Thank you.

When friends come through...

I just completed a two-week beta test of first edition materials on mental wellness that I’m developing for our non profit. Big thanks to the 30 or so participants and I’m relishing the feedback.

My approach to mental health has been to start with society. Civilization, as we call it, is arguably insane. How else could you explain the crazy stuff on this planet that goes on and on unchallenged? Here’s a few “for instance"s:

• War. Old men send young men to die for their enrichment/further control. The “trigger” is often a deceitful manipulation ( like the engineered Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that started the Vietnam war where over 3 million people died, including almost 60,000 Americans… for what?). If you have the stomach to learn the long history of deceitful strategies, visit here.

• Government. Elected politicians do the will of their financial supporters and leave office with millions of dollars, far beyond their salaries. But, “it’s an honor to serve.”

• Health. Known, proven, traditional cures are demonized in favor of expensive, ineffective medicines that make billions for their makers both from sales and follow up sales of other medicines to address the side effects from the first ones.

I’ll spare us more details, except to mention my favorite: the widening gap between rich and poor. According to Oxfam, the Covid-19 pandemic increased billionaires’ fortunes larger than the last 14 years combined and the 10 richest men doubled their wealth while the incomes of the 99% others faltered. The 26 richest individuals have the same amount of money as the poorest 3.9 billion people (half of the human race) who live on $5.50 per day or less (one designer coffee).

None of this is hidden from public view. In fact, we’ve been aware of these problems for decades. And … nothing changes.

Well, why not? That’s crazy… pun intended!

I focused my material on Einstein’s injunction that “we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.” So, the program that just completed, THINKING 101, was all about learning to think in new ways. Having proven that just trying to change things doesn’t work, it’s clear that we have to start with our minds … to change how we think before we act.

I’m super grateful for my friends who undertook this experiment with me. I’ve learned so much that will make the next round of materials way better. If any of you reading now are curious and want to experiment on your own, the materials are still on our website, available free here, reduced to just six days. Enjoy and let me know what you learn.

I’ll be posting a full report for those interested but here’s one takeaway that might seem somewhat counter-intuitive: I’m aiming towards in-person programs now, rather than just on-line. Zooming is so convenient and it did enable the 30 or so of us to communicate live from 6 different countries. But it’s not the same as gathering in person, perhaps over food, with our friends / neighbors, face to face, heart to heart.

Stay tuned for updates, experiment on your own, and I’ll be running a second course in early January with the updated materials. You’ll get an invite.

Meanwhile, let’s all learn from history! What’s stuck in our personal lives? How could we think differently to get different results?

Onward!