If you are reading this on Saturday, October 26, today is Make A Difference Day.  Make A Difference Day is a national event, created by USA Weekend Magazine, which is held on the fourth Saturday in October annually.  It is a national day of service when neighbors help neighbors do things which need to be done or when people just do good things for other people.  Many organizations and civic groups plan projects on large scales, but what can an individual do that will make a difference in the life of someone else?  There are many things to do, and they don’t have to be enormous undertakings.

Last Wednesday was Bosses’ Day.  Our staff made an extraordinary lunch for us and gave us Gift Cards to Wal-Mart.  I love going to Wal-Mart with a gift card.  It’s almost like spending Monopoly money on frivolous things, and it’s a lot of fun.  It felt really good to be appreciated and made aware that we have made a huge difference in the lives of our staff members as well as those of our patients.  The whole experience was humbling, and I am still reveling in it.  Make a lunch or some other edible treat for someone you appreciate and let them know how much they mean to you.  The gain from this is priceless and both of you will have the “warm fuzzies” from it for a long time.

When I was a little girl my grandparents lived across the street from Norman and Myra Allen in Hardwick.  My grandparents’ house had huge pecan trees in the back yard, and I used to love to pick the pecans up off the ground and eat them or throw them at my cousins, depending on my mood at the time.  I was a royal pain in the rear end of Mr. Allen, but he loved me anyway.  One day I went over to their house, uninvited as usual, to hang around and ask questions about what he was doing.  Mr. Allen was a little perturbed at me for showing up unannounced once again.  I could tell that he was a little bit put off by me that day, and I wanted to give him a peace offering.  I took a brown Piggly Wiggly grocery bag, filled it with pecans, and dropped it off on the carport of my grandparents’ neighbors.  Later that day Mr. Allen came to thank me for the pecans and for coming to visit them. (I thought I had really done something great for them until I realized that their back yard had huge pecan trees too!)  My gesture still meant something to the sometimes grumpy Mr. Allen, and he never let me see him being perturbed at my showing up unannounced again.

On Father’s Day last year, my neighbor was down from Atlanta enjoying his weekend place at Lake Sinclair and anticipating a visit from his daughter.  His daughter didn’t show up.  As I was going to deliver some homemade chocolate chip cookies to my grandfather, I made an extra bag to give to my neighbor.  When I gave them to him, he didn’t know what to say.  I told him that I was glad he was my neighbor and that I hoped he had a happy Father’s Day.  Our relationship has been different in a great way since then.

When I lived in Orlando, Florida, I frequently traveled the Bee Line Expressway from Orlando to the beach in Melbourne.  The Bee Line was a toll road, and more than once when I went up to the toll booth to pay my toll I was told by the attendant that an anonymous person who had just left the booth paid my toll too.  I had no way to thank the people who did this, but was warmed by this random act of kindness, and softened by the gesture.  My response was to pay the toll for the person behind me just to keep the momentum up.

If you haven’t done so, rent the movie “Pay It Forward”.  There are countless ways in which you can make a difference for someone else.  Sometimes the difference you make can be enormous and life-changing.  At other times the seemingly small things you do will make a huge heart-warming statement.  Occasionally it feels great to do something anonymously and just know that you made a kind gesture to the universe. Be assured that what goes around comes around. When you least expect it, someone will do something that makes a difference for you.  If you haven’t made plans to make a difference today, it isn’t too late.  Look around.  Find something that needs to be done or someone who needs to be touched.  Reach out, and treat your spirit well.

This past couple of weeks has been difficult for some of us.  Global sadness flows toward The Vatican at the loss of Pope John Paul II and mixed emotions flow toward Florida as Terri Schiavo’s leaving this world is mourned and celebrated all at once.  These two seemingly unrelated events are really very connected in several ways.  Both of the lives of these people made all of us look at our own lives from odd angles.  They were both examples of global change and their existence definitely has a ripple effect on the rest of the world.

This Pope has been celebrated as being a leader of all and someone who reached out to people from all walks of life with compassion and understanding.  John Paul II lost everyone who was important to him by the time he was an adolescent, and grew to be an exceptionally compassionate man from his own personal loss.  As the most traveled Pope in history, John Paul II was more real and more visible to people all over the world and was able to spread his message everywhere in spite of the controversies facing the Catholic Church in recent years.  He will be missed by Catholics and Protestants everywhere as we mourn his loss and prepare for the Congress of Cardinals to present a new Pope with very large shoes to fill.  New challenges for the new leader of the Catholic Church will make people everywhere take notice as the winds of change begin to blow in one of the world’s oldest known traditions.

The life and death of Terri Schiavo forced all of us to look at issues in our own lives that aren’t always pleasant to dissect.  How do I want to die?  Tragic events led to Mrs. Schiavo’s unfortunate vegetative state with life being supported for her artificially.  A once vibrant, thriving young woman was reduced to a completely dependant invalid who was trapped in a body that would not work on its own.  She was unable to communicate her wishes to anyone, so her husband was left to make what he believed to be the most humane dignity-preserving decision for her.  The only gap in this story is the fifteen years she had to live like that before the decision could be carried out.  Millions of people all over the world sought legal advice regarding living wills in the wake of this tragedy.  Mine is prepared and copies have been distributed everywhere I thought my wishes should be known in the event of any such tragedy in my life.  I would not want the burden of life-or-death decisions to be left on any of my family members.  This living will goes against the grain of what most people have thought for years about the time between life and death, but times are different now and this option is one I choose.

