Psychiatrist and mindfulness expert, Dr. Daniel Siegel describes positive time reflecting on yourself as “time in,” a period in which people check in with themselves to see where they’re at emotionally. Dr. Siegel recommends “time in” as one of seven suggested activities on his “Healthy Mind Platter.” This process of self-reflection is important to staying tuned in to our own mind. It helps us to know ourselves, to understand our emotions and to choose how we behave.

The problem, however, is that our mind is not always a safe place. Every person is divided between a healthy attitude toward themselves that is goal-directed and life-affirming and a destructive side of themselves that can be self-critical, self-denying, paranoid and suspicious. This inner critic, also referred to as the “anti-self” or the “critical inner voice” can take over our thinking and lead to rumination. Rumination occurs when we become trapped in a negative cycle of circular thinking. This type of thinking has a strong link to depression and suicide.

When we are in the realistic point of view of our “real self,” we can have positive self-reflection. When we are in the point of view of our anti-self, experiencing thoughts that focus on us as “bad,” we should make a conscious effort to avoid ruminating. There are seven other activities on the Healthy Mind Platter that are far more favorable when in this state, including play time, physical time, and connecting time.

Mindfulness meditation is another healthy practice we can adopt that has been proven, not only to improve the quality of our lives, but to possibly extend the length of our lives. When we learn to meditate, we learn to choose our thoughts. We are better able to consciously steer away from the directives of our critical inner voice.

At first, this can be quite a challenge, as our critical inner voice has a way of slipping into our thoughts without us even realizing it. We may, for example, be sitting in meditation and start having thoughts toward ourselves like, “You don’t have time for this. You never get anything done. You are so useless. How can you be so lazy? Why can’t you do anything right?” Our critical inner voice might even attack our efforts to meditate or control our thinking. “You’re terrible at this. You can’t even sit still for one minute. You will never be able to relax. You’re such a mess!”

When we learn mindfulness, we gain the power of familiarizing ourselves with our thoughts and our patterns. We can get to know our critical inner voices, and we can start to recognize when these cruel thoughts start to surface. We can then choose to steer our minds away from these thoughts. We can see the thoughts as clouds passing in the sky, yet like a mountain, we can stand solid and allow them to float by without letting them overpower us or influence our behavior.

When we do take time to be mindful and introspective, we must adopt an attitude Dr. Siegel describes as curious, open, accepting, and loving (COAL). We can then think about what we want to challenge in ourselves and how we want to differentiate from negative past influences.  In this way, we give our lives meaning and direction without falling victim to the inner critic that holds us back and keeps us from achieving our goals.

Learn more about Dr. Lisa Firestone’s latest book, The Self under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation

No matter how it may have begun, as soon as you can get a handle on the situation, revert to the real you, to your authentic self, to make sure that you are accepted as you truly are. Otherwise, your life could become reduced to The Barbie Chronicles, starring you. Living as a fake self gets exhausting pretty fast. It’s a fine line, between real self and an unengaged self, however. So, this is not a call for women to kick back and “stop trying.” It is not a call to succumb to sloppiness and pajamas at noon.

Even fake eyelashes are, admittedly, all right in the right context. But, as an overall attitude and approach to life, dignity and self-respect could become the female calling card: Sexy and smart; funny and serious; self-assured and open to blissful abandon. Empowered women know that they can call their own shots.

Yet, such self-confidence is not easily accessed, especially during the teen years, twenty-somethings, thirties, and maybe even (come to think of it) forties or fifties, too. Often, developing a healthy sense of self takes quite some time, if not a lifetime to accomplish. Rather than waiting for it to strike, though, like lightning in an open field, is it not better to cultivate genuine self-regard and compassion toward oneself, as an inside job, instead of waiting for it to materialize somehow in the outer world? It might be a long time coming.

It is important for everyone to understand, women and men alike, that expecting self-confidence to come naturally is the first big mistake. Freedom, self-responsibility, unconditional confidence, learning to be one’s own best friend: these approaches to personal development take considerable discipline and effort. By risking being ourselves, by leaving the make-up off for a day here-or-there, by not holding in our stomach fearing that some guy is looking, by surrendering to being our real selves, we open to the extremely heady feeling that women go wild for, a fortified female identity that tells a woman she is free to “just be” herself. You can’t get more Sex in the City self-confident than that.

