By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

When I was sent a link to the film I include in today’s blog, I thought I was too busy to watch it. But the woman who forwarded the link often shares offbeat, humorous, and inspirational pieces she comes across, so I decided to check it out. I discovered that this film, titled “The Power of Words,” by Alonso Alvarez Barreda, won the jury award in the Short Shorts Film Festival in Mexico City. It has also been an official selection at the San Diego Latino Film Festival, Cine Festival in San Antonio, Texas, Short Shorts Film Festival Monterey, and the Short Film Corner in Cannes.

The title attracted my attention because I have a section on Support4Change called Words of Inspiration and Action and I wondered whether it might be related to those ideas. It is. But check it out for yourself and then read my comments below.

I was impressed with the way in which a simple rewording of a sign could make a big difference. Of course, this is a film and not a documentary, so perhaps in real life the result would have been different. Nevertheless, I believe the rewritten sign at the end of the film demonstrates how powerful are the words we use.

Now I invite you to read Words That Change Our Minds and share a quotation, affirmation, fact, phrase or question that caused you to change your mind and take a different action from the one you previously would have taken.

I am also interested in whether the re-written sign affected your views of begging. If you had been there, would that new sign be any more likely to encourage your giving? Please either add your comments below or contact me at Support4Change.

Subscribe to Support4Change Newsletter

About once every four to six weeks, with a few brief emails between, I send a newsletter with information about new articles on Support4Change, Q-and-A Club questions, book reviews, commentaries on life today, suggestions for improving relationships, and much more. To sign up, you can go to Support4Change t or fill out the form below.

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

Take a moment during the picnic to reflect on patriotism

Wondering what I can do quickly for a Fourth of July topic, I’ve decided to do what some of my favorite comics do when the artist goes on vacation: they reprint earlier strips. So I will reuse the July Fourth blog from last year, Being “American” on the Fourth of July. In case you missed it, this Q-and-A Club set of questions asks what it means to you to be an American. The topic fits in well with a recent issue of TIME magazine with a cover article of “The Real Meaning of Patriotism: Why both parties get it wrong—and how to fix it.” Articles from McCain (Why service is our strength) and Obama (Why we share the same destiny), as well as others, explored the different views that Republicans and Democrats generally take toward the ideal of patriotism. Do we look to the past or place hope in the future because we have been blessed with a past that offers promise of a better future? What are your thoughts about citizenship and, most importantly, why do you feel that way?

Sending greetings for holidays and other occasions

Have you ever considered sending your friends and family a July 4th car? Of course, it would be too late if you wanted to send it by snail mail, but there are two fine e-card companies I recommend: Katie’s Cards and Jacquie Lawson. Interestingly, even though they have lovely American Independence themes, they are created in England. The two artists have slightly different styles, but both are easy to use and inexpensive (even when you consider the very low yearly subscription rate). Check them out. They make it easy to let friends and family know you are thinking of them.

Don’t miss the chance to receive a FREE copy of Open Up the Right Side of Your Brain

Rather than repeat the information, I’m just going to point you to the Wonderful Web Women Giveaway that will end on July 10. In the last blog entry I told all about it, so go there to read more if you want to get my  ebook on Open Up the Right Side of the Brain at no cost at all.

Easy to subscribe to the newsletter

Today I’m making it easier for blog readers to subscribe to my newsletter (which comes out every four to six weeks). It will bring you new articles on Support4Change, Q-and-A Club questions, book reviews, commentaries on life today, suggestions for improving relationships, and much more. You can still go to Support4Change to sign up. Or you can fill out the form below.

If you have any trouble, please write me through the Contact page on Support4Change or send a note under blog comments below.

Email Address (be sure it's correct):

Name:

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO EVERYONE!

June 20, 2008

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

An Opportunity to Receive a Sampler of an Upcoming Publication

 
In Almost a Free Lunch, yesterday’s blog entry, I told you about the Wonderful Web Women Giveaway 2008 in which more than 200 people have contributed gifts worth more than $10,000. Read that piece to learn how giveaways are formed.

Today I give you the key to entering the site where the gifts are listed. Just click on the link below or cut and paste it into your browser.

http://www.wonderfulwebgiveaway2008.com/members.php?id=332

My gift, “Open Up the Right Side of Your Brain,” is a free sampler of imagery exercises from a manual, “Images and Symbols: The Glue of Habit, The Lubricant of Change,” that I am writing for therapists, coaches, and their clients, which will be published this fall. You can read more about the sampler on the giveaway since it will ONLY be available on the giveaway.

