Tag Archives: happy life

Becoming wealthy is easier than you think

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Cash

Money.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

In the wealthiest country on earth, most Americans are poor.

What does it take to become a wealthy person? Getting into that top one percent may be difficult but moving up the wealth ladder takes a whole lot less than you might think.

Poor may be easier to define than wealthy. The poor can’t afford much of anything.  By most economic measures the majority of Americans are poor. I will emphasize Americans in this post because most of the rest of the world thinks of us as wealthy, we know better.

Two-thirds of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Most of us are one paycheck away from homelessness. The only thing saving a lot of us is the slow speed of eviction and foreclosure.

Absolutely having an income is important. We will return again later to the theme of the connection between having a job, any job, and having hope and good mental health. But once you have that income coming in, what will it take to start moving up into the ranks of the “wealthy.” Probably way less than you think.

Over one-fourth of Americans have no savings account. Open a savings account of any amount and you move into the upper 75 % of all Americans in wealth. Better open that account with a credit union. In what I see as amazing cynicism most U. S. banks will charge you so much for “maintaining an account” those fees will drain the account dry in a matter of months.

Want to do better than that? Let’s say you want to join the upper 50% of the wealthiest Americans, you need to reach a balance in that savings account of just $500. That’s right folks; to enter the ranks of the wealthiest half of all Americans you need just $500 in savings.

You are saying that it must be more complicated than that. Well yes, there is a little catch. You can’t count yourself wealthy if you don’t pay your bills to collect up that saving account balance. But don’t worry about that one too much. Turns out most Americans have bills that exceed their savings account balance. So yes even with balances on your credit cards you can make the 50 % most wealthy Americans list with just $500 in savings.

Want to bypass all that middle of the road stuff and make the upper crust? The wealthiest one-third is your goal? The amount you need in Savings will need to reach the astronomical figure of $1,000.

This is mind-boggling. Most of us will spend thousands on a big screen or a new computer but can “spend” $1,000 by placing it in a savings account for later use. How much is peace of mind worth? If you lose just one night’s sleep worrying about paying bills having that $1,000 cushion will be worth the effort to save it up.

Unless, big warning here, if you are one of those people who the minute you get some money in the bank you increase your spending to use that money up. To get into the top one-third in wealth is a lot easier than to stay there.

What about credit cards?

We need to talk about the average American now, not the upper or lower anything. Calling anyone average is a stretch, especially when we are talking about money. The average family had 2.3 children at one point. No one has “point anything” kids. You either have two or three or you belong in an institution for the criminally insane.

Take one person walking down Wall Street; he has one hundred million dollars in the bank. Now average his bank balance with the nine homeless people in that Occupy encampment. What is the result? The AVERAGE bank balance will be ten million dollars. No one in this example has that amount.

This trying to average Billionaires and people making minimum wage is one reason Washington keeps getting us into trouble. If you take away everything the Billionaires have and leave them homeless you still won’t get enough to make the homeless into millionaires. On the other hand, if the Billionaires don’t kick in and kick in good there will be no one to buy from their companies and they will not feel safe walking the streets. Trickle-down economics only works when the flow rate increases way beyond a trickle. But I digress.

How do credit cards figure into this becoming a wealthy person?

Credit cards have their place. I am not urging you to return to the depression era economics and go completely without the existence of credit. I keep some in case my car breaks down in the middle of the desert and I need to get it repaired to get out of there. I do not move to the desert and try to live by using my card instead of working.

The way some card companies market their products is the equivalent of that chocolate cake on the healthy eating list. Sympathy for those card companies is like caring for sharks by keeping some in the community pool. I am all for conservation but it does not include a shark in my pool thank you very much.

So what is the relationship between being a wealthy American and credit cards?  Wealthy people do not carry balances on credit cards. If they have them and use them they pay them off as quickly as possible.

This keeps most Americans out of the “Wealthy” club. The “Average American” has $3,800 in their bank account but they have $2,200 on their credit card. If they were to pay that credit card off there would not be even one month’s living expenses left for that “average” American.

The net result is that they will end up using that card again. They get to pay and pay that balance over and over and still never get out of debt.

Want to be a wealthy American no matter how much you make? Save up some money in an emergency savings account, pay off those credit cards and then scale back your spending to match your income.

You can’t afford the bare necessities you say? We need to talk about the difference between necessities and luxuries, between wants and needs. But this post has run over so I will save that for another time.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

5 Rules for Helping and Being Helped

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Helping others.
Photo courtesy of pixabay

Can you accept help? Do you help others?

The tug between giving and receiving help can throw you off-balance regardless of your other issues in life.

