It’s crazy the way everybody, everywhere are talking about networking and connecting?!?!?  How many people have you had conversations with who “know” about social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and maybe even signed up with them, but haven’t done anything with them?

It seems to me that the idea of networking and connecting with people has taken a head long jump into the pool of fearing people.  Really all that needs to be remembered by those of us who want to network or connect is what I’m calling “People ology 101″.   Think of that book “All I needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten” and you get the basic premise.

Some basic tips from your friend, Coach Lynn are;

1.) Be curious.  It’s good to be curious (just not in a creepy or overbearing way) about who people are and what they are up to.  Ask basic questions about how they are or what they do for a living and then zip your mouth, give them eye contact and really listen.  Prompt them with affirming sounds of listening (uhuh, oh my!, laughter, etc.) and re-state a few words or sentences they said for clarity if you don’t understand them.

2.) Be polite.  Manners never, ever, ever, never go out of style.  Basic phrases like please and thank you can go a long way.  Thinking of others before yourself.  Simple things like asking if now is a good time to talk with you, if you’re calling to make a request.  Sending snail mail thank you notes!?!? Think about it, what do you receive in your mail these days besides bill and ads? Wouldn’t you love to open up a personal hand written note or card?

3.) Create a file in your brain, on your pc, in your cabinets with some reminders about who you meet and what they do.  If you follow the two tips above, you’ll probably remember who you meet because you’ve learned through the limbic system through conversing, asking questions or thinking about them when you write a note.  All of this can be stored to be used someday.  With Facebook, LinkedIn and other network sites you will also have the opportunity to interact with your fellows and leave a digital trail to refer back to when your memory fails you.

4.) People are just people.  In most cases, we all put our pants on one leg at a time (though I discovered rather later in life that I step into both pant legs and then pull them up…).  Go for the heart is what I say.  In coaching school they encouraged us to be curious and have a sense of wonder.  Sometimes I end up feeling like Mr. Spock (Star Trek)  because then humans become fascinating to me but basically, most people have something interesting to learn or say if you give them the opportunity.

These are just a few tips that I hope will be useful for you to think about and/or use in networking and connecting.  Remember, if we humans didn’t have so much fear about each other our natural state would probably be to jump into a big huge puppy pile (and I’m not talking orgy here) with each other most of the time.  It’s in our basic DNA to make friends now all you have to do is remember….

You can also read this article in a great new website I’m writing for: http://www.divinecaroline.com/22056/122046-peopleology-101

It’s so weird some of the “persona” that my inner-voices take on when my writing style is basically of the expository kind.  I thought “characters” talking to you in your head and dictating what you wrote were left to either schizophrenics or fiction writers or perhaps schizophrenic fiction writers. But once again I’m wrong because the minute I began typing the title for this post, the comedian Lewis Black entered my head.  I don’t necessarily agree with him a lot of the time and he’s so rabid about most everything….but I could see the intelligence of my brain for picking Mr. Black to talk to me about dysfunctional holidays and how to recognize the “dys” (so you can take it out….)!

One really does have to almost go to the other side of extreme to reverberate back to the middle when pondering how to take the dys out of functional holidays.  Like any good scientist would do, we first have to set-up our controls for what would represent a “functional” holiday in our own minds and what we would interpret as a dysfunctional holiday. Turns out, we all have varying degrees of tolerance, wants and needs for this one, so the first thing we have to do is know ourselves.  This may take some time. In fact, you may even find yourself cycling through several years of holidays before you figure out what you consider sane and insane or even what you want to tolerate (albeit “if” you want to tolerate anything!).  By the way,  this is where getting older can have its advantages (another thing “we” never talk about) because when you’ve done the inner work what other people think about you becomes less and less important. Some people have even arrived at the pinnacle of sane thinking with the ability to think that “other people’s opinions of me are none of my business”.

So on that note, here are some tips that I’ve learned along the way:

1.) Either don’t drink, smoke or imbibe at all or go all the way into black out. Now that may seem a bit extreme for someone who has been sober for as many years as me to say but there’s really no half-way point here.  Even a moderate drinker is going to find the alcohol’s magnifying effect in crazy situations.  Keep your wits about you or sleep through it all.

2.) Repeat after me, “there is no they”.  Take a moment or two everyday to really listen to the thoughts circling through your brain. You might be surprised to hear many sentences containing the word “they” in it in regards to “what will they think” or “what would they want”.  In some cases, this can be good—even altruistic, but in many cases you’re carrying the weight of a judge and jury around in your head.  Your brain is not a bus,  unload the freeloading passengers of judgment and misconception.

