2013 in one word “BROKEN”

After such a whirlwind 2012 with meeting Oprah Winfrey, hosting a successful Jamie Oliver Food Day Revolution, Starting Ignite Health No one could have prepared me for the reality that 2o13 would knock me down and keep kicking at me.

January 2nd my daughter who has already faced more than any child should have to with health issues fell down 12 stairs. She broke her 4th toe on her left foot. Sounded simple enough but here we are April 8 and that toe has not healed and we are going back to the Orthapedic surgeon on Friday. At our last appointment in March the surgeon looked at Megan’s xray in shock. Turned to us and said I have never had to operate on a toe before. Megan’s body doesn’t heal. I know this intutively but can’t seem to get any doctor to look beyond their area of expertise to the bigger issue below the surface.

Since January 2nd I have been taking care of Megan’s needs for showering, for all meals delivered upstairs before I leave for work. Also Toby my 2 year old labradoodle has had to count on me for all care. In that regard I took him to the Dog park on Good Friday. He had a blast there was water in the pond and he was soaking wet. I decided after an hour that was enough and i needed to get him out of there before he got any wetter! Toby is a very rambunctious! He is enthusiastic and still ALL PUPPY! I got him on his leash with the promise of a treat. He was fighting me as i had to drag him out of the dog park. I thought we were through the worst of that and all of a sudden out of my periphreal vision I notice an arm being raised. Toby noticed it too. I felt him tense and all of a sudden he pulled…..I went with him and landed very hard on my chest on Left side.

I now have a broken rib and a bruised kidney to add to the complications of taking care of Megan. I am learning how to do laundry, cook, sleep on my back , how to drive to my job, how not to stretch, laugh, cough, sneeze!

I ponder if God is laughing again, or if he is sending me a message that I still don’t have priorities right? I have a good sense of humour and it helps a lot.

I will be starting therapy on April 12 officially. I need help to understand why I keep beating myself up, picking at my skin, and I send up my white Flag!

I need help to understand what I am doing right and what I need to change, what survival techniques from my childhood are helping me and which ones need to be removed.

We are broken and we are trying to get up!

Depression and a New Focus

I have been depressed. Absolutely without a doubt It started a few weeks ago when we learned that Megan’s foot is not healing and continued as I realized that in order to face the rest of 2013 I will have to back out of my passions in 2012.

My intentions with Jamie Oliver Food Revolution was to spread the word about eating whole foods and making sure our kids are healthier in the future by stopping the craziness now!

I got asked to become a volunteer in April 2012 and I accepted that challenge with excitement, I focussed a ton of my energy and support into creating a wonderful event in May 2012, I got lots of media coverage and the event was an amazing success.

My intentions with Ignite Health Ontario was to take the food revolution a step further and focus on the whole body experience, we need mental balance, spiritual balance, exercise, we need to eat balanced. Any of these factors being out of balance can cause illness and we always need to remember that.

I was inspired by Ignite London and additionally the creation of Ignite Culture where a full night of topics was related to arts and culture. If that could be done why couldn’t we create a night of health related topics. I was geared up and excited. I shared the idea in an ignite london talk and I had a number of great people come to me afte that to tell me to get in touch with them about this event.

We ran this event in October 2012 and it was a great success. I am very proud of both of these events and the work I did for them.

What I stopped paying attention too was the fact it was impacting my own stress levels, my ability to focus on work and now that we have no way to predict when Megan will be able to walk again I have to raise my hands and scream UNCLE!!

I decided that I need to shelve or back out of both Ignite Health Ontario and the Jamie Oliver food revolution for at least 2013. Making that decision broke my heart I am dousing the flames of passion with my tears. So over the last 3 -4 weeks I have been sleeping a ton, I have had a number of migraines and flus hit me. My Chronic Skin picking (dermatilomania) is at a level that I am struggling to get back under some control.