There are those who are always doing for others. They just can’t help enough. But when the time comes for them to ask for or even accept help this is something really hard for them to do. This over-helping can leave you drained and resentful when others don’t show you the appreciation you expect and are not willing to do for you in return.

Other people avoid doing anything for others but are always so needy then use their friends up. Eventually, a day comes that they need help but no one is available or willing to help them. They become despondent and bitter. Constantly asking for help may be a sign you don’t have much confidence in your ability to handle things.

Getting this helping and receiving help in balance is really difficult. To navigate the helping rapids you need a lot of balance in your life.

Helping rule # 1

Helping others makes you feel good.

Have you ever done something for a small child or an elderly person? Someone who truly needed your help and couldn’t do it or do it as well without your help?

How did that make you feel? Most people have had this experience more than once in their life. The predominant feeling people say they get from helping others was that helping that person made them feel good. We mostly like the feeling of helping someone who needs help.

If you have never had this feeling, don’t cheat yourself out of the chance to feel good. Seek out some opportunity to be of service.

Helping rule # 2

Don’t help others and expect something in return.

Did you expect that child to thank you profusely or be in your debt? Did you expect them to repay the favor? Probably not, because you knew from the start that child or older person was not in a position to do the same for you.

Now, what if you lent your car to a friend, and then later when you needed a ride they would not return the favor? How does this make you feel?

You probably feel bad, hurt, even angry. Why? Because when you helped them you expected that they would someday repay the favor.

If you help others expecting something in return you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Helping rule # 3

Don’t cheat others out of the chance to feel good by helping.

If helping a child made you feel good why would you cheat someone out of any of that good feeling? This comes up frequently in recovery groups. People say that they don’t ask someone to be their sponsor because they don’t want to impose.

That other person wants the chance to help. If not you then they will help someone else. So often in life, we constantly help but are unwilling to let others help us. Being able to accept help is as much a skill as being a helping person.

Only watch out for rule 4.

Helping rule # 4

Giving is giving and selling is selling.

If someone helps you do you owe them? There are some businesses that call themselves helping professions or that like to think they help people but it is clear from the start or should be that someone is paying for this service. Most of the time helping and receiving help are not-for-profit transactions.

If someone does for you and they afterward tries to charge you, there is a good chance you will feel cheated. That gift had strings attached. Makes you reluctant to accept help from that person again and it makes you reluctant to offer them any help in the future.

Make sure what the intent is upfront and feel free to decline offers of help that come with strings attached.

Helping rule # 5

Helping should not be a destination at the end of a one-way street.

People who can give help but are never able to receive it are in an unhealthy neighborhood. If something inside you makes you feel that you need to always be helping others but that you should not accept any help in return you need to look at yourself and see why it is so hard for you to accept help.

Do you feel that you don’t deserve to receive help? Are you not worth it? Then take a look back at all those previous posts about how you deserve a happy life and need to start creating one. Believe in yourself.

If you find that you are mostly on the receiving end then consider what you can do to give to others. Giving makes you feel better about yourself and always taking makes you weaker, more helpless, and selfish.

This is not to say that if you have a genuine disability it is wrong to accept a lot of help. What I am saying is that you need also to look at what you can do to be helpful in return. Sometimes that is as simple as saying thank you or a call to see how the person who was helpful to you is feeling today. This is one of those for sure cases of; it is not the size of the gift but the thought that counts. Just, please, be honest with yourself about how much help you need and what you can and can’t do for others.

Helping is not a fair trade situation. You do not do for them so they will do for you. It is a “you have to give it away to keep it” thing. The more you can do for others the better a person you become. Letting others help you, sometimes helps them to find happiness.

Best wishes on your journey to a happier life.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Help Wanted – A GOD —

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Search for a higher power.
Photo courtesy of pixabay.

Do you wish you believed but can’t? Want to find a higher power?

There is no doubt that having a religious or spiritual belief can be a great comfort in times of trouble. I have no quarrel with those of you who have some sort of understanding of a higher power, but I know there are lots of you out there who want to believe and just can’t.

There may be a good reason why you find it so hard to believe. There may also be a solution.

You may be one who describes yourself as a recovering Baptist, a recovering Catholic or some other religious label. You grew up in a religion, but it doesn’t fit. You learned the creeds and rituals but the higher power was not someone you would want for a friend, let alone worship. Try as hard as you could you just can’t believe in that religion’s God.

You may have grown up in a home where religion was not practiced. Where the altar was a Television set and the higher power you worshiped was things. You would like more, some deep spiritual connection but you can’t find one.

You may look at the world’s religions and wonder why they all say they worship a higher power and they all hate each other so much. You try to adopt the religion of your family, your ancestors, or your country. My people always believed this way so I am supposed to. But it just does not work for you. You ask yourself if you had been born on in a different country on another continent would you worship a different God?

