Be SureTo Tell Her It Was Good!

Last week, while on our way to Costco holiday shopping, my wife and I stopped in at one of our local eateries for lunch.

While there, we became engrossed in a conversation with our server about caregiving and confided in her that pop (my father-in-law), would no longer be eating out with us anymore as he had passed away in October. Our server mentioned that she and her family were also struggling with a family member (her mother-in-law) who is dying at home under Hospice care. It is touch and go as to whether the mother-in-law would make it all the way to Christmas.

The mother-in-law is in only in her 50’s yet she is dying from cancer and other medical complications. As death draws nearer, she appears to have begun hallucinating; that is claiming to have been doing things or involved in tasks or activities that are impossible, given that she is bedridden. The adults in the family have found it easiest to just agree with or play along with whatever imagined event is announced by their loved one. 

Why upset them any more than what they are already suffering from?

Recently, a grandson came to visit the terminally ill grandmother at her bedside. Beforehand, he had been alerted by his mother (our restaurant server) that grandma was now prone to hallucinations and talking about things that had not happened. 

Mother instructed her son: “If she says anything about cooking a big meal for us, tell her it was good!”

Armed with this information, the grandson was ready to do his part in comforting grandma should the need for a  “compassionate white-lie” be required.

In my own mind, I can imagine how the scene played out between the two of them.

Grandma: “You know honey, I spent all morning downstairs in the kitchen cooking up our holiday ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, the vegetables and several pies for that dinner we had tonight. I’m so exhausted now from all of that cooking.”

Grandson: (Thinking back to one of grandma’s lavish and tasty holiday meals a couple of years back), “Yes grandma, I loved your meal. The ham and pies were my favorites, but it was all good!”

Grandma: Oh honey, I’m so glad everything tasted ok and all of you ate your fill. It makes this old lady feel like she still has something to contribute to this family of ours.”

The elderly and the dying deserve the support of their family. And instilling respect for one’s elders in a younger family member will always be one of those right things to teach a child. In this case, though a small white lie was the response to grandma’s declaration of her imagined morning of cooking, the grandson’s comment served to comfort and validate grandma’s earned place within the family. Though on the doorstep of passing away during our holiday season, grandma knows she is loved and appreciated. 

God Bless this grandma, this grandson, and this family.

Jeff Dodson

December 22nd 2014

Walking Home: A Book Review

This is the second book that I’ve had the opportunity to review of author and speaker, Sonia Choquette. The first was Grace, Guidance and Gifts in 2012.

Imagine at the height of your professional career, to suddenly experience the loss of your father, your brother, and, to have your marriage suddenly collapse all within a three year period. Your personal life is now unravelling. Time to step off life’s speedway and bind up the wounds.

Walking Home is Sonia’s candid story of how she bravely chose to do this. 

Her solution was committing herself to a pilgrimage walk of the Camino de Santiago. Also known as the Way of St. James, it is the ancient pilgrimage route stretching some five hundred miles between Arles in the south of France across northern Spain and ending at the Cathedral of Santiago. It is there that the remains of St. James the Great are said to be buried. 

Sonia planned for and scheduled a month and a half off from her professional and personal life commitments to walk and complete this pilgrimage. She committed to this not long after having knee surgery with a knee that was not 100% healed. Secondly, she had not allowed for time to build up her physical stamina for the arduous daily hiking through wildly unpredictable weather and the unfamiliar terrain that the journey would entail. 

She did not make extensive plans in advance for this undertaking as she had always felt confident in her intuition to guide her. For this, she paid a very painful daily price with injuries to her feet, sore legs and back and chronic pain with the unhealed knee. Still, Sonia was determined to make this journey because, in her words, “I wanted to walk the Camino more than anything to become free of guilt and anger and shame I was carrying so deep in my heart. I yearned for forgiveness for having all this guilt and resentment.”

It would take Sonia 34 days to complete her pilgrimage. During the course of her walk she experienced an amazing depth of adventures with fellow pilgrims she met, her surroundings, and, with dredging up emotions, some of which had been deeply buried since early childhood. 

While on her journey of healing and transformation, Sonia said, “I let go of blaming myself for someone else’s behavior. I let go of feeling I had to hide and pretend it didn’t happen. I let go of the need to beat myself up about it.”

What I found fascinating about Sonia’s sojourn were the encounters she had that might best be described as spiritual or even supernatural in nature. 

The first one occurred on the 15th day of her walk. While trudging along the Camino trail, she witnessed an elderly man dressed only in runners shorts and a tank top go trotting past her along the trail in freezing cold weather. Later she learned about the man. He had made a promise to God in earlier years that if his only son would be cured of cancer, he would commit to completing the Camino one hundred times. When Sonia saw him, he was on his ninth Camino journey. Witnessing the personal sacrifice and dedication of this elderly pilgrim inspired her to renew her determination to see her trip to its completion.

The second one happened on the 29th day of her journey. While absorbed in her thoughts, Sonya became disoriented and lost. Hiking further, she came upon several forks in the trail. Her intuitive voice compelled her to follow the one to the left. This she did and eventually came upon an old shed with a house attached. The door was open so she entered it. Within she was greeted by a smiling elderly man who invited her to accept a cup of coffee. She attempted to refuse but was informed by him that the Camino had brought her to his house for a reason. She sat down, accepted the coffee then was dumbstruck to be informed by the man, “Antonio your (dead) brother, brought you here.” She parted company with the old sage with an animal totem and crystal to protect and guide her on the rest of her journey.

