Getting Past What Holds You Back with Baby Boomer Weight Loss Expert Scott 'Q' Marcus
As someone once said, “Pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.”
We all experience pain during our lives. It’s inevitable. It’s part of the human condition. However, focusing on it and fearing how much worse it can get does nothing to limit nor lower it.
When I am in pain, I am able to reach out to others for support and to take time to comfort myself. At times like those I need healing, not more to worry about.
by Allen Klein, MA, CSP
“the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”
Comics know how true this is. A number of well-known comedians experienced a tragic childhood and turned their grief into humor.
Charlie Chaplin, for example, was five years old when his father died of alcoholism. Soon after that his mother went insane and no longer recognized her own son. Some of the other comedians who turned tears to laughter were Carol Burnett, Joe E. Brown, Jackie Gleason and Art Buchwald.
Dr. William Frey II, a biochemist from Minnesota, has found that emotional tears contain a greater concentration of protein than tears that are produced by other means, such as those that occur when cutting an onion. (An odd bit of Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not here—Dr. William Frey II is a leading expert on tears; Dr. William Fry, Jr., a former professor at Stanford University, is a world renowned expert on laughter. There is cosmic comedy after all!!)
Frey (the crying expert) believes that tears resulting from sadness play an important part in removing harmful toxins that are produced by stress. He speculates that the tears produced by laughter serve the same function as the tears of sorrow.
In other words, laughter’s tears may also carry away harmful toxins from the body, and the suppression of them, as in the suppression of emotional tears, increases our susceptibility to stress-related disorders.
In spite of the connections between laughter and tears, I believe that there is a major difference. Laughter helps us transcend our suffering; crying does not.
Tears of sadness turn us inward; we cry and feel sorry for ourselves. Laughter, on the other hand, focuses us outward. Laughter expands our vision and gives us a new way of seeing our situation. Author Helmuth Plessner notes “The laughing person is open to the world.” The crying person, on the other hand, only sees his world, his suffering. Perhaps this is why one Yiddish proverb tells us: “laughter can be heard farther than weeping.”
Tears of sorrow focus only on one aspect of our loss, our pain. They emphasize the seriousness of the situation, bind us to our suffering, and narrow our vision.
On the other hand, when we can allow some humor to be part of our pain, we are not as directly involved in our suffering. It is as if we put on someone else’s glasses to view our situation. Everything seems familiar, but there is a slightly different look to the picture.
It is not that our pain itself has diminished; it’s just that space around it has gotten bigger. Any animal confined to a small area will eventually become agitated and restless. It will bray, kick and try to tear down the fence. Expand the fence, and it will be content. One Zen master advised, “To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him.” So to ease a loss, try making the fence bigger with laughter, not with tears.
©Allen Klein, 2012
About the author: Allen Klein was our guest expert as part of our free “Getting Past What Holds You Back” series of inspirational conversations. He spoke about Getting Past Loss. You can find out more about this series at www.ThisTimeIMeanIt.com/register To download the recordings, go here.
Award-winning professional speaker, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, Certified Speaking Professional from the National Speaker’s Association. Author of 17 books including, The Healing Power of Humor, The Courage to Laugh, Inspiration for a Lifetime, Change Your Life!: A Little Book of Big Ideas, Learning to Laugh When You Feel Like Crying, and the audiobook TeacherLaughs. (You can find his books at http://www.allenklein.com/books.htm) He is also a writer for Examiner.com.
I do not wish to be the type of person who slowly, sadly shakes his head, pining for a simpler past, longingly opening conversations with “When I was a kid…” Moreover, when I become aware of an unfortunate societal trend, I try to prevent cranking up my inner curmudgeon, cynically inquiring of my peers, “What has gone wrong with our society?”
Having said that, something has gone wrong with our society because — when I was a kid — brides-to-be didn’t shove tubes up their noses to lose weight before their weddings.
While skimming TV channels, images of young women commuting to work with feeding tubes hanging from their noses flitted across the screen. They didn’t seem ill; quite the contrary, they looked to be “in the pink” (yet another reference from “when I was a kid”). The reporter explained that some women with upcoming nuptials are resorting to a severe calorie-restricted crash diet to drop ten to 20 pounds in the two weeks prior to their big days. That unto itself is not newsworthy; long before “I was a kid,” I imagine women (and even some men) resorted to last minute diets in order to present their best in front of friends, family, and God.
What was exceptional was that, in these cases, the method of choice consisted of consuming only 800 calories a day, delivered in the form of shakes served through a medically implanted feeding tube threaded through the woman’s nose, down the esophagus, and into her stomach. The tube remains in place ten days and the procedure costs about $1,500. Side effects include bad breath, constipation and dizziness. (Nothing says, “kiss the bride” like halitosis.) The doctor performing the procedure said, “At first I decided not to do it for people who just want to lose a few pounds. But then I thought, why should I say five or ten pounds are not enough? People want to be perfect.”
Yet, this is beyond the pale. [Read more…]
Part 3 of 3 (part 2 can be found here)
Stress is very personal, and so are the things in your life that create your stress. First, identify what “stresses you out” and make a management plan that works for you and your family. Begin with your “To Do” list.
1. Write down everything you need to get done on List #1.
2. Divide a 2nd sheet of paper into three categories:
- Critical – These items must be completed immediately because people or deadlines are depending on them. Some tasks that create conflict or are emotionally difficult to do should be placed here too.
- Important – These tasks are not as immediate as critical, yet still urgent.
- Postpone/Delegate – This category is a true stress reliever because it lets you delegate tasks. These tasks can slide for a bit while you tend to those on the critical list. Is it a task you can hand off to someone else? That takes it from your plate and may even work into another’s specialty area.
3. Now, return to list #1 and go through each item one at a time. Honestly determine where to place each task on your category list. You should have a new priority list that is fairly evenly divided among the three categories. This is more manageable.
4. Begin to tackle your tasks with the list under “Critical.”
You’ll find extra time in your day if you organize areas of your life to enable you to function more efficiently. [Read more…]
We know more than we sometimes realize. Unfortunately, we don’t take the time to listen to ourselves as often as we need.
Take a moment. Shut off the TV. Put the computer to sleep. Turn down the radio. Quiet your mind.
Listen.