When you enter the giveaway, you will need to sign in, getting onto the Wonderful Web Women list, but not as a member. If you have a website and would like to get more visitors, I whole heartily recommend you join Wonderful Web Women. You can be a free member or pay for a gold membership, with additional privileges.

REMINDER #1: Even if you are already a subscriber to my newsletter, you will need to sign up again when you find this e-book in the group of gifts. Don’t worry, you won’t get two newsletters sent to your inbox, but that’s the way the giveaway is organized.

REMINDER #2: This giveaway will only last for three weeks. It will close on July 10. That is all the time you have to receive my sampler. So click on the link below and get your copy of my gift, and the gifts of others.

http://www.wonderfulwebgiveaway2008.com/members.php?id=332

If you already know about online “giveaways,” wait until tomorrow, June 20, to get the direct link to a giveaway in which I am participating. If you don’t know about these events, read below and THEN come back tomorrow.

A giveaway is something I didn’t know anything about until last year when I joined Wonderful Web Women, a Niche Partners project dedicated to providing women with the inspiration and skills to be successful on the Internet. Their motto is, “The most generous and honest marketing advice for women on the Internet.” I find that to be true, for many other marketing programs claim you can make a six-figure income working only two hours a day. They tell it like it is.

Anyway, now the community at Wonderful Web Women is about to launch their first yearly “giveaway” and has banded together with invited friends to create a collection of over 200 gifts that are worth more than $10,000. These gifts will be available for only three weeks, from June 19, 6 pm Chicago time, to July 10. 

I’ll tell you about the gifts in a moment, but first let me explain why I think this comes as close to being a free lunch as you can get.

What is a giveaway?

Imagine a huge outdoor market with hundreds of booths where merchants give you their products for FREE! If you like their gift, they hope you will later come to their store and buy something. An online giveaway works on the same principle. You come into the market and visit the booths to see what is being given away. You see something you like and ask to have it — for free.

And this is where the almost-a-free-lunch comes in. Your “cost” is signing up for their newsletter in order to receive the free gift. BUT remember that you can always unsubscribe after you receive the gift.

However, online businesses and services that offer gifts are hoping you will like other products they sell. They hope you will want to keep your subscription. After all, they do need to make a profit.

My contribution to the giveaway 

For the past month I’ve been working very hard to create a special product that will only be available on the giveaway. And yes, even if you are already a subscriber to my newsletter, you will need to sign up again, although you will not get two newsletters sent to your inbox. That’s just the way the program is organized.

“Open Up the Right Side of Your Brain” is a free sampler of imagery exercises from a manual, Images and Symbols: The Glue of Habit, The Lubricant of Change I am writing for therapists, coaches, and their clients that will be published this fall. The sampler, a downloadable PDF, includes the following imagery exercises:

Other gifts from the Wonderful Web Giveaway 2008 

Many of the gifts for this event have been created especially for the Wonderful Web Giveaway 2008 and are donated by men and women from all walks of life. Here are just a few of the topics covered:

Come back here tomorrow, June 20, and I’ll give you a special link to the giveaway. That link will give me credit for all the people who sign up, although there is no money involved unless you choose to become a member of Wonderful Web Women, in which case I receive a small remuneration.

How to sign up for the giveaway 

When you land on the Wonderful Web Giveaway 2008 page, you will need to sign up for the Wonderful Web Women list, which  puts you on the WonderfulWebIdeas list, which sends you a wonderful web idea once per week and rare emails on upcoming events. Also, you can choose to join the Wonderful Web Women list as a member, but this is not done automatically. On the sign up page you will be told (again) that a giveaway works by joining lists to receive gifts.

I got a sneak preview of the gifts and am impressed with many of them. Of course, there are lots I don’t want and can’t use, but overall I found several that fit my needs and getting them was almost like a free lunch.

See you tomorrow.

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

When perfectionists don’t recognize they’re going overboard

Last week I said I’d write about my latest battle with my perfectionism. Here it is in three parts.

It began when I looked at Inspiration.Moonfruit, a website by Paul Foreman, and noticed a feature that gave the day of the week, as well as the month, day, year, and hour. If you refreshed the page, the time would change. Clever idea, I thought, and decided I’d ask my trusty web guru, Thomas Garrison, for a script that would do just that for the upcoming Support4Change e-newsletter. It would illustrate a link I was making to The Daffodil Project, a new article for the Pleasure and Creativity section.

This was my first chance to realize that my perfectionist was rearing her fussy head.

