In the wake of the Penn State scandal, many are in shock, asking themselves, how can an institution that is dedicated to the education and growth, mentoring tomorrows leaders, educators and parents, display such callous ignorance in disregard for human dignity and respect? Perhaps this is more of an issue based in flaws in our society?

So many times we look at others who commit crimes and engage in unethical and unprofessional behavior, and we exclude ourselves as if it were impossible for us to behave in such a manner. Many sit in judgment of others, and we hear them say, “If I were in that position…”, while others respond with rage and hatred that seeks vengeance and not truth. We would like to think that we would all make the best decision for all when life calls upon us, but for many it doesn’t happen that way. We have to understand that even the best intended people make very poor decisions at times. While their 95% of kind, giving, supportive behaviors should not excuse their poor decisions, it is incorrect to define them by their 5% or their 95%.

Situations happen everyday in life that we walk by. We don’t respond out of a feeling of fear, helplessness, not wanting to get involved, not being prepared, not caring, not wanting to lose friends or be seen as unpopular… Many may want to say that this is an issue about a university protecting itself, but whether it is a university, a corporation, a government, or a family where many heinous acts are brushed under the carpet, these groups are comprised of individuals, where each knowingly closed their eyes to a serious problem where people were severely harmed.

At this time, there are millions casting judgment on a coach, a few administrators, a university… and still a child’s innocence was taken away. Children and adults are abused everyday, and people turn a blind eye. How long are we going to keep doing this, and how long is it going to take to see that WE have a problem?

We have to recognize that this is an issue of being human. We are prone to mistakes, and some we wish were never made and many can never be undone, having lifelong consequences. We can say, “That’s life,” and move on to the next headline, or we can aspire to a higher standard.  A standard where we look out as much for our neighbor as ourselves, where we think about how an action is affecting another person or group rather than our bottom line, our profits, our team, our politics… We each have choices to make everyday. Are you going to open your eyes or keep them closed?

I would propose this. Rather than focusing your energy on the individuals named in this action, take some time to look at yourself and the world around you. Focus your energy, thoughts, and intentions on what you would do not just in a similar situation, but in any situation that required your assistance.

Do you stop when someone is broken down on the highway? Do you stop someone when you see them get in a car when you know they have been drinking? Do you comment to or seek assistance for an adult who may be verbally berating or physically abusing a child or spouse? Would you stop a teacher or coach from humiliating an athlete or student? Should we really define a threshold for a behavior that results in the pain, humiliation, and degradation of another individual?

We all have a choice here. We can use this event as a waypoint to set the intentions and actions of our own behaviors, or we can take the time to judge others, only to perpetuate the problem, which is about as wise as a Lion eating its own tail.

My final questions to you – How do you define a winner and how do you define hero?

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

www.drepresents.com

Our last family picture on Ivy & Hunter's last day with us.

