Power For Positive Living

Is This My Last Chance?  One of the major assets of living life is knowing that at some point our individual life will come to an end. Knowing that our life will eventually end can give tremendous value to each of us on making our personal decisions for whatever time remains.     One choice that has positively affected my emotional health has been a choice to frame each interaction with another as though it could be my last chance to frame our relationship.  If family/friends were to never interact with me due to their illness or death, I wanted them to leave this earth with an accurate understanding of how and why they were important to me. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

What Do I Choose to Leave Behind?   Our personal life legacy is in a constant state of being created by our daily choices made one hour, one day or one month at a time.  While our life choices are open to varied perceptions by others, do I accept responsibility for expressing my own values and beliefs in actively living what is important to me?    When death does eventually arrive, shall I be content with the physical, emotional, social and spiritual choices that will accurately define me and my legacy to others?  If I were able to look backward after my death, would I be pleased with the personal choices that I leave behind for others to remember me? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Learning the skills to appreciate our pets with love and caring is important to many individuals.   For some, the lives of our pets may be as important or more important than the skills and beliefs learned to value the lives of fellow humans.   The presence of life also teaches us that at some point and in some manner there is the arrival of death for humans as well as for pets.   The arrival of death for either brings forth our unique values and beliefs we each have developed during our lives.   Having each of us confront his/her views on death for humans and/or pets provides a significant self-learning opportunity.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Managing Expectations of Self and Others Wellness Psychology recognizes that each of us has the power to 'frame' his/her world into the specific perceptions that we choose. We have the personal responsibility for viewing our world along with the power to accept, reject or modify our choices. We frequently need to ventilate our feelings with others. This process of sharing with another tends to reduce the emotional pressures we feel with the frustrations of life. Seeking information about options different than receiving advice can be helpful. Expectations change. Do we choose the power to accept, reject or modify them? Do we choose the 'victim' roles and seek to blame others for our own choices? Are we willing to explore the reasons we offer for our choices versus the challenges of finding the 'real' reasons we have for framing our world and the resultant choices? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Invisible Pain Finding a healthy balance to the joys and pains of living life is a continual process for most of us.  What is hurtful and painful to one person may or may not be the same for another or it may require a different degree to register.  We can often better understand and choose our responses to physical pain like a broken arm, cancer, strokes, etc.    Depression comes in many forms and degrees; it frequently appears to be invisible in the people around us.  Not understanding the diverse dynamics of depression or lacking the best vocabulary to convey the personal presence of depression, many in our society may choose to conceal their confused feelings and thoughts.  Concealment also prevents one from hearing useless phrases like get happy or advice like 'go and be around lots of people'.   Pain is pain whether it is visible to ourselves and others or whether it remains internal and invisible except to the most astute.  Recognizing the presence of invisible pain like depression allows us to decide