I have open sores on my arms. hands, chest, face and scalp. They are sore and begging me to stop. I am having so much anxiety around what I do with my life now. How do I translate that passion to taking care of my own health needs when I have never taken care of myself. Where do I start? How do I learn at 44 how to love myself when my entire life has been focussed on helping others. How do I get passionate about work again. There are quiet times that I need to fill with projects and I need to get excited about that and just do it. How do I keep the man beside me who has come into my life as a blessing and I can barely see with the challenges of working full time and being full time caretaker to Megan and the dog too.
I have been crying a ton and finally hit my breaking point last week . I made a doctors appointment to get Megan some more Tylenol 3 for pain and at the same time I asked to have my antidepressant Effexor increased from 75 MG to 150 MG.

I do feel lighter in my thoughts, I am not crying as frequently and do not feel as emotionally lost. I am now having insomnia instead of sleeping too much, I am having cold sweats but I assume thats related to upping my dose of Effexor and it won’t last long.

I have decided that I will focus on work, my health, my daughter, my boyfriend and I will refocus some of my energy to provide direction to Fatty Liver Disease support again. There are some demons that I will need to address in some counselling sessions and its time I took that step to take care of myself again.

I am not out of the woods but I will not hide the fact that yes I am dealing with depression again. I am also taking steps to fight back against its control on me. So 2013 will look very different for me but I hope to have some positive news for you all soon.

Hugs

Michelle

Guest Post – Heather Von St. James – Wife and Survivor of Mesothelioma

Heather asked if I could share her story and I am more than happy to!!

Heather Von St. James
Courageous Mother, Wife and Survivor of Mesothelioma

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
-Mark Twain

I hear it often from people, how brave I am and how much courage I have. Sometimes I just have to laugh, because, going through what I’ve been through with my mesothelioma battle, I don’t feel very brave. At times, the fear was so overwhelming, all I could do was cry out to God to help me. I would love to say that through the last 7 years, I’ve learned to conquer my fears. After all, Lungleavin Day, our celebration of the anniversary of my extrapleural pneumonectomy surgery, is all about overcoming fears. But I still have my moments, more often than I would like to admit. I have the usual fears creep in, my “scanxiety” I’ve blogged about before, little pangs of fear before I fly, but the biggest fear I struggle with is the fear of something happening to my daughter. This is something that has plagued me since she was born.

I’ve always had what I jokingly call puke-aphobia and, with having a kid, you know it something you have to deal with. This year has been particularly brutal on the gastroenteritis front for my poor Lily. Three times she has been sick this year in as many months. When she got sick the third time, the fear reared its ugly head in a big bad way. So much that I took her to the doctor and insisted he do a battery of tests to rule out anything. The thing I was most afraid of? Yep, cancer. Having dealt with cancer myself, and knowing so many others, my hypochondriac mind went right to the worst-case scenario. My husband, bless his heart, is always able to bring me back around to reasonable thinking. Although he understands why I go to the worst-case scenario, he doesn’t indulge it, and his voice of sound reason helps so much to calm me. Except in this case. I could not shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. Turns out he was right. She is a perfectly healthy 7-year-old little girl. Every single test came back as normal as normal as could be and, for some reason, she has just gotten sick a lot this year.

The fear is crippling. The anxiety it causes makes my life miserable and those around me even more so. It is something that I have vowed to work on this year to not let the fear get out of control. Someone told me once that the word “FEAR” is an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real”, and when you think about it? It is TRUE!! The fear is almost always worse than what I’ve imagined and blown out of proportion in my mind. I did something this time that was not easy for me to do. I asked for help from people who I trust and admire, and their guidance and prayer really helped me overcome this obstacle. They gave me some tools to use to stop the cycle and basically send that fear packing. Frankly, God is the one who gives me tremendous peace. I find that prayer and reading His word, writing scriptures that speak to me, and keeping them in a little notebook for my use is a way for me to keep grounded.

With Lungleavin Day coming up, the opportunity is here to write our fears on a plate and smash them into the fire, I’m going to once again take control of my emotions and overcome. I know I have the power to do it; sometimes it is just making the choice to do so.

I hope you too will do something on February 2nd to overcome your fears in the spirit of Lungleavin Day. If breaking a plate is over the top, I find that a paper plate works great, and burning it, or tearing it into hundreds of pieces. If you struggle with fear, no matter what it is, taking control, finding the root of it, and addressing it helps takes it away. I also find humor is a great way to conquer fear, hence “LUNGLEAVIN DAY” It was born out of the desire to make something funny out of something tragic. It is the day my lung left my body.