Well the time came this past weekend. Our two dogs, my wife’s and my first “children”, graduated to the dog park in the sky. Ivy (16 year old Blue Merle Australian Shepherd) and Hunter (14 year old Black Chow Shepherd mix) lived long, relatively healthy lives, and in the end we felt that we had to assist them along their journey to allow them to leave with dignity and not wanting them to unduly suffer. Both Ivy and Hunter were adopted after an early life of abuse. Ivy sprung back very well, after she adjusted to her new family. From the day we found her in the shelter on my 30^th birthday, and she jumped up on me and then my wife and wrapped her front legs around each of us, she was full of life and spunk. Hunter always had a tougher time escaping his early childhood trauma, and he was full of craftiness, often trying to see what he could get away with. In many ways, I looked at them both as if they were traumatized kids, who needed our patience, structure and love, and overall, they did very well with this approach. Ivy and Hunter both gave us so much in their unique ways, and even though Hunter could bring me to the brink of rage with his defiance and manipulative nature, we loved him just the same, and I learned to have more patience. I used to take them to the office, and Ivy had the incredible sense to know when a client was in emotional pain, and even in a deep sleep she would awaken and jump up next to them and look right through them, telling their soul it was going to be okay. They taught my wife and I that we could be parents to a human child, and helped us to become the parents that we are today. They cared for our daughter as if she was their own, and their patience with Grace, as she was growing, was admirable for any older sibling. Grace reached into Hunter’s heart in a way that no child ever had, and while he felt afraid of so many other children, he warmed up to Grace like holding a hot cocoa on a wintery night. She would dress him up, and he would take it, as well as many pictures we will smile at forever. Ivy on the other hand was Grace’s older sister, who let her know the limits and kept her in line. She tolerated Grace’s attempts to love her in her sometimes rough and tumble way, but had her line of dignity that Grace could not cross. We had let Grace know over the past six months that the dogs were getting older and knew that the day was coming when we would have to likely make this decision. After losing both grandfathers this year, we did not know how Grace would handle it. When we told her of our decision the night before we made arrangements, she cried like we had not heard her cry before, and just like a 6 year-old can do, she was asking for another dog in the same sentence she was saying that they were her best friends ever. It was okay and good for her to grieve. Death is one of the lessons a child may be fortunate enough to understand in an environment of trust and love, and we wanted her to know that her feelings were her own through this, and she has handled this Gracefully. What I told Grace when she asked about getting another dog, was that when we lose a person or a pet, we need to give our heart time to heal so that we don’t try to fill that empty space with something or someone else. This is a powerful life lesson. I told her to let her feelings be known and honor the memory of her dogs, and one day it would be time to get another dog. We would all know when. We all feel that we are better people because of Ivy and Hunter, and even their death happened for us, not to us. Their last day was filled with quality time, play with their doggie friends, a Frosty Paws ice cream party and cooked meat for dinner. When it came time, our Veterinarian came to our house. I did not want the dogs’ last moments to be feeling fear and unfamiliarity. Grace chose to be a part of the process, and we had discussed the process numerous times, and she helped where she could, to gain some power over her feelings of helplessness, handling the situation Gracefully and respectfully. A child’s view of death is often channeled through the parent, and we want to Grace to not fear it, but instead see it as a part of life. Death does not have to be morbid or scary. It is a transition – another life lesson. My wife held Ivy when she went to sleep, and I held Hunter. It wasn’t until the next day until it really hit me what it may have meant to Hunter for me to be holding him as he looked in my eyes when he went to sleep, “Here is my caretaker who raised me, loved me, fed me and gave me limits when I needed them, and in my last moments of life, he is holding me and loving me as much as I loved him – a much different reality than I came into this world with.” Well maybe he didn’t think that. “Maybe he was just thinking, this was a really fun day. I wonder what we are going to do tomorrow.” But I think that is what his eyes were saying. Hunter, I say this to you, “I hope we helped you to heal your soul in this life from what happened when you were young and helpless.” To Ivy, “Thank you for reaching into the hearts of so many and finding their smile.” You will both always be in our hearts… indelibly. Respectfully, Dr. E…

For As Long As the Sun Has Risen

Political conflicts have been happening for longer than humans could say “election”; however, in the past decade, it seems that our political parties decided that they were going to spend more time undermining each other than they were going to spend getting the job done that we pay them to do.  They have learned the art of the media machine and use that voice too often to spread misinformation and disinformation to evoke emotion and reactions in the voter base. When these actions lead to the death of others, as it did in Gabrielle Giffords, no responsibility is taken and fingers are pointed.

Many politicians “bank” on your blind allegiance to the “party line”, and they want you to fight their battles for them, especially on election days. Fear, mistrust, and manipulation are often the emotions that are played upon under this dubious shell game. And this has become very dangerous indeed, and we, as a country, stand the chance to negatively impact our lives and the lives of our children for years to come, because of their arrogance and selective ignorance. Trust has been compromised at the hand of greed and power grabbing. We all suffer when we can’t trust those who we elect, and according to most politicians, it is most other politicians who can’t be trusted.

One Term President??? How About Term-Limited Congressmen

This past week, John Boehner made a comment that “There was an elephant in the room” that no one was speaking about, and that was that Obama was going to have to focus on his re-election next year. True as the fact is, the most disturbing aspect of this comment was the look of arrogance that he displayed in making this comment. Furthermore, it seems through this and other events, that he, Mitch McConnell and their republican cronies are invested in destroying his re-election more than they want to work for the best interests of our country.  Don’t get me wrong, there are events of political manipulation that can be cited on each side of the aisle, this is merely recent and salient. It is clear that this game is about power, and it is at the expense of the American people.

What my biggest concern is that our political system has deteriorated to our focus on often electing the politician with the least amount of mud on them, rather than the best man for the job. It has been said that the best people for the job are too smart to put their hat in the ring, and many well-meaning individuals lose their moral compass on the road to Washington.

The Buck Stops Here

All of this has happened on our watch, and we are participating, blindly or actively. How do we fix this problem? I don’t know. The Tea Party was born out of good intentions, but even that has begun to be swallowed up by “the Game” that is played on Capitol Hill. After all, we know what the road to hell is paved with.

It is my hope that we resolve this issue of the debt ceiling before it is too late. What is already too late is that we have lost faith and trust in our political system, and it is lacking in honor, respect and integrity. If we are going to rise out of this, we have to set a higher bar in Washington than destroying our rivals and take personal responsibility for how those who represent us behave. As for integrity??? Structures that have no integrity crumble under pressure. What will also come tumbling down should our political system crumble, and what will be the ultimate cost?

