Power For Positive Living

 Greg Moore completed a personal retreat and is interviewed.   He discusses how he used his personal retreat to take responsibility for clarifying where he has been in life, who he is today and possible choices to be faced as he prepares for his future.

 His focus for writing his life story has been to reclaim his individuality, understand the power of labels and take the risks to experiment with various degrees of thought, feelings, and behaviors for possible change. His goals have been to reclaim his individuality, understand the power of labels and take the risks to experiment with various degrees of thought, feelings, and behaviors for possible change. 

This Power for Positive Living podcast series began in 1990 on Galveston-Houston radio station, KGBC-AM. The goal was to convey educational information about the new and unique introspective personal retreat programs offered at Friend Ship House.

Rev. Bill Clark was the first guest interviewed. He describes how he spent two days, totaling 12 hours, with his own personal retreat. He shares his individualized experience of what he learned from the process and how others might decide if a personal retreat would meet their needs.

This is a brief episode of a TV interview with your host about the value of personal retreating.

35+ years of developing this positive living website by sharing myself with others has given me many specific personal guidelines that I have found to be most helpful with my life choices. 

My personal choice guidelines for relationships with self and others allows me to better understand the individual positive-living journey that I have chosen over the years.   

Wellness psychology encourages the processes of introspection and experimentation for each individual to develop, understand, implement and share personal guidelines that support positive living.  

The United State Surgeon General has issued a health warning about an "epidemic" of loneliness among seniors who have lived many years.   

We each face the reality that our family and friendship circle membership tends to diminish as you and I age. We all face personal individual decisions on how we wish to manage this isolation situation for today and tomorrow for as long as you and I continue to live this gift of life. 

Being able to emotionally connect with other humans where we can openly and honestly share our hopes, fears, and concerns is one way to manage loneliness and find individual positive answers to this important question. 

Aging allows us to strengthen the value of our time currency.  We learn that the gift of time is probably the most precious gift we have to give/receive with others each day that you and I live.Reaching the 'front of the line' also gives us the opportunity to realize the reality that we are going to die.  The varied physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the death process while we live one day at a time are no longer an abstract to handle sometime in the future.

With this awareness of reality, what specific choices do you and I want to make for spending whatever time currency is left in our account?   What is really important to us at this stage of living?   Can we finally let go of the 'small stuff'?  

Wellness psychology teaches that we humans want to be heard and accurately understood by others.  Whether we wish to be known for the "real" us or some modified version is always an individual's personal choice.  Just because you and I want to know someone does not guarantee that this individual wants to be known by others or by me specifically.

They may also want to be known generally but not in specific life areas.  After listening to many life stories over the years, one can learn there are many foundations on which a person may decide to view personal information as worthy to be a "secret".  Listening to personal secrets can be a responsibility for us to communicate effectively:  Do I want to accept this responsibility of learning and maintaining your secrets?

 I recall a song from my youth that encouraged me to maximize giving to persons who I loved while we were both still alive and able to give/receive personal gifts. 

 The song's theme was: "Give me my flowers while I am living so I can enjoy them while I can. Please do not wait until I am in my casket to slip some lilies into my hands." 

 We have the choice to give loved ones gifts that they value more than flowers at their future funeral.  Can we make the transition to give the gift of our "flowers" while a loved one is alive to enjoy them?  Have we given the gift of our presence by visiting for lunch or sharing a trip?  Have we made a gift of our time with a phone call?

The time to choose the spending of our time currency for 'flower gifts' by how and what we give to loved ones is today!   Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow may or may not arrive for any one of us.  

Life for many seems to be seeking a healthy balance in handling the various stresses and pains of living life.   What worked yesterday for us may/may not work today or tomorrow.

Pain is pain.   How we experience it and the individualistic ways we manage it in our lives are some of our most important life choices.

It may be easier for our family/friends to offer support for a disease or visual physical condition like a broken limb than for a more invisible situation like depression/anxiety/loneliness.Learning how to be supportive of invisible pain situations can be one of the best ways to love our family/friends.

One of the strongest traits that we humans have when born is having the 'will to live' and survive in our world. 
 This drive to survive gives us motivation to confront and overcome obstacles that arise during our lifetime.  While almost totally dependent on support from others at birth, each of us during adulthood develops our own personal ways of implementing this trait. 
 While having this will to live and survive seems to be present in all of us, there is often an erroneous assumption that the strength of this trait is present equally in all people. Observation indicates that this is not true.  We may also erroneously assume that whatever strength is present at one point in our life will remain the same level throughout our Life Journey.   Change is a constant of life and the individual choices we make at any one point have a significant impact on the strength and direction of our will to live life.