Big Tech and government are in an unhealthy alliance to eavesdrop on you, control you and deprive you of your privacy, liberty and humanity.  It's time to immunize yourself from them.

Self-esteem depends on mastering one core concept. It's a leap of faith, really. And you can take that leap right now. Just hit "Play." 

Everyone always advises taking the “long view” of life—that today’s troubles aren’t forever.  There’s truth to that.  But for people under stress, it can be unwieldy to think too far in the future.  A focus on today—in fact, on this very minute—can unlock reservoirs of personal power.  Can you breathe for a minute?  Can you take a walk for 15 minutes?  Can you work for an hour?  Can you commit to the journey through one day, come what may?  Of course you can.  

What do you really GET for speaking your mind, even if so many people in America want to shut you up?  You get stronger.  You get a spine of steel.  Everything that works against resistance works better, in the end.  So, don’t be muzzled or (as Anthony Fauci did with dogs) have your vocal cords cut.  Say what you think.  Mean what you say.  And don’t back down for anyone.

Viktor Frankl, the great psychiatrist imprisoned for years in a Nazi death camp, gave us the tools to unlock the God-given, indestructible reservoir of power inside each and every one of us.  It can be tapped in the face of any amount of pain—if you know it’s there and resolve to use it.

Sometimes it really helps to remember that the creative and economic stresses that those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to pay our bills can still feel, along with the sense of impending doom that  visits us despite relative peace and prosperity, are created by us.  We conjure them up.  It’s almost as though we suspend disbelief and generate a false narrative of our lives that makes it seem life threatening if we don’t climb the next rung on the ladder of success or meet rather artificial deadlines or milestones.

Sometimes, we should just sit back, realize there are no holes in our jeans (unless we bought them that way or like them that way), remember that we won’t be at a loss to buy our next $4 cup of coffee and let our lives and hearts and minds breathe a bit.

While the ego climber might think that the ascent to wealth or fame or admiration or a remarkable physique is indistinguishable from the growth and achievement that comes from expressing one’s true self and true goals, that isn’t so. There’s something infinitely exhausting about ego climbing.  That’s because the peak of the mountain keeps receding as you approach it.  You can’t ever get that feeling of having reached the pinnacle because that kind of celebration and sense of SELF-satisfaction are reserved for those who climb to meet themSELVES at the top of the mountain, not to escape themselves.

There may be no pain greater than the pain of not being yourself—the person you were meant to be from all time.  The journey from pain to power is the journey that taps into your core, moves you onto the path to self-actualization and allows you to manifest your God-given gifts.  

It is in our darkest hours—including those being experienced, no doubt, by Governor Andrew Cuomo—that we are called upon to turn our pain into power by striving for insight into oneSELF, by recommitting to even higher levels of service to SELF and others and by SEEING how our stories can become comeback stories.  The alchemy of the soul that fuels Pain-2-Power now has to be summoned by Governor Cuomo.  And that’s why I chose Governor Andrew Cuomo as this week’s Pain-2-Power Person of the Week.

Depersonalization is a psychological pathology in which people feel as though they are not truly at one with themselves.  They feel dislodged from the drivers’ seats of their lives, as if watching themselves in a movie.  America, as a nation, seems to be displaying similar pathology—wrenched from patriotism, with vanishing borders, with calls to remove all police, with self-hatred for our national identity.  These are circumstances in which what binds us together can dissolve, leading to extreme infighting between races, genders and those of different sexual orientations.  It’s time to use the pain of these times to find our power, again, as a people.