My life is far too busy to take time to add little flourishes that aren’t essential to web pages I need to get done in a relatively short period of time. And the continually-updated clock wasn’t essential. It just seemed like a nice touch. Unfortunately, perfectionists tend to associate “nice touches” with “essentials.”

So I contacted Tom and he gave me a java script that would allow the viewer to see the current time where the server for my website was located, which happened to be Pacific Daylight Time. Visitors to the page would have to calculate their local time from the one on the screen, of course, but it seemed, as I said, a nice touch.

After a bit of more trouble than I expected (well, a lot more to be honest), I inserted the java script, which isn’t my first language and always takes some time to figure out. However, it wasn’t until after I had uploaded the newsletter onto Support4Change, where hundreds of people could see it, that I noticed the clock on the server that hosts my website wasn’t set correctly. Their time was half an hour off! (Tom wasn’t in charge of the server. He only used it.)

This was my second chance to defeat the perfectionist who was far too demanding of what needed to be done.

I should have dropped the whole thing at this point and simply put on the page a picture of a clock, like the one above, and said: “Take a look at your clock right now. That time is NOW.” I could have then made a few more comments about the fact that time on the clock may be different around the world, but at any given moment we all have that same minute in which to live. A few more etceteras and my purpose of mentioning the clock would have been served.

Instead, frustrated, I went back to Tom for a different time script. This new one reflects the current time of the computer on which the page is being read. Of course, if your computer’s time is set incorrectly (like the clock on the server), the time on the screen will be wrong, but at least it would have been a better code than the one I was trying to use.

A word here about Tom, who offers more help than I’ve gotten from others who have hosted my websites in the past. He will give me code I need, tell me how to use it, and insist I simply follow the instructions. Put this code here and that code there and DON’T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, JUST DO IT! Like perfectionists everywhere, I want to understand what I’m doing, event though simply following the instructions should often be good enough.

I will point out, however, that it’s easy to skip over a detail in the instructions and leave out a line of code. But in any case, I tried. I honestly tried. And even though I got a little frustrated in trying to figure out exactly what part of the code went here and what part went there, I was determined not to call him, but to work it out myself.

That was my third chance to stop my perfectionist and move on without her.

As you may guess, it took more time to insert this new code than it should have. True, it didn’t take all afternoon, but it took longer than the “nice touch” deserved. As before, I could have added the picture of a clock and gotten on with the job of finishing the newsletter. Instead, I was determined to prove to myself (as well as Tom and you) that I could do it. That was because I had convinced myself, as I said earlier and which is typical of a perfectionist, that the newsletter would be so much better with the active time code.

Eventually I got the java script correctly placed in the newsletter and the time worked as it should! See the Support4Change newsletter to see the results.

I finally made it!

This morning I noticed I had switched to the correct java code in the newsletter, but not in the article of The Daffodil Project, for which the code seemed especially relevant. But after only a few minutes of trying to get it to work (because that page used a template), I decided to tackle that later, if at all. A few comments at the beginning of the page and I’m satisfied it’s good enough.

The reason I add this experience to my lessons of a recovering perfectionist is to show you how trapped one can become in the determination to do something perfect. It helps to get a perspective on the situation before you get to the fourth, fifth, or sixth opportunity to drop unreasonable expectations on yourself.

Why do perfectionists allow themselves to get into such positions in the first place? As I write in the first chapter of my new book, Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life, our brains are designed so that we interpret what happens to us because of early experiences. And because of the experiences of perfectionists, our brains are programmed to feel good when we are complimented on our hard work. We have come to believe that unless we work hard, unless we give everything our absolutely top effort, we won’t be loved and appreciated.

However, if we eventually get tired of working hard all the time and never feeling quite good enough, we may be able to see that others do love us and appreciate us even if we don’t do the best possible job we could do in every situation. When we open our hearts to accept the love that is out there, we can FINALLY begin to accept ourselves just as we are. We can stop trying, at least some of the time, to work so hard to please others. That’s when we become a recovering perfectionist. That’s when we realize that we are good enough even if we haven’t added java script to a page that would be plenty fine without it.

One more word. If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool perfectionist and this article has caused you to realize you often do more than necessary, you’ll probably want to be “cured” of that tendency right now. Sorry. Your brain has gone down the perfectionism path too long to stop immediately. It’s like an oceanliner that reverses engines and takes more than two miles to stop. Actually, that’s a fact on which I’m unclear, but I’m not going to take the time to check it out. You get the idea.

What have been your lessons about perfectionism? I’d love to hear from you.

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

Letting Go of Resentments From Childhood

“When we heal our relationship with our parents, we are healing a deep part of ourselves, and this will enhance all our relationships.”
 — The Shared Heart, Joyce and Barry Vissell, p. 121 

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and millions of mothers of small children will be honored with a cold-toast and soggy-cereal breakfast in bed and with hand-made cards expressing geuine love and adoration.

The day will also be one of great discomfort for millions of children, especially those who’ve been out of the house for awhile and realize their mother was (and still is) far from perfect. How can they accept their parents, these people say, when they feel their parents never understood them, didn’t give them what they wanted, let alone what they needed? How can they let go of that resentment when they are convinced that problems they have in their lives today were caused by neglect and abuse in their childhood homes? 

Earlier today, I thought of many adult children who carry grievances from the past and just wish Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day didn’t need to be such a big deal. You see, I was cleaning up my e-mail files and found an old e-newsletter I had sent from Learning Place Online (now only Support4Change has a newsletter). It had a link to an article from Joyce and Barry Vissells’ April 2004, Shared Heart Column that was reprinted on Learning Place Online.

Now that I have many new readers, I’ll mention that article again. So if you find it difficult to “honor” your mother with sincerity when past (and sometimes current) resentments catch your throat as you profer the “obligatory” flowers, dinner and/or phone call, I recommend you read Our Parents’ Blessings. It may help you see things a little differently. 

However, even if you don’t read that article, the Q-and-A Club questions today are ones that may help you start to see your parents in a new way

Q-AND-A CLUB: QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO STRENGTHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

What are the lessons and gifts I received from my parents, even if they were not the parents I would have chosen, if I had been given the chance?

What qualities of strength and character did I gain from dealing with my parents?

Am I willing to let go of my resentments over things that happened in the past and cannot be undone?

NOTE: My husband and I are heading out the door for our traditional Friday night dinner and walk. I will not spend any more time polishing this, which the perfectionist side of me says needs to be done. But this week I had another of my recovering perfectionist lessons that I will tell you about in the next blog entry (early next week).

All you perfectionists out there would do well to come back and read what happened.

By Arlene Harder, MFT

Conducting Interviews With Interesting Questions

Beginning this month, authors, coaches, therapists, and others who are interested in being interviewed will be given the opportunity to answer ten questions. It’s my hope that within two years I will have enough answers for an e-book. In the meantime, I will publish the responses to these questions on this blog, the Q-and-A Club, and Support4Change.

First, I have to add one more question to the nine I’ve selected, which is where you, readers of the blog and newsletter, enter the picture.

Here Are the First Nine Questions I Have Chosen

What experience taught you the most important lesson of your life?

What do you think is the greatest challenge the world faces today?

If you could return to one moment in your life and could do something differently, what would that be?

What one piece of technology that has been created in the last seventy-five years would you not want to do without?

If you could “un-invent” one piece of technology that was created in the last seventy-five years, what would it be?

If you could live in another decade and somewhere else than where you live, when and where would that be?

If you could have a conversation with one person, alive or historical, who would that be and why?

What would you like people to say about you after you are gone?

What three quotations of humor, inspiration, and wisdom are your favorites?

What Do You Think the Tenth Question Should Be?

You get to vote on your choice for the 10th question by choosing ONE of the following six questions. Just fill out the easy form that is right below these six questions and you will receive a PDF of the first two chapters of Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life.

1. What is the most beautiful place you have ever seen and what made it so special?

2. What is your happiest memory from childhood?

3. Who has been your greatest teacher, in or out of school? Why?

4. What is your definition of success?

5. When you were a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? Did you do it?

6. What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? Was it worth it?

Which question do you feel would most reveal something about a person being interviewed that you would like to know?

NOTE: The vote is completed and number 4, What is your definition of success, was selected by the greatest number of people. I do not save your e-mail address and will not automatically subscribe you to the newsletter.

Thanks to all who participated.

If you want to try your hand at answering these questions, go to Ten Questions Worth Considering and send me your answers. I am looking forward to reading what people have to say.

Categories: Q-and-A Club: Exploring Social and Political Issues

By Arlene Harder, MFT

A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF THE TAX-AND-SPEND GAME

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile (or have visited the Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist section on Support4Change), you know that I can make things more complicated than they need to be.

The reason I say this is because I’ve been looking at the statistics of viewers to the blog after the initial rush of readers when I first introduced the Tax-and-Spend Game in How Will the Election Change Our Taxes?. People seemed very interested in the idea of exploring how they’d like to have their tax money spent. But the rules (while I thought were reasonable) caused my son, a teacher, to wonder where the “fun” was in the game. I had to admit that there may not be much fun in trying to explore all the government programs I had listed.

Therefore, I’ve decided to condense the original Tax-and-Spend Game into something I call the “Taxpayer Challenge.” This is how it works.

Choose one government program from which you currently benefit that you are willing to do without — and tell your Representative or Congress person why.

OR 

Choose one government program for which you are willing to have your taxes increased — and tell your Representative or Congress person why.

The idea behind this challenge is the same as that which I set out in the original Tax-and-Spend Game; our collective propensity to accept government services without being willing to fork over our hard-earned money in the form of taxes. We want to cut the other person’s program, which we consider unnecessary, and keep ours, which are “obviously” essential. Yet it is with just this attitude that we’ve dug a tax hole for our children and grandchildren. The more we borrow from the future to fund our current pet projects, the deeper that hole will be. The next generation may be the first that cannot expect to be as successful as their parents, partly because we’ve saddled them with our debt.

True, members of Congress are elected to bring into their local area pet projects that could not be funded solely by local taxes. It’s a game we all play. But there isn’t enough money to fund every pet project. Something has to give.

True, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contribute mightily to our budget dilemma. But when these wars were begun, how many of us said, “We recognize that a war requires money and we are willing to give up something on the home front in order to fund the war?” I’m old enough to remember rations during World War II (yes, I realize that dates me, but there it is). I didn’t understand exactly why we had a limited number of coupons to spend on sugar and gasoline, but when newsreels described victory in the Pacific, I watched the planes take off from aircraft carriers and felt a connection with the pilots, believing we were all in it together. The majority of Americans may not support the Iraq war today, but we can’t wish away the billions of dollars it is costing us each month. Disentangling ourselves will not be easy and we can’t wait for the war to end before we do something about the deficit. Something has to give.

HOW TO PLAY THE TAXPAYER CHALLENGE:

If you need to, you may want to first review the eleven categories of the Tax-and-Spend Game:

Funding Education
Funding National Security
Funding Protection Against Crime
Funding Protection Against Injury
Funding Physical and Mental Health
Funding Infrastructure
Funding Economic Stability and Job Growth
Funding Housing and Community Development
Funding for Environmental Protection
Funding for Cultural and Artistic Enrichment
Funding for Foreign Aid

If you are WILLING TO ELIMINATE A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM YOU CURRENTLY USE, send the following to your local or state Representative or your Congress person:

Dear _______________________________,

I currently use the following government program (or programs) but would like to have it (or them) eliminated or significantly reduced in the interest of cutting taxes: ____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

The reason I want you to reduce this (or these) services is because I believe it is irresponsible for me to want to reduce another person’s program if I’m not willing to reduce one that I use. Further, I believe it is important to reduce the deficit so that our children and grandchildren don’t need to pay for services we are using today.

Sincerely,

_________________________ , Taxpayer

If you are WILLING TO PAY MORE TAXES IN ORDER TO KEEP A PROGRAM YOU CURRENTLY USE, send the following to your local or state Representative or your Congress person:

Dear _______________________________,

I currently use the following government program (or programs) and am willing to have my taxes increased in order to continue having this (or these) services available: ____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

The reason I tell you this is because I think it’s irresponsible for us to continue using services when the cost for them is going to be paid by our children and grandchildren.

Sincerely,

_________________________ , Taxpayer

The “challenge” is for you to find the courage to actually fill out one of the forms above and send it to your local, state, or federal representative.

If you send me a copy of your communication to the elected official, I will enter you into a drawing for a free book of Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life. You can learn more about the book by reading the preface, introduction and testimonials from early reviewers.

I wonder what effect such opinions would have on our government if every person paying taxes in the United States were to actually send these messages. Then our elected representatives just might find the political will to either reduce programs (beyond the savings that could be made by reducing waste), or to raise taxes if the citizens of this country aren’t willing to do without those government services.

Even if you don’t accept the Taxpayer Challenge, I’d love to know what you think about the idea. I think it would make a good discussion for a civics class, or a discussion with friends at work. Please either add your comments to this blog or send me a note in the Contact Us form on Support4Change.

How many of you will accept my challenge? 

Publisher’s Special

If you order Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life from the publisher, Personhood Press, before March 30th, you will only pay $12.95 instead of the normal price of $14.95. ALSO, you will receive it before you could buy it in bookstores. The book will be sent before the end of March, but will not be available in stores until May.