Tag Archives: Second Adulthood
Make Your Voice Heard
Make Your Voice Heard: Guidelines for Effective Advocacy
Advocates for individual groups often meet unfair policies and practices that hinder rather than help their clients. Changes to such policies in the form of rules, regulations and laws, often require the support and commitment of legislators, political leaders and other policy makers. The following are some guidelines on how to be an effective advocate and communicate your message. Remember that efficiency requires education, both your own and your audiences, as well as reliability, accessibility and persistency.
Identify Your Goal
- What do you want to accomplish? For example, decide if you want to introduce legislation to change a discriminatory employment practice like lifting a particular occupational bar or licensing restriction for people with criminal records.
Develop Your Strategy for Accomplishing Your Goal
- Who has the power to effect your desired change? What is the process for the policy or regulatory change that you want to make and who has the power to make it. It could be legislators on the local, state or federal level, or perhaps, appointed commissioners on the state level who are responsible for promulgating the particular rule or regulation.
- Who are your partners? Identify organizations and individuals that may share your goal and who can help you communicate your message. These may be local or statewide residents, coalitions of individuals and/or groups, as well as community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and other advocacy groups.
- What is the timeline for your goal? Be aware of legislative timelines, such as when the legislature is in session. Be patient, understand that achieving your goal could take a considerable amount of time.
Create Documents that Will Help You Communicate Your Message
- Are your documents clear and concise? Politicians, policy makers and other officials, and their staff, are busy and often do not have time to read a lot of information. However, supplying them with written information that includes data and research on your issue may support your position. Therefore, make sure that the written materials that you provide them with are specific to the issue and the area that they represent.
Helpful Tips for Conducting a Meeting
- When introducing yourself make sure that you identify yourself as a constituent or as someone who represents constituents.
- State the point of the meeting at the beginning.
- Be brief and to the point.
- Listen as well as talk during the meeting, as well as take notes on questions or concerns that come up during the meeting.
- Be honest. Acknowledge the positive and negative aspects of the issue.
- Share written materials during the meeting, if it is appropriate, and leave them behind for the leader of the staff that you are meeting with to read.
Cultivate a Champion
- Who can represent and advocate for your issue publicly and champion your goal? It can be incredibly beneficial to have a public figure, such as a famous person or politically powerful person, to help you with your advocacy and to deliver the message you need to achieve your goal. Regardless of who it is they need to be persistent, charismatic and effective.
Most importantly, don’t burn any bridges, whether you achieve your goal or not. You never know who you may need to work with again. Be a gracious winner or loser.
What To Do When Your Life Falls Apart
Sometimes when things fall apart, they are actually falling into place (Photo credit: symphony of love)
I found this OH SO appropriate post by a contributor to The Daily Love…..a blog curated by Mastin Kipp. The author of this masterpiece is Kute Blackson, speaker and life coach and one of my newfound sources of inspiration! I hope you all find it as moving and touching as I do and that it helps…..even just a little bit…..through those tough days we all have.
When your life as you know it falls apart, it is a great blessing.
Give thanks.
In that moment realize that your life is actually falling together even though you might not see it.
If your life falls apart then you are ready for something bigger.
It falls apart because it was too small for who you are becoming.
It falls apart because there is something more that is seeking to express itself in and as your life.
It falls apart because what you were living is no longer in alignment with who you are.
It falls apart because life is letting you know that perhaps you have gotten too comfortable where you’re at and need to grow to the next level.
Life is change. Life is growth. Life is a cycle of Creation-Life-Destruction. Every birth is another form of death. And every death is another form of birth.
Often when things fall apart we become afraid, we panic, we resist and fight life. We hold on to what we know, even though it no longer works or serves us.
This only keeps you stuck.
Holding on to the old will not bring what is new. Resisting what is new will not transform or change what is old.
When life falls apart you can resist or fight, which ultimately only leads to suffering and struggle.
So, what do you do when your life as you know it falls apart?
Simply, LET GO!
Perhaps it’s a relationship, job, or a house.
Let Go! And Trust.
Trust that what no longer remains in your life is no longer meant to be there. And that the Uni-verse is just making room for what is more in alignment with your highest good.
When things fall apart, the Uni-verse is trying to make space for something greater.
When life as you know it stops working and falls apart this is the moment to let go of your ego, as it can only take you so far. This is the moment to let go of your ego’s attachment of how your life should be, and surrender.
In every crisis is an opportunity to let go of what is inauthentic and live with more integrity.
In every breakdown is the blessing of a breakthrough.
In every challenging situation is the gift to help your soul evolve and become who you were really meant to be.
So if your life as you know it is falling apart give thanks and…
LET GO!
Love.Now
Kute
What The Bleep Is Neurofeedback You Ask?
Brain, computer art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have been wanting…..okay attempting…..to write a post about the internship I was doing in neurotherapy. Specifically, a post that would explain what neurofeedback is and its use in treating brain disorders of any kind. The post would be easy to understand, comprehensive without being overwhelming, with a bit of humor thrown in for good measure. I was on draft number four of writing said post when a peer emailed me the article below and I thought, “Wow,this guy just took the words right out of my mouth…..and did it better than what I was imagining!” So, of course I have to share it with all of you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and that it spurs you on to learn more and share with others.