You know there has to be a solution, and there is, but you can’t find that higher power that is of any use in your life. You want to believe but you just can’t.

You may consider yourself an agnostic, an atheist, or a seeker who studies one faith after another. You may have adopted an unusual religion or rejected them all.

There is a solution and perhaps an example will help.

Say you grew up in a family that worshiped the Flamethrower God. This God hates everyone. He is always out to catch someone doing wrong and then fry them. He hates you and you fear him. He may even ask you to go into his service in some other country to rape, pillage, and burn.

This God, so his followers say, hates everyone and thinks we are all evil and deserve to be punished. This is an easy God to twist to fit your ends. Parents use him to scare little kids at night into behaving. Politicians can use him to justify wars and war atrocities.

If you grew up indoctrinated in this belief, this “you are no good, no one is any good” culture, it is hard to see how this higher power could be of any use to you. The less this God knows of your whereabouts the better. Since you will never be any good you might as well do your worst.

In psychological terms, we call this a non-affirming home. There are plenty of religious leaders who use this system to keep control over their followers by telling them if you do not do everything I, as God’s special representative, tells you, God will get you.

Sometimes we call these Cults and Fanatics but they can just as easily be a part of a large dominant religion.

So what do you do?

Here is a suggestion, not an original one, but one I have heard more than once.

If you could find that ideal Higher Power, that God you so desperately need, what characteristics will that God have? Try to avoid any particular mental image, any characteristics that you have been told that someone else’s God has. Inside you how do you feel this Higher Power would be?

Write out a want ad for this Higher Power.

Wanted – One God must love me unconditionally, must be available 24-7, and in times of need. Does not need to solve my problems for me but must be willing to go with me through whatever I am going through. Must be willing to help me become the best person I can be and not judge me harshly if I can’t do everything perfectly the first time.

Now begin acting as if this Higher Power exists and now knows you are looking for your Higher Power. It also helps, as various Higher Powers are suggested to you if you check back on your want ad and make sure that the powers that respond to this ad are really Higher Powers that will make you a better person, not some imposter that will take you off into doing things that you know are wrong just for someone else’s benefit.

Like any good loving relationship, this new Higher Power relationship will require some development.  Consider including some sort of two-way communication with this power. Personally, I like the expression “prayer and meditation.” You pick the expression that works for you.

The usual caveat here. Some of you have very strong beliefs in this area. You will want to quote a particular religious book, tell me I MUST call my higher power by a particular name, wear a certain piece of clothing, and contribute money to a cause. You are entitled to your opinion but I am resistant to being told that my higher power told me wrong. If you need to prove I or anyone else is wrong then I am convinced you are insecure in your faith and need the rest of us to be wrong to make you right. I am old enough to be willing to be wrong some of the time.

What I would like to hear from some of my readers, if you care to share, is what has your higher power done for you? Has that relationship made you a better person? How would I know that better person when I see them in front of me?

Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Are they laughing at you again?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Laughing.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Why are people watching you and laughing at you?

If I started off by suggesting that people were following you around and were out to get you most of my readers would think that this was paranoia and say “no not me.” But a great many of you are convinced that others are laughing at you a lot. I have to admit I have shared that thought also a few times.

Most people worry in social situations. We want others to like us. Being liked and included has had evolutionary survival value. When the tribe likes you they share their food, shelter, and fire with you. If they don’t like you the result may be being banished to the jungle or forest. In some more rural cultures, the mentally ill are still sent out into the jungle to live. The attitude is better they get eaten than the healthy ones in the village.

The more sensitive and insecure you are the more likely you are to be constantly vigilant to see if you are being accepted. People with high anxiety are constantly monitoring the environment to see if others like them. There is a big problem with all this insecure monitoring.

That problem is called confirmatory bias.

If you think that people laugh at you a lot, as you are walking through the mall you hear a sudden burst of laughter. You look around and see a group of people all laughing and they are looking at you. That confirms it. A group of total strangers is laughing at you. Once you catch them at this, they all turn and walk rapidly away. At least that is what you think.

That is not what happened at all.

An independent observer who was sitting on the bench watching this unfold would have a different story. A group of people was standing around talking. Someone told a joke and they all laughed. At that point, someone walking through the mall stopped, turned, and stood there staring at the group of people. They became nervous and looked back. When this stranger continued to stare they decided to get out of there before that crazy person did something and they walked as quickly as they could towards an exit.

See how this confirmatory bias works?

If you think that others are looking at you when you look around there will be some people looking at you. That confirms what you thought. All other evidence gets ignored as you are not currently looking for people who are ignoring you.