If the weight of these events has had any part in your disposition in the past couple of weeks pay attention to the fact that both of these people in their own ways made enormous impact on all of our lives through bringing about global change.  Global change can be instigated by someone as common to us as a mother and homemaker or as regal and Chosen as a Polish Cardinal.  As a sometimes not-so-humble chiropractor I make an effort to bring about change every day.  People who come to my office come looking for physical change most often but sometimes leave with much more than that.  We make every effort to educate people about the fact that they can choose what they want for their lives and their healthcare.  Alternatives are available for myriads of problems if people would look around.

It is difficult to change generations of thinking that might no longer serve the same purpose they were intended for years ago.  I was talking a couple of days ago with a woman who is a financial advisor and is having difficulty teaching people that they don’t have to have the “It’s just a job” mentality.  Change is inevitable.  Growth is optional.  Chiropractors everywhere fight daily trying to teach people that they don’t have to sit back and accept whatever drugs are sent their way and whatever surgeries are recommended.  If they have not served you well in the past why not seek an alternative?  It is a hard fight, but one I will carry on until I am no longer here.  The safety net of the ordinary and the usual is one that is rigid and can become very uncomfortable over time.  Stepping out of the proverbial box and making choices that might be unpopular but better for you will make this life and the lives of those after us more pleasant.  The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine says that over 42 percent of adults in America today are seeking alternatives to allopathic medicine and they are teaching their children to follow suit.  That means the winds of change are “a’blowin’” in another of the world’s oldest known traditions and that excites me. Be a champion for change in your own circle of influence.  Treat your body well.

In juggling a few possible topics for this week’s column, I ran a few by some of the people who work in our office.  Amy, our front office manager, said, “Why don’t you write about why you and Dr. Tracy hug everybody after their adjustments.”  It is a policy of ours that we hug every patient following an office visit, and joke that the adjustment won’t hold as well if the hug is skipped.  We have also been known to go to the parking lot to get a hug from an attempted escapee.  One of the keys to excellent results in our office is the very human interaction between us and our clientele.  We integrate our clinical expertise with our very sincere commitment to keep interpersonal communication as an active part of our patients’ healing processes.  Remember what it felt like when you had a very bad cold and your mom made chicken soup for you, rubbed your chest with Vick’s Vaporub, and tucked you in on the sofa with a warm blanket?  If you weren’t so fortunate to have this feeling, it is never too late to find it.  This is the feeling that we foster with our hugs.

Sometimes people think we’re crazy when we tell them about our hug policy.  Often they don’t want to comply at first but become the very ones that will wait for their hugs before leaving the office toward the end of their care plans.  What is it about a hug that transforms people?  Even Letterman recognizes that hugs are important.  He who is the most sarcastic of all hugs guests on his show.

Many of us remember the studies done with baby monkeys to prove the fact that babies will die if they aren’t touched and handled enough.  In a world where sexual harassment and child abuse have everyone shying away from touching others, people are too often deprived of non-sexual, nurturing touch. It is indeed all right to enjoy a hug or pat on the back or touch on the arm or hand from another human.  In fact, not receiving these touches can place one in jeopardy.

Not only do we gain emotional benefit from receiving nurturing touch from others, but we also benefit physically.  According to The Touch Institute researchers, there are several immunological effects of touch and of touch deprivation.  Touch deprivation causes stress-induced activation of the pituitary-adrenal system.  This causes increased production of stress hormones like cortisol, which destroys or impairs immune system cells.  Following human touch, this system of cellular destruction can be reversed.  Natural killer cells are immune system cells that are important in killing virus-infected cells as well as cancer cells.  The production of these natural killer cells is increased following skin stimulation, which hugging definitely offers as a by-product.

Both Dr. Tracy and I were active in the research program in school, and one of the school’s projects was to determine the effects of chiropractic care on those who are HIV-positive. One of the things we found was that these people were rarely touched by anyone without latex gloves so they didn’t receive the healing benefits of touch from others.  We hugged these people as well as our regular patients and they received enormous benefit from being touched by us in more ways than just via our chiropractic adjustments.  Their self-esteem improved, and their outlook on life in general got much better as a result of being treated like human beings rather than outcasts.

The more we hug and are hugged the better off we are.  Sometimes our hugs are the only ones people get in the course of a day.  We never know just how far-reaching our efforts are, and we encourage everyone to spread the power of human touch to others.  Make it an effort to get at least a dozen good hugs in the course of every day.  You will be surprised at how much better you will feel as a result of this simple step.  Your days will become brighter, your immune system will work better, you will feel less depressed, and you will find that a little more humanity will emerge from the least likely of places.  Just try it for a week.  Let me know what happens.  Treat your body and your spirit well.

Until this past Friday night, my column for this week was going to be about the management of Type II Diabetes, which I will save for another week, but something happened that I felt  would be nice to share.  I promise to pontificate about adult onset diabetes and how to stay healthy with it at some other time.