Neurofeedback: Alternative Health Care for Robots?
Many people interested in alternative health react to the word “EEG biofeedback” with hesitation. It doesn’t sound very organic. It doesn’t even sound holistic. Talk about bodywork, herbal medicine, homeopathy, spiritual healing or any of the other approaches usually associated with alternative health care, and most people have some sort of feeling level response. That response is probably positive. These approaches seem nurturing and familiar, low tech, not part of the electronic age. They are from a calmer age, an age when life was slower and more natural.
Biofeedback and, more recently neurofeedback (brain wave biofeedback), seem to be high-tech, electronic. Sort of what a robot or an android might use for a health problem, not something that could help a person trying to simplify his or her life. Being attached by wires to an electronic gadget (a computer no less!), and learning to control brainwaves sounds like a science fiction story, not a method of natural healing.
Neurofeedback is actually one way that technology is truly holistic. Many people all over the world devote a great deal of time and energy learning to regulate their brainwaves. They just call it different things. Some call it trance work, some call it meditation, some call it psychic healing. Zen monks, yogis, Sufis, Qigong masters and others spend 20 years or more learning to reach certain states of consciousness. Some do it because these are thought to be healing states. Some are trying to reach a state of freedom, a release from pain or suffering. Some are just trying to find a better, more calm and centered way to live.
Neurotherapy practitioners throughout the world are using neurofeedback with adults and children who have learning problems, anxiety, headaches, depression, sleep problems, ADHD and more. Let’s use the common example of the ADHD child. The typical western medical treatment for these children is medication. Ritalin, antidepressants, and anti-seizure medications are routinely given to children as young as 3 or 4 years old with the prospect of continuing these medications into adulthood. Neurofeedback is an effective alternative that teaches these children to alter brain wave states in a way that usually results in a significant change in their conditions. Of course medication may be necessary for some individuals but many prefer to try this simple, non-invasive approach first and use medication as a last resort. Others have tried medication, have not found relief and are interested in trying something else.
So how does it work? The effects of Neurofeedback are similar to those of medications. Only it is not habit forming, has no “side effects”, does not cause long term problems, and doesn’t mask or cover up underlying causal factors. It provides a lasting learning experience that the children can take with them throughout their lives. Neurofeedback is a learning process just like meditation. The child learns to sit still and pay attention, first to an external indication of how his or her brain is functioning, and then to an internal awareness that becomes as easy as breathing.
Much of what is taught in meditative traditions are techniques for eliciting the kind of balanced awareness that the children learn to reach through neurofeedback. Sensors are attached to the head and ears, and brain wave information is given to the child through a simple “ pacman” or similar computer game. The only difference is, the child plays the computer game with his or her brainwaves. When brainwaves are in a balanced pattern and the child is relaxed, the pac-man turns bright yellow, moves along eating dots and beeping. When the child “drifts” away from this desirable state, the pac-man stops, turns dark and no beeps are generated. The child learns to reach this balanced state by getting immediate “feedback” or information about what works and what doesn’t. Self-regulation skills that take a meditator years of trial and error to develop, the child learns more easily because of accurate feedback.
The neurofeedback process is using something most kids and many adults are already attracted to, namely computers and computer games. In this case though, the technology helps them learn the ancient arts of self-regulation. The body/mind is an integrated whole that has lots of self-regulating mechanisms. These mechanisms get out of whack in our modern world as they did in the old days, only now more severely. That is what natural healing methods try to correct. Neurofeedback is one of those methods that try to enlist the person’s own self-regulatory mechanisms to create a state of optimal health. It works on a very subtle level and leads to remarkable changes.
The process is similar whether the individual is trying to become more alert and energetic or whether s/he is learning to reach a calm, centered, meditative state. The feedback is specific to the brainwave frequency patterns typical of the desired state. The feedback is instant and accurate and makes the learning process significantly more effective.
So why haven’t I heard of it, you say? Well, it doesn’t fit very well into the natural or alternative-healing arena, although it is often mentioned in this context by the mainstream media. It is not well accepted by the mainstream medical community either because it is hard to prove what is happening and how it is helping in a way that western medical personnel are willing to accept, (sort of like acupuncture and homeopathy!) It is also cutting edge technology, and that turns some people off who would normally be natural candidates for this approach.
Neurofeedback or neurotherapy is being used successfully for treating addictions, chronic pain, PMS, bulimia, anxiety disorders and a whole host of other conditions. This also doesn’t sit well with the regular medical community because it sounds like a “cure all,” and that is an instant red flag in medicine. “The more things you claim to help with one technique, the more likely it is to be quackery”, said one prominent psychologist about neurotherapy.
So what can you do to find out about neurotherapy? You can read the book A Symphony in the Brain by Jim Robbins. You can also log on to the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) web site (www.aapb.org) and the Society for Neuronal Regulation web site (www.snr-jnt.org) to find information and a practitioner in your area. The field is growing fast and more people are requesting neurotherapy from their doctors, their schools and from their HMO’s. If enough people want neurotherapy for themselves and their children, it will become a part of mainstream medicine as a viable alternative to medication management of illness.
WELL CALL ME CRAZY 