One hard thing for people who are anxious or depressed to do is to realize that most of the rest of the world is not motivated by you. Frankly, they are, most of the time, not laughing at you. They are in fact not even looking at you.

This bias comes from the belief that you somehow are responsible for what the rest of the world is feeling, that if they are sad or angry or hurt that it is somehow you doing and therefore your fault.

One thing I have learned from my time here on earth is that most people are way too interested in themselves to pay any real attention to what I am doing. A lot of times that I felt embarrassed or worried because a made a mistake there in public, it turns out no one noticed because they were all too preoccupied with themselves.

So next time you become nervous and think that others are looking at you because of something you did or said, consider that they may be looking at you because they are afraid you just noticed what they did.

One other thing I have learned? To not take myself so seriously. Sometimes I realize I did something that even I should laugh about.

Hope you are learning to accept yourself however you are and moving towards the happiest life possible.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Do others harm your self-esteem?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Low Self-esteem

Low Self-esteem.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Who talks badly about you?

If you were on a desert island, with no one around to criticize you, would you still feel bad about yourself?

Interesting question. I saw this question in a book titled “Be Glad You’re Neurotic” by Dr. Louis Bisch, one of the founders of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. I have paraphrased it slightly. It was a valid question back in 1936 when his book was published and it is still a good question today. This is not the post to go into the whole Neurosis versus Specific Diagnosis thing or talk about the difference between psychoanalysis and the kind of brief therapy in vogue today. We may get back to that later – maybe not.

What is important at this point in our series on moving towards your happy life is the question of how much of what you think about yourself is the result of what others have told you and how much is now a part of your belief system.

In a previous post, I talked about how we may have faulty life blueprints in our heads. One major source of these life-plan errors is the things others said about us that we took for the whole unvarnished truth. Many of these things we believe about ourselves because others told us so are just not the truth.

An example.

A woman refused to eat while at the treatment facility because she was “fat.” She looked normal to below normal in weight. She was not quite underweight but clearly, she did not need to diet. Her reason for believing she was “fat?” Her siblings and her cousins had always called her fatso and teased her about her weight. For the record when I eventually met her family they were all larger and heavier than she.

She believed that she was fat not because of outside objective evidence, like scales or doctor’s opinion, but because it was so painful to be teased about her weight she was resolved to change herself to please her family.

A really stupid man?

One student in my night class confided to me that he did not expect to do well in the class. He was sure he was just too stupid to do college-level work. He had not done well in high school but he was hoping to somehow make it through the program at the community college and earn a certificate in a vocational program.

His first paper was atrocious. But as I reflected on this paper I realized so was many of my early papers. Like many of my students, he was not fully prepared for college but he made up for a lack of skills by putting in more effort.

In this particular class, the requirement was that the students submit the papers early so that I could grade them, and then they were to revise the paper and resubmit it. The grade was based on the quality of the revised paper.

This student’s revised paper was one of the best in the class. Further, he got one of the highest scores in the class on both the midterm and the final.

He had been told so repeatedly that he was stupid, he had lived down to other’s expectations.

Is this an unusual situation? Not really. Many people who return to college in their adult years have underestimated their abilities. They have believed others in their lives who told them negative things about themselves.

Meanwhile back on the desert island.

If you were away from all those naysayers, by yourself on that remote island, would you still feel bad about yourself?

Most of us complain that our family or friends, maybe our Significant Others criticizes us all the time and that undermines our self-confidence. But the truth be told, if we were all alone by ourselves we would still be saying those same negative things about us. We have internalized those negative messages and now, believing them to be true, we act accordingly.

In a previous post (Making friends by calling them names) I wrote about the tendencies so many of us have to escape from negative or abusive people in our lives and then to continue the abuse and negativity by abusing ourselves and call ourselves names.

So consider for a moment Dr. Bisch’s question. If you were alone on a desert island with no one to call you names, would you still feel bad about yourself?

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Did your goldfish die? About relationships

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Goldfish.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What do goldfish and potted plants say about your relationship?

For people in recovery, relationships are a source of huge problems. Early in recovery, we discover that those relationships can be either an important source of support or a cause of pain and suffering.

One area that pops up on inventories, goals, and to-do lists is to create better relationships. People come to think that if they only had that one person that loved them they would be healed.

The result is a lot of people jumping into new relationships way before they are ready.

We can also start trying to fix relationships that have been strained or broken only to find that those first clumsy efforts to repair breaches have resulted in new arguments and slights that leave further wreckage in our lives.

Women in recovery are often urged to take the simple plant, pet test. Men would benefit from taking this test also.
Begin your recovery by getting a simple plant. A flowering houseplant is nice. Pick anything that you like and which fits your lifestyle. Spend some time looking around and selecting your plant. Most of us have selected life partners with less thought and consideration than we take on our plants.