For this, my 7th Annual Lungleavin Day, I’m conquering fear by surrounding myself with amazing people and sharing our night with anyone who wants to join in. I hope you can join us. Go to my Facebook fan page to join the Lungleavin Day Event and we will be live webcasting on the night of February 2nd, 2013 6:00 pm to whenever the last plate is broken (Central time).

I hope you, too, find something healing about the day just like we do. Together, we will make 2013 fabulous.

Read more: http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/heather/fear.htm#ixzz2J0nHx1ru

Tears lots and lots of Tears!

Well since my last post where I told you all that I was taking some time for myself after determining that I had built a solid brick wall around my heart has been very interesting indeed.

Since November I have cried enough tears to fill a bathtub! I have salt stains on my face that will likely stick around for a while!  I cry about memories, I cry due to happiness, I cry for lost moments that should have happened.  When I am driving I find that songs will remind me of the man I am proud to call my boyfriend, best friend and the sweetest kindest man i have ever known. That will create tears of happiness and gratitude in my heart. I will share more about him another time. Suffice to say I am very happy.

I hear other songs and I will think about my kids and burst into tears. The nostalgia for christmas long ago when Alex used to cry on Christmas Eve because he couldn’t fall asleep and he was so worried and anxious that he was ruining christmas for every child in the world. I would read to him for hours and I would try so hard to calm him down. It took hours and that little boy truly was carrying the weight of the world in his heart. He is now 19 and I don’t think he had any trouble falling asleep christmas eve. But I would have been ready to cuddle him and settle him until he could fall asleep if he ever needs that again! Those tears are for days gone by and moments that I know will never be repeated but will always be in my heart.

Tears for the little abused girl that i was  have come too. I was such a strong smart friendly child and the world around me tried its hardest to squash me and destroy me. But my soul was stronger than that and I am so proud to say that no one in my life has ever had the power to destroy my inner strength and I can say with conviction. No one EVER will!

 

I cried when Toby chased snowflakes last night..just a couple tears but to see his joy and playfulness with something so basic reminds me why puppies and little children will always be my favorite things.

My Children both bought me gifts this year that absolutely mean the world to me.  Alex picked out a homemade scarf for me with all my favorite colours reflected in it! I adore it! Megan got me a really cute picture book with photo’s of dogs taken under water! Its amazing! She also got me a wonderful Sherpa Blanket that has been my best friend while I have been sick!

Underwater Dogs from Megan! Great Book!

 

 

Sherpa Blanket from Megan!

Alex’s gift to me

A Real Friend

In my life I have met 2 people like this. Who could read me completely from the moment we met. Who can see my walls and challenge me to to take them down to reveal the inner Michelle who is hidden to protect myself.

This is my thank you to them!

Sometimes you know that things are meant to be

Sometimes things just fit and no issues can you see

You can’t remember feeling this safe, this whole

They envelope your heart, your spirit your soul

They come in like a whisper and become every breath

Not with effort , not with pain, just comfort and peace

They have been here before , you know that is true

They know you to well, they can read every clue

Were they part of a life from long ago

Have they found you again to sooth your soul

Friends like this are so very rare

Never reject them , be brave and prepare

For the friendship so deep you can’t hide how you feel

They will see it , they will challenge it , make sure that its real

This is honest and pure, its acceptance we desire

They can see your dark side and your sweet side,

They can see your mistakes and celebrate your wins

They can give you a shoulder, they can wipe away tears

They can hold you so tight and they can eliminate fears

They make you see yourself as you really are

They call “LIES” to the inner voices that say you aren’t

This is your best friend, the one you should be

To yourself, to you, from inside your soul

They are external but a part of you

The best part of you

Hiding behind a wall – Shutting down emotionally

I have been experiencing an awakening of sorts over the last month. I have become aware that I shut myself down emotionally about 2 years ago for a number of reasons.

I have been very successful at doing presentations and showing my passion for causes I believe in, I have made many friends at the acquaintance level and I would say I am well liked in London, Ontario.