Acting in Stepford Wives kinds of ways by minimizing ourselves while going overboard to stroke our partner’s ego does no good for anyone in the long run. In the first place, its inauthenticity is a turn off because it snuffs out all the spontaneity and potential for passionate engagement in the moment. There’s nothing less appealing to a woman than feeling the pressure to be other than she actually is, left to believe that she is “not enough,” or that if she doesn’t Barbie-ize herself, she may lose out to one of the always-available Barbie-like women out there, maybe even one with a Corvette and a Dream House. This dead-end is one in which many of us have found ourselves at one point or the other in the course of past relationships, contorting into our best version of a “bombshell” as we have learned to define it through our partner’s eyes, in order to not lose him. While it made us queasy to play the role, we felt compelled through fear of loss to do it anyway.

It is clear that women have to be very careful, because in our essential feminine energy, we can be our own worst enemy. Females have a natural tendency to nurture, to take care of, and to put others before our selves. It is built into our DNA: babies need their mothers and mothers need to be needed by their babies. In fact, based on the best of circumstances the baby/mother bond develops into a mutual admiration society. A mother’s main biological job from the very first moment of life is to nurture her offspring. So, with this natural tendency alive in all of us, whether we have children or not, we need to be on guard against our propensity to give all of ourselves away to the other people in our lives.

Giving one’s self away, running on empty, being a martyr all are surefire ways to become depressed or anxious, feel a listless sideways drifting, or lose a sense of direction in life. Sooner or later, it dawns on women that they are simply “going through the motions” in life, rather than actually living the real thing, and the weight of the false construct becomes unbearable. After all, how long can someone fake it? If, on the other hand, women can choose to be true to themselves (and everyone else) from the very start, they may be able to avoid an otherwise unavoidable face-off.

The main lesson is this: in order for women to reach their fully realized potential, they’ve got to learn to be themselves, at all costs … no matter what. Consider this a Female Call to Arms! Be yourself. We do no good by playing ourselves smaller than we are: meek, ineffectual, and inhabiting an antiquated view of femininity.

Instead, we owe it to our grandmothers and their grandmothers to live this life “out loud,” to be bold, to be ourselves. It is a legacy of empowered female presence and inter-relationship. It is a precious heirloom passed to us from them, down through time that we may protect it and nurture it, and ready it for the next generations of women who wait and watch and learn from the examples we set.

This first appeared in Ambassador Magazine, Detroit, Michigan.

While it may sometimes feel like we have to outsmart our feelings so as not to get hurt, when it comes to our relationships, we are far better off being vulnerable, making a practice of being the one who loves more. Throughout our lives, the only people we can fully change or develop is ourselves. We can strive to be the best we can be at expressing love. And when we do, we give ourselves a better chance of getting what we want.

As we get close to someone, we must not listen to the critical inner voice that warns us not to “be a sucker” or “love too much.” This doesn’t mean choosing someone who doesn’t love us at all or staying with someone who mistreats us. Rather, the goal is to develop into a giving person, a loving person. It’s a worthy pursuit to learn to do extra things and go the extra mile to show love. Here are five tips on how to be more loving in your relationship:

1) Communicate what you feel. People often make a big deal of who says “I love you” first. Many people feel shy or foolish to be the first to admit their feelings. It’s scary to take the plunge and tell someone how you feel, but it is also the only way for your relationship to survive. When we take the advice of our “critical inner voice” telling us not to trust or open up, we deny our partner a chance at really knowing us. We also deny ourselves many opportunities to get closer and get what we want. Make sure to say how you feel, rather than trying to temper or hide it. Avoid playing games or over-analyzing your partner’s communication. Instead, think about how they make you feel and let them know how you feel toward them. There is always a chance you will get hurt or rejected when you put yourself out there, but it is still worth it for your own sake to take risks and let people know you for who you are.

