Monday, July 15, 2013

Working With Limitations


Limitations.  We all have them, but sometimes illness adds new ones that we never before had to deal with.  Accepting this fact was a challenge.

When I was hit by one episode that left me psychotic, suicidal, and hospitalized I was 31 and had just been promoted to VP of Sales at the company for which I worked.  An incorrect diagnosis and my poor response to the medications prescribed, as well as my refusal to accept mental illness and my subsequent noncompliance with my doctors’ orders, left me reeling for years.  I fell into a string of small jobs, just to keep health insurance, and checked into and out of psychiatric hospitals several times.  The hole in my resume became so large, and my ability to deal with stress so frail, that it became clear that I was not going back to the executive suite.  The effect that stress had on my moods, and the moods themselves, severely limited the amount of responsibility I could handle on the job.  I continued to work, but limitations were holding me back.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Compassion


Even a casual survey of popular media will insist on countless benefits of mindfulness meditation.  Practice will make you better able to deal with stress, reverse the cognitive effects of aging, spur creativity, improve test scores, promote deeper sleep, and who knows what else.  If all of the claims are to be believed, mindfulness meditation may just one day save the world.  It all may be a bit overblown.  However, for more than 2,000 years mindfulness meditation has been practiced to alleviate suffering, both in the meditator and in others.  Its track record in promoting compassion is strong and accepted.