But I started realizing a few months ago that I do not cry in movies anymore and that was something both my kids would tell you they looked at me during movies for.

I have cried in the last month a fair amount, a lot of that is about my sister and my worry for her, some of that was stress related and has been dealt with. But most of it seems to be a crack in the brick wall that I put around myself a couple years ago.

I can place a couple reasons for that initial shutdown, first i lost a best friend and it hurt me deeply, making me not want to open myself up to anyone that much again.  Second, my child was sick and doctors and everyone was giving up on her, calling her a liar and I was constantly battling for her to never back down from any of the naysayers I knew my child was sick and no one would convince me otherwise.  3rd my choice in men had brought me nothing but heartbreak.

I know that shutting down emotionally happened gradually.  I remember complaining that I felt so alone , that no one was really there for me. But no one heard me. My child who was sick was suffering so much worse than I was so i swallowed those emotions down and eventually grew cold.

I know I shut down as a little girl, it was the only way to survive the drama and violence in the home around me.  If I didn’t let it bother me then I could withstand anything.

But I am not a child anymore and I am incredibly sad knowing that I left myself that way for 2 years as an adult. It did let me focus on my job and making a difference in the community. But if you ask me what I like or what my favorite things are right now , i truly have no idea.  I am a giver by nature I have always been good at reading other peoples needs and filling them.  This was again a critical skill in dealing with mentally ill parent and alcoholic parent you had to read the signals to know if you were safe to speak or if you needed to just disappear and hope they didn’t see you.

So I have to break the wall down, it will take a bit of time and it will not be easy. I will not run Ignite Health Ontario in February now that I have figured this out. It is time for me to find my own balance and open my spirit up to the world again. I need to focus on learning what makes me happy and how to balance myself now that my daughter is healthier and stronger.

I have been my own best friend and my own worst enemy in so many ways. I am my best friend in protecting who i love, and making a difference in community because I know those things make me very very happy.  Now its time to let tears flow, to appreciate myself and love myself. I am my worst enemy in disregarding my feelings and disregarding my own wants. I am my worst enemy in taking care of everyone but me.

I am sorry to those I have been cold too, I was not fully concious of this in myself and you have only seen a small sliver of who i really am. I hope you will stick around for the discovery.

Hugs

Michelle

Sometimes the world throws you a fast ball

I was happily feeling the glow and success of Ignite Health on October 24th. The event went so perfectly and I was so proud of my daughter. I was on a natural high feeling of success.

Less than 48 hours after the event I got a call that my only sister was dealing with a bad case of depression, she essentially hit the bottom and I went to see her the next day. It was very hard to see my little sister completely broken. She is fighting back and getting good help. I know she will be so much better moving forward and I am very proud of her.

My work environment also seemed to become toxic around the same time, bullying and power struggles seemed to be impacting me and the team I work with. It became difficult to face being at the office for a few weeks.

My daughter had a terrible weekend and stopped seeing a reason to keep fighting, she has taken on so much and she is a perfectionist who has to learn her limits and not expect so much of herself. Its ok to feel weak and lost sometimes.

All of these things seem to happen directly after a perfect high in my life of efforts I make to make a difference in my community. These challenges reset me and bring me crashing back down to earth to focus on what is important in my family. I have found myself in tears more in the last 3 weeks than I had for a year. Life is never perfect, we all deal with challenges all the time and things that are not in our control. The goal is to keep moving forward and not staying in the negative mindset. This is not easy when things keep going wrong but I know that the reason I have been able to deal with so much tragedy and pain is by looking for a bright side.. moving toward a bright side. trusting in a bright side.

I always recognize when I hit an emotional bottom for me, I then focus all my energy on bringing positive into my life to offset the negative. I have started pulling together ideas for the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution weekend and I am so excited about the ideas I have!

1. thanks to my friend Christian D’Andrea we will have a day that is focussed on Veggies. A veggie fest where we will cook some basic recipes with lesser known veggies. Blind taste tests for veggies that you have never tried!! 