2) Avoid the “tit for tat” mentality. Couples often get into trouble when they start quantifying what they do for each other. If you find yourself thinking or saying “I will only do this if you do that,” you may be forming an unhealthy habit. Pretty soon, you might find yourself thinking, “Why should I clean the bedroom? He never lifts a finger!” or “Why should I be the one to go toward her and be affectionate? She always acts too busy for me anyway.” Instead of thinking about what you’ll get in return, try to be selfless in your giving. In other words, commit to acts of kindness with no strings attached. When you do this, it doesn’t just make your partner feel loved; it makes you feel good. Plus, it leads to a cycle of openness and exchange between you and your partner, instead of promoting a posture of defensiveness, in which both of you won’t budge for fear that the other will let them down.
3) Be sure to support and participate in the things that excite and interest your partner, that light your partner up. If he or she loves to hike, take time to experience this passion alongside your partner. Encourage them to pursue their interests and the things that give their lives joy and meaning. You can expand your own world by being open to another person’s. This doesn’t mean sacrificing your own interests or giving up what makes you happy. It just means staying open to trying new things, so that your world is always expanding instead of getting smaller, which is a risk in many relationships.

4) Take actions your partner would perceive as loving. Quite often, our acts of kindness tend to take place on our own time or within our own parameters. In other words, we might do things for our partner that suit us then feel hurt when our partner doesn’t react the way we want them to. Maybe taking them out or buying them presents is something you consider worthwhile, but is it something that your partner values? Perhaps he or she would rather just spend a night at home, curled up next to you and watching a movie? Even a simple act, like picking up something they need at the drugstore or offering to make dinner, can be true expressions of love to the people close to us. When we consider what matters to them and respond accordingly, we show love and consideration that goes beyond ourselves.

5) Don’t become closed off. Often, when relationships get closer, we have the tendency to create a protective distance by slowly shutting down or closing ourselves off more and more to our partner. We may start to get cynical toward them, honing in on little traits that we don’t like. We may start building a case, piling up every mistake they make until we’ve formed a wall between us and them. Hardening ourselves to our partner can be a defense against being too vulnerable or loving. When we love someone, we are more susceptible to fears of losing them or the life we are accustomed to. It is better to face these “fears of intimacy” than to turn against our relationship. We should fight to maintain our feelings of love, even when it is frightening to do so.

No matter what, we can only feel our own feelings. Being loving is the best thing we can do for our own well-being, because it allows us to feel genuinely good about ourselves. It is a skill that benefits us in all of our relationships, with our friends and our children as well as our romantic partners. Plus, when we expand our own ability to be loving, we actually grow our capacity to be loved. It opens us up to new possibilities, while allowing us to feel a consistent sense of honesty and integrity within ourselves.

What is disorganized attachment?

When a child has an ideal attachment, the parent or primary caretaker provides the child with a secure base from which the child can venture out and explore independently but always return to a safe place. When a parent or caregiver is abusive, the child may experience the physical and emotional abuse and scary behavior as being life-threatening. The child is stuck in an awful dilemma: her survival instincts tell her to flee to safety, but safety may be in the very person who is frightening her.  The attachment figure is thus the source of the child’s distress. In these conditions, children often disassociate from their selves. They may feel detached from what’s happening to them. What they’re experiencing may be blocked from their consciousness. Children in this conflicted state develop disorganized attachments with their parental figures.

Disorganized attachment arises from fright without solutions. Parents can frighten their children in different, often unconscious, ways. It might be through abuse or neglect, but it could also be through unresolved trauma and loss in the parent’s own life that leaves him or her feeling afraid, which unintentionally scares the child.

How is disorganized attachment expressed in children?

Children are born with the instinct to seek care from adults; their survival depends on it. They are therefore highly motivated to form an adaptable strategy to get their needs met, even by a far from perfect or unsafe caretaker. A disorganized attachment results when there is no organized strategy that works for the child. Their parents’ behavior is unpredictable, so no organized strategy allows them to feel safe and get their needs met without fright and terror.

Attachment expert, psychologist and researcher Dr. Mary Ainsworth conducted the “Strange Situation” test, in which she noted how a young child reacts when a parent leaves the room and then comes back. What Ainsworth actively measured was reunion behavior on the second reunion. She found that a child with a secure attachment will get upset when the parent leaves, but when the parent returns, the child will come to the parent for soothing , easily calm down and continue to play on his or her own. A child with a disorganized attachment expresses odd or ambivalent behavior toward the parent, (i.e. first running up to them, then immediately pulling away, perhaps even running away from the parent, curling up in a ball or hitting the parent.)  The child’s first impulse may be to seek comfort from the parent, but as they get near the parent, they feel fear to be in their proximity, demonstrating their disorganized adaption.

How does disorganized attachment develop?