Sonia’s daily narrative of her pilgrimage journey is a fascinating read as she wrestles with painful past memories, decades old emotional wounds and lots of raw anger. As each day passed, she began a process of first facing and confronting each of these feelings then allowing herself to simply let go of each of them.

Walking Home is a vivid account of one persons journey and transformation from being emotionally and psychologically wounded into one who became a reintegrated and healed soul. This book would make a great movie!

Jeffrey Dodson

November 24th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

Alzheimer’s Research Game Changer

On October 12th 2014 an article appeared in The New York Times by Gina Kolata entitled, Breakthrough Replicates Human Brain Cells for use in Alzheimer’s Research. The next day on October 13th 2014, the online website KurzweilAI (www.kurzweilai.net) featured an article entitled, Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish is ‘first clear evidence’ for amyloid hypothesis.

Both articles are reporting the work of Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Genetics and Aging Research Unit and investigator, Doo Yeon Kim, PhD who shared authorship in a report to Nature on Sunday October 12th.

The Kurzweil article began with, “Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have created the first ‘Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish’ - a 3D petri dish capable of reproducing the full course of events underlying the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

According to Dr. Tanzi, the key to their success was a suggestion by his colleague Doo Yeon Kim to grow human brain cells in a gel, where they formed networks as in an actual brain. They gave the neurons genes for Alzheimer’s disease. Within weeks they saw the hard Brillo-like clumps known as plaques and then the twisted sphaghetti-like coils known as tangles — the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease, The New York Times article stated.

Lead researcher, Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi of MGH Boston, is now initiating an aggressive project to test 1200 drugs that are already on the market in addition to 5000 experimental ones that have finished the first phase of clinical testing. With the petri dish system, Dr. Tanzi states, “we can test hundreds of thousands of drugs in a matter of months.”

What’s so special about this dish research? Consider the following.

Mice Be Gone
It is an apparent successful breakaway from the laborious and expensive laboratory work associated historically with mice. Transgenic mice are carefully breed genetically controlled mice that have brains similar to we humans. Similar but not the same. In the ballpark but not in the exact tier, row and seat that is crucial.

A More Accurate Model
The dish research brings it all home in that human neuron cells from the outset are what’s being tinkered with. Researchers are viewing exactly how human rather than mouse cells are behaving and reacting. Thus a more accurate and exacting model of how the mechanics of Alzheimer’s disease works in the human brain is now available for research.

Accelerated Testing Process
New drug testing can now be profoundly accelerated going forward with the petri dish approach. Up to now, each single drug test with mice can take up to a year. It has been the absence of new drugs coming to market that has acted as the dark black cloud hanging over the Alzheimer’s community for too many years. Millions of people worldwide are dying every year without the hope of any new significant drugs coming to market that will slow down, let alone stop the disease. The last new Alzheimer’s medication that was approved by the FDA was Namenda back in 2003.

A Key Enzyme
An additional bonus discovery in this petri dish work was learning how to block the action of an enzyme known as GSK3-beta, an active agent in the formation of protein tau aggregates and tangles.

Going forward, I’m keeping my eye on how this petri-dish AD work advances.

We are long overdue for a breakthrough of some kind with our dementia diseases.

Three of our four parents passed away within the past two years with Alzheimer’s as either their primary cause of death or a co-contributing factor.

It’s time for a turning point involving Alzheimer’s.

Jeff Dodson
November 7th 2014

Attributes Of A Father

Introduction
It has been twenty three days since my father-in-law passed away with my wife and I close by his side. In this intervening period, We have contemplated what qualities he possessed that we most admired and that we would affirm to share with others. We made a list, then settled on what we call pop’s most enduring attributes. This then, what follows, is our tribute…our eulogy to father, and  father-in-law, Forrest Earl Widdifield.

Devotion
Pop was most definitely a devoted man. Especially when it came to his late wife Marian. From December of 2006 up through March 23rd 2013, her final day with us in this life, Marian, owing to late stage Alzheimer’s dementia, was a resident of two local skilled nursing facilities.  Pop dutifully got up each morning, prepared his own breakfast, then drove himself to see his beloved wife at least once nearly every day for all of those 6 plus years that they were apart. On some days, he would drive back again to visit her a second time in the afternoon. On the rare occasion that he could not make the trip, it was because he was down with the flu or a cold. And it just ate at him when he could not make the trips to see his wife.

He arranged for my mother to have a small digital TV set in her room to watch either TV or enjoy many of the old DVD movies she liked or any one of a variety of taped Lawrence Welk Shows that pop recorded for her enjoyment.

At home, in the privacy of his own bedroom, he hung his most favorite photos of either Marian or the two of them in their early years of marriage. Timeless treasures to look upon and reimagine that place in time again.

It made his day each time he walked into the room when their eyes met and she broke into one of her pleasant smiles of recognition and love for him.

Pop’s tender devotion to my mom and his daily trips to spend time with her may just as well have been taken right out of Nicolas Sparks’ book, The Notebook. Unwavering devotion to his life-long partner and spouse. His dedication to his wife Marian epitomized what devotion to another is all about.

An Active Mind
Coping with the reality of having your spouse living apart from you in a nursing home is something that is very upsetting and stressful for any senior. Pop found ways to keep himself busy mentally. He designed and assembled stereo speakers. He tinkered with household electronic clocks, toasters, and gadgets. He repaired a decades old hi-fi stereo cabinet system record turntable for his sister. He puttered in his backyard electronic repair shop. He read up on Alzheimer’s diseases and the various dementias. He began refurbishing an old three-wheeled adult trike to ride around his home. Pop pursued ways of keeping himself busy.