2. A community Garden to be created. A friend of mine Helder is working on finding a plot where we can plant seeds and then as attendees we will take turns managing the garden and we can all share in the results!

3. Back to Basics cooking lessons – lets think back to what the pioneers did for cooking we have lost basic cooking skills and haven’t provided to our children lets do this with parents and kids!

4. Growing Chefs childrens events- will certainly be back in touch with my friend Andrew Fleet to host and create awesome kids events!

I Am also looking forward to creating Ignite Health Ontario II in February 2013. Looking for a facility and to pick a date before the end of this month.

These things remind me of the good I can do and the impact I can have on a greater cause.

I am staying in touch regularily with my sister and Megan is back to looking forward. I am also looking forward to my son getting back to ontario for a visit from Halifax in December!

Christmas is coming and I am ready to restart my life again!

Don’t stay stuck! Find a reason to move forward, pick yourself up and just do it!

 

Love

 

Michelle

What if the bully is your mother?

I am reflecting on my 15th year of life after watching #RIPAmandaTodd’s video. I was not bullied in the traditional ways at school I worked very hard to keep a smile on my face and pretend that life was perfect. I kept my distance just enough and avoided controversy by trying to be LIKED by everyone.  This was crucial to my survival at school because I was being bullied by my mother at home.

When I think back on my 15th year today I am actually trembling. This didn’t strike me as one of the worst years of my life but clearly my heart and soul remember it vividly to create anxiety in me at 44 years of age. I look around and my mother is not in my life, she can no longer manipulate my friends by pretending to be the best mother and telling them what a liar , slut and bitch I was.

A bit about that year as I think back this morning. My mother was miserable and had borderline personality disorder or some other nasty mental illness that made her jealous of her 15 year old daughter and planning to destroy her. My mother would take my purse or backpack and dump it out looking for drugs or condoms when  I got home from school. I was not sexually active yet, I was not doing drugs…but because I smoked cigarettes that meant I was evil and doing other things too. I drank alcohol with my friends at school I skipped school to have happy moments in my life. I was attracted to the bad boys and the rocker girls because I was being told I was one of them at home.

Other nights my stepdad would be away on business and my mother would force me to sleep beside her in bed telling me that she would likely die overnight and she wanted me to check to make sure she kept breathing. So I would never sleep on those nights, if i drifted off i would wake with a start and make sure she was breathing.

My mother would call my friends and be their support system, manipulating them, making them question why I was so miserable. If I shared anything about the things happening in my house my friends would roll their eyes because my mother was acting so perfect to them.

One night i was asleep in my bed around 2am. My mother woke me up and demanded i get out of bed because someone was on the phone for me. I got up blurry eyed and picked up the phone… I said hello wondering who would be calling for me at 2am…On the other end of the phone all i heard was you are such a BITCH. Then they hung up.  I burst into tears and my mother sent me back to bed.  I cried the rest of the night and got up for school in the morning. I remember so clearly looking at all my friends and wondering which one of them was on the other end of the phone. I had recognized the voice but didn’t get enough of it to be sure who it was. All my friends denied it, Clearly I was insane.  I stopped trusting my friends that day. I felt incredibly alone and my mother had worked very hard to make sure I was.

I was then in a place where I knew that my friends didn’t truly care about me and my mother hated me. I had no one, nothing. This was one of the very first times i considered suicide. I had a mother who was plotting to destroy me. How does that happen? Was I crazy, maybe I was the reason she was so miserable? Maybe I wasn’t worth talking to or being around? 

My 15th year peaked with another night where my mother was threatening to kill herself. This time she locked herself in her bathroom with a suitcase of drugs. I was screaming and pounding on the door begging her not to kill herself and asking her to open the door. She yelled back FINE you want to watch me kill myself you bitch….go ahead come in. My mother was sitting on the floor , she had poured all her pills on the floor and looked up at me and said which one do you want me to take next?  I begged her to stop. she told me that this was my fault anyway, I was the reason her life was ruined, I was the reason she was killing herself. I was frantic I yelled for my stepdad and he called 911.

