you live in your truth – and that your conscious choices are always in line with what will make you happiest. 

Each one of us can benefit from developing a better sense of self.  It begins simply enough by learning how to connect within and acknowledge all that we currently are.  Sounds easy…..right?  Yet the truth is that most of us avoid focusing inward.  It’s often easier to point the finger at others than to shine a flashlight on our own flaws and weaknesses.  And yet to evolve because of our conscious effort, creates an immense degree of self-satisfaction and self-worth.

Below are 5 strategies for developing a positive sense of self:

1. Practice self-honesty.  Through our willingness to take a close look at who we are (including our strengths and weaknesses), we grow.  It’s a lot like the old adage, ‘you can’t fix a problem unless you know what the problem is.’  You can’t expect to develop a better sense of who you are unless you are willing to be completely honest.  Out of self-honesty comes knowledge and the ability to create positive intentions for improvement. 

1. Make a list of all of your positive qualities.  These are the things that you feel most proud of and appreciate about yourself.  Try and keep this list centered on your own personal attributes and successes rather than making it about others.  Some examples of positive qualities include: being a good listener, your ability to make others laugh, being a loyal friend, and working hard at everything you do.

1. Create a self-improvement list.  This second list allows you to address particular aspects about yourself that you may have long overlooked.  Create action steps for how you might go about improving each quality.  Become conscious of the necessary action steps that will allow you to change a particular behavior or trait.  For example, perhaps you would like to have better control over your temper.  You realize that in order to do this, you first need to become better at recognizing the early warning signs of when you start to feel angry.  By being consciously aware of your feelings, and through paying closer attention to the physiological signs that tell you when you are beginning to feel angry (i.e. muscle tension in your neck, clenched jaw, racing heart beat), you now have a choice around how you might react. 

1. Connect with your inner self.  Buy a notebook and spend five minutes each day writing your thoughts and feelings.  Use this exercise as a way of connecting internally with your self.  While at first it may feel awkward to sit quietly and write whatever comes to mind, what you are doing is strengthening your relationship with your inner self.  Taking the time to listen inwardly will increase your self-awareness and provide you with greater insight and wisdom.  Try it for a week and notice what you learn about yourself. 

1. Visualize your ‘future self’.  Using any new information you have learned about yourself from the four exercises above will help to create a clear picture of who you want to become.  Most of us are unaware of the knowledge and wisdom that we have the capacity for attaining.  We evolve because of our intention and willingness to do so.  For example, you might decide that you want to be more patient, more tolerant of others’ differences, or perhaps you would like to become more positive.  Having a healthy sense of self means that you continually strive for self-improvement and personal growth – even while you continue to recognize your strengths and successes.

Finally, strengthening your sense of self has everything to do with sharing yourself with others.  You do this by being who you already are – kind, loving, caring, sympathetic, considerate, and thoughtful – with everyone whom you come into contact with.  You see the positive results of your kind words, your smile, and your ability to make another person feel good by being your authentic self.  Knowing that you have the power to create joy by being joy contributes to your positive feelings about yourself.  Sense of self isn’t something that can be learned from a textbook or from a single life experience.  It develops (like aspects of our personality), along a continuum throughout our lifetime.

Your relationship with yourself is the single most important relationship you will ever have. Developing your sense of self means strengthening your inner relationship as you continue to nurture and feed your soul.

I think about what it means to have a sister. Not necessarily a blood relation (although you’re most lucky if you do!)…but a special female friend. Sisters are friends in the truest sense of the word. They force us to grow like no one else since they have the experience (albeit their own personal, unique one) of living with us as a child. They know our parents, our other siblings, and they’ve been a part of all of the inner most details, secrets, hardships, and joy of our family of origin.

Sisters present a world of difference. They are alike us in many ways – all of the ways that make us feel connected – like we are part of a whole – a deeper sense of truth. And yet we are forced to embrace them as uniquely “their own”. Reared with their own distinct set of ways in which they look at the world – their own lives, and the way their thoughts and perceptions can envelop truth.

Sisters are passionate – they love us and yet they need to be love, honoured, respected, and told how incredible they are. Regardless what birth order they fall in, they add incredible wealth of character, wisdom, kindness, and spirit to our life and the lives of our family members. They acknowledge us to be their closest confidant, companion, fashion muse, ‘forever’ keeper of life altering secrets, master of witty jokes which allow for impromptu giggle, and inspired planner of the fate of the world.

Sisters, whether they are biologically our family or ‘family’ of our own choosing….need a special place in our lives. You don’t need to see them – or even speak with them every day (although it’s wonderful to be able to stay connected on a regular basis!) to know you’re loved – and to feel a special knowing that comes with having one or more of these wonderful women in your life.

To be a sister is to honour yourself. For your sister teaches you much about who you are….what you are made of…..and what good things you still need to get better at!

To sisters and beyond….

I’m reminded that summer is in full swing as I enjoy multiple days of hot temperatures, and warm, sweet-smelling nights. One of the things that we tend to do is look ahead to the future but without planning what we want for our life. Looking forward to the summer for any number of reasons is one great motivator to also decide what your summer will look like.

What will you plan for yourself this summer? What events, occasions, activities, and memories do you plan to create? Take just a few moments to list what is most important to you this summer. It doesn’t have to be a long list….just a list that will inspire you to create the summer – a simple summer – of what you really want. Then…go out and make it happen!

Happy Summer Everyone!

Original Publication: York Region ‘Liberal’ Newspaper  – December 2001

Trust is the fundamental building block of human relationships. In our personal lives, we trust that our friends will be open and honest with us. If they are not, we may feel less comfortable around them, – and less willing to share of our own self. We trust that we will be able to give our friends our open and honest opinion about something and that they will not be offended because our opinion comes from a place of truthfulness and compassion. We also trust that our friends will not be judgmental and critical of us, but accept us for who and what we are. We trust that our friends are able to recognize all of our good qualities, and yet be patient with us as we continue to grow and evolve. When we trust that certain people in our lives will not make negative judgments about who we are, we can then feel comfortable in being ourselves — including being silly, angry, or sad at any one moment. We can be our authentic self and feel at ease in the presence of our friends. To have even one friend who allows us to be able to do this is indeed a great gift.

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Original Publication: The Globe and Mail – Canada’s National Newspaper -  November 21, 2003

If you were asked to define yourself, chances are, you’d start by describing what you do for a living.

Our sense of identity and self-esteem is tightly woven into our work. We assess our self-worth based on how successful we are at our jobs and how others perceive and acknowledge our performance.

Yet what happens if we begin to feel less passionate, or even bored with what we do for a living? How do we go about restructuring our definition of “self” if we have always associated who we are with our work?

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Original Publication: The Globe and Mail – Canada’s National Newspaper – January 14, 2003

`Consciousness’ is one of the biggest buzz words yet to rise from Eastern mystical practices. But what does it really mean and why should you care?

Living consciously means taking responsibility for your life and your actions. That is, you see yourself as who and what you really are.

And the best part of choosing to become conscious of the events and experiences of your life is that you become more responsible for your future.

Consciousness breeds self-improvement: When you choose to be honest with yourself about your strengths and – more importantly – your flaws, then you must also decide what you are going to do to change.

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