It had been a very busy week, and I was looking forward to getting out into the lake and enjoying some sun and skiing.  When it was time to launch the boat, a friend of mine and my little sister excitedly drove off down the road perhaps a little too fast and the right rear tire of the boat trailer went off the side of the road and hit a sharp edge of a hole (Hancock County tax dollars at work – NOT!!).  The tire blew out.  To make a long story short, we didn’t have a spare for the trailer and had to abandon the boat in the middle of nowhere to go to my grandmother’s house not too far away to borrow one.

We got back with the spare and proceeded to try to figure out just how to change a tire on a boat trailer.  By this time it was getting pretty dark, and the weekenders were rolling in by the truckload. They blew past us and offered a breeze in the stifling heat, but no one was in the mood to stop.  We did get plenty of hecklers and whistlers but no help.  Finally between the three of us we figured out where to put the jack and how to block the trailer wheels.  At what seemed like five minutes before complete blackness (no street lights in Hancock County either), a nice man, his wife, a friend, and two very sweet dogs stopped to bail us out.  We never got their names, but they were from Macon and offered us frosty beverages in the one hundred degree heat in addition to taking over completely and changing the tire.  Thank you to the gang from Macon, and may God bless you richly.

Maybe this account isn’t so extraordinary but the fact that Good Samaritanism is still alive and well in this age of abductions, murders, and meanness is pretty extraordinary to me.  Maybe I’m naïve, but I like to think that people are basically good.  Lately I have been examining my own life in an effort to balance it, and I have discovered that we get from life just what we expect to get from it.  We also get back from life what we give.  Although I watched about twenty cars go by without even offering to help us, I knew that somehow we would get out of this predicament unscathed. It didn’t make me angry that nobody stopped because I knew that everything would be all right.  It was in the eleventh hour, but we were taken care of.  I fully expected either: a) we would figure it all out and get the tire changed without incident, or b) someone would stop and take care of it for us.  We went about trying to figure it out rather than doing the “Why me?” dance, and lo and behold the problem was solved.

Maybe it was a test because just a few short years ago I would have been ranting and raving about whose fault this was and how the whole weekend was ruined and how nobody ever wanted to help and blah, blah, blah.  As well as I know my name, I know that if the ranting and raving ensued, we would have been there all night with one thing or another going wrong and delaying our purpose.  I actually heard myself saying aloud, “What am I supposed to learn from this?”  As soon as I gave in to the situation and tried to learn from it, Good Samaritans were sent to solve the problem and let me know that perhaps I had already learned what I needed to learn from this and I had passed my test with flying colors.

The boat got launched at about 9:30pm, and the full moon shone orange as it danced on the glassy waters of Lake Sinclair.  As I drove the boat home recounting our adventure in my head, I absorbed the beauty of it all.  I am thankful for life’s lessons and for newfound awareness of what it takes to get along happily in our world.   If we all expect to see   goodness in each other and give what we like to get, more beauty will shine through for everyone. Treat your spirit well.

Occasionally I find it necessary to clean out drawers and files to make room for more stuff.  Last week I did this in my office and ran across my goals list for 2002.  I read them occasionally throughout the year just to keep myself focused but had not done so in a couple of months.  To my complete astonishment, I have accomplished over 90 percent of them and still have almost a month left in the year.  This is when I realized that it is time to set new ones.  I also remembered how important it is to have goals and thought I would share some thoughts on this subject in this week’s column.

Someone told me once that that which you love grows. Love one child and neglect the other and see what happens.  Love one plant and neglect the others and see what happens.  Watch TV and neglect your marriage and see what happens.   In other words progress is made in the direction of your focus and energy.  If focus and energy are put on how lousy things are and how nothing ever goes right, guess what?  Things become lousier and continue never to go right.  In fact, things that were going well might even go wrong since negative focus and energy prove that nothing can go well.  Setting goals is a way to draw energy toward designing the life of your dreams and making it become a reality.  The hardest part about this whole idea is that you must get into the habit of doing it and following up on your own ideas for what will and what won’t work for you.  I am convinced that making concrete goals and adjusting them occasionally works.  I am living proof.  Be a person who makes things happen rather than a person who wonders what happened.  Follow some of these simple suggestions for goal setting and watch the life of your dreams unfold before your eyes.

Before anyone can move forward in the goal setting process, the personal house must first be cleaned.  Only you can do this, and there are many techniques for doing it.  The way I was taught to do this was at my church in Savannah where we as a congregation would have a bowl burning ceremony on the last Sunday before New Year’s Day.  Everyone was given a sheet of paper on which we were to write unedited lists of things for which we had bad feelings like bad relationships we needed to mend, resentments, bad habits we wanted to release, and a whole host of things that needed to be cleaned up in our lives.  We then tore the paper into shreds and, one by one, went to a large copper bowl in which a small fire burned and threw the torn paper in it, symbolically releasing all of the things in our lives which stood in the way of our forward movement.  Of course there was still work to be done in these areas, but releasing them at least symbolically made room for positive thoughts and plans.  Amazingly this simple act makes you feel better about the items on your list almost immediately.