4 police cars pulled up to my house that night. It actually took 4 police officers to pull my mother out of the bathroom. She fought them tooth and nail. She was taken to the hospital and I was taken to a temporary foster home. I was a mess , and I was put into a co-ed home. This was a mistake for a completely destroyed 15 year old. Boys gave me attention and I lost my virginity that summer because I had no self esteem. I didn’t even like the boy that took my virginity I just thought i might as well do this since my mother said i was a slut anyway.

I was put on birth control that summer which was the right thing to do by the foster family. I actually loved the freedom I had at this home. I started to calm down and they had a big pond that I could sit by and be soothed by the water.  I was having supervised visits with my mother as she was being treated at the hospital and had been there 6 weeks. After she got home I received a call from my mother…and all she said on the other end of the phone was Why did you steal my frozen spinach pastry puffs? I was mystified, I told her I did not steal them and I hung up. Then I started laughing and I knew that my mother was actually crazy. This was the clear line for me.  Why would anyone steal a frozen pastry puff? I was not even living at home to steal it.

In actuality , she was obsessed with me, she needed to control me, she needed to make sure I didn’t love anyone more than her. I was sent home to return to school in August of that year, I decided that when I went home I would no longer respond to her attacks. I would treat her like she was normal and refuse to feed the craziness in her.  At 15 I completely understood mental illness.

She went back to school that september and started volunteering for the college newspaper. She moved into a happy period of her life and thats why my 16th year was actually pretty good.

Amy Todd was bullied to the end of her rope. She didn’t know anyone was there for her, she didn;t have tools to find inner strength and peace to guide her back from the brink. I was lucky that there has always been something in me that was a fighter, I refused to be totally destroyed by anyone. I refused to make my mother happy by killing myself!

At 17 she actually chased me with a knife and wanted to kill me, but thats another story and its in another blog titled the night my mother tried to kill me.

No child should ever feel this alone in the world, Someone should have stood up and helped Amanda stand up to her bully. Whoever that boy or man who constantly manipulated her and stalked her from town to town should be charged with murder. Where was her family? Were they supportive, did Amanda listen to them? She was 15 only 15…..

My message to teens is YOU have NO idea what is going on at home for a child you are bullying. For all you know they have a mother like mine. Are you really willing to be the person that pushes someone to the edge of considering suicide. Be kind, be supportive, don’t rush to judgement. Everyone has a story and everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone deserves to have someone in their life they can turn too.

I survived my mother’s bullying and I wish strength to any child who is dealing with a bully in their home or in their life outside of home. You are not alone. Many of us have been there and know your pain.

Hugs

 

Michelle

 

 

Getting Stuck in Someone Else’s Ideals – Tommy Caldwell

We all have people we follow. They may inspire us, speak in terms that we understand and bring us clarity, or uncover topics or information in areas that we don’t frequently research. Whatever your reason, learning from others is the fastest and most efficient way to learn and adopt new ideas and life strategies. But when do we take it too far? When do we get so caught up in what someone else is saying/doing that we bypass our own logic and judgment in exchange for the excitement of a new thought? I’m sure you are all reading this and saying “that’s not me; I think for myself and make my own decisions in life”. I beg to differ, and I think we all need a bit of self reflection now and then.