For the next 6 months carefully tend your plant. Is it growing well? Does it need more light and water? Or does it need less water? Too much or too little of a lot of things can cause damage to plants and to relationships.

At the end of the six months grade yourself on plant care. Have you developed a caregiving relationship with your plant? Has the plant thrived? Have you?

If you have been successful at growing your plant then you are ready to move to stage two.

It is amazing how many people who can’t keep a plant alive jump into a sexual relationship and produce a child at a time when they don’t have the strength to care for a plant. This exercise is not just about gardening skills, it is about your ability to consistently day by day show concern and care for something outside yourself.

The next step in the process is to get a pet. This gets riskier. A goldfish is a good place to start. This involves more research. Most of us think we know all about taking care of goldfish but most of our fish die. Learn a little about what makes for a healthy goldfish and what their needs are.

You want to learn how to select a healthy one. Moving fish around can result in some not making it. Too much food or too little can make your fish sick. You may have to try this several times before you get one that likes the place you are keeping them and is healthy enough to be a part of your life.

By now I hope you are getting that this is not all about goldfish. What we are practicing is the skills needed to create healthy relationships. You will need to learn about any potential relationship partner. You will need to learn how to pick a healthy one. You will also learn that lots of things look better in the store window than they do after you get them home.

If your goldfish dies you may be sad or even cry but only you and the goldfish will be affected. If you “hook up” with someone there will be you and them but there will also be their family and yours mixing with you and your family and friends. If this relationship fails you can’t just flush it in the bathroom.

If you have been successful in raising your goldfish or other small pet for at least 6 months you are ready for the next big step. No, don’t rush out and start a family. If your living situation permits get a larger more demanding pet. A kitten or small shelter puppy make good next steps in this process. If where you live does not permit these types of animals, consider a small bird or other, more complicated small animal.

Now you have to balance your needs, do you feel like caring for your “family” today? Can you continue to meet the needs of your menagerie? Your dog or cat needs care every day whether you feel like it or not. You also have to consider the interaction between your previous household members and your new addition.

Does the cat try to get the goldfish? Do you need to move the fishbowl up high? How safe is the plant? Juggling all three creatures’ needs prepares you for juggling conflicts between other family members as your recovery progresses.

This creating a blended family is an important skill for those in recovery from a mental illness or a substance abuse issue. Once you enter a more adult romantic relationship there will always be conflicts between past relationships and the new one. Navigating blended families with step, half, and ex-relationships can put a lot of stress on you and on your new relationship.
This whole process will take about two years.

This step method of practicing relationship skills is not original with me. It has been used and recommended in recovery groups as far back as I know. It has largely been recommended to women who are at an especially high risk of rapidly entering a new relationship. This risk is especially high if you have children and need a partner to help with the financial and caregiving tasks.

In this new modern era, more men than ever are becoming the primary caregiver for their children and they especially need to be good caregivers not expect the replacement partner to take the primary responsibility for children from past relationships.

Some people become frustrated along the way and toss that plant against the wall. Some people forget to feed the fish for a while and the goldfish dies, or they overfeed the fish, pollute the water. and the fish dies from that. This gives you an opportunity to practice your recovery skills. I would rather you toss a plant at the wall then a child.

This discussion assumes that you are not currently in a romantic relationship and many recovering people are either not in one or not in a healthy relationship. If you are in a relationship or are coming home from the hospital or rehab to some children you already have you can modify this as needed.

The emphasis here is on your learning skills to have healthy relationships rather than thinking that if you just fell in love with someone else then your life and your problems will be fixed.
Any comments?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

4 Ways Prayer is Answered

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Sunset.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Why visualization and the law of attraction may bring you garbage.

Whatever you may call it, the process of expressing things to our Higher Power and then waiting for an answer gets extremely misunderstood.

People tell me “God does not answer my prayers.” I also hear the law of attraction does not work or that visualization stuff is bunk. Let’s consider those possibilities.

Whatever terminology makes you comfortable with this discussion is OK by me. For ease of my writing this out, from here on in I am going to call it prayer. You can translate that into some other vocabulary if that works better for you. I will also use God and He or Him to refer to this Higher Power. If you understand your higher power as She or Them, please talk with your higher power, not me, about that.

We get a whole lot more answers to prayer than we realize. They just weren’t the answers we wanted and expected. Let me give you an example.

See a problem with this prayer?

A man new to recovery prays earnestly one night. “God, please give me a better paying job, lots of money, a new car, a nicer house, and a more attractive wife, and I will need this by Friday night when the class reunion occurs.