In Mary Main’s research, utilizing the Adult Attachment Interview she developed, she found that unresolved trauma and loss in a parent’s life is the best predictor of disorganized attachment between a parent and child. Parents who have experienced trauma in their early lives and have not resolved that trauma by feeling the full pain of their childhoods and making sense of it are likely to engage in disorienting behavior with their child. Research has shown that it is not necessarily how bad someone’s childhood was that impacts attachment between parent and child, but how much they’ve been able to make sense out of and feel the full pain of their past, creating a coherent narrative. The better able someone is to resolve trauma and conflict from their early lives, the better able they will be to form a secure attachment with their child.

Having experiences of abuse, neglect or unresolved trauma in one’s early life can have lasting residue that leaves a parent prone to being flooded by emotions in times of stress between them and their child. Studies have shown that 20-40 percent of the general population has a degree of disorganized attachment, while 80 percent of children who have been abused have a disorganized attachment to their parent. Disorganized attachment can be passed from generation to generation, because parents who struggle with unresolved trauma themselves may have trouble tolerating a range of emotions in their child. They may react to their kids with fear or other primal emotions within them that surface in moments of stress. At these moments, the parent may act out destructive behavior and not even be fully aware of how they are behaving.

What does disorganized attachment in adults look like?

Parents whose relationship with their child is a disorganized attachment may react by being frightened or frightening in moments of stress with their child. They may act in ways that do not make sense, demonstrating unpredictable, confusing or erratic behavior in these relationships.  In the Adult Attachment Interview, researchers found that individuals with a disorganized attachment often can’t make sense of their experiences. They have trouble forming a coherent narrative. If they suffered abuse, they may offer unusual explanations for their abuser’s behavior. When they’re asked to convey details of their relationship with their parents, their stories are fragmented, and they have difficulty expressing themselves clearly.

A person who grew up with a disorganized attachment often won’t learn healthy ways to self-soothe. They may have trouble socially or struggle in using others to co-regulate their emotions. It may be difficult for them to open up to others or to seek out help. They often have difficulty trusting people, as they were unable to trust those they relied on for safety growing up. They may struggle in their relationships or friendships or when parenting their own children.  Their social lives may further be affected, as people with secure attachments tend to get on better throughout their development. Children with secure attachment are often treated better be peers and even teachers in school. On the other hand those with disorganized attachment, because they struggle with poor social or emotional regulation skills, may find it difficult to form and sustain solid relationships. They often have difficulty managing stress and may even demonstrate hostile or aggressive behaviors. Because of their negative early life experiences, they may see the world as an unsafe place.

How can someone heal from disorganized attachment?

The important message to take away is that there is such thing as “earned secure attachment.” People with disorganized attachment can heal by making sense of their story and forming a coherent narrative. They can find healthier ways to deal with unresolved trauma and loss by facing and feeling the full pain of their experiences. Hiding from their past or trying to bury their emotions doesn’t work, as painful feelings will be triggered in moments of stress. Getting help to resolve early trauma can come in many forms. Most important is to form a healthy relationship that exists over time with a romantic partner, a friend or a therapist, which allows a person to develop trust and resolve his or her issues with attachment. This can help a person to break the cycle often perpetuated by the formation of a disorganized attachment.

Read More About Attachment:

What is Your Attachment Style?

Identifying Your Child’s Attachment Style

Watch Dr. Dan Siegel on Disorganized Attachment:

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By Anonymous PsychAlive Member

I’m 41 years old and I recently learned that I’ve lived my adult years searching for my parents. Not the obvious ones I was born to, but their replacements.

My subconscious desire to have parents in my adult life has caused me years of discontent. The life of a child is helpless, scary and powerless. Functioning in an adult world as a child creates a never-ending misery of inequality, fear and paranoia. As a child, anyone can control and overrun you. If you don’t obey or conform to your parents’ wishes, you may even be rejected or exiled from your family. As an adult, of course, you own your life and destiny. But, if you remain a child in your adult life, you look at the world around you as dominating, controlling and dangerous. That’s a miserable life.

Where did I try to find my parents?

I found my father in a man I loved originally, and granted he had parental tendencies that nicely matched my childish ones. My desire to find fault constantly in myself worked well with his need to fix me. You cannot love a man or be attracted to a man if you are looking to for criticism and definition and parenting from him.  Love is equality. I know that now.