The next step is to write down any area of your life in which you need to make improvement like physical body, for example, or finances.  This part of the process can be very time consuming, but in order to make the whole project complete, every aspect of your life that contributes to your well-being must be considered.  Don’t leave out the social aspect of your life.  Do you want to develop more friendships?  Maybe you want to go on a long-deserved vacation.  Create your own ideal scene and let your imagination run wild.  Everything is possible, so don’t hold back.  You don’t have to reach all of these goals in one year.  As the saying goes, if you reach for the moon and land on a star, either way you’re on higher ground.

After the areas of your life that need attention are identified, look at each one of them individually and decide just what it is you want to accomplish.  Do you want to go to the gym 5 times a week?  Do you want to start a book discussion group?  Do you want to add to your personal net worth?  Is there a cause out there for which you can begin a grass-roots movement?  Do you want to be nicer to your brother?  Whatever the area is, write down specific things you want changed about it no matter what it is. If there are material things you want, write them down.   Be extravagant.  Be selfish.  It is OK in this exercise.

Once the areas are identified and specific things that you want are written down, make plans to get what you want.  If you want to add to your personal net worth, how are you going to do it?  Maybe getting more educated or better trained is what you need to do.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you will keep getting what you’re getting.  Nothing changes before you decide to change it.  If you want it badly enough, you will figure out what it takes to get it.  If a better relationship with a sibling is what you want, perhaps there is some old baggage that needs to be cleared before this can happen.  Will you need to write a letter or make a phone call to start the process?  Bury the proverbial hatchet and move on.  Do you want to be debt free?  Figure out what you owe everybody and make lump payments to the smallest ones to begin the digging out process.  You must start somewhere.  As Nike says, just do it.  Start somewhere.

There are a couple of different ways to chart your progress in the goal-setting game.  Some people prefer to put away the list of goals and look at it only after a year has passed.  Then they can be amazed at how much they have accomplished.  Others tend to look at their goals more often and revise them as they reach certain ones.  In our office, we as a staff make new goals weekly.  I adjust my personal goals quarterly.  There is a lot of information available on the power of goal setting and methods for doing it.  Look on the internet or go to the bookstore for more meat on the subject.

As we near the end of 2002, this is a great time to hold your own bowl burning ceremony.  It is never too late to change the path on which you are traveling, and our time on this earth really is very short in the scheme of things.  Why not make it count?  Figure out what it is you want, map the road to achieve it, and go for it.  Treat your spirit and your body well.

I cannot count the number of times people have asked me why it is that members of our office staff are always so happy.

“It’s just not normal for so many people in one place to love their jobs as much as the people who work here act like they do.”

“Y’all must threaten them within an inch of their jobs if they don’t smile and act happy.”

“How can all of you have that Life Is Good attitude?”

“I just want to see y’all have one bad day like the rest of us.”

These are a few of the comments some people who want us to commiserate with them have made to me.  I swear to them that no one is threatened but no one gets the idea that we set up the whole scene for our staff members by giving them exchange in abundance.  What is exchange in abundance?  I am glad you asked.

While he has been criticized mightily for some of his extreme concepts regarding people in general, we subscribe to the management philosophies of L. Ron Hubbard, who was a genius as far as his management technologies go.  One of his essays which, by the way, number well over a hundred thousand, addresses the idea of exchange and what people expect in return for what they give.  Webster defines “exchange” as follows: (1) to give or receive (something) for another thing; barter; trade (2) to interchange (similar things).  Mr. Hubbard says that exchange is not so cut-and-dried.  According to him, there are four distinct types of exchange.  There is criminal exchange, partial exchange, fair exchange, and exchange in abundance.

Type 1 exchange, or criminal exchange, is the type of exchange where one puts forth effort, work, energy, money, or even love without receiving anything in return.  This can also apply when people steal things from others.  They get something for nothing, or so it seems.  Of course there is no such thing as getting something for nothing.  The one on the receiving end of criminal exchange certainly will get what is coming to him or her in due time.  There is no good side to criminal exchange.  That is why it is so named.

Type 2 exchange is called partial exchange.  People put forth a little effort and expect full payment or tend to be incredulous when someone suggests that they should do more in order to receive what they expect.  An example of partial exchange is when a person goes to college, gets a degree and expects then to be paid more simply because he or she went to college.  A person who should really be paid more is one who has paid his or her dues and has proven that he or she is willing to earn what comes.  Partial exchange is also displayed when someone you contract with to provide services such as lawn care or cleaning does great work in the beginning to secure your trust and money then follows up with shoddy work.

Type 3 exchange is what we all know as fair exchange.  Fair exchange is simply that – fair.  You get what you pay for – nothing more and nothing less.  Fair exchange might be what you get when you purchase something from a retail outlet.  The price is ten dollars, you think it is worth ten dollars, and you pay ten dollars for it.  If your job is to go to work and make quota you go to work and make quota.  You do nothing more than what is expected of you and you accept whatever your employer is willing to pay for just that. You watch the clock and run out at the moment you are allowed to.  Nothing extra is ever offered.

Type 4 exchange is known as exchange in abundance.  It is what I personally strive for in every area of my life.  If I am eating in a restaurant and the acceptable tip for acceptable service is 15% or 18% and I receive outstanding service, I tip 20% or 25%. Insurance companies who are accustomed to mediocre documentation by doctors are pleasantly surprised to find that our notes are well over the minimum standard of care in our field.  When my bills are due to be paid, I strive to get them there before their due dates.    If members of our staff go out of town for business with us and we know that a clean bed and full tummy would suffice we could book them at Motel 6 and buy fast food meals. Everyone on our staff, however, is stellar and we assure them of top notch hotels and meals that are outstanding.  The Department of Labor statistics show that our staff salaries exceed others for similar work.  If they do more than the minimal expected amount we bonus them further.  We look for people who are willing to go that proverbial extra mile and do everything we can to make sure they are happy working with us. We would never ask any member of our staff to anything we are not willing or able to do ourselves.

If everyone would focus on exchange in abundance, or Type 4 exchange, where we all do more than anyone could ever expect in return, we would all receive more of the fruits of life in absolute abundance.  There is nothing more aggravating than having to ask more of those who are supposed to be of service to you.  Are you not more likely to tip the server who attends to your every need than the one you constantly have to seek to refill your tea glass?  How does it feel to call someone you are already paying to provide a service and you have to beg them to give you the service you are already supposed to be receiving?  Nothing is more frustrating.  L. Ron Hubbard was a proponent of training people who work with you to give much more than is expected of them.  This way no one has to police the workforce.  People whose ethics are in the right place and who enjoy the fruits of life in abundance truly understand Type 4 exchange.  Those who wonder why our staff members are so happy can rest assured that what they see is genuine.  We love people and we all strive to practice Type 4 exchange with all of the people we meet.  Practice Type 4 exchange in your own life and watch the abundance flow.  Instead of trying to get as much as you can from others with as little output from you as possible, turn the tables.  Do more and be more.  That is exchange with the universe in abundance.  Treat your body and your spirit well.

What a year 2004 has been!  Life has taught me a few new lessons in the past twelve months and I am anxiously awaiting the lessons in store for me in 2005.  Last year at about this time I wrote a column about the importance of goal setting in mapping out the way you want your life to go in the coming year and beyond.  Overwhelming response to that column made me promise to bring it to you again.  It is time once again to examine with objectivity the past twelve months and see how it went.  Did you reach the goals you set last year, or were they wishes that never came true?  Are you better off this year than last in some areas, or are things the same as they always were or worse?  If the latter is the case for you, most often you have only yourself to hold responsible.  There is no reason for anyone not to make life go right.  A few simple but not necessarily easy steps can make it happen for you.

A ritual for me at the beginning of the New Year is that of the burning bowl ceremony.  It is a ceremony in which I write down areas of my life that are not exactly as I would like them to be and burn the paper in a large fireproof bowl as a symbolic release of the negativity in my life.  You might consider the burning bowl ceremony as culling old junk that is no longer working and making room for a whole new outlook. It is a sort of spiritual house cleaning.  This is then followed by a very detailed goal-setting session in which every single aspect of my life personally and professionally is designed to build my ideal scene.  I write everything down and make specific positive affirming statements out of every goal.  For example, instead of saying, “I want to take more leisure time for myself” as a goal, my statement might look something like, “I take at least one long weekend out of town every other month.”  Instead of saying, “I want to exercise more,” I might say, “I work out in the gym for at least 45 minutes 5 times a week.”  The word “try” is eliminated from this process.  As Yoda said, there is no “try”.  You either do or you don’t do.  The statements are written as if they have already happened and I am reading facts in retrospect.  Several sheets of paper are filled with statements like this one then I fold it and place it in an envelope addressed to myself and put it in a file to read at the end of that  year.

Last year our entire office staff decided to join in the burning bowl ceremony and see what happened.  We sat together and I acted as narrator, reading suggested areas of life that might need clearing then we all burned the papers.  After that we spent about two hours writing affirming statements, placed them in envelopes addressed to ourselves and sealed them.  I returned the envelopes to the staff members in the second week of December for everyone to read and see how it went.  Out of the then seven staff members four of us had accomplished at least seventy five percent of what we wanted to do last year.  We had not spent the entire year obsessing about what we wanted to do, but by making positive affirming statements the year before we had made up our minds about how our year would go.  Everyone was astonished that the accomplishments were made without a regular reminder of what the goals originally were.  In fact, most of the staff had forgotten about the envelopes completely until they were returned for the year-end checkup.  Our plan for the burning bowl ceremony this year will put us into the first week of January before we put everything in writing but that is all right.  As long as you get to it early in the year (at least in the first week or two in January) the purpose is not lost.    

If you haven’t already done your own version of the burning bowl ceremony, it is not too late.  Take the time to clear out the things in your life that are holding you back then write out exactly what you want things to be like for your life this time next year.  You will be amazed at how much of your plan will come to fruition just by your planting positive seeds on fertile soil then leaving them to germinate as you support a positive environment in your life.  I have a written guide for this on file if you need help getting started.  Feel free to e-mail or call me and I will get the guidelines for the process to you.  I have done this for 7 years now, and the results are overwhelming.  I can say without reserve that my life is markedly better today than it was when I lived it without planning for it to go the way I wanted it to.  Make this the year of growth and change for you.  You can allow negativity in your environment to suck you in and give you excuses not to produce or you can be a beacon of hope for those around you as you flourish and prosper in the face of adversity.  The choice is yours.  Treat your body and your spirit well.  Happy New Year.

