COMMIT TO LIFE WITHOUT CRISIS
I’m used to hearing from people in crisis. As a psychotherapist and life coach, it’s part of my business. It may be a crisis in a marriage, a crisis at work, a financial crisis… There are many places for crises to wreak havoc in our lives.
Some crises are unavoidable. We control only so much of what happens in our lives, and sometimes life throws hardship, tragedy, or deeply chaotic circumstances our way.
I don’t make light of or gloss over the realities of life; but I do make it my business to help people to avoid unnecessary troubles, and there is one thing that we can do to prevent some of the more predictable crises of life.
We tend to use the passive voice to describe our troubles: An affair “just happened.” The project “just fell apart.” No author, no identifiable cause. The passive voice puts us at the mercy of events; the active voice is the voice of self-ownership and commitment.
A lack of commitment to our highest values can create tremendous anxiety; and turn every conflict, every decision, and every challenge, into a potential crisis. Every small problem can throw the entire commitment into question… And that is a major source of avoidable crisis.
Now to the practical application, a tangible plan of action for a life without unnecessary crises.
HOW HILLARY WINS
Join the forum discussion on this postHALF-FULL REPORT 01/29/16
I woke up this morning to a deluge of Forum comments on my Trump Derangement Syndrome yesterday. A large number of them were from Trump supporters who strongly disagreed with me.
They did so with courtesy and grace, with reasoned arguments rather than schoolyard insults. Trump could learn a lesson from them. I can’t thank them enough. We can continue to agree to disagree, and do so with mutual respect. I am so proud of my TTPers.
Which brings me to my gratitude for Rod Martin. Rod has been a dear and close friend of mine for more years than we both care to admit. Ours is a mutual admiration society. And of course, he’s an avid TTPer. Read his bio in the link, and you’ll quickly be excited to know Rod will be manning the HFR helm in my absence. Thanks, Rod!
Here’s the full text of the GOP candidate debate last night (1/29). It was glorious to have a real debate without Trump in the way, a clear demonstration of how much better the whole Pub primary campaign would have been without him.
Trump made a disastrous mistake in wimping out of the debate, afraid of a girl. The Fox debate last night dwarfed Trump’s egomaniacal competing rally, 4.5 times as many, 12.5 million vs. 2.78 million viewers. In fact, the headline is: Debate Without Trump Got Better Ratings Than Last Debate With Trump.
Cruz took advantage and closed the deal with Iowans with what Carl von Clausewitz called the schwerpunkt, the decisive point. At least, that’s what I think will happen Monday. We’ll see.
ACHIEVING AN AMERICAN RESTORATION
Under President Barack Obama, the United States has been fundamentally transformed. From the land of the free and the home of the brave, seven years into the Obama presidency, America acts like the land of the overregulated and the home of the risk averse.
In the Middle East, the new America is treacherous, and pathetic. It is despised by its allies and scorned by its enemies. America’s spurned allies are making their peace with its global self-destruction. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t praying that America will come to its senses.
Unfortunately, history cannot wait forever. Time is running out. Incremental change simply will not do. The world is changing too quickly and dangerously for a hesitant successor or one that fails to recognize that the entirety of Obama’s foreign policy must be rejected from the outset.
And so, before the first votes are cast in the 2016 presidential election, who among the candidates has the courage and the competence to enact a counterrevolution in American foreign policy?
A LEGACY OF INFAMY
Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him.
Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization?
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly.
The album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes.
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, and declared that the singer’s hit song was the president’s favorite in 2008, from an album whose grotesque cover had a crowd of NASCAR-looking, white redneck youth bunched up with an African-American official dead at their feet?
And what if the next day, Bush told the nation that he regretted not being able to bring the country together? Would there have been media calls for Bush’s impeachment?
Tearing the country apart is the unfortunate legacy of Obama—and it will continue in Pavlovian fashion until January 2017.
OPEC AND THE SAUDIS CANNOT DEFEAT US SHALE
Hedge funds and private equity groups armed with $60 billion of ready cash are ready to snap up the assets of bankrupt US shale drillers, almost guaranteeing that America’s tight oil production will rebound once prices start to recover.
Daniel Yergin, founder of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, says it is impossible for OPEC to knock out the US shale industry though a war of attrition even if it wants to, and even if large numbers of frackers fall by the wayside over coming months.
“The management may change and the companies may change but the resources will still be there,” he told me here at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The great unknown is how quickly the industry can revive once the global glut starts to clear - perhaps in the second half of the year - but it will clearly be much faster than for the conventional oil.
“It takes $10 billion and five to ten years to launch a deep-water project. It takes $10 million and just 20 days to drill for shale,” he notes. Do the math. OPEC cannot compete.
SOCIALISM IS A FORM OF SLAVERY
Do you know what socialism is? Hillary Clinton struggled to find an answer when recently asked.
Socialism is a system in which the government owns or controls the means of production, and allocates resources and rewards.
Sen. Bernie Sanders proudly proclaims himself a “democratic socialist.” Many in the Democratic Party seem to have no problem with this and, in fact, are embracing him and his ideas.
America -- and its unique success as a nation -- was built around individual liberty and opportunity, not collective coercion. All too many no longer understand what the American Founders were trying to, and largely did, achieve. It is a tragedy that too few Americans understand the dangers of unlimited government.
The young people who support Mr. Sanders, and even Hillary, seem to be generally ignorant of why America worked. Many do not want the government to restrict unfettered abortions or their right to smoke pot, but seem to be oblivious that socialism and big government makes everyone into an economic slave.
THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT
A marriage, a friendship, a close family relationship… all of our important relationships are built on countless moments, innumerable interactions that either build qualities of trust, joy, and respect - or undermine those qualities.
Today I want to show you what is arguably the most important moment for building a trusting, satisfying, loving relationship. We can often think that what makes a difference in a romantic relationship, or our relationship with our kids, or other friends and relatives, are the big things; the romantic getaway for the weekend, or the great gift that we buy.
…but there is a moment that packs more leverage, more meaning, and more potential for doing good – or harm – than almost any other. It is the moment when…
GIRLIE-MEN AREN’T TOUGH
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/22/16
DONALD PERÓN
The GOP prez race came into sharp clear focus this week with Trump overtly morphing into an American Juan Perón.
100 years ago, Argentina was in a race with America to be the most successful economy in the world. Its GDP per capita was higher than Germany’s, France’s, or Italy’s. That was long ago, for thanks to a succession of demagogic populists, stretching back to Juan Perón (1895-1974), the country is a wreck.
That’s The Parable of Argentina, The Economist’s warning to any country tempted to embark on its version of Peronism – that it risks becoming “the Argentina of the 21st century.”
This is precisely what America risks with Donald Perón. On Tuesday (1/19) in Iowa, he abandoned the slightest pretense of being anything other than a crony capitalist wedded-to-the-establishment populist vote-panderer.
What more could it possible take for Trumpkins to wake up from their hypnotic trance, to realize they have been suckered by a charismatic demagogue like Juan Perón, a mentally imbalanced narcissist like Obama, who only wants fame-power-adoration without principles or mercy?
His election would be the death of conservatism in America and of any chance to regain our freedom or Constitution. Because conservatives will have abandoned every single conservative principle they claim to possess in selling their souls to him.