This is my application essay to the University of Pennsylvania Master in Applied Positive Psychology program, which I wrote in March, 2008. In a quest to clean up files on my computer, I found it tonight and it makes me smile to know I am still on my path towards freedom. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For some time now, I have been thinking that I when my time comes, I’d like my tombstone to read, “It feels...
I've been sleeping on other beds since March 24 (keep your mind out of the gutter), as I've traveled the east coast to work on related projects: systems interventions using the SOcial-eMOtional model of change. I've also spent quality time with family, friends and dear colleagues -- sometimes they're all rolled into one -- and am coming back home to Cleveland today feeling refreshed and reenergized. While my bed is in Cleveland, I realized something on this past trip: that I have homes in other places, too. I know what they mean when they say: home is where the...
Apparently: 30 days has September April June and November. Yesterday, I thought November had 31 days, but alas, there’s only 30. Another positive, a friend reminded me, as I’m engaging in a month-long writing initiative, where we write everyday for a month. I’ve committed to this blog. To you. To me, really. And right now I don’t want to write. But I want to honor my commitment. I want to set and reach goals. To live into utmost integrity. This means saying what I mean and meaning what I say. It means adapting – even when I don’t want to. I’m reminded of the true...
[caption id="attachment_629" align="alignleft" width="276" caption="Who the hell knows?"][/caption] The story of my life. Yours too, I may presume. But not. So step off. It’s mine. Kidding. Step on. We're all fuck ups. Really, I believe this. Cause what happened to our childhood innocence and love – for ourselves, for others? Yes, I’m a fuck-up. And I’m pretty straight, sort of speak. What I mean is, I’m becoming more and more aware of my own insanity and what I’m realizing is that boy, I’ve been conditioned in a funny way. Wow. And I can’t judge it. I can’t hate it. Cause when I do,...
Last Tuesday evening I gave a talk at NYU Langone Medical Center for Faces: a nonprofit center to improve lives of people affected by seizures and epilepsy. The program last week, Caring for the Caretaker, attracted 200 people, many of whom were parents of children with epilepsy, and some were patients themselves. What happened though was quite unlike anything I’ve experienced before as a facilitator: resistance writ large across a crowd of folks up against real stinkin’ conditions. “Who will pay the medical bills?” “Will he ever be able to ever live alone?” “I never know if my son’s next seizure will...
Reminds me of what I've been experiencing + writing about this month: Evolution/growth/success is not linear (if you do this, then you get that). It's spiral. Requires a full range of emotions, including the ones that don't feel so good. Gotta go through it to get through it. Takes multo amounts of allowing, loving, and being present, without judgment, of oneself. Of others. It's all part of the same cycle and with conscious awareness and emotional intelligence, we can feel that judgment not resonating with our higher selves. It's fear surfacing as a protection mechanism. But really now: how's that workin' for...
1. Lots. 2. Negative patterns are so imbedded in our DNA, that without mindfulness, we're apt to repeat our history -- and not in good ways. 3. No one is exempt from building this thing called positivity. It's not "you have it or you don't." You build it -- just like any other muscle. 4. Focusing is hard. Especially in 2011 when there are so many things (media/discourse/beliefs) coming at us all the time. Especially during summer. Especially in transition. (For me, living in a new city, and out of a suitcase, has been more challenging than I thought it would be.) 5. Evolution is...
My Facebook status update read: “Dreams coming true this week” and really, that’s just as I experienced it. I’m still savoring the best week of my life, which I spent in Cleveland, Ohio, starting on Valentine’s Day and ending six days later as I drove back home to New York last Saturday. A long drive on route 80, indeed, but with a big smile on my face and lots of oxytocin running through my body, it was A-Okay. Better than okay. Great! Dare I say, the best week of my life? I was there working on an intervention project called SOMO Leadership which...
[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignleft" width="190" caption="circa 1980"][/caption] Picture it: 1978, Pascack Valley Hospital, Westwood, NJ - I was born an unexpected twin, breech, the youngest of four children. “Doctor you have another baby in there,” the nurse said as she was cleaning up after Christine was born. “WHAT?!??! my parents screamed.” I grew up in the suburbs of NYC (not far from the Housewives of NJ), overweight and pseudo-overachieving. I lost my brother Todd to suicide when I was 12. He was 19. Awful, tragic, sad. But I remember where I was standing that day of his death, at the edge of our driveway,...
If you can just see as I see, feel as I feel, you'll know: I'm just as f-ed up as all y'all. Really. The voices in my head are loud lately. Really loud. Getting in the way. It amazes me how neurobiological this stuff is: engrained in our DNA. [caption id="attachment_276" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Me and Christine blowing out our candles."][/caption] Last week was my birthday. 32. Woo hoo! Traditionally, my twin sister Christine and I have a joint party with her friends and mine. We call it "Twins and the City." In one form or another, we've been doing...