As the Power for Positive Living radio series moves on from KGBC broadcasting, the focus turns toward what your host has personally learned from his experience and adventure of offering wellness psychology concepts to others.   

Any life experience is open for one to learn.  What each of us chooses to learn from whatever happens along our Life Journey has been and will continue to be a personal decision.  Change continues in our lives and each retains the power to choose our individual responses.   

Power for Positive Living has been an effort to share what your host has learned over the years. Each listener is encouraged to consider this knowledge and utilize any relevant portion of it within their own individual lives. 

  There can be times when we need an objective, competent and caring person to listen and offer guidance for the many and varied stresses of living.   Sometimes we need more than we can receive from family and friends.    Choosing a counselor is a very personal decision.  One may be lucky with the first choice they try or they find that finding the right person can be a long and challenging road.  Like many significant life choices, it helps to do extensive research on options that match one's own unique personality.

  Wellness psychology accepts that basically healthy people frequently have needs for assistance from others to better understand themselves and others.   About one in four persons will need some type of psychological assistance from another during their life journey to make healthy mental health choices.   Mental Health is defined on Friend Ship Radio and at the Personal Retreat Center as: positive interaction with life to the benefit of self and others.  

  Various mental health myths are discussed.  Our society often has difficulties with individual differences.  We like persons to be "individual" as long as they are also "normal".

  One of the cornerstones of wellness psychology is acknowledging the power of choice that each of us has with personal prejudices. A key to a better understanding of who we are is learning how we choose our personal attitudes and expectations.   Your host discusses how specific perceptions of mental illness create our prejudices. Over the decades there have been myths that mental illness is caused by factors such as emotional weakness, bad parenting, sinful behavior or that the individual actually brings their mental illness on themselves.

  Who am I?  How did I develop into the person I am?  Who were the people and what were the major events that led me to make healthy and unhealthy choices which bring happiness or sadness into my current life?  Am I ready to study and understand the internal compass that guides me when I enter the emotional fogs of daily living?   How can I understand myself better and explore/experiment by choosing different emotions and/or behavior?   Wellness Psychology encourages the exploration of diverse characteristics in ourselves as we choose who we wish to be.  One is encouraged to choose the role of being the author of one's life rather than choosing to be a victim of life.   Experiencing a personal retreat is one way for an individual to focus on four major aspects of life:  emotional, physical, social and spiritual

  Who am I?  How did I develop into the person I am?  Who were the people and what were the major events that led me to make healthy and unhealthy choices which bring happiness or sadness into my current life?  Am I ready to study and understand the internal compass that guides me when I enter the emotional fogs of daily living?   How can I understand myself better and explore/experiment by choosing different emotions and/or behavior?   Wellness Psychology encourages the exploration of diverse characteristics in ourselves as we choose who we wish to be.  One is encouraged to choose the role of being the author of ones life rather than choosing to be a victim of life.   Experiencing a personal retreat is one way for an individual to focus on four major aspects of life:  emotional, physical, social and spiritual

Wellness Psychology encourages each of us to more fully understand and appreciate the choices we make in developing and implementing our own individual self-esteem beginning as a child to becoming a senior citizen.   Special interest is paid to the emotional cancer of perfectionist tyranny and the ways we can re-decide to promote healthy self-esteem for ourselves.

Wellness Psychology encourages each of us to more fully understand and appreciate the choices we make in developing and implementing our own individual self-esteem beginning as a child to becoming a senior citizen.

Beginning with words from the Book of Proverbs, "As he thinks in his heart, so is he", various approaches are presented to understanding the choices our heart implements during our daily living.  "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is another guideline for study with emphasis on the last two words. 

Honesty is often defined as the ability, to tell the truth to others.   Maturity is the ability, to tell the truth to ourselves and, therefore, often tends to be more challenging for many.  Maturity becomes a major goal of the personal retreating process. 

Jim Cole's book Facades is used to demonstrate that healthy self-esteem needs a sense of belonging, having worth and value as well as having some competency.

Development of our self-views is characterized by "children are the world's best recorders of their world and also the world's worst interpreters of it." The outcome is that many individuals make choices that are inaccurate and lead to unhappiness.

Understanding Defense Mechanisms

Your host discusses the following: 

* What is a defense mechanism? What role do they serve?

* What is a reaction formation?

* What is projection? We strongly condemn in others what we can't admit about ourselves.

* What is rationalization and how can we recognize it?

* Is there a difference between a "good" reason and the "real" reason?

This broadcast PTP (Point to Ponder) involves the behavior of responding to someone who often seeks advice and then chooses not to implement it.   People seek advice from others for a number of reasons ranging from seeking confirmation of ideas (people do what they want to do) to seeking help from others to reinforce a perspective of neediness.   Psychological mind games can be played such as, "See, I told everyone that my problem could not be solved".   A significant point to ponder is for a helper to self-define what he/she sees as their role in encouraging others to seek healthy assistance.

One of the most frequent challenges a person can face is the process of developing a positive self-image and choosing positive ways while interacting with negative people.