3.) Eat your veggies.  Seriously, eat probably the healthiest you would ever eat at this time of the year.   Make sure you get plenty of fruits, veggies, whole grains and protein.  If you must have flour and sugar, do it in moderation.  I’m one of those people who lost (or never had) the moderation button when it comes to flour and sugar so I don’t partake of either.  The big secret is that my body feels so much better without them gumming up the passages.  But then again I was the kind of flour and sugar eater that turned every bowl of cereal into a pool of sugar cement at the bottom. Pretty much, if I could have mainlined sugar….I would have.

4.) Go for a walk, get exercise.  Whatever form of exercise is best for you, do it.  Did you know if you looked at the clock before you walked out the door and walked 15 minutes and then returned home you would put in a 30 minute walk?  Endorphins are your friend this time of year.

5.) Drink plenty of water.  This has been told to me all of my life from my health conscious mother to my fighter pilot Dad.  I always “knew” it was true, but very rarely followed through on making sure I got 8 glasses of water every day. Then in my young adult hood when I did a lot of spiritual and psychic exploring I learned that we exerted a lot of energy from that kind of work and how important it was to help your body, mind and soul assimilate what you had learned by drinking plenty of water.  That got me into the habit of drinking water.  Eh….whatever it takes, right?

6.) Get plenty of sleep.  Maybe it’s because of how much energy I exert each day just living or maybe the sheer amount of activity I do is exhausting but whatever it is, I know that I need 7-9 hours of good sleep everyday for me to be at my optimum.  If at all possible, and you’ve got some time off for the holidays, naps are so underrated.  My father likes to say that the best nap lengths are either 20 minutes or an hour and 45 minutes.  I’ve tried both and prefer the hour and 45 minute ones but I have been refreshed with just a 20 minute nap when that was all I could squeeze in.  Throwing a lack of sleep into a holiday is like emptying a whole bottle of fire starter on to a grill. Get your sleep!

7.) Acceptance is the key to all our problems.  It is.  And I have battled and battled with what acceptance means to me for years and years.  What helped me with the concept is that just because we are accepting life on life terms doesn’t mean we have to like it.  You see I always confused the idea that if I accepted something or someone as they were then it meant that I liked or agreed with it or them.  Not true.  It really is about getting it that “what is, is”.

8.) Bring in some humor.  Just this morning my  mom and I were remembering a dysfunctional holiday that we shared several years ago and laughing in amazement about it.  At the time,  pretty much all of us who shared that weekend were in pain and it felt yucky but today after lot’s of growth it seems like the more absurdity that we can recognize about ourselves the more humorous it gets.  You truly can’t make this stuff up.  I always think of it as great material for my one-woman stand up comedy show that I may never have, but love to think about it anyway!

9.) Do something for someone else. Okay, okay, you better know me well enough to know that I certainly ain’t no Pollyanna!!! But, it has been my experience that when I get out of myself long enough to do something for someone else it ends up making me feel better.  A good friend of ours lost one of her sister’s in a freak blood clot episode over Thanksgiving.  We invited our friend and her husband over for dinner and games last night just to hang.  We talked about the incident with her sister and how her family was doing and then proceeded to get really silly playing game after game of Dominoes making each other laugh.  Helping someone else feel solid in today and creating a safe place for them to “be” however they feel is a nice thing to offer when we’re able.

10.) Bust out the walls.  Not literally, well, unless of course busting out the walls was on your list of things to do over the holidays.  The walls I’m talking about are the walls of marketing genius and media spin.  I have to remember that one of my favorite movies starring Natalie Wood as a child actor about Santa Claus was made by marketers to bring awareness and customers to Macy’s Department Store.  All the angles are covered to pull at our heart strings and sympathies.  I love the movie, but there were more than a few years there when I had to distance myself from watching it because my expectations of myself and others during the holidays seemed to blow up into exponential disproportions!

Just a few ideas from your friend Lynn about how to be functional during the holidays.  How about you?  What have your holidays of yore been like and how do you take care of yourself?

“They” should warn you about things like this.  If an Australian Shepherd ends up in your pack of life, be prepared for more to merge in at a later date.  One of our first clues to Aussie dog owners tending to have multiple Aussies was last summer while vacationing at the beach when we met a woman who had three champions playing frisbee with her all up and down the beach!?  They all got along so well together and they just seemed to fit together perfectly.  You could almost see them, in your mind’s eye, herding flocks of sheep across the rolling green hills of country-islands across the ocean.

