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The Support4Change Newsletter |
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June 13 , 2008 |
Arlene Harder, Editor |
Volume 2, Number 3 |
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 From the Editor
Planning for the Wonderful Web Giveaway 2008
Last year I joined Wonderful Web Women, a Niche Partners project dedicated to providing women with the inspiration and skills to be successful on the Internet. Their motto is, "The most generous and honest marketing advice for women on the Internet." I find that to be true, for many other marketing programs claim you can make a six-figure income working two hours a day.
Wonderful Web Women is about to launch their first yearly "giveaway" that will be available only from June 19 to July 10.
What is a giveaway?
Imagine a huge outdoor market with hundred of booths where merchants give you their product for FREE! If you like it, they hope you will later come to their store and buy something.
When will I remind you about the giveaway?
On June 19 (U.S. time), the opening of the online market, I will send you an email giving you details of how you can participate.
What am I giving away?
My gift will be an e-book titled "Open the Right Side of Your Brain." See first green box below.
Arlene Harder, Founder and Editor of Support4Change
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Expanding Our Minds
Getting Our Brains Ready for the Next Age
Daniel H. Pink, chief speechwriter for Al Gore from 1995 to 1997, aide to Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, and author of several books, including Free Agent Nation, wrote an article for WIRED magazine in 2005 titled Revenge of the Right Brain in which he said:
The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.
. . .To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
While he notes that "logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable," he emphasizes that what we need now is "closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent."
My free gift for the giveaway (see intro) encourages a greater balance between the left- and right-hemispheres with an e-book titled Open Up the Right Side of Your Brain. It is based on Images and Symbols: The Glue of Habit, The Lubricant of Change, which is a manual that will be published this fall. With more than fifty imagery exercises and other techniques that can be used by therapists, coaches, and their clients, the manual has four parts:
 Part One: Opening Up the Right Side of the Brain explains why imagery techniques increase creativity and expand the potential for intuition.
Part Two: Inner Resources for Successful Living and Satisfying Relationships gives you twenty exercises to help you get your ego out of your way, release the past and face the future, and create loving relationships.
Part Three: Healing Imagery to Cope With Stress and Illness has twenty exercises to help you achieve and maintain vitality and deal with the aches, pains and illness that are part of every life.
Part Four: Using Personal Symbols Throughout Your Day offers many ideas for how symbols can reinforce your goals, remind you of the qualities you want to express, and support your purpose in life.
You can read Part One at no charge on Support4Change. It is the new, revised imagery section and I hope you will check it out.
On June 19, I will send you information about how you can get "Open Up the Right Side of Your Brain," which will only be available for the Giveaway (see intro).
Later in the summer, I will tell you more about the complete manual, which will be available in both e-book and print format.
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Book Reviews and Excerpts: For Women of Faith and Spirit
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Busy Women Can be Mindful Too
  It is no news that today busy women never seem to have time to sit down and take a breath, let alone meditate, even though they've been told that's good for them. That is why I liked this book. It demonstrates that one doesn't have to carve out a time for meditation, but one does need to find a way to mindfully pay attention to what is happening during any day, busy or otherwise.
Sue Patton Thoele suggests that people like her, who are trying to live mindfully, might make better progress if they "started a new 12-step program called SAA: Stimulation Addicts Anonymous." If it feels as though you could use such a support group, you will find this book a gem.
One of her suggestions strikes me as an excellent way to bring greater peace into busy lives. Simply act lovingly! Whenever you are called upon to respond to whatever has happened, ask yourself, "What would love do?" It's not a complete answer to what ales us, but it's a start.
If you want to get an idea for the style of the author, read a new article on Support4Change called Guilt-Free Mindfulness and Busy Women Can Be Mindful Too, which is an excerpt from The Mindful Woman: Gentle Practices for Restoring Calm, Finding Balance, and Opening Your Heart.
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A Woman's Call to the Ministry
  Initially, I reviewed this book by Sarah Sentilles by saying that, as the daughter of a minister, I've had experience in observing congregations and what they expect of their pastors. It's not always a pretty sight. There are always expectations that the leader of their congregation will behave in a certain way. If that person is a woman, there are added expectations that are not always expressed openly, but which can make a great deal of difference in how well a pastor can tend to her flock, and even whether a woman pastor is truly welcome.
Then I suggested that this might be a good book for someone who wants to know more about the dynamics of women preachers.
