Thursday, April 15, 2010

THE CELL PHONE - FRIEND OR FOE?

Family members are now benefiting by regular contact using cells. It is now much easier to stay in touch - something that is especially important with children.

However, there is a big BUT. Look at these quotes from Valdosta Times, GA:

"Children 8 to 18 devote an average of seven and a half hours a day"

"Only about 3 in 10 parents have rules about cells"

"47% of heavy media users earn mostly Cs or lower"

"They are using this to escape reality"

"A whole new loss of ability to interact on a more personal level"

"I locked the laptop, keyboard, mouse and cell in the car at night"

"I had caught my 13-year old at it at 5:30 am"

Another writer says we need to outsmart the smart phones. By that, he means find new ways at home and at school to use the technology together for the wellness of each of us. He wants us to harness the immense new power.

When we discovered fire, we found ways to harness it. Using wellness as our goal, the possibilities become huge.

Give us your feedback on this FAMILY CHALLENGE.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

WELLNESS VS. ILLNESS

Our families and our society are caught in a terrible illness trap. We all believe in wellness for ourselves and others. We all believe in illness too much. When illness happens we then believe that we must find a cure for the illness in order to be well.

There are several dumb things in all this:
  • We assume we can find a cure
  • We assume that the cure will then mean wellness
  • We have this naive idea that wellness is just one step away

The facts are that wellness is a combination of a number of key ingredients. In the Rainbow model, there are six: health, relationships, information, roots, values and faith. Handicaps of any sort are not on this list.

The other fact is that a cure does not necessarily provide wellness. Why? Because wellness and illness are in two different leagues. Cures are about solving problems which just get us back to where we were - good or bad. Wellness is about getting life right.

Let's be practical. A person has a severe allergy. It interferes with breath, disturbs the person day and night. Do we say to that person, with the right medical attention you should find relief in three months. The answer is yes, but.......

The BIG BUT is why do we leave that person for three months before making wellness suggestions. What is stopping this sufferer from attending to a key relationship, a family member needing support, a new idea for the whole family?

We hold back because we are in the illness trap - where this fantasy controls a life.

The other big thing is that everybody has some form of handicap: physical, emotional or spiritual. These are not always evident even to the person in question. Nevertheless that is the big fact on which Freud made a good living.

So, there is every reason in the world to get onto wellness - both because it is great and because it tends to bring with it "cures" we don't expect. Besides, wellness is our best brand of preventative medicine.

Let's hear from you on this latest FAMILY CHALLENGE.