Research Smesearch…It’s always a matter of opinion
Most things we learn in the age of information have some sort of stemming ‘research base’. When someone cites a reference or some sort of scientific experiment it somehow legitimizes what they have to say. For most of us this is enough to get our ‘eyes up’ and take some questioning away from any given persons spiel. I personally don’t cite references or research for any of my writing or findings because research is biased and quite frankly a bunch of bullshit.
Everyone has their motives- as both the speaker and the listener- and both will find a way of legitimizing what they want to say and what they want to hear; and research is a great way to falsely support our own inner investments. Here are some examples- If you frequent facebook you have seen the picture of the distance runner next to the elite sprinter; the sprinter looking muscular and cut, while the distance runner looks skinny, loose, and frail. If you’re someone like me who promotes explosive movements (sprinting) and somewhat condemns degenerative activities (distance running) it is easy to look at this picture and say “here’s your proof, sprinters look good and perform well and distance runners are flabby losers!” I’ve seen this picture posted by my colleagues and fitness folk alike to prove their point in a totally illegitimate and lame way. They can say ‘research shows that distance runners typically have a higher body fat and lower muscle mass when compared to a sprinter’- and they may very well be right… based on the research they chose to search out.
The worst part about this is that ‘proofs’ like this spread like a disease- with a bunch of agreeable people jumping on the bandwagon and spreading their new found ‘proof’ without asking a single question or looking into how one sided the information may be. You won’t hear questions like “do you think that perhaps big jacked muscular explosive people gravitate towards sprint based activities and excel at them while skinnier, lighter, fiber 1 type people gravitate towards and excel in distance based activities?”. Not to mention the fact that you could easily find a really jacked distance runner and a slightly overweight sprinter, place their pictures side by side and make the same adverse argument; but neither of those things will ever happen with a group of speakers and an audience of listeners that find it more important to prove THEIR point than to prove the point that is most legitimate in the most legitimate way.
You may be saying ‘ok, I get it, but that isn’t really research, that is an optical comparison’. You’re right, it is, but here is a legitimate research paper example that is equally moronic.
I was reading an article in a journal of strength sciences regarding how plyometric exercises (jumping, bounding etc) cause more harm than good. The article explained how they did a 6 week course of varying plyometrics in one group, and then a basic light exercise course in the other. After the full 6 weeks they had several minor injuries in the plyometric group resulting in very little overall gains, and in the other group they showed positive gains in strength.
Well, I did some further research on this article and dug up the stats that they didn’t tell you. Like most lame exercise research papers spread to the average reader, they used a population of elderly people for this testing. So in group one they were having 60+ year old degenerative participants jump around on their old brittle bones and weak stagnant muscles and via their conclusion that jumping around is bad for old people they publish a paper stating that plyometric movements may be bad for ALL PEOPLE. Junk science at its finest, and consequently the most abundant science we have these days.
The point is that you never get the whole story on research, the participants, or the environment- and even if you did, YOU WEREN”T THE ONE BEING TESTED!!!! Research on any other person other than you will never give you a result that should be followed specifically by you. So read your research with caution and skepticism.

Joining the Modern Day ‘Cult’
It’s great to be a part of something. As Seth Godin would explain we all have this deep seeded instinct to find our ‘tribe’ and belong to it. In other words, finding like minded people with similar values to share a portion of our lives with. This is a healthy, effective, and sustainable approach towards becoming part of a good cause, movement, change, or whatever you want to call it. But when does it go too far? When does it get to the point when you’re not so much a part of something as you are ‘under’ something? Where do you draw the line between belonging to something and becoming something?

Losing your true individuality
I come from the mindset that no person should ever just ‘be’ something. I don’t think someone should just be a republican or a democrat. That someone should be a Buddhist, Christian, or atheist. Why can’t someone just be who they are without subscribing to a pre planned train of thought, belief system, or set of ideals?
As soon as you decide ‘this is who I am, and this is what my people are called’, your individualization and potential for growth are over with… done. You build a box around yourself and remove your potential that pertains to everything outside of that box. You are essentially subscribing to one way of thinking in a given subject and blocking out all other sources of competing information.
I can’t think of a worse way to live your life. Having pre-determined thoughts and understandings of everything that surrounds you because you want be a part of something and attach a name to that group.
Unfortunately it is now all around us. In fitness, health, religion, politics and all other topics that allow some sort of adverse thought. You could argue that these different groups allow us to exchange ideas and create discussions, but people are only interested in spreading their own ideas and not truly interested in absorbing others. People these days argue to be heard and spread information to be known- not a lot of people do it to ‘get people thinking’ and create a platform for the open expansion of the mind.