Simple Pleasures
Pop loved a good meal. Either home cooked or a well prepared, satisfying one from one of his favorite restaurants. Pop still cooked and prepared his own meals. His recipes for bean soup, stew and what he called a goulash were all hearty and satisfying. His favorite dining places were few and predictable. Mr. Perry’s, IHOP, the Waffle Barn or Shari’s. Unpretentious and low budget.  All offered the kind of food he had become accustomed too so many decades before as a young teen traveling far and wide every week. Road house and all-night diner food. Omelettes, pot-roast dinners, hamburgers and the occasional fish-n-chips. It was all comfortable and familiar for him.

As his health declined and his doctor’s office visits became more frequent so arose the opportunities for him to ask to be taken to one of his favorite places after the doctor’s office visit or checkup.

My husband and I were fortunate to accompany him so many times as we did at one of his local diner lunches or dinners.

In between enjoying a good meal either at home or out, pop enjoyed a handful of favorite TV programs. Channel 3.2 offered up all of his favorite shows from back in the 1950’s onward. Most of those favorites were all Westerns. Bonanza, The Rifleman, Wanted Dead or Alive and The Big Valley topped the list.  His mid-morning favorite soap opera was The Young and the Restless.

He Made All His Own Decisions
Woody made all of his own decisions, including his final one, which was to be taken home to be comfortable and pass away there when all of the medical reports and tests began to stack up against his continued longevity.

While transitioning in his care at the Sherwood Nursing Home after more than a week in ICU and time at Mercy Hospital, pop made a decision. He declared to Penny that he wanted to be transported home to live out whatever time he had left under Hospice care rather than remaining at the nursing home. We acceded to his wish and put it into motion.

He was thus able to spend his final week with us in this world while residing in his own home.

Hospice care personnel along with members of his family were at his bedside 24 hours a day for that final week.

We admire and love you pop for these qualities, these attributes that we have spoken of today. We love and cherish you for all of the kind words that you shared as a father, all of the life lessons that you taught or modeled for us over the years and for all of the good deeds that you performed for others, for family and for your community in the time that you were with us.

George Strait got it right in the lyrics to his song, Love Without End, Amen, when he sang about the timeless love a father holds for his children. Pop loved country western music, and, recently decided that he liked this particular song by George Strait. It turns out, pop was living out those lyrics every day with his family since day one.

We will miss you pop and love you for all time. God Bless You Forrest Widdifield.


Jeff Dodson & Penny Widdifield Dodson
October 27th 2014

Forrest Earl Widdifield Life Notes

Born December 22nd 1921. 

Passed away on October 4th 2014

Rest in Peace Pop

Forrest E. Widdifield was born on December 22nd 1921 in the Canadian farming town of Creelman. Creelman is located  within the prairie province of Saskatchewan. He was the eldest child of Stewart and Marie Widdifield.  His siblings also included brothers Lloyd, Lyle and sister Joyce. His own children are daughters Lynn Goodman and Penny Widdifield.

As a child, Forrest learned first-hand about the economic hardships of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Depression era that followed as the negative hallmark of the early 1930’s. For the remainder of his life, Forrest practiced being thrifty, never throwing anything away, learning how to fix or mend what he had or owned and making do with what he had.

He began his professional career while in his early teens barnstorming across Saskatchewan and Manitoba showing Hollywood motion picture films in a variety of town halls, churches and clubs for the company General Films of Canada. He spoke warmly of the network of young teenage boys that he worked with that would assist him each time his film touring route brought him back through their specific town. His shows would feature two reel films and then either cartoons or a newsreel highlighting world events.

He was full of stories about the all-night cafes and his favorite towns to visit or stay in while on the road during his early film showing work.  A dinner meal on the road ran .75 cents. One of his favorite stops on the road was in the small town of Storthoaks. Pop declared once that Storthoaks was the town he used as “his home base” when he was showing films on the road. A large French-Canadian family named Chicquin lived there with their seven sons. On one occasion, Forrest suffered a bad asthma attack after arriving at their home. He was in a bad way and needed medical attention. One of the boys loaded Forrest into a vehicle and drove him to a medical clinic some 25 miles away to get the life-saving medication that he needed. No matter what time of day or night that he arrived, the Chicquin family would be up and ready for him with a hearty hot meal and conversation.

In 1951, with his wife and year old daughter, he immigrated down from Canada to Sacramento, California.  That same year he also went to work for the McCurry Brothers camera and photography store. Years later pop would open and operate out of his home, his own hi-fidelity stereo sound equipment and camera repair business. His work brought in hundreds of customers from all over Northern California. In time the experience that he gained operating his own business afforded him the opportunity to go to work for the audio visual department at Sacramento State University.

In 1957, Forrest and wife Marian became parents a second time with the arrival of their second child, daughter Penny.

In 1963, at the age of 42, he was awarded his Master Mason Certificate as a member of Sacramento’s local Tehama Lodge. He put in countless long hours working towards this level of Masonic achievement and was most proud of his accomplishment.

Forrest loved to maintain and tinker with audio-visual and stereo equipment. He owned and maintained an impressive library of eight track audio tapes of country western and popular music.

