about the economy

I'm eternally grateful to be on disability right now, and to have a house that does have equity because I bought it so low.

I wrote to my family: "That means my resources are your resources, too, oh family of mine. So let's not worry, let's keep taking the next step, being prudent in our plans, and trust in God."

My experience convinces me that worry doesn't do anything, except cause stress, anger, taking it out on people we really love, and then guilt and remorse. Action and planning and faith are my antidotes to worry. I wish them for you, too.

about Ultimate Leadership Camp

My colleague Gary says 'sometimes the universe is waiting for us to catch up." Gary also said "sometimes we forget that we have to do the 3 days in the tomb before we are reborn."

I just did my 3 days at Peak Potentials Ultimate Leadership Camp, coming face to face with my physical self and its limitations. I pushed myself way too hard and ended up having a physical and emotional meltdown. One wonderful man helped me through it and I was able to finally admit the extent of my abilities (far less than they were five years ago!), ask for help, and receive it. I ended up in a wheelchair and allowed three men to actually carry it (despite my misgivings about my weight being too much for them). I ceased feeling guilty for not being able to participate in everything, and instead saw how I could participate and contribute within my abilities.

My key takeaways are:

* I am a person with ability, and it's my responsibility to care for myself so I can be fully present for my team and myself - no drama.

* People come forward to help me when I ask.

Those were the big ones, along with many others smaller in scope. For example, it was men who immediately came forward to help me when I had my meltdown. They weren't afraid of me. Women initially were either angry or afraid. So now I realize it is possible for me to have what I want with a man.

When I am myself, I allow people to see my humanity and vulnerability. And finally I understand that if they like what they see then, they will love the easier parts of me. Instead of trying to "behave" all the time, I am committing to myself that I will be myself.

"Trust your intuition. The universe is guiding your life."

about naive Democrats and others

I visited Collins Watch, a blog on Susan Collins (R), junior Senator from Maine. It fascinated me to learn that Collins is so weak on issues of concern to Mainers, yet she was elected Senator.

How do the Republicans do it? It's as though people are really naive - when someone lies to us, we say "oh, they couldn't be lying!" and choose to be deceived.

It's a mystery to me how so many people get sucked in by the manipulation and distortion of reality. I'm then infuriated by the all-too-common scenario that people, when presented with facts that contradict their beliefs, get angry at the messenger.

I strive for more understanding about how people's brains and emotions interact - or not.

about Jill Bolte Taylor's "Stroke of Insight"

There is an amazing video everyone should watch, on Ted.com. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher, discusses her own stroke and its lessons. Go to www.ted.com for this very powerful 18 minutes. Her observations about right/left brain foci are so closely related to the burgeoning literature on "being in the now" a la Eckhardt Tolle.

"Focus on the now" is a tool I use with friends and colleagues to calm anxiety and encourage happiness. Where are you right now? There are no worries in the now. If you are fully in the now, it's possible to make choices based on gut instinct - because you can hear your gut speak (that brain in our intestinal tract...?). Beginning exactly where we are in the present allows us to make more realistic plans for reaching our goals. Appreciating what we have now allows us to be happy NOW, and continue to be so in the future - because the future is always now. It does work.

One thing fascinates me: Alcoholics Anonymous has a ton of sayings and tools to help people recover from active alcoholism and learn to live sober. One of the key slogans is "One Day at a Time," sometimes "one minute at a time." The core message is that it's possible to not drink for one 24 hour period, even if it's not possible to imagine not drinking for the rest of your life. As people stay sober, a day at a time, for longer periods, that message is applicable to every situation in life. The Al-Anon program for families of alcoholics has a little pamphlet called "Just For Today" that reminds readers that "just for today, I can handle almost anything" (a bad paraphrase). Basically, if you look at where your feet are today, right now, you're OK.

People only stop drinking when drinking stops working. Booze helps alcoholics be unselfconscious and comfortable in one's skin. It lessens one's shyness or self-criticism. Is alcohol then a mechanism to shut off the left brain? To allow one to lose oneself in the ethereal connectedness Jill Bolte Taylor describes?

Can it be that the tool "one day at a time" allows a recovering alcoholic to activate the right brain and achieve the same kind of release that alcohol once promised, sort of delivered on, and then ripped away?

about (vice) presidential machinations

I participated in something called Veepstakes on Facebook, and Sarah Palin was the 3rd highest ranked Veep possibility for the Republicans. Apparently, Jane and Joe Public have a better sense of who could be selected than the pundits! In the Veepstakes, we got fake money to buy shares in the Veep candidates we thought were most likely to be selected (not who we liked!). I did buy Palin shares and made "money" on her!

Anyway, it caused me to read a bit about her - long before she was actually nominated - and I was impressed by her taking on the Republican establishment and oil interests. What I didn't like was her social politics. I still don't.

I also don't like how politics manages to make us choose sides and then often to demonize the other side. My experience of many Republicans is that they are very hostile to any questions or criticism of their positions. I've been shocked this election by the overt hostility expressed toward Obama by some of my long-time pals, and distressed by what I experience as a knee-jerk defense of Sarah Palin - LONG BEFORE KNOWING MUCH ABOUT HER!

I do respect that Palin has been in executive positions, regardless of their size. Having run organizations myself, I know that it does make a difference when you run something. I also worked with community organizers and in NYC government, so have some perspective on both of those arenas as well.

In my experience, community organizers learn more about how government actually works than almost anybody else in the world but some of those who actually are in government. I say "some of those" because there are many who just do their jobs and aren't aware of the levers of power and change. Organizers have to be aware of those things. So I'll say that Obama's background prepares him extremely well to be President.

Palin's management experience is irrelevant, anyway. She wouldn't be running anything except the VP's office. She wouldn't run the Senate; they have a Majority Leader and a Rules Committee to do that. All she could do is open sessions and break tie votes. Period. McCain would be President and he'll have a Chief of Staff who will actually manage the White House.

In a way, the way Obama has run his campaign tells me he's a much better manager than either of them. His people are very cohesive and in alignment. And clearly he's selected a great campaign manager (emphasis added!) He knows he doesn't need to be strong in everything and he's brought on people to complement him, so that the entire team is competent and capable of handling what comes along. But that's irrelevant, too.

Being President is sort of like perpetually being in campaign mode - pushing your agenda; persuading voters, legislators, the media, advocates, etc. of the rightness of your positions; and getting things passed. Then it's on to the next issue for the President. Cabinet Secretaries and their staff will be the ones actually managing the implementation of the various elements of any legislated change.

If it comes down to it, my opinion is that all 4 candidates probably are equally "managerially" qualified to be President. So the crux of the matter for me is their positions on key issues.

I believe strongly that we'll go backwards under McCain - in terms of our economy, our world position, and social policy. It's impossible for me to ever vote for someone who opposes choice of any kind because that's about abridging freedom rather than spreading it.

about the 2008 Presidential election

I believe that a woman's right to choose and gay rights should not be political issues - they are about individual choices. If the Republicans would only agree that "market forces" and "states' rights" were applicable to these issues, I'd not have such a problem with them.

It troubles me that the Republican party favors constitutional amendments abridging rights. The forces of expanding rights and equality come from the ground up, and our country has a history of expansion in those areas. The 13th, 14th, 19th, 24th, 26th constitutional amendments about people's rights have been about more rights - emancipation, women's suffrage, voting rights.

A friend recently spoke with Maine Senator Susan Collins, who told her not to worry about Roe v Wade ever being overturned. How then does she reconcile with the Republican platform, then? It's a scary one in terms of choice and gay rights. I looked at the platform and found these items:

We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. (p. 52)

Because our children's future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. (p. 53)

My understanding is that the candidate agrees to the platform and has a key role in shaping it. This would be the agenda for a Republican administration.

So while Susan Collins may well be right (and I hope and pray she is!!!), this IS the stated agenda for McCain and Palin, and the folks electing them will be voting for this agenda. That's what I object to so strenuously.

It was strange reading the Republican platform (which is at www.gopplatform2008.com if you're interested). In addition to there being a lot of histrionic, hyperbolic language, there was an almost laughable misquoting of the Declaration of Independence:

As the Declaration of Independence states, our rights are endowed to us by our Creator and are inalienable: rights to life, liberty, and property. (p. 17)

The actual text is this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Text of Declaration of Independence

I think this use of the word "property" instead of "happiness" reflects the Republican Party's focus on getting "more" of "what's mine." It's so fear-based. Sad and scary.

about self-awareness

It was pretty painful to learn how to be self-aware. For a long time, I felt self-conscious about being self-aware. It was as if I were looking over my own shoulder, both observing and judging my actions. The yardstick against which I judged myself was often pretty harsh - usually it was my idea of what was "perfect." Of course, over time the external yardstick went away as I internalized the principles of the program and began to live my values.

Perhaps the self-consciousness was a necessary stage in my development; after all, I'd been pretty unconscious for many years. I followed the direction of my emotions and impulses, rarely making choices and rebelling against the very process of making a pro and con list when faced with a big decision.

For example, I decided on a graduate school based on a Tarot reading and a fear that a major catastrophe would hit the West Coast while I was there. Never mind that both West Coast schools gave me free tuition and a scholarship to cover other expenses, while the mid-west school did neither. I chose the mid-west, and then talked my way into getting a teaching assistantship which included free tuition. I was so proud of myself for successfully overcoming the financial hurdle!

Today, I think that it was such a great example of my always needing to prove that I could handle the hard stuff, and choosing the harder path simply because it was harder. I hope that today I would make a more thoughtful decision about where to go to graduate school, based on a lot of factors and informed by a lot of information.

Self-awareness is second nature to me now - something I continually develop through reading, praying, meditation, writing, talking to friends, examining my behavior through "spot check inventories," and getting feedback from others who may see me more clearly.

I do filter that feedback through my gut to determine if it fully applies to me. My gut instinct is usually pretty accurate. The more information I have, the more accurate it is. I've learned to trust it. I do know that the information I most resist is that which I most need to heed; I most often reject the truth. When I feel a little bristly, it's a sign now that I need to examine the statement or observation. That's real self-awareness - being onto myself and my techniques for
avoiding awareness of myself!