I tried to find my mother in various woman friends, often times opinionated or outspoken. Or perhaps, in a woman’s tense, angry or distracted face, I would find the disapproval and hate, or worse the dismissal I felt from my mother. At those times, I would turn an equal friend to someone I had to be careful and afraid of. I would feel belittled and small. Or like nothing at all. And it was always wrong. We were always equal.

But oh how compelling it is to have a parent; so I kept looking.

I found parents, both male and female, in my friends. Admittedly, it was complicated because at one time I was a child with many of these same adults, but the reality is that over 20 years ago, I became not only an adult woman, but a successful, competent one. A very equal member of my family, friends and society.

I found my parents in the friends that offered me feedback or input about various parts of my life. I would react with fear and panic and dramatically push back on the information, or become upset and angry. An adult, in a room full of peers, hears information, processes it, and it’s not a threat. Because in the end, an adults can choose their path. They are not children being told what to do, or how to live, or being rejected, or disapproved of for making a different choice.

To hang on to this old identity with all my might, for many years, was so compelling. Why? All I can answer is this: remaining a child, although miserable, is further away from the agony of aging and death…and so the compelling draw is hard to let go of.

Recently a very dear friend reminded me about this unconscious desire to be a child, and it hit me. I never heard it that clearly. It’s ruining my life and making me unhappy. And I’m sick of it.

I’m 41 and have finally learned its time to stop the search. Of course, I still have my moments of childish reactions, but I’m learning to catch them, notice the almost physical feeling that comes on, and stop it before I engage. I will make mistakes, but I plan to forge forward as an adult, and search instead for equality.

Nonetheless, this leaves me very alone. And the aloneness leaves me anxious, and sad…but its real. And life as an equal, although painful, is fuller. And I’m ready for the challenge.

Becoming your true self is a process that lasts throughout a lifetime. Our personalities are not set in stone by the time we drive off to college or even the day we head to retirement. It is always possible for a person to change. Yet, in order to achieve lasting change, we have to know ourselves. How did we become who we are and how do we seek to be different?

A person’s life, while entirely unique, is all too often a repetition or reenactment of the past. Very often, we live out past prescriptions from parents and society without really questioning “what do I want?”  Negative adaptations to our early environment lead us to develop traits we often don’t like in ourselves. In fact, the behaviors in us that we like the least are often negative characteristics from parents or other influential caretakers that we’ve taken on as our own. When we look closely at these traits, we can start to notice how they impact our careers, relationships and our goals in life.

My father Dr. Robert  Firestone describes this process of differentiation, as a four-step method for freeing yourself from past prescriptions and becoming who you really are. On June 4, I will host a free Webinar “Becoming the Real You” to further explore this complex subject.  I will discuss the steps of differentiation and describe key principles to keep in mind when embarking on this challenging, yet invigorating, path to self-discovery.

How can we identify and overcome the old characteristics and attitudes within ourselves that hurt us in our lives today? How can we separate what is us and what is a repetition of someone else? Here are some fundamental ways to become differentiated:

1)      Fully expose the attitudes that hurt you in your life today. Start by writing down your parent’s or another influential caretaker’s attitude at its most extreme. Think of when your parent was in a moment of stress and acted out. What kinds of statements would they make? What points of view would they reveal? A woman I worked with tried this exercise and wound up surfacing some deep-seated attitudes her mother had toward men.  In writing down her mother’s point of view, she described men as worthless and only good for taking care of a woman. As she exposed her mother’s distrust and hatred toward men, the woman began to feel critical of these attitudes and motivated to separate from these early “lessons” her mother had imposed on her.

2)      Once you identify these old, often engrained, attitudes, you can really start to think about how they impact your own life or behavior. For the woman I described above, this meant noticing how she now felt toward men. How was she living out (or reliving) her mother’s prescription for her life by maintaining these attitudes in herself? First, the woman thought about how she treated her husband. She often noticed herself feeling superior and critical toward him. Yet, at the same time she often acted like a child, wanting to be taken care of by him and thinking of him as weak when he failed to live up to her expectations. She also noticed herself having moments of extreme distrust, in which she became jealous or overdramatic in her reactions to him. It was clear to her that much of her point of view sprung from her mother’s cynical perception of men. She could tell this attitude was different from her real feelings for her husband, which were far more loving and equal than her mother seemingly felt in any of her relationships.