The AA Big Book refers to this as something like being a greedy child on Santa’s lap at Christmas. That is not the way we should pray.

We are told to pray for “Knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

You can reframe that as finding your life’s purpose and then living your life that way if you chose. (I need to stop doing those reframes.)

1. The first possible answer to any prayer is NO!

There will be lots of “things” in your life you might ask for and you will not get them. You may pray for God to let someone live and they die. This does not mean that you are a bad person or God hates you. (My higher power loves me and everyone else unconditionally; he may not belong to that kill them all and let me sort it out club.) Getting a NO does not mean that your higher power is cruel.

There were reasons why you got a NO, I don’t know what they are, you may not know why, but then you might want to go on living your life the best you can and see if you can figure that one out.

2. The answer may be yes.

Sometimes my higher power heals sick people. I do not know why he heals some and not others. Praying in this case and the resulting healing could just be coincidences but some of the stories I have heard tell me there might be another, more spiritual reason for this healing.

My higher power does, however, help a whole lot of Alcoholics, addicts, and mentally ill people if they are willing to do a little work on themselves. Why this Higher Power has such a decided interest in the addicted and the mentally ill, I cannot say, but I am firmly convinced that a Higher Power of some kind is a part of the recovery process.

3. The answer to your prayer may well be “Not now, you need to wait.”

Very often we need to keep praying over a long time, all the while doing the required work in order to bring a result into tangible form. Those of you who believe in the “Power of Positive Thinking” can ascribe this to repeatedly placing the thought in your subconscious.

Personally, I do not hold much faith in the subconscious. I know about the conscious and about being unconscious. Like subliminal advertising, I think anything worth doing is worth doing in a conscious manner. The subconscious is part of another discussion; now back to our prayer in progress.

That third answer, you need to wait, some of us get that confused with the NO one.  It would be easy to give up on the conversation at this point and say God never answers my prayers. This is why it is important to not only talk with your higher power but to also listen carefully to what he is saying.

One way of listening to a higher power is to meditate. There are other words that can be used to this process of listening to your Higher Powers voice like “still small voice.” I will let you translate this one as needed.

These first three ways God might answer prayer seem pretty obvious but number four – well hold on to your hats.

4. You want what?

I do not know about any of your Higher Powers out there but mine clearly has a sense of humor. Sometimes God gives us what we ask for, all the while knowing we won’t like it when we get it.

We get this answer to our prayers when there is a spiritual lesson that we need to learn.

For example, say you prayed “God help me get this job” just before you go for the interview. Then you get the job. A few weeks into this new job you start discovering things about what you will be doing that are most distressing. You may have been moved across the country or overseas. You may be trapped and unable to afford the move back home.

This “You want what?” can also apply to love objects and friends. Sometimes we want an important person to like us and then find out that they are no one we want in our lives. Being popular with the in crowd, may not lead to spiritual enlightenment. It may lead us to a whole lot of places we wished we hadn’t gone.

This possible answer to prayer is why that “Praying only for knowledge of his will for us” part is included. We don’t always know what is best for us.

So have you used prayer or something like it? Has it helped in your life journey?

What is next on this road to a happy life? Stay tuned and we shall see.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Afraid to say pray? Spirituality, religion and a happy life

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Praying.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

The role of Prayer, spirituality, and religion in creating a happy life.

I have held off on discussing this topic as long as I can. It is with great trepidation that I even put the keywords, prayer, religion, and spirituality into my blog.

But there is a connection between what you believe and your ability to have a happy life. We find that people who have a spiritual belief are more able to create the changes needed to improve their life. Having friends is helpful and having somebody with a whole lot of pull in the universe would be even better.

Nothing has been so effective in human history at dividing us up into in and out groups and becoming an excuse for war or general mayhem, then what we call our particular spiritual belief. If you have a particular aversion to Religion in general, please read on, I believe that for you, recovery is possible also and you don’t need to sign on for my particular religious belief system in order to have a happy life.

I, like so many others, have from time to time referred to myself as a recovering —— (fill in name of several religions here.) I came from a region where at one time the “Regular” Baptists and the “Separate” Baptists used to get guns and shoot at each other. It was the 60’s, the 1860’s. But the idea is still in play.

Further north and a little east of there some of my ancestors tried to kill each other and then had to flee because somewhere Catholic and others were Protestants. Descendants of these faiths and a whole lot of others end up marrying each other and I am one of those results. I find it increasingly difficult, no impossible, to take sides in all these sectarian disputes.

So what does that have to do with recovery?

The hard part for many people in recovery, recovery from any and all of life’s problems, has been to separate those old religious rituals and dogmas from reconnecting with some sort of deeply felt beliefs.