He also had a life-long love of automobiles and prided himself on maintaining and servicing every one of the cars and trucks he owned. He shared with his son-in-law Jeff a substantial amount of his car care tips and what to look for when maintaining a vehicle. On several occasions the two of them teamed up to repair several of the family vehicles.

In addition to metal work, machinery and audio-visual equipment, Forrest also was adept at both rough and finish carpentry. Over the years he extensively  added to or remodeled his Edna Street home as well as performing carpentry work at two of his daughter Lynn’s family homes.

His favorite plants and flowers included Azaleas, Roses, Begonias, Vincas, Sweet Peas and Crepe Myrtles. 

While working at California State University in the Audio-Visual Department, one of his film students was Carol Bland, who would later go on to become a local KCRA TV news reporter.

He loved becoming a great-grandfather to great granddaughters Ella and Haley, and great grandson, Liam.

In his final years, Forrest loved having a meal whenever he could at the original Mr. Perry’s roadhouse diner in South Sacramento.  The attraction was always the free tapioca pudding that was included in a seniors meal. In addition, he also loved the wonderful split pea soup served on Wednesdays and the hearty navy bean soup served all day on Saturdays. His other favorite local restaurants included the Black Bear Diner and Brookfield’s in Rancho Cordova.

Forrest passed away on Saturday October 4th 2014 with his daughter Penny and son-in-law Jeff at his side. 

In the mind of this writer and son-in-law, pop was the toughest and most resilient 92 year old man I’ve ever met or had the pleasure of spending any time with. 

We will miss you pop. We love you for all that you shared with us and how you immeasurably enriched each of our lives. Thank you so much for providing us with such a wonderful blueprint of what compassionate parenting is all about.

Jeff Dodson

October 15th 2014

The Power of No: A Book Review

The Power of No. This is a book about taking back control of your life. A substantial number of us have spent most of our lives subconsciously or otherwise giving up our power to others around us much to our own detriment. Taking back control of your life is another means of gaining back your personal power. James and Claudia Altucher have written this book to serve as a blueprint for reclaiming that power of ours back. All with the selective and judicious use of the simple word, no.

James and Claudia share with us their ideas on the application and use of No through seven chapters. Highlights of each chapter are shared here.

Chapter One: The No That Choses Life

Devoted to learning how to say no to stress, to taking your own life, your emotional life, to avoid disease, learning how to navigate away from negative chatter, and how to pick yourself up from rock bottom. James shares his own compelling story of plummeting from lofty financial heights to rock bottom and the aftermath.

Chapter Two:  The No That Brings True Love, Creativity and Abundance

I loved the quote from the Altucher’s in this chapter which is: “ If we have crappy people around, we have a crappy life.” With this quote in mind, a second quote carries the though further: “Reconsider who you call your friends, lovers and partners. You could be surprised. Because if you don’t say no to crappy people, your life will go down the drain.”

Chapter Three:  The No to Phony Storytelling

One topic taken up in this chapter speaks to the danger of allowing others to make our choices for us who themselves are unhappy about many things in their own lives.

Other topics are saying no to being a slave for others, plotting your escape from the 9 to 5 world, and, finally, taking steps to getting healthy, getting well, getting inspired, and  getting knowledgable.

The Altuchers inform us that complaining is draining. By disciplining yourself to eliminate complaining (if that is what you are prone to do) from your daily behavior. With regard to complaining, this is what they had to say: “Complaining sucks the air out of any new possibilities that may appear in the present moment; it drags things down into a depressive mode and leaves us drained.”

Thought attacks: The average person experiences up to 70,000 thoughts a day.

Learn how to say No to social pressure. That social pressure is countered with what the authors call ABC. Acknowledge, Boundary, Close. This is a means of politely but firmly shutting down those who are trying to overload you or who make unreasonable demands upon you and your time.

A no to abusive people primarily means avoiding them altogether, or, removing yourself from their spheres of influence.

Chapter Four:  The No to the Angers of the Past

No’s listed here include the following examples.

The application of a compassionate no. The example given here would be like the Highway Patrol officer at the scene of a horrific accident who gently but firmly prevents a mother from approaching the crushed vehicles and witnessing the mangled remains of a husband, a son or a daughter. Compassionately preventing another from witnessing an unspeakable horror.

No to mindless selfishness. Consider treating everyone else as if it’s their last day.

Saying no to lies; to the costume ball masks of life that we all learn to select and put on from childhood onward. Look outward for others that are true to themselves on the inside. Just like you are evolving to be. These are the kinds of folks that may well be . your new tribe.

Chapter Five:  The No to Scarcity

In order to counter scarcity one must take up the belief in abundance. Believe in it first and then it will come.

Getting unstuck. Here the Altuchers offer a nine step guide to getting unstuck by turning the flywheel of forward progress.

Practice the art of listening to others with an open heart. All people are drawn to those who are good patient listeners.

Chapter Six:  The No to Noise

The opening quote to this chapter is a great one. “You have the right to silence and be fully present, here and now.”

Identify the noise and distractions in your life and set out to minimize or eliminate them.

Consider adding Yoga to your regimen to help you focus and become grounded. This is Claudia Altucher’s area of expertise.

Chapter Seven:  The No to “Me”

We are not our thoughts (refer back to the thought attacks in Chapter Three).

The benefits of cultivating silence are: trust, value, time saved, mystique, observation, more brain energy, less web to untangle, and, less stress.