3)      Remember not to be defensive. People often have a blind spot when it comes to their own past and how it affects them in their lives today. They may not notice ways they are acting out based on old experiences. It’s valuable when learning about yourself in this way to be open to feedback. Friends and loved ones can be very helpful in letting you know when you don’t seem quite yourself or when certain behaviors of yours put them off or push them away.

4)      Once you recognize the undesirable ways your past is affecting your present behavior, you can make a conscience effort to act differently. You can teach yourself to stop reacting instinctively and to really think about the kind of person you want to be. The woman, for example, started by noticing when she felt triggered in relation to her husband. Instead of making a sarcastic or biting comment, as she normally would, she’d stop herself and ask, “where does this attitude come from? Is this really me? Is this how I want to treat him?”

5)      Taking note of times you’re triggered is very helpful to the process of differentiation. It allows you to know yourself better, to identify patterns and to ask yourself what’s going on in these moments. For the woman, she noticed that these critical thoughts toward her husband actually came up just after she started to feel particularly close to him. If she felt especially vulnerable or open to her husband, she’d have a reaction a couple days later, when all of a sudden, she’d have instinct to push him away. She realized in thinking about it, that she was afraid. While her mother’s attitudes were often unpleasant, they were familiar. Breaking from them posed an emotional threat to the woman in that it would cause her great anxiety, severing an imagined bond with her mother and refusing to live out someone else’s vision for her life.

6)      As you disrupt these behaviors, you can expect to feel anxious. Pushing past this anxiety and standing up to any self-critical attitudes or “critical inner voices” that arise is key in becoming your truest self. It’s essential to start choosing the ways you want to be. Think about positive traits you like in yourself that really express the person you want to be. Try to resist the urge to just go half way and really throw yourself into your goals. For the woman, that meant trying to stick it out and stay close to her husband. It meant letting him express his love for her without her acting distrustful, tough or guarded.

7)      Naturally, you won’t always be perfect, and you won’t always like the thoughts you have along the way. Remember, the patterns you’re trying to change have deep, emotional ties to your past, and you came by them honestly. Have empathy for yourself and for others in the process. Notice how the patterns hurt you and those close to you, but don’t allow yourself to get caught up in beating yourself up over your flaws. Instead, have compassion for any hurtful experiences that led to your struggles. Having feeling for yourself can help you to separate from your defenses. Furthermore, it can help you to have patience with yourself in your lifelong journey to become who you want to be and live the life only you have imagined for yourself.

Here are the facts: on September 25th, 2000 due to bipolar disorder and serious psychosis, I jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was nineteen years old and after leaving the Bridge, my firstthought was that I had made a terrible mistake.

Miraculously, I survived– and despite my severe injuries, I was able to reach the surface of the water. Upon my resurfacing, I bobbed up and down in the frigid waters surrounding me. Then, something brushed by my legs, I feared it was a shark come to devour me whole. I tried to punch it thinking it might bite me. However, this marine animal (whatever it was) just circled beneath me, bumping me up.

Yes it may be hard for the average skeptic to believe, but don’t take my word for it… Call the old producers and staff of ABC’s “Primetime with John Quinones.” You see, I did not know that the creature was a sea lion, not a shark until I was featured on that show due to my work in suicide prevention and mental health.

Many viewers’ emails flooded into ABC and one of them was from a man named Morgan. He wrote:

Kevin, I am so glad you are alive as I was standing less than two feet away from you when you jumped…. And by the way it was not a shark (like you mentioned in the TV show) it was a sea lion and I have pictures.

I immediately took down his email address and phone number. I called Morgan and I asked if he would email me the pictures he took. He obliged. The problem, I unknowingly gave him my father’s email address. My dad was not prepared for, nor would he ever willingly want to see what came through to his inbox. He opened his email, clicked a button and out popped a picture from birdseye view of my near lifeless body laying atop a circling sea lion. The picture was grotesque, morbid and yet, at the very same time, beautiful.

My father was an emotional wreck and he nearly fell out of his chair. When he composed himself he showed me the picture and together we agreed that no one should see it. With the click of a button it was gone.

To those who read this, I say believe it or don’t, that’s completely up to you.  I know the truth, and in this case and that is all that matters.

Choices that can change the course of our destiny.