An ‘Open Air’ Approach
People are always complimenting me in somewhat flabbergasted ways in regards to the shape I’m in, the sacrifices I make, and how well I take care of my body. I couldn’t see things more differently. I think getting in shape and taking care of yourself is a fairly easy task. In fact, I think it’s insane that the whole world population doesn’t take better care of themselves because it is the easiest thing you can do. It’s no different than brushing your teeth, going to work, and combing your hair.
What impresses me are the people in this world who have 100% control of their mind, emotions, stress, and intellectual outcomes. I have spent the last 3 years putting far more focus on the health of my mind than the health of my body- and I am nowhere near where I’d like to be. I literally exercise my mind with the intent of making it stronger and more efficient every day of the week, and I am literally moving at ‘crawl speed’ when I think about where I would like to be.
One of the big challenges I faced with the reconstruction of my mind was the ability to understand others first, and not let my own ‘interests and opinions’ affect how I perceived the information I received from those people. Truly listening to another individual who sees something differently than you with the full intent of utilizing their information over yours if it seems more logical is a very difficult feat. The ability to say “I’m wrong, they’re right, what else can I learn from them” is a trait that seems to go against every grain of human nature; but the more I work on it, the better I get, the better I feel, and the more I grow on a personal and professional level.
My point is that we subscribe to an ideal that likely isn’t even ours, from sources that are self serving, and then we put a name on our ‘group’ and shut out all adverse arguments and points, regardless of logic. None of us want to admit it, but we all do it in a completely selfish and childish manner. If you can realize this part of yourself and accept that it is how you deal with a lot of your ‘mental subscriptions’, you will see that you can still have the feeling of belonging to something great and contributing to that movement and yourself, without compromising who you are as an individual and as an independent thinker.
Listen to what others say. Get excited about new ideas. Listen to many many many many different people; but don’t get stuck in a single path of thinking in any given subject, and never think that you or the leader you are following has the answers to all your questions… or even their own. And if you find yourself following someone who is never wrong, constantly condemns others ways of thinking, or suggests that ‘their way is the only way’- you have unknowingly become a member of a modern day idealists cult. I suggest you get out IMMEDIATELY!

Teenage minds- Not ALL the same!

My name’s Megan I am 16 years old and I live in London, Ontario. Seeing into the minds of people my age can be difficult for anyone who isn’t my age. My generation faces new problems, new social norms, and new expectations. The way teenagers thought 30 years ago isn’t how we think today and the way we think now won’t be how teenagers 30 years from now will think. And within that every teenager will have different priorities and different hopes and dreams so clearly you can never have a full understanding of every teenagers mind. I have been sick for the last 5 years of my life and have been removed greatly from people my age so I can’t tell you much about the way they think but I can tell you about the way I think.

The thing about being sick for so long is I had a lot of time to think.  Most people envy being able to stay home all day and relax but being that isolated can become boring and tedious; you can only check facebook so many times. For the first few years of my illness I found small things to entertain me, video games, books, television shows, but as I grew older I spent more of that time thinking. I thought about my future and if I would get the chance to have one, I thought about my family and if I would always be a burden on them and I thought about the world and would I ever be able to do anything for it. I started spending more of my time reading about what was going on in the world and I started seeing things that I couldn’t believe were happening. For example a couple months ago in Iran 70 university programs were closed off to women because they were surpassing the men within them. And in many places around the world, such as Uganda, it is legal to kill a person for being a homosexual. Reading all this I wanted to fix it but never thought I would have the opportunity to.  At that point in my life I didn’t let myself dream or hope for anything but sickness, after five years of nearly constant illness how could I? So I ignored these problems and went back to my tv or video games.

Something changed for me a few months ago, I got tired of letting my illness stop me, I got tired of not trying to do anything because no one thought I could succeed, and I got tired of accepting that I would live the rest of my life being ill. I don’t know what changed for me but I did. I started researching universities and looking at careers in human rights and I started working towards a future for myself. I started volunteering in the community and doing things to see if I could handle going back to school. And now after five years I’m fighting my illness so I can do something with my life. I have decided I want to become a human rights lawyer and be the person that helps solve the types of issues mentioned above. So this year I’m working my butt of to do well in school and to get more involved so I can get into a good university and eventually a good law school. It is hard, I get tired and I get sick but I keep working because I have to, because I’m tired of letting illness rule my life.

So that is how I think, it may not be how every teenager sees the world but those are the challenges I am currently facing and I hope this gives some insight on a teenagers brain even if it is just mine. One thing I want to add is a quote from novelist John Green.

“When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

― John Green, Looking for Alaska