I will leave you with this, Washington is not a school yard playground to settle scores and see whose got the biggest “feet”. The intentions of our forefathers were to create a center for our nation’s government with the ideal that intelligent, honorable, respectful men would meaningfully solve problems facing our Republic to benefit the greater good. We say we are the greatest country in the world… It is time to act like it.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

www.DrEPresents.com

Most people don’t realize that the need for control is based in fear. No matter how much power people feel that they have over others, there is always a fear that others may want what they have, and often we end up giving power to objects rather than to ourselves. What often hides this fear of losing control are arrogance and hatred, not confidence and pride. Additionally, the more they fear a loss of power, often the more extreme the methods to hold on to power through any number of techniques: terror, brainwashing, manipulation, threat, and creating conflicts between others who would be a threat if they allied their power together. An example of the division of power to misdirect conflict was giving different levels of power to the various South African tribes from the Zulus to the Hottentots. When they were brought closer together under a more unified front with Nelson Mandela (after he fought his own internal revolution), the Apartheid system of government could no longer stand, and a more democratic ideal that he worked toward was realized.

What Neslon Mandela and many others throughout history created in the mind of others was a revolution of thought and inspiration. When that “revolution of thought” became a threat to those who held positions of power, those rulers often sought to control the will and minds of others. Consider this: when people rule over others, they often want “those who serve them” to be as intelligent and motivated as they can be to promote the wants and needs of the ruler, but not so intelligent and motivated that they can undermine or overthrow them.

Power Hungry

As it has been said, power is an alluring aphrodisiac, and it is often the aphrodisiacal power over people that drives us to abuse it at the expense of others. It is when the loss of freedom, power and control of those feeling abused overwhelms the power of their own fear that revolutions are born. In other words, there is a shift in the balance of power of emotions within us from fear to anger/rage/inspiration. For those who remember the movie Network, “I am sick and tired of it, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

A revolution occurs when those who feel exploited/abused and don’t have “status power” collectively pull together to take their power back and seek to overthrow those with the power “over them”. If we consider the roles that we play in our culture, revolutions occur when “Victims” collectively challenge their “perceived Persecutors” because there is no one to “rescue” them. What often happens is that their anger, rage and hatred that had been repressed for so long behind their fear and terror, results in those “victims” becoming “Justified Persecutors”. This means that the subsequent persecution of those who once ruled over them is sanctioned by the belief that they were exploited and/or abused, so they don’t have to feel guilt about their actions. They feel justified in their actions to cause pain to those who once ruled them. Consider many of the massacres that have occurred at the beginning of revolutions and the damage that unbridled rage and hatred have caused.

Just Who Is In Charge Here?

There are often circumstances when a few inspire the many to revolt, whether they are the Mandelas, Gandhis, Jeffersons and Washingtons, or the Stalins and Husseins of the world, that those who follow those revolutions are often beholden to the intelligence, ideals, motivations and moral values of the leaders of the revolution. Those involved in revolution want change, but if they are not leading the change, they may not see the outcome that those leaders of change intend. Furthermore, there are those who latch onto the process of change for good to hijack the change process for their own ends. The outcome was that the many who participated in this process of change to free themselves ended up being exploited once again. It is sometimes these fears that prevent change from happening. I think we all have heard the phrase, “The devil you know is often better than the devil you don’t.”

Emotion Commotion

What so many often don’t realize is that it is emotion that drives revolution and change, and it is ironically often the fear of pain that keeps things from changing. Fear, terror, pain, anger, rage, hatred, inspiration, passion, love, courage… these are some of the emotions that drive the process of change and the revolutions that evoke them. While fear and terror help us to realize that change is necessary; and anger, rage and hatred may motivate us to act, passion, love and courage need to be part of the fuel to see the change process through to an outcome that all can benefit from. Revolution just for the sake of change may not lead to better change. This is where wisdom, experience and truth are a premium.

People who allow themselves to be ruled over are often in a state of ignorance, which is why so many may be easily misled. Those who inspire revolution seek to play on the emotions of those that they wish to join them. Our emotions can serve us to promote the positive change we desire only as well as we are educated to see the change we desire and the details it takes to create and maintain the change. The process of “ousting the dictator” is just the beginning. Implementing and realizing the change is the journey.

Opportunity Knocks

As we see these revolutions taking place around the world, be mindful of these issues. Furthermore, don’t stop with the idea that revolution can only occur in a culture between people. For real change to occur, revolution has to occur within ourselves for our world to truly change. You can spray paint a hunk of iron with gold paint, and it will look golden, but when you change one electron in an atom, it changes the elemental structure of that atom.

Cultures often engender common belief systems and durable patterns that are resistant to change. Although we may see opportunity for positive change in our lives and cultures, as a psychologist, I see how difficult change can be. It takes hard work, diligence, focus, vision and trust in those guiding the change process. When people have felt oppressed and exploited for generations, trust is a commodity that is difficult to come by. That lack of trust can halt change like a truck hitting a brick wall, and it is fear that drives mistrust. In any change process we have to be mindful of our emotions and the emotions of others around us. We all influence each other, whether we want to realize it or not, and to promote change we have to support each other and respect each other. Growth may feel frightening, but need not be painful.  Again, the journey is as important as the destination.

It is my goal that we grow closer to truth. To do this, it is imperative that we face our fear and embrace our truth. Let love, wisdom and passion be the fuel that feeds to process of change, within ourselves, our community, our nation and our world.

Vive la Revolution

Dr. E…

www.DrEPresents.com

I grew up with a dad who worked a lot. His work was important to him, but it wasn’t until later that I truly realized why. As I kid, I wanted him to play with me, be at my baseball games, soccer games, scouting events, and while he made some of them, his attention to his work seemed to take precedence. I remember that when we did play pool together, he would beat me again and again, and was amazed that I would come back for more. But what he taught me was that he didn’t play down to me, he challenged me to play better, and when I did beat him, I knew I got his best.

When I was 8, my brother died, and while this was painful to experience as a child, I now, as a father, can more dearly understand how difficult this must have been for him. My Father tried to revive him when he found him on the floor, and his best efforts could not bring him back to life. It was in this time, as I reflect back, that my dad was selfless in times that required strength. My parents’ priority was to make sure that we, as a family stuck together, and while they both mourned the loss of their child in somewhat silence, in a time when expression of emotion was not the norm, they continued to support their children the best they knew how. As a family, we stayed together, and I remember that my Dad worked hard to make that following Christmas memorable. I think what my parents learned from the loss of their son was that life was precious and time together was important.

I remember my Dad and I usually making an annual trek to a Browns or Indians game when I was growing up, especially the Monday Night game against the Cowboys. Man was it cold. I grew up wanting more from my Dad, without understanding him and how he showed love. I didn’t appreciate his hard work and his humility. I now do. It was important for him to find me jobs at his office. That was how he connected with me. I was often known as the boss’ son, and while there were a few times I let him down, he never made it more about him, but I knew his expectations.

In my high school and college years, I had a few run-ins with my Dad, but instead of pushing me away, yelling or becoming aggressive, we had the brief, but serious talk, and he never held things over my head. He understood my humanness.

The summer before I was getting ready to graduate from college, he would call me from work and ask me to meet him for lunch. I would, and we would talk. He would listen, and he said he was sorry. He said that he knew he worked too much, and buried himself in his work after my brother died. He didn’t want his grief to be our grief. He believed his job was to be strong.

When my Dad was running a company outside of Detroit (while my parents still lived in Cleveland), I just graduated from college on my way to Grad school. He asked me to work for him to design and build the landscaping around their major rebuild of the company grounds. We spent the summer driving to and from work together (Dad, the left lane is for people who like to drive faster than the speed limit). Even when he asked me to do this, I didn’t realize how much he believed in me. We had some of the best talks driving to and from work and to and from Detroit to Cleveland for the weekends. What he also told me about why he worked so much then was that he felt it was his job to make sure that we had the ability to do the things as kids so that we could have a better life, and he was felt fortunate that he loved what he did.

And when my wife and I moved into our first house, with the help of my parents, he came to help landscape our yard with me. That is when my Dad realized I was an adult when I said, “Dad there are 50,000 ways to plant a rose, and it will still grow. Trust that you taught me well.” While I added an expletive to my comment, he stopped, listened, filtered and trusted my judgment.

And when my first business failed, and I was under a mountain of debt and stress, he came to help me dig myself out (pun intended). When I broke down during a hard day and went back to his temporary office and apologized for letting him down, all he said was, “Are you kidding me? I wish I had the courage to take the risk to do what you did.”

What my Dad learned from working too much was how to be a better grandfather and how to be a better father to us in our adult years. I am inspired by his ability to take responsibility for his mistakes and perhaps the highest compliment he paid me was telling me that I taught him how to hug and that I taught him more about emotion than anyone ever had.

He is loved by ALL of his grandkids, whether he is Big Daddy, Be-Paw, or Grandpa Buddy. He is known for his sense of humor, and the time and patience he takes with them to teach them about the simplest things in life. I loved watching him with my daughter, as he listened intently. Whether it is blowing bubbles, swimming in the pool, making funny faces, or finding fun in just about anything, he spent the time with his grand kids that they will remember for a lifetime. I feel proud that my daughter will remember her Big Daddy, and she got to read him Nursery Rhymes tonight on the phone.

You see, my Dad’s health has taken a turn for the worse in the past few days, and I am heading to Tucson tomorrow to hopefully get there in time. I pray for the weather and flight schedules to cooperate. For 13 years he has honorably and resiliently lived with cancer, not complaining much through the surgeries or the chemo – just showing a desire to live, not selfishly out of fear of death, but to share and create more memories for all of us, and to be a best friend to his wife. Through example, both of my parents taught us that we could find and marry our best friends. And I thank you both for loving my wife, as you love your own daughters. He has defied death, to champion life, and his strength makes me want to be a better man and to give to my generation and the next.

What I want you to know Dad is that you taught more than you knew, and even more, you had the courage to allow me to be your teacher. I thought for so long that I had created my equity-based approach to the world from understanding a control-based society, but now realize that my parents fostered an environment that allowed me to explore and respected my value. For giving me the permission of self-discovery, I thank you both.

I know that I am very fortunate to have a Father with integrity, who valued hard work, honesty, and who loved us the best way he knew how. I have come to appreciate the greatness of my Dad not just by seeing who he is and who he has become, but by working with so many people in my work who did not have a Father like mine. He is human and he knows it, and he accepted our humanness. I am sorry that it took me this long to truly understand him and how proud he felt of all of us, but I know it now.

Dad, I want to tell you that I love you more than you may ever know, and I am glad I got to tell you, in your living years. I feel proud to call you Big Daddy, and I speak for all of us when I say that you leave this world in a better place than it was when you got here, and we will carry the best of what you taught us into our futures. I hope that one day the world knows how great my Dad is, but I know it is enough for him that his family knows.

Respectfully,

Your son, Erik Anthony Fisher, aka Dr. E…

Nursery Rhymes can be great teachers, and not just for kids. Many are not aware that the origins of many nursery rhymes were based in the monarchies when people did not have free speech and would create parodies of political situations hidden in the subtext. The great fact about many stories and parables is that they can be timeless, and so many of them are still apropos. So what can Humpty Dumpty teach us today?

Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall

How often do kids get in trouble for fibbing, manipulation of the truth or outright lies, and how serious are the consequences that we impose on them – grounding or time-outs, mouth washed out with soap, spanking or even physical beatings that cross the lines of abuse? How often to we ask ourselves why they are doing it or where they learned it? I think that for many of us, we have to look no farther than ourselves and then to society to find the answers to our questions.

The most basic motivation for a lie is to create an alternative truth or “shell” around ourselves that misdirects from our actual truth. We tell lies for some of the following reasons: to avoid pain, appear as greater than we are, create or feed fear, avoid our own fears and inadequacies, undermine or usurp others, create doubt, avoid responsibility… As you can see, many of these reasons overlap and are based in a lack of integrity.

Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall

I often tell people who come to see me that you can’t grow up in France and not learn to speak some French. More times than not, kids are a mirror to the adults around them, within their family and their culture. They are like passive sponges and their actions are often just reflecting back what they see. I think we also have to consider that the act of lying is an aspect of the human condition, and while this may be the case, it does not mean that we cannot aspire to a higher standard and level of behavior, especially as adults. What this translates into is the idea that we create an ideal self that we want to believe in and want others to believe in. The lie hides our real and our feel and the more disparity between the real, feel, and ideal, the farther there is to fall.

Issues of lying, manipulation and lack of integrity in our culture are reflecting on us from all angles. In our families, our political culture, religious culture, sports culture, corporate culture, the media… The problem is that many people believe that this is just the way it is. We believe that this is acceptable behavior, and many people strive to see how well they can play the game, whether it is lying about doing homework, responsibility for manipulating political facts, abuse of steroids, cooking financial books… We all may have our justifications for why we lie and manipulate the truth, but what we all need to see is that the reasons are self-motivated first.

All The King’s Horses and All The King’s Men

We often don’t like to look at the darker side of ourselves, and our denial can lead to our undoing and pain and even death to others around us. The consequence of this undoing often leads to more lies and manipulation to further cover our tracks. The question is, when will it stop? When do we say enough, not just in society, but within ourselves?

We can look to the rest of the world around us and blame them for our actions and manipulations, or we can look to ourselves and take accountability.

Couldn’t Put Humpty Together Again

Other people cannot put our lives in order and resolve our inability to look at our truth, however we are also ultimately responsible for the manipulations and falsehoods that we present to others. The stories, lies and manipulations that we put out there do not solve problems, they create more, and as we have seen so many times around us, the results can be tragic. Don’t the children of our generation and future generations deserve the truth? Do you have the courage to live in your truth?

Stay Tuned…

Dr. E…

www.DrEPresents.com

In all seriousness, where has this journey taken us? Well, for as long as time has been ticking we have been and will continue to be beings that are anthropologically, genetically, physically, emotionally and spiritually driven to engage in sexual relationships with others. That has not been the issue of this series. I am all for people having sex. The issue is how we go about pursuing sex and how, in many ways, we have become slaves to our cultural beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and language of sex. IMHO, sex is one of the most sacred experiences in which we can engage with another person, and it is important that we see it that way for ourselves and others to preserve our self-respect and others’. Probably the most important subtext to this series has been the effect of our attitudes and the influence of various cultural issues on our kids. Honestly looking at all of these factors when it comes to ourselves, it is the influence of our issues on our kids is often the hard part.

Lost and Found Along the Way

It has not been my goal to come across as judgmental, nor holier than thou. I am not taking a religious nor political point of view; I am more focused on the health of our collective spirit. Sometimes in life, we become distracted by that which looks and feels inviting. This is not always in our best interest.

Life offers many distractions and temptations and so many things become a part of these distractions: work, play, relationships, television, internet, the media, drinking, drugs, social life, how we look, who likes and loves us… Many of these things I have touched on, and one of the common denominators of all these issues is often sex. It is ultimately up to us to take responsibility for what we focus on. It is my sincerest hope that you have grown through this exploration. These are some of the issues that I would like you to consider when considering your choice, not just in sex, but in life:

• Are we making the choice that brings us instant gratification, or making choices that look at our long-term best interest?
• Are our actions dishonoring our self and our soul, or are we loving, respecting and honoring ourselves?
• Are we looking for a quick fix, or are we truly looking for intimacy?
• Are our behaviors and attitudes carelessly affecting our children, or are we careful about what they see and hear?
• Are we indifferent to our children’s awareness and attitudes about sex/life, or if we are invested in what they are learning and doing?

I hope these become guidelines for you to use in your everyday life to help direct your choices for you and those you guide. Never forget the power that you have in what you create. No matter what you do create, do it from a place of love, and let that become its foundation. After all, amusement parks can be enjoyable when we ride them safely. When I’m done with this blog, I am going to Disney World.

The Pledge

I hope you will take the following pledge and will allow this to become a part of your everyday living.

I pledge to learn more about love, what it truly is and truly isn’t. I agree that sex is not love, but instead can come from a place of love. I agree to honor, my body, mind and soul and commit to the intention of acknowledging my mistakes in the context of sex and love and to learn and grow from them. I understand that to err is human and forgive myself and others is Divine.

I understand that sex is not a shameful or guilty act, and also acknowledge that sex, intimacy, trust and love belong hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand, and one without the others may not honor the creator’s intended design. I understand that it is my place to find my power and ability to love myself from within and will honor others as I honor myself.

Sex is not intended to be a vehicle of power, status or control, but a vehicle of love and connectedness that is the culmination of a respectful and healthy relationship based in Agape, Eros and Philos. I owe this commitment to myself, those I love, and those I will love.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

What a truly inspiring week for the sum of humanity who witnessed the miraculous rescue of the Chilean miners. Whether one was involved personally or was riveted to the television, this event went a long way to redefining how we can all witness a news event as a positive outcome and challenge us to seek a more peaceful world. And my being an On-Air consultant to CNN Networks during their climb to earth was a once in a lifetime gift. Perhaps the most synchronous part was that the miners were reached on John Lennon’s birthday – “Imagine” that. As a psychologist, I am often looking at metaphors that life evokes, and the circumstance of these miners, rescued after being trapped below the earth, provides such an apropos metaphor for the world to learn from.

So many times in the history of mankind, we, as a collective, have created the circumstances that contributed to our traumas, and those who were supposed to protect us either caused the trauma or did not do what could have been done to prevent it. As a result, we feel betrayed, neglected, unloved, and our trust is shattered like a stone through a window pane. Through our experiences in this world, we are taught to hide our traumas and pains deep inside ourselves.

So many of us have so many wounds and pains that we feel helpless to know what to do with, and we believe that the deeper we bury them, the better off we should be. Sooner or later there comes a time in our life when something so egregious happens that we can’t just turn our backs to it. We have to act, there is too much to lose if we don’t, but we often don’t have the resources to find our lost selves and heal them. We require the help of others. But how helpless it can feel when we are trapped by our own negligence and denial.

So we work to dig and drill down to the depths of our soul traversing the various strata of our defenses, addictions, attitudes and beliefs of indifference, anger and mistrust, the efforts slowed by almost impenetrable doubt and fear, and still we press on, learning that failure is the process of learning on the journey. Quitting, not an option, we continue, refining our technique with proper guidance, until we reach them.

Still alive, we give them enough to sustain them until we can bring them to the surface, one by one, and the efforts begin again.