Prayer is one of those useful beliefs.

Now it would appear that there are a whole lot of different understandings of who we pray to and what prayer is, but the results tell me that those that pray have better and happier lives.

Twelve-step groups in their early days had to come up with a solution to this God and belief problem. They use the term “God as you understand him” So that includes all the various denominations as well as the various other names by which people may call their “higher power.”

I will try to avoid those old sectarian disputes, though at this point I suspect I have already wandered into the minefield and shortly my comments and inbox will fill with comments from people saying “If you don’t pray the way we do at the First Church of —- then God hates you and you are going to —.”

Prayer is too important to our recovery from unhappiness and a whole lot of other issues to be left out of the equation.

Wholly sectarian philosophies often incorporate practices that look and sound suspiciously like prayer. Creative visualization, meditation, the law of attraction, all these things try to put us in touch with something greater than ourselves. So does “wish-craft” and psyching yourself up to create better performance.

As we take this journey towards our happy life, whatever you may define that as being, we will need to talk about the role of faith, belief, prayer, and meditation. I don’t expect to write anything that intentionally offends anyone and I do believe that what I say will not contradict anyone’s current religious practice.

I have not studied religion in any professional capacity and don’t presume to tell anyone what they “should” believe. What I do know based on my training in counseling and psychotherapy is that believing in something is helpful in creating a positive, mentally healthy life.

This raises a bunch of questions we need to consider.

Does God, your higher power, the forces of the universe, or whomever, hear and answer your prayers? Even if it is your own subconscious that hears and responds, what might be the advantages of giving some prayer a try?

Why do some people say they get answers to their prayers and others say they don’t? What improves the chances that you will get an answer? How many different ways could your prayer be answered?

What is all this meditation stuff and why do people talk about “prayer and meditation?” Don’t you do one or the other?

This material on prayer, meditation, and spirituality will get sprinkled throughout the year so as to avoid giving anyone spiritual indigestion.

From personal experience, I have concluded that my Higher Power (as I understand them) has not one or two ways to answer my prayers. I am quite convinced that I have received at least four different answers to my requests. Your answers to prayer may vary from that number depending on your actual situation. I have also learned that I was not very skilled at praying. I have needed to change the technique I use.

Let me tell you in a future post about those four different answers you may receive and why we may all be amateur prayers.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

If your house is leaning check the blueprint – life plans

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

No Roof.

No Roof.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Things we know, that aren’t so, keep life from being happy.

Can you imagine someone building a house with faulty blueprints?

Leave out a couple of braces, a support or two, and cut some boards a little short, and – Wallah – a house that leans precipitously, ready to fall over. There have been a couple of notable cases of this in buildings built by government agencies but that is another topic.

Imagine building your life using a faulty set of blueprints.

This is precisely what a great many clients who come for therapy are trying to do. They keep doing the same thing over and over using a life plan, a set of mental blueprints for living, that the copied down in childhood but there are some mistakes in those plans.

One clinician observed that those life problems that cause us the most difficulty are the things that we learned between five and fifteen that turn out to not be true. The age range may vary but the principle is the same.

Some examples of defective life blueprints may help.

You grew up in a home where alcohol or drugs were readily abused. You grew up thinking that everyone drinks and drugs a lot and this is normal. You may also think that the cops are out to get you because they show up on a regular basis every time you and your family members fight.

This is not normal behavior. Did you know that half of the adults in the United States who are old enough to drink have not had a drink in the last thirty days?  Turns out that the twenty percent heaviest drinkers, they drink eighty percent of the alcohol consumed in America.  Not everyone who drinks at home gets violent either, but the people who do get violent seem to drink and drug a lot more than the people who don’t.

So if you formed a plan for life that includes getting drunk and fighting with people who don’t do what you want them to do, this plan may not work well for anything but sending you to jails and institutions or worse.

Other errors you may have made in transcribing your life blueprints besides drugs and alcohol.

You may have been taught and therefore learned that people with emotional problems, they are crazy and so you need to try really hard to pretend you don’t have any emotional problems because if you admit you have them you will fall apart and go crazy.

This turns out to be very untrue. In the course of their lifetime, half of all Americans will have an emotional problem that becomes so severe they need to get help. My suspicion is that this is true in other places on earth also. Those who recognize they have a life problem and get help early; they have a better chance of getting over this problem quickly.

Everyone who sees a counselor is not crazy. Crazy people pretend they don’t have any problems even when those problems have overwhelmed them.  Much of what we do in counseling is helps people find solutions to normal life problems that are right for them.

We may have “learned” that to be wealthy you need to have been born into money, have a stroke of luck like winning the lottery or come up with some new technological innovation like invent the next e-pet. Turns out that there are people in America who are wealthy and do not realize it. There are also a lot of other paths to wealth that people don’t know exist.