For example, say you are walking down a particular street or road and, instead of moving straight in that same direction, you make the next immediate right, putting yourself off your normal path to work or an upcoming meeting. And that little diversion allows your destiny to take hold–because it was due to that one right turn, that you run into an old colleague or friend, loved one or business associate. One whom you might not have spoken to in over 3 or 4 years. It is on this different path that you exchange pleasantries and upon parting ways, you exchange your new (to each other) business cards or personal information. Then one of you says, “Let’s grab lunch or coffee soon.” Without knowing it, right then and there, you may have just altered the course of your life, maybe forever.

I know because something similar happened to me. And things like this have happened all throughout my life, always changing it.

Years ago, I handed my very first poorly-made business card (the business card I made on my 90′s green IMAC and cut out sloppily myself) to a complete stranger who was also my brother’s high school principal. Two years after that day, I got a call from this acquaintance offering me a tremendous opportunity at the school he ran. Because I’d handed that old business card to the principal two years past, I was asked to do a job–it was one of those jobs you dream about getting. And it would be a job that would change my life.

I found my purpose; I knew that I had to dedicate myself to this new journey. In it, I thrived!

Every day I worked was a gorgeous day, whether there was fog, rain, hail, or sunshine, I woke up energized, happy, and exuberant. With this turn around in my life, I found hope again. I found my step and plan to only move forward from there.

I don’t mean to say that employment will solve all of your emotional, physical and mental problems. Instead, it’s those small, medium and large moves, turns, paths and which transportation route you decide to take. Every time you move in any direction, what job you do or decide to leave later, and who you end up running into “accidentally” can change the course of your destiny.

My recommendation through all of these changes is to be self-aware enough to take the path which leads you to not just living but living well.

Well…My wife and I do.

In the 31 years I have spent on this earth, I have gleaned that no matter the struggles, the pains, and the amount of times we feel “broken” in this life, we are not here to simply get by in life, we are not here to go through the motions.

We are here to JUST LIVE!

Living is not:

• Working day in and day out while hating what you do; this is not the answer.
• Fighting endlessly with business associates about protocol and logistics; this is not the path meant for anyone.
• Working a job stressed to the bone; this is the furthest thing from inevitable.
• Arguing intensively with those you love for the sake of arguing; this is not our purpose.

You see friends, we are here for higher more valuable dedicated reasons. Reasons you cannot shake a measly paycheck or a wad of hard earned cash at. We are here to thrive, to find a true and powerful inner and outer purpose.

That purpose is to stabilize yourself and then find ways to help as many people in the story of your life that you possibly can.

It was the year 2000 and I was nineteen years old and by all accounts I should have died. By God’s good graces I was allowed to live and to continue my life path, eventually finding my passion.

Yet, that day I leapt over the rail of the Golden Gate Bridge to what most certainly should have been my demise, the world opened up to me, sharing with me the secret potential deep inside me that would help me to do good with what I had learned…This good would help give back to those who desperately needed to  cling onto hope and the idea of their invariably bright future.

As much as I was blessed with the hope of this new found life’s worth, I realized that it would be up to me to reach out with my gift of gab (which any family member of mine or friend attest I’ve had since the age of 2). With that gift, I would try to emotionally touch all those in my presence. I was lucky in the aftermath of “the single worst action of my entire life.” I was handed a purpose. The very first time I spoke publicly of my attempt and my story, six young students were directly and positively affected.

They saw through me hope in the darkest of hours; rather through my faith in the human condition, they saw their future and it was not to be one that ended in death by their own hands. This would end up being the very beginning of the rest of my life, a beginning where I would realize my calling. I was to talk, talk and talk some more. I was to spread a message of the immense and palpable power of influence. Positive, intelligent, bright and shining influence. I was to find venues where my voice, like any encouraging, determined, and deliberate voice, could be heard from the mountaintops.

So I did just that. In the beginning there was just one presentation on the topics of suicide prevention and mental health awareness. Since, I have spoken to audiences at universities, to our nation’s service members, to clinicians and to the general public.

God has granted me not just the gift of life after being so close to the brink of death but he has also shown me, through the last 11 years, that the gift he has given me is meant to be shared, and is meant to be placed in the hands of those who need it more than even they know.

Please never forget the gift of life, for it may be the single greatest gift we have or will be ever be given..!!

As I quote at the end of all my speeches–

And As the great Babatunde Olatinji

Once said
“Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
Today is a gift,
That is why they Call it the present”

I say let us always and forever cherish today and everyday.

-KH