Many changes have been swirling around us in the world lately.  I have finally turned off my television because there is too much bad news out there and not nearly enough stories of hope and the promise of stronger rebound.  A couple of days ago I was talking to one of the members of our staff and explaining that adversity is not always the pit of doom that it seems at first glance.  I have fallen more than once from what I thought was the ultimate position in life for me and each time I have bounced back higher than I was before.  Sometimes people have to hit the ground hard before they can be prepared for the higher levels of blessings available to them when rebound occurs.  Although there has been complete devastation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, rest assured the people there will be given even more than they had before.  The city will be restored more beautifully and the levee system will be forged so that this type of disaster can be avoided in the future.  On a recent trip to New York this was proven.  Go there and visit the site of the World Trade Center, formerly known as Ground Zero.  The people of New York are changing the name in preparation for new, more magnificent buildings to represent hope and steadfast belief in the strength of the human spirit.  The people of New York are warm and welcoming of visitors and are happy to see us Southerners enjoying their beautiful city.  The tragic events of September 11, 2001 served as a huge wake-up call for New York, and there is a palpable difference in people there.  Of course nothing will be the same as before for people recovering from any type of disaster, but renewal brings with it the promise of something better. 

I spent a large part of my life resisting change.  I finally learned, however, that change is inevitable and the true test of emotional maturity is how one reacts to change.  In writing recently about managing stress I realized that one of the best ways to reduce life’s stresses is to be the cause of change rather than always being the buffer for the effects of it.  In learning in my own life to be the cause of change I have come to embrace it and to grow at a faster rate as the result of it.  If being in a comfort zone all the time is what we expect from life, certain stagnation will follow.  No growth can occur when everything remains the same.  Stagnation breeds complacency and complacency opens the doors for us to be blindsided.

I receive the newsletter from my church in Savannah each month, and a recent issue contains a parable that I am borrowing for my column this week.  The story is told of a young woman whose complaints to her mother were that she could not go on because her life was so full of problems.  She said she was tired of struggling.  Her mother took her to the kitchen, filled three pots with water, and put them on a high fire to boil.  In one she placed a carrot, in one and egg, and in one some ground coffee beans.  After the pots boiled for a short time the mother fished out the carrot and placed it on the drain board, then the egg, and finally she ladled out the coffee into a cup.  The mother then explained that each of these things had experienced the same stress (boiling water), yet each reacted differently.

The carrot was initially strong and firm.  However, after being subjected to the boiling water it became soft and weak.  The egg had been fragile.  Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior.  After sitting in the boiling water, its inside became hardened.  The ground coffee beans were unique.  After they were in the boiling water they actually changed the water rather than succumbing to the effects of the water and allowing it to change them.  Straining the ground coffee beans left water flavored with delicious coffee and the ground beans were still intact. 

”You can choose which you want to be like,” she told her daughter.  “Adversity knocks on your door.  How do you respond?  Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

In dealing with the various outside influences that disrupt the smooth flow of our lives, it truly is our choice how we respond to them.   Internal stress is often the result of feeling out of control of our circumstances.  If we focus on being in control and at cause rather than at effect, we can all flourish and prosper in the face of adversity.

Will you be the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity becomes weak and wilts?  Will you be the egg that starts with a fluid spirit and soft heart but with exposure to the heat becomes stiff and hardened?  Or will you be like the ground coffee beans?  The crushed beans actually change the hot water (the very circumstances that brought trauma).  It is only with the hot water that the beans release the true gifts of their aroma and flavor.

Like everyone else, I have made some difficult choices in my life.  It might have been easier for me to take a quiet job where I would blend in with everyone else, but something drives me to be a voice for change and to help others to make a significant difference in their daily experiences.  I could have been a general practitioner in the medical field and been accepted by everyone just because of my title, but I chose the “red headed stepchild” (my apologies to the lovely redheads out there) of the health care providers.  It is sometimes difficult being a chiropractor and having always to defend my position but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.  There is nothing better than changing the water for me.  Treat your spirit well.

The Burning Bowl ritual is a year-end release work which is very appropriate in preparation for a new beginning and for bringing new good into your life.  Rituals make things real for us, and the burning bowl sends a clear message to our subconscious minds (where the “hidden” patterns of thought operate to create or attract experiences into our lives) that we are truly serious about the new decisions we are setting out to make.

Rituals, in general, are important in our lives because they give us occasion to slow down for a few moments, and they provide the opportunity to reflect, to assess where we have been and where we are going.  Rituals are a way of honoring our journey.

Just as we must clear out closets and drawers to make space for new items which come into our lives as we receive Christmas presents, so too must we make internal space available for the spiritual gifts of the season.  Christ is born anew in you, and so today you get a chance to clear out everything unworthy of the expression of God that you are so as to create a place within you that there might be room in the Inn, so to speak.

The best place to begin the releasing process is with forgiveness.  If there is anyone you feel strong negative emotions toward, put their initials at the top of a blank sheet of paper.  Jot down anyone and everyone who is problematic in your life, anyone you feel resentment toward or anger about.  Remember that you release these emotions to free yourself of them because having resentments toward another is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.  The major relationships in your life might be OK just now, but scan your awareness for anyone, even a minor character in your life, who interferes with your peace of mind and sense of being a loving person.