Later in the year, I plan to post a series of pieces about financial issues and how a large amount of what we may have learned and are trying to do may be the result of really defective blueprints.

Some people have a blueprint in their head that tells them they are defective, worthless, or stupid.  If you were told a lot of negative things about yourself as a child you may have internalized thoughts about how you are less than others. Turns out there are a whole lot of very bright people out there who never knew they were that smart. Since others put them down, they have never tried to do the things that they were meant to do.

There are plenty of other examples of this faulty blueprint phenomenon. These may have to do with religion, politics, or other values.  Anytime we swallow someone else’s beliefs whole without digesting them and getting a full understanding we are at risk to have gotten them wrong.

This year may be as a good a time as any to take another look at the blueprints in your head, the ones you learned as a child, and see if they are working or is your life house leaning over and about to collapse. If you find beliefs that are holding you back this may be a time to examine them and see if you may have learned things that are not true.

Some of the structures you have added on to your life house, they may be rooms from someone else’s structure that were never intended to fit into your life.

You can’t create a happy life with a set of blueprints that create misery.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Would you want to go on a trip with you?

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5

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Taking a trip.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

How much do you really know about you?

Most of us can tell the world quite a lot about others in our lives. If you have a friend and I asked you about that friend you could tell me a whole lot. Why even an enemy, someone you could not stand, you could go on for a long time telling me all about their defects. But let me ask you about yourself and most people could not tell me much about them and what they did say would likely not be very accurate.

Start right now to get to know yourself the way you would come to know a very best friend.

You will spend more time with you than with anyone else you ever meet in your life. Everywhere you go, when you wake up the next morning you will be there. You need to start right now on becoming the world’s expert on you. You should strive to be your own best friend.

It is said that we teach others how to treat us. We need to begin by learning to treat ourselves better. Compassion like charity begins at home. Treat yourself kindly and you will encourage others to treat you better. Is there one thing that you could do today to get to know yourself better?

Learning what makes you happy goes a long way to becoming happier. Make a list of all the things that make you happy. Decide which of those things you want more of. Decide right now that you intend to be that best friend you need.

Some of us have been blessed with true genuine friends. But whether you have had the experience of a trustworthy friend or not you can determine here and now to become that best friend you need. Treat yourself well.

For many of us, empathy for others comes more easily than tender feelings for ourselves. Learn to honor and respect yourself, learn also to identify those things that cause you pain, and resolve to eliminate those causes from your life.

It is difficult for others to care any more about you than you care about yourself.

Learn to accept the defects in yourself in the same way you might accept defects in others. Believe that you are a worthwhile person, not because of some great accomplishment but just because you are a unique individual. You are special in your own way, just like every other person on planet earth is special in their own way.

Some people can’t stand to be alone. They have never become comfortable spending time by themselves. Learn to occupy yourself. Be happy being in your own company. You will be with yourself all your life, start by learning how to mindfully do things with and by yourself.

What is your favorite color? What activities make you happy? What things in your life have made you sad? Hear your own pain and tell yourself it is all right. Learn to give you comfort and reassurance.

What has been the best moment in your life? What was the worst? It may help you to take notes.

What makes you feel loved? Couples tell me they do not feel that their partner loves them but they have never considered what makes them feel loved. How do you show yourself self-love? Loving yourself does not make you vain, it makes you mentally healthy.

If you want your children and your partner to do things that make you feel loved, you need to demonstrate how this love should be displayed.

Often I find clients are unable to tell me anything good about themselves. They have been so concerned about sounding conceited they have been cruel to themselves.

Taking good care of yourself is not being selfish. Giving yourself credit for things well done does not make you conceited. Failure to recognize and give yourself credit for things well done is a form of false modesty and is detrimental to your self-esteem.

I ask them what would a friend say about you. What would they say was your best quality? What do they like about you? If you don’t know, ask that friend, and while you are at it share with them the things you like about them.

In parenting class, one exercise we have used is to have each client sit in the center of the circle and as we go around the circle have each person tell them one thing they really like about that client. People often hear positive comments from their peers that they have never heard before. We often think good things about our friends but fail to tell them.

Tell yourself what you value about you. If you can’t make a list right off then make that a project to work on this year. Find the true value inside you.

Learning to accept praise, thanks and congratulations is a part of beginning to see yourself realistically as a worthwhile person. Accept that you are someone who sometimes does well and sometimes makes mistakes but is always a person worth having as a friend.

What will you say about yourself? What you tell yourself about you will determine the kind of person you become.

Become the kind of friend you will want to spend your life with.

Related articles

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel