Posts Tagged "human condition"

Often when talking with “leaders,” husbands, wives, or parents, who are experiencing problems, difficulties, road blocks, resistance, revolts, failures, disappointments, or other catastrophe’s, it often can be traced back to making a poor decision. Some questions to consider:  What is your process for making decisions?  Do you have a process?  How do you decide whether or not to purchase a washer and dryer?  Whirlpool or Maytag, Lexus or Volkswagon?  Are you a leader? Pastor?  Business Owner?  Parent?  Are you aware that decisions have long lasting effects on the future, the flock, our finances, our spouse, children, patrons and a host of other people as a result? Poor decisions and undesirable outcomes are often the result of making decisions...

The older I get (maturity yanno), the more people I counsel, with every person I get to know in a deeper, closer way, the more I’m convinced we’re all messed up to one degree or another.  Once you get past the veneers, the facades, the masks, have you ever met anyone who was not wounded in some way by a delusional, angry, mother, abusive father, weird relative, peer, spouse, teacher, pastor, priest, church, or boss?  I haven’t.  But if you’re like me, we tend to look at other people and say, “they have it all together.”  “Why can’t I be like them?” I recently attended a Christian men’s retreat designed to address a man’s shame, anger, loss, guilt, and fear.  The transparency from each man was astonishing and refreshing.  I met...

As Mother’s day approaches this weekend, we recognize the vital and formative role mothers have on individual lives.  I’ll throw out the question, where would we be without our mothers?  Now if your mother was warm, welcoming, nurturing, loving, caring, emotionally healthy, and present, this is a no brainer.  If however, your mother was not “present” either physically, emotionally, or otherwise, then it’s a more difficult question to reconcile. Many clients (especially men) seeking help for depression, anger, or personality disorders, often describe their mother as cold, depressed, unavailable, ambivalent, distant, burdened, intimidated, lonely, and often a victim of abuse themselves.  The abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual in nature.  One...

Experiences of childhood affects many facets of our adult life. Recently I was thinking about my political beliefs of limited government and my dislike for government expansion with entitlement programs. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood. My parents did not have a lot of money, they never gave me a lot of money, but growing up, I never did without the basics. Sure, I would have liked to have been given additional spending money to purchase more clothes, Beatles albums, ballgame tickets, swimming club memberships, junk food, you get the picture. My parents and grandparents grew a lot of our food in vegetable gardens. We ate them fresh from the garden in the summer, and out of jars and freezer bags in the winter. My grandparents kept the neighborhood...

Now that I’m “retired” from my regular day job, I’m on different routines.  For example, I might be at the grocery store during the day instead of on the weekend or at night as was the case today, after returning home from vacation, our cupboards were bear.  I got up later than usual and started to the gym.  Traffic patterns are different at 8 am  vs 5 am.  No joke.  School buses and school mom’s tried to kill me several times with their unexpected starts and stops.  At 5 am, there is no traffic to speak of, so I had the road to myself, but not so at 8am.  The gym is a bee hive at 8am compared to the 10 of us there at 5am. So now, I’m off to the store.  Ok, first lesson, never, never shop at Wegmans on Monday...