  So it should come as no surprise to us that after only a week of seriously looking into a new litter-mate for our small pack of an Aussie and a Lab, who would fit in the most seamlessly like he’d always lived with us but “George” who ended up at the shelter as a stray.  They figure him to be about 7 months old but I think he may be a little bit younger.

George and Paul (yes, you know any more dogs we get will be named John and Ringo…) acted like they fit together like peas and carrots from their first meeting.  I didn’t go with my husband for the “meet and greet” between them because I have a hard time going to any kind of animal shelter since I end up wanting to bring everyone home with me.  Soon after the time he made his appointment to take Paul to meet his new possible sidekick, I got the most happy voice mail from my husband telling me that they were getting along famously and riding together in the back seat of his car with no problems at all.

Our Black Labrador, The Grand Dame we call “Reality”, likes him too.  And he defers to her better judgment in cases where both he and Paul get a wee bit too rambunctious for the regal black lady of our abode.  I’ve had dogs all my life, in fact, I say often that I was raised by a Boxer because “Duke”, my parents’ first dog-child, used to watch me in the front yard when my mom went to talk to neighbors in the hood and not let me wander out of the yards’ parameters.  I’ve been around German Shepherds when my mom was into showing and breeding them and raising champions, Great Danes, Wired-haired Dachshunds, Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, Schipperkes, Dobermans, Cairn Terries, Golden Retrievers, an Irish Wolfhound and a Cockapoo but I’ve never had an Australian Shepherd, until now, which seems to be a breed all unto itself.

I’ve made my husband promise me that we will find a trainer (for us more than the dogs) who specializes in Australian Shepherds so that we can make sure that we keep their bright little minds busy and occupied with little chance of circling around in on itself and becoming really neurotic!!  After four years of talking and communicating with the Paul-dog, it wasn’t until this evening with the addition of the new George-dog, that Paul acknowledged that my words were reaching him when he came to full alert because the next door neighbors with all their kids were home. This is usually the time that he loves to run to the window and bark as if Attila the Hun himself was outside trying to break in.   We’ve tried all kinds of things with him to get him to stop to no avail when, surprisingly, all I had to say to him this evening was “now Paul, think really hard how you want to react to this…you’ve got the little man George watching your every move”.

I’m sure it won’t surprise you at all to know that Paul did not bark once. Well, maybe once but that was only when one of the neighborhood kids actually came up to our door and knocked on it to give us their annual family photo Christmas card.  Even still, Paul did not bark as loud or as long as he would of before George (b.g.).  All this goes to show that I’m pretty sure everything you say and do with an Aussie goes in their ears and stays there.  I’m also beginning to realize that there is probably an exhaustive list of all kinds of things they can do but….ONLY WHEN THEY WANT TO DO IT.   So, the trick for us is to learn how to gain their respect and attention so they’ll want to do what we say.

I really feel sorry for those humans who don’t enjoy animals as much as we do.  I’m sure if you are an animal lover that you have many examples in your own life of how being in a relationship with them has expanded and grown you in your “being” experience.  In fact, I would love to hear stories from you about what you’ve learned from your animal friends.

Until then, picture me running around the foothills of the Texas Hill Country with my Aussie dogs and send us all a little prayer would ya?!

If I had given birth to children, I’m pretty sure that I would have felt like I was the first person who had ever experienced the unique feelings that come with the miracle of bringing life into the world even though there have been all kinds of women who have given birth for thousands of year.  I know that, for me in that situation, I would have felt that I was different from every other woman on the planet.

So why would I expect to feel any other way about other major steps in life such as helping family and friends figure out where they want to call home and how they want to live their lives til the end of their days?  Same goes as I look down the road for my future and contemplate where my husband and I would like to be (both figuratively and theoretically).  It’s amazing how steeped in denial we can be about life choices like this even with all the swirling articles, stories, documentaries, lectures, movies and so on out there to remind us.

Over the last year, I experienced helping a good friend walk through the process of realizing that her debilitating illness had taken her to a point that living in her home alone was no longer a safe option for her.  During her life, she had enjoyed knowing that she had above average intelligence, a good education and had experienced many examples of competencies and success both in the business world as well as her private life. So you can imagine how difficult it was for her to accept that she would have to move to a residential apartment and downsize considerably.  Oh by the way, she was a good twenty years younger than most people are when they have to make these kind of decisions.  Within a short time of moving to her apartment, her illness got progressively worse with frequent trips in and out of the hospital.  She tried to stay in her apartment and hired 24 hour home health care but that was sorely lacking from the inexperience of her helpers to the fact that one of them stole her narcotics.  About three months before she passed away her illness had taken such a turn for the worse that all the medical authorities predicted that it would be just a matter of time so she was received into the hospice center of her choice.  Within a week of being in the hospice center it became obvious that she had rallied so her family came together to help her make a choice of where to go to next.  A nursing home was chosen that was supposed to be “good” and “clean”.  My friend threw as much of a fit as she could about not liking it and wanting to move immediately but we were told that this kind of reaction was normal for someone who first enters nursing care and to just give her time to adjust.

What did I know? I’d never had to deal with this in my family and certainly not with any friends.  Luckily for my friend, her son heard her requests and helped her to find a much better facility for her to live out her days.  It still wasn’t the Taj Mahal of nursing care centers, but it was light years away from the first place that she landed. Oh, did I tell you that she went through a confusing time period there of not knowing how much money she had in her accounts and what she could afford to spend in the way of nursing care and accommodations?  That was enough to get me to pay attention to how we spend our money and what our retirement plan is all about!

Fast forward to this past week and one of my family members told us that they were looking down the road to where they wanted to call “home” for the final time.  Luckily for this family member they have a good pension as well as a family trust so they have been able to find a retirement and continuing care community with all kinds of choices for care that also does not feel like an “old people” place.  I think this may be how the one percent gets to live or at least have excellent choices available to them concerning whether they stay in their own home with help or move into a community with all kinds of bells and whistles.

As I look down the road for myself (even though I’ve got a good 20-25 years til I have to really make some concrete decisions) I realize that a.) I’m very grateful to have good help, b.) I’m very grateful to be married to whom I am married and for the choices we have made in our lives and c.) Although I appreciate lovely surroundings, pretty much if I live where I can enjoy the ocean and nature, I’ll be happy.  If I need it, I’m sure there will be health care workers who love seaside communities as much as me who can come visit my cabin.

Every once in awhile if I’m lucky, some of the wisdom and/or other people’s lessons make an impact on me and cause me to really consider what actions I want to take in my life instead of just floating along as a passive victim just taking what life dishes out.  I understand that I don’t have control over pretty much anyone or anything outside of myself; however, I can pay attention to how I’m feeling and thinking and take actions towards that which I believe so that I can live in concert with who I am.

I tell you what, if looking down the road now means that I might have to drive my twelve year old car just a wee bit longer so we can sock away some more money for a comfortable retirement I’m so on board with that now!  Sometimes delayed gratification is really the icing on the cake.

How about you? What do you see down your road?

My father gives all kinds of wisdom to us kids with sparkling eyes, specific ways he moves his hands to underline a point and just the hint of laughter in his voice  sometimes followed with the infamous “horse bite” where he’d grab a knee with his hand and squeeze.  I’m betting that the saying “reaping the harvest of hard work” must have come down the line at some time in my life from him.  When I was younger, especially when I was a teenager, a lot of the life lessons he taught me were received with both of my eyes rolling at a real or an imaginary audience but his point usually did hit home even if I’d have been damned to show anyone that it had!

This week, mi padre is visiting for the Thanksgiving Holidays along with my brother-in-law.   Tonight we all got together for dinner and had a really nice conversation and time.  It was especially nice for me to be able to hold some kind of semblance of an informed political conversation with my Dad (he’s a retired USAF Col) sharing some of the ideas and knowledge that I’m receiving from the political science class that I’m taking this semester.  What is especially heart-warming is that I want to hear whatever experience, strength and hope my father shares without fearing being offended or irritated by what he says.  I think the gift of my being able to have an open heart is largely in part because of having done a lot of deep soul searching work and taking all kinds of steps towards the life I want to live and have.

It’s taken me 275 words to risk receiving the same response from you  that I used to give my parents by sharing that if you do the really hard work  and invest time, attention and action into doing your best with family, friends and work you will reap the benefits I promise you.  It’s just that sometimes the rewards for all that we’ve put into our selves and our lives definitely doesn’t happen on our time line (instantly) nor does it always come in the form or fashion that we expect (fame, fortune, insert your expectation here).  I realized I was reaping the harvest of hard work tonight because of how I felt spending time with my family.  I felt happy, sane and calm.  Really!?!  There would have been a time in my life that if you had asked me how my family time was, much less around a holiday, you would have never seen “happy”, “sane” or “calm” in my description.  Today, most of the time there’s a good chance you will.

Maybe this thing about hard work and reaping the harvest somewhere down the road seems like a no brainer to you.  Perhaps that completely makes sense to you but for me, especially in this instant everything kind of world, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that every lesson and everything that you learn and work to improve in your life has to be hard work, not at all. What I am saying is that if you sometimes feel hopeless or wonder why the hell you put forth the effort to improve yourself and/or make a difference — you will reap the rewards of your efforts today somewhere down the road.  I believe there is a universal law at play here that has to be reconciled with your input.

So take some time today to think about where you’ve put your intentions and efforts and know that the universe is paying attention.  We don’t always know when or how the universe (I call it the Divine) will respond, but have confidence that there will be a response.

Having an “attitude of gratitude” puts us in the frame of mind to be looking for people, circumstances and places that we can feel grateful about.  I used to hate it when the people I was hanging out with or being mentored by would suggest such a thing to me.  It just sounded like another one of those platitudes that everyone says but don’t really mean.

And it might be a platitude but when I have an attitude of gratitude it works.  Imagine that.  A platitude that actually works, who knew?!

The best time to come up with things to feel grateful about are especially when it seems like there is absolutely NOTHING to be grateful about.  Your head hurts, you lost your job, you’re broke, you are divorced, your loved one walked out on you, your car broke down, you don’t have a car….the list goes on and on.  One thing we’re really good at doing is coming up with a list of what is wrong, especially if you’re recovering from any number of addictions (alcohol, drugs, nicotine, food, sex, money, insert-your-drug-of-choice-here).  For the past couple of years, I’ve been making it a point to focus on those things that make me grateful and just like “they” tell you—-the more you focus on something, the more you’ll see it.   Why, today I have so many things to really feel grateful about.  Like my husband, and my friends and family and my health and the Pistachio  Tree in our backyard whose leaves look like glinting gold in the sunlight.

Something I’ve been doing lately during my commutes back and forth to school is listening to one of the radio channels here in Austin which is playing 24/7 comedy.  I have a feeling that this great comedy will only be around until  someone purchases the air time and creates a new station (not being negative, just realistic) but for now it sure is making a difference in my attitude.  They happen to play some of my favorite comedians over and over like Jim Gaffigan. Here’s his skit about “Hot Pockets“.   Obscure comedy, my favorite. Before listening to this comedy show I was listening to ranting talk shows, some music and lots of news.  Talk about a way to get yourself as far away from grateful as possible! I mean, I’m all for you knowing what is going on in the world around you; however, we surely don’t need to be watching/listening/tweeting/absorbing everything news all the time unless we’re the President and even then we’d probably have someone whose job it was to just give us the cliff notes.

What we think about, what we talk about, what we focus on is what our lives end up becoming.  Still haven’t figured out how to manifest a Mazda RX-8 for myself (because I think about them all the time), but I sure do see them driving up behind me, to the side of me, pulling out of parking lots, backing into spaces in front of me so I suspect its just a matter of time before I will be driving my own!

I like to play this game with gratitude sometimes where I’ll sit outside and look into my house when the lights are on (except not for in the winter because it’s cold) kind of like I’m stalking myself but it puts me in a place where I feel like I’m looking at my life through the eyes of somebody else.  And I really like what I see.  Or I notice that I mostly like what I see but I really need to take the slip cover off of the sofa and wash it.  I’m still grateful though,  I mean I have a sofa so there’s that.

As we head into the season where many of us focus on what we have or don’t have, decide to capture an attitude of gratitude.  For two weeks before you go to sleep, list 5 things/people/places/ideas/etc. that you’re grateful for and each of those days for that two weeks the list has to include at least 5 different things.   I kind of got panicky when I first did this and thought ahead because I was just sure I wouldn’t be able to list that many things but when I realized I could even get as simple as being grateful for breathing and my heart beating, then I realized that I had this gratitude game covered. Try it.

What’s on your gratitude list today?

Breaking away from any pack is quite a conundrum for me because I love to be right in the middle of a big “puppy pile” and yet, I have realized that in order to find the right “puppy pile” for me….I have to first realize what pack it is that I’m breaking away from.

For all of my international readers I apologize for thoroughly confusing you by throwing out these references that you may or may not be familiar with.  In this case, “puppy pile” means a group of friends, colleagues and or acquaintances who I enjoy spending time with and “the pack” refers to the people that I find myself surrounded by.

Right now we are smack dab in the middle of November, which means, for many Americans we are heating up for our biggest “holiday” season of the year.  Even though our eyes have been opened up over the last decade or so that there are other holidays going on in addition to the traditional Christian one of Christmas, no matter our religion anyone living in the U.S. has been under the heavy influence of great marketers for all of their lives.  By the time October rolls around, the shopping frenzy and anxiety about not meeting unrealistic expectations (real and perceived) begins.

However, I am grateful to tell you that it is possible to break away from the pack so that you can figure out how you want to celebrate and/or acknowledge your particular holiday. It turns out that I have friends and family members who have taken the leap to break away.  One couple we know has a fabulous Winter Solstice party every year and invites all kinds of interesting friends who are fun to talk with as well as cooking amazing food for everyone. If gifts are exchanged at all, they are usually of the homemade or something-you-can-eat variety.

  For several years there, I was miffed about how I felt about celebrating around this time of year partly because I still celebrated the faith tradition I was brought up in and partly because I had no idea how to celebrate in the new faith tradition I had adopted.  All that and the added bonus of the extreme marketing campaign memes that run through my head about how “one” is supposed to look, feel, act, behave, decorate, celebrate and give.  Whoooowh.  I had a Jewish boss years ago who used to stay at a very nice swanky hotel in Hawaii with his family. They’d leave around mid-December and not return until after the first of the year.   Seemed like a  pretty sane idea to me.

Slowly my husband and I have created our own version of celebration.  We definitely enjoy spending time with friends and family taking the time to gather, talk, play games and have fun.  For many years, because my husband is from another faith tradition then me…I felt sorry for myself and would not decorate in the way that I grew up in a traditional Christian household.  Slowly but surely, I’ve come around to figuring out what kinds of decorations I want to have because I want them….not because of any expectation of what I am supposed to have.  I bought three poinsettias from a friend’s daughter a few weeks ago and am looking forward to having them to add their festive color to our home.  I’m pretty sure that I was clear with the Universe, at least subconsciously, about wanting Christmas decorations for a tree because somehow over the years I actually have accumulated enough to decorate a nice mid-sized tree.

As to the whole gift giving thing, I’m still not the Martha Stewart that I wish I was who would grow and make enough things that I could whip together into fabulous unique gifts.  Truly, I do have this image in my head.  I have to stay away from all those magazines in the doctors’ offices that have great ideas for how to make gifts or even buy gifts for under $$ (enter number here).  I’ve finally gotten honest with myself about this in that a.) obviously my calendar speaks volumes of where I put my interests and b.) having a very limited budget takes care of all kinds of worry cuz you can’t do what you can’t do!??

So what I would encourage you,  my dear readers is if you live in a place (like the U.S., U.K., etc.) where most people kind of go bonkers around this time of the year, to think about how YOU want to celebrate your particular holiday or season.  How do YOU want to let people know that you care about them.  Turns out, it may be just as simple as giving someone a bit of face-time.

May I be able to break away from my pack and you be able to break away from yours so that we can find each other in that free space away from the frenzy!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you’ve heard/read/seen the news about the winning-est football coach in history, Joe Paterno of Penn State  being fired, along with Penn State President Graham Spanier in the wake of a sex abuse scandal in which authorities said they failed to do enough after learning of it from an assistant Coach.  Now before I piss off a whole bunch of you, I want to say for the record that a.) sex abuse is never okay and b.) sex abuse is especially heinous when it is perpetrated on a kid and c.) sex abuse is never okay.

I’m telling you all that because I want you to remember it when I tell you what may piss you off which is why this whole media hoopla has got me up in arms and it’s not just because of really gross negligence and awful sex abuse allegations that seem to be torn from the pages of a Law and Order Special Victims Unit script.  It’s because so many of us are missing so many huge points. It’s like we’re all just a huge litter of Pavlov’s dogs ready to jump at the first threat that the media and press throws out to us with our very surface opinions on whatever the matter du Jour is (enter unruly taunting Monty Python character here)…

French Taunting Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Yes, the whole situation with Penn State and the alleged situation with the children is horrendous.  Yes, it is extremely sad that such a great hero such as Joe Paterno is being driven to his knees so late in life after all that he has done for so many.  And do you really think that this kind of sex abuse situation where some people know and don’t really shake the bushes about it to put a stop to it is rare?  Really? Can I say Catholic Priests?  And not that there is anything the matter with Catholic Priests, but not too far back if you rifle through most cities’ Daily Planet rags you will find headline news about the sex abuse allegations of many Catholic Priests being hidden for decades.

Witch hunts only make certain that witches will hide.  Ye gads people do you really think that burning famed figures at the stake because they preferred to throw the hot potatoe to the next person in line and ignore what happens is going to make someone in a similar situation in the future pause and say, “hmmmm, I remember what happened to Paterno and Spanier so rather than passing this to someone and then focusing on what brings glory and fame and money to many, I’m going to risk losing it all by following the whole chain of command and shaking a lot of bushes to make sure things get done”? Really?  Well, I want to be part of that world where most people would respond that way but unfortunately probably what most of us would do in that situation is try to make it go away as quietly as possible.  I mean, I think I would raise all kinds of hell if it was me but I don’t have as much to lose as Paterno and Spanier did either.

One of my favorite blogger/tweeter CEO/Consultants, Peter Shankman, wrote a recent article entitled, “Why Most People Are Full of Shit“.  Suffice it to say that I don’t believe I’m digressing too much by referring to Peter’s article because he’s saying that 99% of the people you meet in the world are full of shit. And then gives examples of say two people bumping into each other and saying “they’ll have to meet for coffee” with really not having any intention of meeting in a dark alley at high moon much less sharing a cup of Jo with each other.  Okay, so a few of those FOS (full of shit) people were blasting the airwaves yesterday on one of my favorite talk radio shows (KLBJ AM – Jeff Ward) pretty much saying that Paterno should be hung out to dry along with a whole bunch of the higher ups.

Sorry,  not going to really be able to take in your sincerity of opinion because I know that you are really an FOS person who is used to talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Now, with that said the kind of people I will listen to very intently are the ones who have suffered at the hands of someone like Sandusky.  I know you’re coming from raw experience.  And I’ll listen to someone who has been in Paterno’s shoes and learned  some hard lessons about sweeping stuff under the carpets.  I won’t give someone like Sandusky any attention at all; however, I might listen to his wife just to find out how it could be possible to be in such total denial of someone you are married to for so many years.  That’s a case study in itself.

What I’m trying to say here is GLASS HOUSESSSSSSS!  We have an opportunity with a case like this to really look within ourselves so that we can become willing to grow and learn.  We can look into yet another freaking broken system to see how we can handle things differently.  We can learn to be willing to look into the dysfunction going on in our own lives, families, work, friend situations and let the healing begin with us.

I can almost guarantee you that there are so many more people responsible for what occurred and didn’t occur then has come out in the press thus far.  A sick situation that has lasted so very long has a whole lot of people in agreement, whether consciously or unconsciously, to keep things status quo.  I bet there’s a lot of aching necks from looking the other way for so long.  And not very many of us can be found without some kind of dirt on our own selves because dirt like this flings far and wide.

It’s a very sad situation that is being played out all the time, all over the world by so many people so the thing that we need to do is look to ourselves first for how we can clean up our side of the street and then look out in our own lives to see where we can shine the light and bring in some awareness and healing.

It’s really easy to get on top of a high platform and yell out the injustices at the top of our lungs. Sometimes, in fact, it’s a very good thing to do this.  But what seems to be our kryptonite is accepting our own humanity with all of our perfections and fallacies so that then we can then accept the reality of what is, and then decide the best response and action to take.

How will you show up in your life today?

If you let yourself just take that in for one minute, “everything is alright, everything is okay”, doesn’t it make you feel better? I mean, even if you were already feeling alright, sometimes we’re just not aware of all the stress, tension and control we are wound up in until we hear (or read) a soothing voice telling us that it’s all going to be okay.

Back in the “day” when I used to smoke mary-ju-juana, I was one of those people who partook because I wanted to not feel sad, afraid, hurt, angry, worried (insert issue here).  I spent the whole summer after my freshman year in college, high.  Or as close to it as I could.  And you know I didn’t get a thing done such as going to summer school or finding a job.  But I did discover a whole bunch of really good ways to combine food and eat sugar.  What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I needed to discover that peaceful place inside of me that has a never ending fount of encouragement and feeling peaceful.  Somehow I didn’t make it into an Ashram, church, synagogue, counselor’s office or 12-step meeting then.  I guess I was still living my story and adding chapters of experience for figuring out later down the road.

When I finally did make it into all kinds of spiritual rooms, counselor offices and self-help groups I set down my weapons of rash dysfunction to my brain and walked around feeling pretty exposed for awhile there as learned to understand myself and who I was in the world (see Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning“).  I will be forever grateful for the therapist I saw during this period because of many reasons but most certainly because she had such a soothing way about her from just her disposition to her voice.  I think it was more the way she loved me to health rather than any great psychology that helped me get to the place of feeling that everything was going to be okay—although there was good psychology too!

It may seem disingenuous for me to tell you that even with the state of the Economy around the world, war, disease, and pestilence,  that everything really is fundamentally okay…but it is….really.  I’m thinking of even the worst times in my life when I’ve been hurting physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually (and there’s been a lot of those times) that in the center of each time, I was okay.  The “I” that cannot be measured.  The “I” that has a body and a soul and all kinds of things that we attach to ourselves to say to the world, “this is who I am”. But really that “I” of us is that place you can find, if you have the desire to find it, that is in the center of us but can’t be measured. It can be felt but not seen.   Meditation has definitely helped me find that “I” so that sometimes all I have to do is sit somewhere calming to me (like outside in the swinging chair on our back patio), disengage from all the things that are troubling my mind and soul and allow the “I” to float forward.

Sometimes though I need to run through the countryside or swim in the ocean….move my body till I can let go of what I am holding on to so that I can allow in, me.

No matter what is going on now for you, you too can find that calm within so that you feel the truth that everything is fundamentally well.

The journey may be long and the road may be rocky but the bliss is so worth it.

What are you willing to do today to feel the bliss within?

Paramahansa Yogananda

When the Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now” came out a handful of years ago, I so resisted reading it.  It just seemed to “book du jour” to me.  E V E R Y O N E was talking about it from Oprah to people I sponsor in 12-step programs to random people on the street.  In fact, a couple of friends who I admire from two different areas of my life even gave me the book to read and it still took me 1/2 a year or more to get around to it.

I don’t remember now, but  have probably written about it in previous posts, when I actually picked up the book and read it but HAZZA  almost upon the first few sentences I was struck by the energy that came through the words that Eckhart had written.  I totally related to the example of when an emergency happens how everything slows down and you are so in the moment during that time (ask me about being in the moment as I woke up from a drunken stupor to see my car heading off of an overpass….).

Needless to say, this book and the teachings—or re-teachings of what we already know–have stayed with me.

I’ve been thinking today about how we humans seem to enjoy freaking ourselves out about stuff.  Like the whole pandemonium that is going on around 2012 and OCCUPY Wall Street, etc. etc. etc.  When I contemplate these reactions and how sometimes we only seem to get in the moment when the sky is falling then I realize that really, really what is happening underneath it all is we’re just searching for the NOW. The What IS.  The connection to ????? (insert the G-word here?)

I found out today that someone I knew from way back in high school days had just learned on a seemingly routine annual exam that she has a rare aggressive form of cancer.  This is a gal who had her ups and downs in childhood (as many of us did) but by and large had a whole lot of really great things going on throughout her life and BOOM there it is. The Now factor.  What we’re all searching for sans the cancer.  And I got blown into NOW by my heart because I immediately felt the tears coming up with a love that I hadn’t realized that I felt for this friend. Not that deeply.  It was nice albeit painful.  We played telephone tag today but I felt the connection with her in our voice mails.  Once again I’m being reminded to pause and be alive.  To feel the love that circles in and around and throughout all of our lives that we tend to swat off like an irritating swarm of gnats who dare to bug us in our busy days.

I’m amazed today when I hear someone tell me “I’m bored”.  I totally cannot grok what they are saying and quite frankly I have no interest in pursuing why.  There is just so much to explore and learn and experience that if we spend the rest of our lives being alive in the now of that we will never realize them all.  Being bored is boring?!?! And self-centered. Hello, yes I’ve been this person (a bored person) and I bet I was pretty boring to all around me in my self-absorption.

Being in the now can be scary because you might think about something that you’ve been denying or you might realize something that you don’t want to accept or God forbid you would feel feelings that you’d rather not feel…but here’s the deal…when we allow ourselves to be in the N O W, then we can take down our neurotic staircase to avoidance.  And clean up what we don’t want in our lives so we can allow in what we do want.

How will you allow yourself to be in the N O W, now?