Trapped for so long in indescribable conditions, banished to the recesses of our unconscious, we understand that to feel our wholeness and resolve our shame we must bring them back into the light. As we widen the reach of our efforts, we are able to free our pain from our self-imposed tombs, and we bring our traumas to our light, and as each is exposed, worn, sickly, and wary of the light, they require time to regain their strength. Share they must their traumas and pains, no more to be buried and forgotten. Learn, we will from them They ultimately grow in strength from the light. Stronger they are to stand with us, changed forever, by facing our truth we realize that our shame was not suffered through the trauma, but was the result of our own disrespect of our self and our soul.

Through this we learn, as failure will teach, that the love and respect of ourselves and others leads us to understand that there is no price that can be put on our soul, nor one else’s.

But when the miner’s were rescued, their president spoke to the world of the “33” being strong and better for their experience, denying their own negligence and accountability. And the miners’ pain and their potential pain to come, should they bury their experience behind their shield of strength, indifference, and financial reward to come, as so many have before them, would only be borne by them as others would have moved on long ago. Shall this all be forgotten when we turn the channel?  I hope not.

I dedicate this not only to the indeterminable strength of the “33” miners, but to the indeterminable strength of the human spirit that lives in all of us.

Bless you all in your journey to healing, and God bless us all in our journey to truth.

Dr. E…

When it comes to how we treat our bodies, there are often wide gaps between our real, feel and ideal, because it can feel painful to be so honest with ourselves and others. We spend so much time trying to avoid our truth and our emotions. As a result, we look to others for approval with our appearance and sexuality to see what we need to do to feel accepted and fit in with others. Family, peers, society and sources in the media become the objects that we look to that contribute to how we determine our real, feel, and ideal. There are many areas in our life where we may apply these concepts of real, feel and ideal and our sexuality is definitely one of them that is prominent in our culture. Too many times we are trying to deny and disprove our feel, ignore our real, and spend too much time trying to support our ideal by attempting to appeal to others through the way we dress, sexual innuendo and sexual behaviors… These behaviors are often accompanied with arrogance and exploitation which become a major part of our avoidance.

The purpose of arrogance is to protect us with a shield of false pride. It often hides feelings like shame, guilt, embarrassment, inadequacy, unlovable, and many other emotions that we consider to be bad, wrong and weak. The problem is that it often our arrogance can lead us to denial and can result in us getting into situations that are over our head and sometimes dangerous and even life-threatening. When we attempt to dress, talk, and/or act in a sexually provocative manner, we are often trying to use some of our “assets” that we feel will appeal to others. We want the attention, acceptance and power from others, often because we want to feel better about ourselves, getting us further away from our “feel” and closer to our ideal, but at what expense to our integrity and truth?

Am I saying that wanting to dress up and look nice is or wanting to feel our “sexual beingness” is a bad thing? Absolutely not. What I do believe, however, is that behaving as we do contributes to our avoidance of emotions, issues, attitudes and beliefs that would help us to become better people if we had the courage to face them. Too much of our lives are spent around avoidance of learning and understanding ourselves, and the intoxication surrounding sex and everything around it is often a great way to avoid.

Until my next post, pay attention to your feel, real, and ideal and see what you can learn about yourself. You may be surprised.

I just finished the open audition for Your OWN Show and found it to be a very interesting experience. Mark Burnett (reality show guru) and Oprah Winfrey developed a reality show to have a competition for a talk show that a “Winner” of the competition would host on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

I am not much of a purveyor of many reality shows (I do like my American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance), and never saw myself involved in one, but the opportunity to “win” a talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network seemed to be too big an opportunity to pass up, especially when I have been working on developing my own show for the past year. Apparently that is what about 10,000 or so other people thought too.

I didn’t want to do this audition at first, because I am a more conventional person when it comes to business and have been pitching my show through the more established channels. However, when three separate people told me I should do it and then my Intellectual Properties Attorney said, “You are crazy if you don’t try this.”, I thought I better give it a whirl.

Today, I am never amazed by the number of people who get involved in reality-based shows. So many of us want to be stars, and we often see these opportunities that will bring fame and fortune to be the answers to all of our troubles. Often they are just the beginning of others.

What I loved about the idea of this show was to see so many people who had some really good ideas, and those with dreams who were willing to put themselves out there. Thousands invested in their dream and saw themselves in their OWN studio on the air, daring to dream big. It seemed that others just wanted to be part of the experience so they could have the memory.

As someone who has worked for years on being in the media to share a message I strongly believe is worth sharing, I have to be honest and say that it felt difficult to see all of those people out there wanting something that I have worked for for so long, who likely have not worked as hard as I have. But I also acknowledge that it is my own ego that had me feeling that I was more deserving than many of my compatriots out there for such an opportunity.

The process began with an application. I spent hours on this and tried to put as much of myself into this as I could. I worked off and on for a week on the application. I found it to be a great exercise to reflect on my life, my goals, and to really help me focus on what I want. The next step was the “big day”, the open call audition at a Kohl’s store in Atlanta (sounds a little cheesy don’t you think).

So, I decided that I wanted to be fresh for the day and got a hotel ten minutes away from the Kohl’s store so that I would be able to maximize sleep and not have to worry about the drive. I had my wife and daughter come along so we could spend the evening together, and they would be part of the memory. I went to bed at 11pm. Little did I know that my brain would wake me up at 2 am, more than two hours before I intended to wake up. So my plan for 5-6 hours of sleep turned into 2 hours of sleep. I got out of bed at 4:15 to get ready and then arrived at 5:15, only to find that there were hundreds of people in line waiting already.

While waiting in line, I struck up some conversations with others to hear their stories—everybody has a story. By 5:45 the line was moving and by 6:45, I was given number 874, and per my number, was supposed to be back between 11 and 12. When I looked behind me, there were still another 400 people in line.  In seeing all of those people in line, I had that internal fear that all of these people are going to take my opportunity away from me (after all, the was MY OWN show). The Reality – it wasn’t my opportunity to be taken.

So I returned for my first round. According to the producer, the 20 others in my group and I each had :30 to 1:30 to pitch our show. I was the only man in my group… hmmm great odds. I heard some great ideas and some that seemed like someone just wanted to be on TV. It came to my time, and I felt that I nailed the pitch. It was as I practiced it: I presented my qualifications as an expert, defined the pain to be healed, presented the solution, remained concise, incorporated humor, and ended with my sound bite, all in less than :90. I saw heads nodding, got the applause, and the producer commented on how well I ended the pitch. I felt that they would have to be crazy not to select me for the next round (100 were people selected for the next round of interviews from the 1200 or so that showed up).

So I celebrated my success and waited for the call. It wasn’t if they were going call me, it was when… I also realized that there were many factors that they may be considering for entertainment purposes for the reality show that were beyond my control. I went home and waited for the call. My wife, daughter and I had a relaxing evening, and I waited…   and waited…        and waited. I quietly thought, “Are they calling the best first or last?      How could they pass me up?      I am perfect for hosting my OWN show… Oprah is going to love me…  Why are they not calling me?     This competition is rigged…”

I was feeling the resonance of all of my past rejections in my life, and while I wanted to feel cool and calm about it, there was a part of me that felt that I will never get where I want to be—to change this world. “How could they do this to me?” There was also the balanced side of me that realized that there are likely many others just as qualified as me, if not more. I had to also remind myself that this was not my first choice to do this reality show, and I really was not enthused with the idea of being on it in the first place, so why did I feel so upset. I felt like it was a blind date, and my not so attractive date left me with the dinner check.

I packed it in at about 11pm and went to bed. It felt like Christmas came and went, and Santa Claus didn’t show. So I woke up the next day with my Hang“OWN”ver, realizing that one more opportunity to reach my goals of changing this world came and went. One more opportunity to have my hopes, dreams, goals and expectations fulfilled fell to the ground like a Ming vase off of a museum shelf. The feeling felt so familiar to all of the other times in my life when I experienced losses and perceived betrayals. When things like this happen, I have learned to stop and look inside of myself to find these times and places where my emotions emanate from and honor the emotions and memories that came with them. I knew it would take some time to adjust to the “loss”, and continued to remind myself that this opportunity to get my show off the ground wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. So why did I feel the loss that I did?

Well, what I realized was that my Hang”OWN”ver wasn’t that I truly felt badly about feeling rejected by the show. The experience dredged up the emotional resonance of past rejections that I suppressed and did not want to feel. With that realization and my acceptance of my journey, I had rebounded by Sunday night, and I resolved myself to continue to work toward my goals that I had set. The gift of this experience was that it helped me to renew my commitment to myself, my wife and my daughter, appreciate my practice with my clients who have taught me so much, and reinforce my goal to continue to work toward my show. It is me who chooses how long I stay down and when I choose to get up.

If there is one thing that I have had to learn is that life is what happens when you are making plans. I will refer you a blog I wrote last year, Reach for the Stars and Land on Uranus. I look forward to what the Universe has in store for me. And to all of you who made it to the next rounds in the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Your OWN Show, I wish you all the best. To all of you who put yourself into the process and didn’t make it, I wish you all abundance, and hope your Hang”OWN”ver doesn’t last too long. As Casey Kasem says, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

BTW, Oprah, call me…

Respectfully,

Dr. E…