Then I sent the copy I had for review to a friend who is also a woman minister. She was disappointed that the author, Sarah Sentilles, didn't present other opinions and wished she had been more balanced in her reporting of women in the ministry. Her experience was not that of my friend. So I'm not sure what to say about A Woman's Call to the Ministry. Read the first chapter, called A Church of Her Own: What Happens When a Woman Takes the Pulpit by you can get a flavor of what she has to say about the topic. Read the book and judge for yourself.
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Ideas from the Blog
From an E-mail Challenge to Stopping Perfectionism
 How Willing Are You to Accept a Challenge? From Taxes to E-mails
When I first created the Tax-and-Spend Game, I thought I had a winner of a topic. However, either I made the game too complex or too long or too something, but there wasn't enthusiastic response beyond the first day. So I then created a much pared-down version called the Taxpayers Challenge. This didn't raise much dust either.
Then I created an E-mail Challenge for all of us who are tempted to forward an e-mail without checking the facts. Read the blog and see what I mean. If only a small percentage of you take the e-mail challenge, our in-baskets will be a lot lighter.
Accepting Our Parents' Blessings When Our Parents Are Less Than Perfect
Although not strictly a Q-and-A Club article, this blog entry asks some questions for many adults who have trouble wishing their parents a genuine Happy Mothers' Day or Happy Fathers' Day. If your childhood hadn't been as nurturing as you would have liked, there are some questions you might ask yourself to help you recognize the gifts and skills they gave you.
Stopping Perfectionism Takes Time
In this latest piece (okay, it was a month ago, I've been busy — see intro), I give you another of my lessons of recovering perfectionist. Here I share an example of how easy it is to get caught in the trap of wanting something to be far more perfect than anyone else really cares. Maybe it will help save you a lot of trouble.
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New Articles:
From Working Mothers to Guilt-free Mindfulness
 How Some Working Mothers Are Able to Balance Job and Children
One of the toughest jobs in the world is that of balancing the raising of children and holding down a job. This article, by a therapist who is also a mother, offers observations of mothers who are able to handle multiple roles successfully. Are you one of them? Or would you like to be?
Read Working Mothers: Having Multiple Roles to see how you might be more capable of the daily balancing act than you think you are.
Fear of Abandonment is Universal
Have you ever known someone who never seemed to get enough from you, who made you feel guilty that you weren’t giving enough to them, or weren't a good enough friend? Or how about someone who seemed to often test you by pushing away your love?
Barry and Joyce Vissell, a husband an wife marriage counseling team, remind us that if we look deeper, we will see their fear of abandonment. And they point out that while sometimes the fear of abandonment is more obvious in one person in a relationship than another, if you look deeper you will see the universality of this fear. Once recognized, this can be a shared healing opportunity for a couple, rather viewing it as a his-or-her problem.
Read Hidden Fear of Abandonment to understand how knowing about the probem can make solving it much easier.
Experiencing Mindfulness Without Feeling Guilty You Aren't Doing More to be Spiritual
Mindfulness is being aware of yourself, others, and your surroundings in the moment. In other words, it is purposefully paying attention in a particular way in the present moment, and doing it nonjudgmentally. Sue Patton Thoele, author of The Mindful Woman: Gentle Practices for Restoring Calm, Finding Balance, and Opening Your Heart reviewed above, likes to think of mindfulness as the art of inhabiting your own life with kindness and acceptance. This article demonstrates how you can choose to live as many do with calmness, acceptance, and joy, without taking mindfulness on as a self-improvement project that must be done.
Guilt-free Mindfulness is a wonderful article for anyone who has been beating up herself (or himself) for not taking time to meditate.
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 Discovering a Different Perspective:
Taking a Walk in a Coastal Town
If you could step into this picture of Catalina Island at night and walk down the street, what might you say to someone with whom you have a disagreement? Or even better, what might you say to someone you love about something you don't have the courage to say?
See Stepping Into A Picture to learn how you can use this technique to approach problems and challenges in a whole new light.
Click on this lovely painting, Catalina Nocturn, by Lynne Fearman to see an enlarged view. Go to her gallery of pictures to discover what a talented painter she is. On the Segil Art Gallery website you will find other artists of fine paintings you may want to hang on your wall so you can imagine using their magic to change your life.
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© Copyright 2002, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT |
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