I enjoyed reading this book because the solutions and exercises offered within are imaginative, make sense and liberally laced with humor and wit. The Power of No is real world grounded with personal, shared stories of failures as well as successes that the duo author couple have lived through. The Power of No is clever, candid and what is presented within is all doable!

The Web page for James Altucher are: www.jamesaltucher.com (The Altucher Confidential). Web pages for Claudia Azula Altucher are: www.claudiayoga.com and www.earthyogi.blogspot.com

Jeff Dodson

September 30th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You: A Book Review

Serena Dyer is a daughter of world renowned spiritual author and speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer.

In reading this book, I learned that Serena was by no means a perfect child. Growing up, she experienced many of the challenges and obstacles most children and teens contend with. She shares examples of being independent minded, stubborn, contending with failures and working hard at overcoming being quick to judge others.

One of the great gifts she was provided by her parents was to follow her own destiny rather than to fit in, to conform. In this ten chapter book Serena shares how she grew up and how she grappled with recognizing what her own destiny was to be and how to pursue it.

This is her first book and it is entitled “Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You.” From the outset, I must tell you that I found this book to be an easy read, informative and entertaining.

The book is composed of ten chapters. My thoughts and takeaways from each are incorporated here.

 1.    Don’t Die with Your Music Still in You
Serena writes,“it isn’t about what you do with your life. It is about how you lead your life. Live a life of purpose. Wow! Get right to it.

In this first chapter, I loved this quote of hers: “When we hide who we really are in order to fit in or belong, we are suffocating are souls.”

This is the best description I have ever read of something I have occasionally felt on the inside from time to time in my own life when I strayed far from what I was put here to do.  The emphasis on the word suffocating in the quote is my own as the word she chose here so closely aligns with my own personal experience.

2.     Have a Mind That Is Open to Everything and Attached to Nothing
In this chapter, Serena shares with us several stories about her early childhood.  Some are humorous and served to illustrate just how independent minded and strong willed this young lady was. Serena talks about establishing alignment with her purpose.  She learned that she was and is a communicator.  She is very good at conversing with and speaking to others.

3.     You Can’t Give Away What You Don’t Have
In other words, if you don’t have love and compassion on the inside, then you don’t have those attributes to give away and share with others.

4.     Embrace Silence
In Chapter Four, Serena reflects upon how her mother served as a model of demonstrating listening and silence. Serena describes her mother as “an ocean of calm,” while she raised Serena and her seven other siblings. Serena shares how silence can be used as a powerful tool: “When we are quiet and focus on our thoughts, we’re able to realize what kind of thinking patterns we have, and change the ones that aren’t working for us anymore.”

I love silence. Working in silence, or performing my hobbies in silence. Have done so ever since I was a kid. This chapter resonated for me also.

5.     Give up Your Personal History
Serena begins Chapter Five with this quote: ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.”A variation of this quote I have found is: “You cannot march forward into your future facing and walking backward.”

Serena writes,that your personal history does not have to define who you are. Letting go of the past better allows you to embrace and live in the present.

6.     You Can’t Solve a Problem with the Same Mind That Created It
Revising your self-talk. Serena asserts that, “ If you allow anything to stop you from pursuing your passion, you’re stopping your soul from expanding.” Another great quote about one’s mind set here is offered by Spanx founder, Sara Blakely who stated: “I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it is safe.”

7.     There Are No Justified Resentments
Serena shares how she learned this from her father.  Anger does not serve you. It only keeps you in the same place that you want to get away from. Taking back control of your life. Blame yourself for your mistakes but not others. Own your own choices and the consequences that follow them.

8.     Treat Yourself As If You Already Are What You’d Like to Be
Believe it first then you will see it. Serena quotes Pablo Picasso here who said: “Everything you can imagine is real.” She devotes time in this chapter speaking about visualization and cultivating the emotional feelings that would arise from achieving higher goals and accomplishments.

9.     Treasure Your Divinity
A quote from Louise Hay begins this chapter: “You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Serena writes that, “Treasuring your divinity simply means accepting all parts of yourself as having come from pure, Divine love.”

In chapter nine, Serena shares her experience of choosing to be immersed in the holy water spring at Lourdes. This occurred while she accompanied her father, Wayne, on a trip that took in three of the most spiritual places in Europe. She describes the event as follows: “ I left the baths rejoicing, crying, laughing; I was ecstatic. I probably looked like a lunatic on the street, but I didn’t care. I felt great.” Become what you seek.

10.   Wisdom is Avoiding All Thoughts That Weaken You
I loved the quote that begins this chapter which is, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

In this final chapter, Serena shares the principles that are set forth in the book, Power vs. Force,  by author David Hawkins, M.D. , Ph. D.  This is one that her father shared with her when she was young. Power allows you to live and operate at your best without effort.  By contrast, Force requires movement and burns up energy. Peak athletes focus on performing at their highest capacity and using their own inner strength to excel. Power thoughts thus strengthen us while those of force weaken us.

Overall, I found this to be a great first book by a new author who offers a unique personal perspective of what she learned growing up for herself in addition to a peak inside the family of one of our greatest and most popular spiritual teachers and public speaker.

Serena Dyer has her own website, www.serenadyer.com.


Jeff Dodson
August 27th 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

One Of A Kind

Our religious leaders and philosophers are noted for their attempts to impress upon each of us just how unique each one us really is.  We are told that from the beginning of time up until the very end of time (if such a thing is possible), there will only ever be just one being that we know as our self.

That means just one you, one me, one Uncle Jonas.

So for the curious at heart, just what kind of mathematical odds against the possibility that each of us were ever born to begin with? What does the science of statistical probability tells us about just how unique we individually are?

An intriguing article on this topic by writer Tara MacIsaac was featured in the July 17th-23
2014 issue of the newspaper, Epoch Times. (www.theepochtimes.com)

Tara cites self help author/blogger Mel Robbins’ remarks at a 2011 Ted Talk (Technology, Entertainment & Design) conference in which she declared that the likelihood of you being born as you has been calculated out to about 1 in 400 trillion.

To quote the writer Tara, “This is the probability of you being born at the time you were born to your particular parents, with your particular genetic makeup.”

Tara reported that Dr. Ali Binazir, author and personal change specialist, was also in attendance at Mel Robbins Ted Talk. Dr. Binazir did his own computations and came up with the odds of 1 in 700 trillion.

Dr. Binazir’s conclusion was: “the odds that you exist at all are basically zero.”

By way of illustration, Dr. Binazir shared this scenario: “It is the probability of 2 million people getting together each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice and they all come up with the exact same number — for example, 550,343,279,001.”

Then there are those characterizing attributes that make up the individuality of each of us that perhaps serve to reinforce the uniqueness factor.

Internet writer/blogger, Mary Jaksch, offers a website, Goodlife.Zen (www.goodlifezen.com), that speaks to individuality. In an essay entitled, 35 Things That Make You Special, she lists the following:  personality, signature style, beliefs, spirituality, aspirations, dominate sense, thoughts, goals, creativity, happiness, attitude, attraction (whom/what are we drawn to?), genes, body, face, ethnicity, culture, voice, diction, gender, health, hormones, age, intelligence, life experience, childhood, trauma, opportunities, relationships, learning, habits, work, quirks and foibles, communication style, and, last, your life journey.

Whew! This list of 35 attributes or qualifiers, by her reckoning, would seem to lend support to the mathematical odds discussed beforehand.

In attempting to comprehend what these kinds of hyper-sized numbers represent, and, in review of the spice cabinet variables writer Jaksch has listed, one can’t help but feel a sense of awe and wonder at the apparent hand of Divinity that is at work here.

Way too many of us for too damn long have ignored just how individual and unique we all are and were meant to be.

So stop and pause the next time you come upon a mirror, give yourself a long gaze and then smile. You’re looking at a one-of-a-kind original.


Jeff Dodson
August 18th 2014

Gratitude

image courtesy of: joettles.com

Gratitude

This topic of discussion arose between my wife and I recently. How many people nowadays express their gratitude for something to another? Much less than there should to be.  Too many folks just take what they receive for granted or sadly, with an attitude of entitlement.

For many, gratitude means to be thankful or to give thanks for something we value.  An emotional feeling of appreciation for a kind of     act directed towards you.      

From the online reference source, Wikipedia, we are provided with this:
“Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. “

Browsing the web,  I discovered the following quotes about gratitude:
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
— William Arthur Ward (writer)

“Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

“When a person does’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.” — Elie Wiesel

“Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.” — Jacques Maritain

What lessons did I learn from my parents and grandparents about gratitude?

As a small child, it was always thank those who provided you with a gift at your birthday party. You did that either face to face or afterwards on the old fashioned house telephone.

As a teen and later young adult, I was taught to send a small note or a card of thanks to someone who taught you a new skill, provided assistance in a job lead, a tip that paid off for you or maybe just a note of admiration and thanks to a person you just damn well felt good about.

The responsibilities of caregiving drove home the necessity of expressing gratitude to all of my parents’ medical providers, nurses, can’s, whenever we had an appointment or need for their services. My late father’s banker, for example, is now the banker for my wife and I primarily due to the conscientious and loving attention she provided to dad.

Sociologist Georg Simmel calls gratitude, “ the moral memory of mankind.”

Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis campus, and a leading scientific expert on gratitude, has discovered through his research that practicing gratitude has proven to be one of the most reliable methods for increasing happiness and life satisfaction. Gratitude appears to strengthen the immune system and lower blood pressure. Gratitude has also been found to strengthen and enhance relationships.

Gratitude is viewed as a prized human propensity in the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu traditions.

Gratitude is something we need to show and spread around a lot more in our society today in place of smugness, entitlement and the notion that, ‘the world, or, somebody owes me something.’

It is an easy trap to fall into. That is, taking for granted all of what we have today that, at one time, was all merely dreams or a bucket list of achievements yet to be fulfilled.

A simple statement and a quote to end this blog comes from the late President John F. Kennedy.
“We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”


Jeff Dodson
August 9th 2014

Alzheimer’s Research: The Alarming New Drug Failure Rate

A few weeks ago, I came across an article written by John Carroll at the online website FierceBiotech (www.fiercebiotech.com).  The article was entitled, Alzheimer’s R & D suffers as trial failure rate hits an astounding 99.6%.

My immediate reaction was, this cannot be true. Turns out, sadly, that it is true.

Jeffrey Cummings, director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health has been researching the medication studies and clinical trial data available at www.clinicaltrials.gov for the time period between 2002 to 2012.  He reported his findings to FierceBiotech that determined that the clinical trial failure rate for a new Alzheimer’s drug was indeed 99.6%.

Three most recent Phase III clinical trials that ended in failure with their respective new drugs were Ely Lily and their Solanezumab,  J & J’s Bapineuzumab, and, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals version of Bapineuzumab.  A successful Phase III clinical trial is the last step in the process for a pharmaceutical company to obtaining FDA approval of the new drug and delivering it to the consumer marketplace.  It is worth noting that the time a new drug takes to reach the market place from its original inception in a laboratory is between 12 to 15 years.  The total financial expenditure for all this according to industry claims comes to approximately 1 billion dollars.  That’s for just bringing one drug successfully to consumers.

The bigger pharmaceutical firms are starting to move away from investing their money in any  medication that deals with late stage Alzheimer’s.  The thinking within the industry is that it is too late to do anything measurably corrective for anyone with late stage AD.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) devotes $600 million a year just for Alzheimer’s research.  Though this is a substantial sum, it represents approximately one tenth of the money that is directed towards cancer drug research.  The large pharmaceutical firms contend that if the NIH would pump a greater amount of funding into AD and neurological research they would up the investment risk ante as well.

So where do we go from here? Is there anything offering hope out there for AD?

Promising new work is being done with delivering small amounts of medications across the so called blood-brain barrier.  Nature provided us with this barrier as a means of preventing harmful and infectious organisms from entering the brain.  It has taken scientists the better part of the past century to learn how to introduce what are known as small-molecules across this barrier and into the brain.  To make a difference in treating a disease such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, or a brain cancer, a step up to large-molecule medications is required.

The transferrin receptor pathway is a natural protein transport mechanism that is one of the hot research areas to use to transport large-molecule drugs into the brain.

On January 13th 2014, www.fiercedrugdelivery.com reported that Roche laboratories had developed a transferrin receptor pathway delivery method for getting their experimental drug, gantenerumab into the brain to reduce amyloid plaque.

On March 19th 2014, www.fiercedrugdelivery.com reported that AstraZeneca’s MedImmune had worked out a deal with Canada’s Bioasis Technologies to utilize their version of a blood-brain barrier breaching technique called the Transcend platform.  The Transcend platform acts a shuttle to piggy-back medications across the blood-brain barrier directly into the brain.

Another area of early detection research has been underway in Australia.  An early diagnosis trial in Perth involves an eye test to identify who will develop AD up to 20 years before the first disease symptoms begin to appear has shown promise.  Natasha Harradine of ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News reported about this study on Sunday July 13th 2014.  The trial participants consumed curcumin, a yellow compound found in the spice turmeric. The curcumin makes any beta-amyloids glow in an eye scan.  This particular trial is a joint project between the CSIRO, Edith Cowan University and the McCusker Foundation.

While these are promising new technologies for catching AD very early in it’s development, I don’t believe that researchers should completely give up on our loved ones who have already descended into late stage AD.  NIH and Big Pharma, please take note and up the anty with more funding….just like what’s been done with cancer and HIV research. Breakthrough medications and treatments for both of these diseases did not come through cheaply.


Jeff Dodson
July 21st 2014

A Book Review of Letting Go

Letting Go: The Pathway Of Surrender is the work of author David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. 

This book is my first exposure to the work of this author, who has written seven other books including co-authoring the 1973 groundbreaking work, Orthomolecular Psychiatry, with Nobel Laureate, Linus Pauling. Letting Go, his most recent work,  was written just prior to his death in 2012. 

Letting Go is an extensive, thorough primer that walks you through how are mind works with respect to the emotions that we attach to everything and the thousands of subsequent thoughts that arise as a result of those emotional feelings.

The essence of what this author is teaching you is this:

A thought is a “thing”.  It has energy and form. Thoughts are caused by suppressed and repressed emotional feelings. When a feeling is let go, thousands or even millions of thoughts that were activated by that feeling disappear. We surrender a feeling by allowing it to be there without condemning, judging, or resisting it. We simply look at it, observe it,  and allow it to be felt without trying to modify it. With the willingness to relinquish a feeling, it will run out in due time. It is all about learning how to shed our emotional baggage.

The primary emotions to contend with are these:

1. Apathy and depression
2. Grief
3. Fear
4. Desire
5. Anger
6. Pride
7. Courage
8. Acceptance
9. Love
10. Peace

Each of these emotions generates a vibrational frequency level. Apathy and depression rank the lowest. The vibrational frequency level increases up through grief, fear, desire and so on until you come to courage, acceptance and love which have the much higher levels. Peace generates the highest vibrational frequency level.

Our minds have come to handle our emotions in one of four ways: expression, suppression or repression and escape.

The goal is to learn to be set free from emotional attachments. It is the underlying emotions, untapped, bottled up and not dissipated that serve to act like the carbonation in a soda can (my own visual image device). A built up pressure that eventually must be released.

Dr. Hawkins sets forth many principles in this book. Among them, here are a few of the ones that struck me as compelling:

A thought is a “thing.” It has energy and form, as previously mentioned.

The mind with its thoughts and feelings control the body; therefore, to heal the body, thoughts and feelings need to be changed. 

What is held in the mind tends to express itself through the body.

An illness tends to result from suppressed and repressed negative emotions plus a thought that gives it a specific form (i.e., consciously or unconsciously, one particular illness is chosen rather than another).

Feelings are not the real self. Whereas feelings are programs that come and go, the real inner Self always stays the same; therefore, it is necessary to stop identifying transient feelings with yourself.

Dr. Hawkins had this to say about the emotion of anger:

“With regard to the emotion anger, the price we pay for chronic anger and resentment is sickness and premature death. Anger is binding, not freeing. It connects us to another person and holds them in our life pattern.”

A final quote that I loved of his is this one:

“If we look back on our life, we will see that every mistake we ever made was based on an opinion.”

The book is very comprehensive and not one that you can knock off in one afternoon.

It is more like a detailed blueprint to lovingly take your time with and soak up each aspect as you delve into it.

I have already applied the principles set forth in the book in dealing with old repressed anger feelings about an encounter in my childhood with a bully. It works!

I love what this book is all about.  Finding a pathway through the thicket of old stored away emotions to ones higher, inner spiritual Self.

For more information about the author, David R. Hawkins, visit his website at www.veritaspub.com/

Jeff Dodson

July 3rd 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

A Book Review of Percolate

It was the title that caught me at first.  Percolate. Just like a coffee maker. Second, since I have been an avid coffee drinker for decades, another reason to give this book a read.

Percolate is the first book by author, Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino. She is the founder of her own business, The Best Ever You Network and the host of  The Best Ever You Show.

Percolate is a book that offers a Nine Point Plan of self improvement.  Each of the nine chapters headings of the book are entitled Percolate Points. Coffee and the love of it is the vehicle that this author employs to capture your attention and illustrate a step by step plan to make changes in your life for the better. 

“Every day you wake up with the opportunity to think, behave, and relate differently; and that moment of choice is what Percolate is all about,” is a quote from Elizabeth that sets the tone of her book.

Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino shares three words that she lives by: motivation, consistency and discipline.  These three words, really, are the building blocks, the ingredients necessary with any self-improvement program.  Motivation is the reason or reasons that propel you towards making a change. Consistency is what you strive for in your efforts at making forward progress. Discipline is the stick to it no matter what final element.

The author sets forth what she call Percolate Principles.  There are thirty five of them. Those that resonated for me were:

Be authentic (remaining true to heart, to what your purpose really is)

Be inspired (what or whom do you admire and desire to emulate?

Be resilient (how tough are you in the face of setbacks?)

Be yourself (follow your own character script rather than that of someone else)

Take away quotes that I loved from this author:

“Everyone has challenging health problems, or other issues, but your potential has no limits.”

In terms of listening,  “are you still enough to hear yourself and others?”

“You have an expiration date, and despite your wanting to claim control over life circumstances, you’re not entitled to know when your expiration date will be.”

Percolate is a down to earth, well crafted book that is both humorous and informative. The author shares many of her most inspiring lessons along with a few of her most comical and embarrassing ones.  I loved her statements about the importance of Contributing amazingness to the world, and , learning to like your own blend.

Percolate is a book, in part, about making the transition from ego-based decisions centered from the mind into making decisions and exercising thoughtfulness from the heart towards yourself as well as others. “Think with your heart and uncover your authentic, best self,” is how this author put it.

I enjoyed Percolate along with my favorite cup of java!

Websites of author Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino are  www.thebesteveryou.com, and, www.Percolatebook.com.

Jeff Dodson

June 2nd 2014

FTC Disclosure:  I received this book for free from Hay House Publishing for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are unbiased and reflect my honest judgment of the product.

Learning From The Animal Kingdom

image: courtesy of coolfunpedia.blogspot.com

How do we treat our pets? 

Mostly with high regard and an abundance of

 devotion.  We love them unconditionally.

I learned a new phrase recently for the way an animal is looked upon with a missing or malformed limb.  Not disabled as we look upon our own kind who are born with such a challenge. Instead of disabled, one pet owner referred to her devoted pet as differently abled.

What an open minded view in which to look upon an animal born with less than all of it’s appendages or by attack from another!

The program, broadcast on PBS, My Bionic Pet, was captivating, entertaining and thought provoking.

How is it that so many animal owners have a more compassionate way of treating their pet or animals they encounter in nature that exhibit missing or malformed parts of their bodies?

Why are more of us in our society not more compassionate about those among us who are differently abled? 

As a long time caregiver for four aging parents of whom three have passed away due to illnesses complicated by Alzheimer’s dementia, the thought occurred to me of viewing what happened to my parents and others who suffer from dementia in a new light.  Rather than considering my late family members and other dementia stricken folks as cognitively disabled, might it simply have been that each have merely been rendered differently abled?  

In other words, each of them were compelled to have to operate, to communicate by a means different from what they and we were accustomed to for so many years. Except that now…the onus is on us to figure out, to be open minded enough (cast off judging attitudes along the side of the road) to embrace different ways of communicating/connecting with our loved one. So maybe, going forward, it has to be a kind of sign language, or abbreviated style of contact that conveys our acceptance, our understanding of what that person wants or is trying to say, just now in a different way than before. 

Speech has become slurred or sentence structure is jumbled. How do we work around this?

Comprehension has become lessened.  What simplified words, phrases, pictures, signs or miming will work to achieve the same thing?

As a caregiver, when faced with the care of a declining dementia patient or loved one, a unique challenge is definitely in store for you.  Why not look upon it as a puzzle solving opportunity instead of drudgery or despair?  The old key no longer works with the old lock.  The tumblers inside the lock changed.  Time to get busy and fashion a new key that will work on the old lock.

Our dementia afflicted loved one is still there, trying to hold onto hope and also hoping for a helping hand and heart

Find out in what ways they are still able to function and at what level.  Make room for empathy, compassion and patience as additions to your caregiving tool kit.   It’s differently abled time.

Thank You PBS!

Jeff Dodson

May 25th 2014