Who Am I? (Part 3)   Some of the most frequent and powerful questions that an individual can ask him are:  Who Am I?   Who is the current 'me' and how is today different from some earlier age?  What decisions shall I choose for today which may alter my self-image in the future?   The questions for personal introspection tend to be endless.  Introspection is hard work.  We each find what works for us.  Sample questions are presented in five different areas for each individual to ask themselves as they seek to honestly confront a question like 'Who Am I?'   Sample questions offered in this podcast are: Need for Privacy, Needing Others, Authority Figures, Our Body, Being Loved. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Who Am I? (Part Two)   Wellness Psychology encourages us to explore the personal question of "Who Am I?".   There are many ways for a person to experience this process of introspection.    Using the multiple-question method that is similar to the personal retreat format, one can seek the answers to questions created to go beyond our surface traits.   Questions can be entered in a personal journal, verbally shared with another person, or in some combination.   Examples given in this podcast include topics:  Possessions, Sources of Greatest Satisfaction, Weakness, Fundamental Attitudes Toward Others.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Who Am I?   Wellness Psychology encourages us to explore the personal question of "Who Am I?".   There are many ways for a person to experience this process of introspection.    Using the multiple-question method that is similar to the personal retreat format, one can seek the answers to questions created to go beyond our surface traits.   Questions can be entered in a personal journal, verbally shared with another person or in some combination.   Examples given in this podcast include topics:  Self Knowledge, Self-Description with Adjectives, 10-Statement Autobiography, and One Change in Self.    --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Life Risk Choices   Wellness Psychology encourages us to accept that our choice to live life is accepting that this decision comes with some type and degree of risk.  Living life is risky; each of us retains the option on how we manage these risks.  Most of us conclude that the only completely risk-free path is when we die.  We choose to accept risk when we take ownership of our life and do not give our power of making personal choices to others.   --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Framing My Gift of Life   The personal power that we each have to frame our gift of life is truly awesome!  While there are some aspects of this gift for which we have no control, there are so many others where we do get to make individual choices to make the most of this gift that we have been given.    A thought that may be of value for each of us to ponder in deciding the daily direction we choose to point our viewpoints for living:  I cannot change the beginning of my life.  I can begin today to determine how it will be at the end. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Same Messages, Different Words   Most of us wish to communicate effectively with others.  To accomplish this goal, we often use the same core of our beliefs, values, attitudes, and experiences.    Like an artist who can convey artistic viewpoints using different mediums or a pastor who chooses to focus on varied aspects of his/her faith, a psychologist will use his knowledge and experiences within a certain framework/philosophy to assist others with making healthy life choices.   Wellness Psychology is the framework of choice for this Power for Positive Living and Friendship podcast series.   This psychologist, like the artist and pastor, conveys the same message on the power of personal choice in different podcasts while choosing to focus on Wellness Psychology using a variety of words.   The power of the listener to decide what role these messages/words will play in living his/her gift of life remains an individual choice.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Conversational Boundaries While some persons thrive on the conflict of participating in culture wars, we can choose alternate paths for ourselves. Handling the stresses of diversity in our society can be a challenge, but is always a personal choice. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Conversational Ritual and Boundaries   Do we really listen or do we rely on the ritualized behaviors of greetings?   Are we content with "just fine" or are we willing to invest more energy and time to hear more from others? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Do I Want A Real Conversation?   Most of us spend much of our awake-time talking with other people.   If one is ever exploring the questions associated with feelings of loneliness, one helpful way is to consider what makes a conversation with others 'real'.   We can also explore the degree of 'connection' we wish to have with others and for them to have with us. Do we need to explore how much of our talking/conversation is scripted and repeated by rote or do we wish to have deeper 'original' content for our dialogues to be 'real'? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Do We Understand Each Other?   Effective human communication remains one of the major challenges we each face during our Life Journey.  The assumptions and expectations that each of us personally takes into a dialogue with another have a powerful effect on whether our communication is successful.   Seeking to understand our own ways of "broadcasting" to others is as critical as being able to tune into the other person's choice of channels for listening.   --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Mourning Our Loss of Yesterday Life seems to be a constant parade of gain and loss.  Many cannot fully appreciate their present-day choices since they are still focusing on an inability to let go of their past.  Yesterday is gone as are any changes we wish to make about it.    We hopefully can learn from the assets and liabilities of living our personal history, but any change whether positive or negative for the future will be a result of choices we make today.  Wishing for any change in our past is almost certain to be a stressor in some degree for our current and future mental health. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Opportunity Learning with Deprivation Much of our daily life is lived by implementing the choices we have made during previous days.  We tend to accept these situations as normal and they become our personal habits in thoughts, feelings and behaviors.    There are times when we are deprived of what we consider normal and have the opportunity to make new choices from our habitual patterns.  What we choose to learn and implement with changes from periods of deprivation can be informative and provide opportunities.   We are unique individuals and each will decide what these deprivation experiences teach us.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Everyone Has An Opinion! It is clear to most people that each individual tends to have many opinions about various areas of their life.  We choose experiential perspectives that work for us and frequently may label our opinions as facts for everyone.   Challenges for many are not the large number of opinions which may be presented as objective facts, but that so many people have opinions which are different from our own views.    Our choices may become whether we choose to learn something new from different viewpoints other than our own or whether we prefer to engage in competitive conflict-focused win-lose contests to prove ourselves correct and others wrong.   Our decisions on managing our place in this opinion-filled world conveys information on how we see ourselves and how we choose to relate to other people.  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

What Am I Living For? Every minute that you and I are alive we are making and implementing personal choices for answering the question:  What am I living for?   Our answers to this basic life question are constantly evolving as the years pass by adding our own unique experiences and incorporating diverse viewpoints from interacting with other people.   Embracing the processes of emotional introspection on a frequent basis allows us the opportunity to inject joy and understanding for our future choices. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message

Physical Versus Mental Health Choices   A foundation belief of Wellness Psychology is that we each have the personal power of the verb "to choose" in laying out our individual life path.  Our life is constantly changing; our choices often determine the consequences that characterize us as humans.    A recent viral pandemic provided new options for many.  There were often stark choices between support for balancing our physical health behaviors within a society versus our individualized needs for supporting our own emotional health with in-person human interaction.  We were often asked to evaluate the prices we were able to pay for certain outcomes versus the prices we were willing to pay for supporting our individual physical and emotional health. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/power-for-positive/message