Sometimes our irritations are not about the person as a whole, but just a particular situation where he or she “has let us down” by not being considerate, accountable, sensitive to your needs, or whatever it might be – perhaps by infringing on your boundaries or even not measuring up to your standards or the expectations you had of them.  It might be someone irritating at work or maybe just an annoying acquaintance that seems to be unavoidably present in your life.

Don’t feel totally free from the need to forgive, however, even though you can’t think of a particular individual.  If you don’t feel strong repelling emotions toward an individual, you might find that you do have such emotion toward a group of people – racial or religious bigotry, for example, or clerks or food service people who are not service oriented, government employees, the IRS, lawyers, salesmen, telemarketers, the medical establishment, politicians, in-laws, the conspicuously wealthy, people receiving public assistance, slow drivers, nosy neighbors, etc.

If you can’t relate to any of that, ask yourself what situations come up in your life which really irritate you.  Fill in the blank: “Don’t you hate it when X happens.”  For example, you have scheduled an appointment with someone and you are in that person’s office when the phone rings.  You have to sit there and listen to a one-sided conversation for five minutes.  In another example, you go to your doctor’s office for an appointment and still have to wait 1 and ½ hours before you get to see the doctor.  You make an appointment to get your car repaired, and it takes them 4 days instead of 1 to get the job done.  You are in the only open checkout line, buying something that you need badly and you are in a hurry, of course, then the cashier calls for a price check for the slow person in front of you.  What if the scanner scans the item for regular price when there was a sign that said it was on sale for much less?  In short, what are the typical situations which you feel resentment or upset toward?

Try to get clear in your mind precisely what it is that frustrates or irritates you about the person, group of people, or situations which push your buttons.  What is it that you feel when you interact with this person or group, or how do you feel when you encounter this situation?  Get clear in your mind and state clearly on paper the exact cause of the irritation.  That cause will be the feelings which stir your emotion. Jot down what your feelings are as clearly as you can.  If you are unsure of what you feel, just note the situation for the time being.

Be aware that behind feelings is a belief that is a part of an old pattern of thinking.  Typical patterns, which you can think of as scripts, revolve around issues of trust.  For example, the fear of being taken advantage of, the fear of being discounted, the idea that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, the fear of abandonment – behind every experience is one of these old beliefs in operation, even though at the conscious level your spiritually-aware rational mind recognizes the pattern of belief as untrue.  At the conscious level you know that, but someplace inside and old part of you has not received the message yet.

Now focus on your heart and ask what that person or group has come into your life to show you or to teach you.  Know that behind appearances is a message with a true blessing – one, when understood, enables you to perceive a false belief so that you can release it.  This feeling is there to develop a soul quality in some way.  Whatever negative emotion you feel signals a false belief, and that belief which is undoubtedly beneath the surface of your awareness is blocking the full experience of abundance in your life.  Remember that every experience in life is an experience which resonates with meaning – the Universe is always trying to communicate with us, so just be willing to release this pattern of thought and experience today.  Write it down.  God within you will provide the insights you need as you decide it is time for you to release this excess baggage.  As you see your forgiveness paper go up in smoke in a little while, know that it is being dissolved through this prayer ritual and everything that needs to take place for your new freedom unfolds easily, in divine order.

Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of Unity Church, said that we should each spend a half an hour daily forgiving everything and everyone who came into our life that day who was capable of evoking negative emotions.  To forgive is to give truth for error.  The truth is that everything happens in our lives so as to bless us.  Once we integrate this paradigm shift into our consciousness we see that we “own” the experience by right of consciousness – it is our experience, and so it is our blessing.  Make sure you forgive yourself for unworthy thoughts and behaviors as you do your forgiveness work, otherwise the residue of guilt will draw punishment.  Just know that, like everyone else, you have done the best you can and that now, as God in you works to create more awareness and you become more practiced in the exercise of your spiritual understanding, you are destined to do better.

The rest of this exercise in unburdening ourselves tends to lighten because we tend not to feel so unworthy about other areas where release is in order.  So let’s have fun doing our house-cleaning as Spirit guides us in sweeping over our souls.  Please don’t use this as an opportunity to beat yourself up for your perceived defects – that is a major old pattern to release.  During the time we focus on what we no longer need, remember that defects are merely calls for adjustment – we have all that we need to perfect every defect.  That’s why defects draw our attention.

Draw a line under your forgiveness statements and begin writing your list of those things in your life which you are now willing to release.  I’m going to talk all the way through this exercise while you are writing to help you think of things which you might otherwise leave out.  Just keep writing, and don’t worry too much about the form.  After all, this will all soon be burned.

Begin now by writing down whatever tops your list of most burdensome or worrisome things in your life today.  Write them out and let these be at the top of your list.  Remember it is the worry you are releasing or the burden.  The thing itself is neutral until you put a judgment on it.  After you have the ones that come to your mind most quickly, add any others that fit your experience from the suggestions I now make:

Enemy thinking – viewing other people as threats or obstacles, the idea of competition (there really isn’t any), aggressive thinking, arguing in your mind, responding in your thoughts to hurts or imagined hurts, swelling on being right at the cost of being happy, making the other person wrong so that you can make yourself right.  Making God wrong so that your position is self-righteous.

Limitation thinking: using the “facts” to limit the possibilities in your life such as, “the economy is slow, there are no jobs out there”, “I am too old to get a job”, “there is no need for what I do”, “nobody values what I do enough for me to earn a comfortable income”, “I’ve been out of school too long to be a successful student”, “there’s no future in doing (fill in the blank)”, etc.  “This is cold season.  Every time I sneeze I realize that I am getting a cold.  If my head gets stuffy, I will have cold symptoms for X number of days.”

You might also want to release habits such as smoking, excessive intake of coffee or colas, drinking too much alcohol or doing anything excessively (and obsessively).  Whatever repeating patterns there are in your life which interfere with your joy, that get between  you and fulfillment in your relationships, or which sabotage whatever you wish to achieve or be…what are the patterns that lead to your showing up in the world in a way not worthy of who you really are and who you are becoming?  Perhaps you want to release commitment avoidance so that you can be a person who says “yes” to life.  What patterns can you track which create the most negative thinking?  Release these patterns, these addictions.  You might also find that in some cases you avoid commitment, and in others you over-commit.  Release the imbalance. 

Look at the words you use.  Some of them could be replaced easily and the release would create a tremendous difference in your perceptions.  Eliminate the word “try” as in “I will try to do X”.  There is no try.  You either do something or you don’t.  “Trying” prevents us from ever achieving our goals.  “Try” is a word that signals commitment avoidance, lack of confidence, and it undermines our success.  Another word to release is “need” as in, “I need to do X”.  Use “choose” instead, because “choose” takes the activity from the realm of mandatory into the realm of choice, where it belongs.  “Want” is another word to release.  Remember that Conversations With God makes it clear that we cannot have what we “want”!  As long as we want, we acknowledge lack.  So instead of saying “I want X”, say “I choose X”.

Eliminate all but the most literal descriptions of how you feel or what you are experiencing – don’t use clichéd metaphors to describe your feelings.  There are probably thousands of phrases which send a negative message to our subconscious minds:  “This is just like pulling teeth”, “I don’t believe it.”

Eliminate fear statements:  I can’t do X, because I am afraid that if I do X will happen.  Certainly acknowledge your fear, but then take time to recognize it as a fear, a worry thought, and not a necessary outcome.  Affirm the outcome that you choose rather than the outcome that you fear.  Eliminate words like “unrealistic,” “ought,” “should,”; eliminate scripts like the one that says my duty is to please, or try hard; I must be strong; I must be perfect.  Eliminate life scripts like “Life is hard,” “I have to do it myself,” “This is too good to be true,” etc.  Release the “Until” script:  When X happens, then I will be happy, or safe, or free (when my kids are grown, when I retire, when I have X number of dollars in the bank, when I get the promotion, when I finish school, when I meet my soul mate, then . . .) Claim whatever it is that you envision now.  You don’t have to wait unless you think you have to wait, to experience joy, love, peace, abundance, fulfillment, etc.  Eliminate “once and for all” thinking – in truth, nothing happens once and for all, and we simply discourage ourselves by thinking that it does.  Let go of the need to control, to change others, to have definitive answers, release the fear of change, the sense of not being enough – not good enough, attractive enough, thin enough, smart enough, strong enough, rich enough, healthy enough, educated enough, loveable enough, talented enough; I’m not creative, I’m not organized.

Eliminate this morning the filter that prevents you from seeing the peace that is already there (or order, harmony, blessings joy, beauty, fulfillment).  Eliminate the idea that joy comes from the outside rather than the inside.  Eliminate the tendency to look exclusively outside yourself for healing, joy, fulfillment, love, etc.

Eliminate the tendency to measure your worth b y what you do; release the distrust you have for anything that can’t be proven or seen; let go of the need to be more, to do more than you can do; set free the compulsion to commit without thinking; and, conversely, to say no automatically; say goodbye to the need to believe that you are responsible for bringing happiness or safety to others – over care; false gods (giving something or some person or condition more power than you give to God).  Release self-righteousness, guilt and self-condemnation.

Release what Caroline Myss calls wound-ology – the sense of being permanently warped by your past; the sense of being a victim in life.  Release willfulness, discontent, resistance, depression, being against rather than for, the need to know before you can move forward; let go of being a truth seeker in favor of being a truth finder; release the idea that you are stuck.

Give up the idea that your life (or marriage, or church, or your job, or body, your income, etc.) is already as good as it can be.  Release the current limits of your imagination.  Release the idea that you can’t be who you are, that it is not safe to be fully yourself.  Release the idea that what you don’t release today will never be released, release the idea that it will soon be too late to do what you have to do, that you are unlucky, that you are destined to failure, that you inherit limitations in health or appearance or opportunities.

Now take just a moment once again to center yourself within, and to confirm your conscious choice to release the patterns or judgments written on your list.  Bless them for what they have taught you about yourself, for they have helped you clarify your values and priorities – and have helped you to better know who you really are and what you are becoming.  And so, with a grateful heart, let us all now release that which no longer serves us well, and that which has outgrown its usefulness.