“There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life.” —Dr. Stephen R. Covey

I love Oprah. Don’t tell my wife that. I love watching her shows and reading her O Magazine. She inspires me and helps me to understand the power of giving. Today, I was fortunate to catch a show I had missed earlier. It featured ex-Microsoft executive John Wood. John was a high-profile executive at Microsoft. He had everything he could possibly wanted - paid-for business-class flights, a private chauffeured car, a beautiful home, and more money than he knew what to do with.

What made him walk away? On a trip to Nepal to “get away from the 24/7″ world of Microsoft, he visited some villages and discovered the appalling school conditions there. There were 70-80 children crammed into a dirt floor school house meant for 20. When it rained, the floor would turn into mud.

The library had 20 books which were left by traveling backpackers, but not suitable for children. John promised that he would return in one year with books. One of the teachers told him, many people who had visited said that they would return. No one ever did.

But John was different.

He said, “I was making wealthy shareholders wealthier” but there were millions of illiterate children in developing countries who could not read.

Was it hard to leave? “Oh it was so difficult … I was definitely left standing alone at parties.” People told him, “You’re crazy. You’re going through a midlife crisis.” But as John told Oprah, “You have your calling and can’t say no.”

He had originally promised to return to that small village in Nepal when he was on vacation with 300 books. Instead, a year later he returned with 3000 books. Today, he’s built 3600 libraries and collected 2.8 million books. In the past 7 years, he opened 287 schools. By the end of 2007, they’ll have 250 original book titles written by local authors.

When Oprah asked him if he knew that this was his mission he replied, “I had no idea. I just thought “‘maybe I was put on this Earth to do more.’”

What an amazing and inspiring story!

I want to ask you two questions:

1. “What is your calling?
2. “How have you answered it?”

My challenge to you:

1. Find Your Calling in Life.
2. Do Something about it.

“Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.” -Jim Rohn

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Photo: Merry Christmas by TIO

I would like to wish the readers, loyal visitors, and subscribers of Beyond Behaviors a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. As I look back on this past year, I have so much to be thankful for.

First, I am thankful for my wife, Miwa, who loves & supports me unconditionally. She makes me want to be a better husband and a better human being. Second, I am grateful for my family who loves me. And though they still don’t know what I do for a living, they always want me to be happy. Third, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my friends and former colleagues in Saipan (Becky Flores, Patty Mendoza, LJ Tenorio-Fejeran, Percy Torres, Thelma Cing, and Erica Sonoda Thornburgh) for their friendships, their dedication, and their desire to serve the needs of children.

Finally, my wish for the Beyond Behaviors readers/subscribers is to find that little joy during times of sorrows, to be that little light when there’s darkness, to rise above the system of mediocrity and strive to be your best, and above all to always believe that:

“You Will Because You Can.”
Follow Your Heart. Believe in Yourself. Transform Your Life.

Warmly yours,

Steve Nguyen

Beyond Behaviors
www.beyondbehaviors.com
Personal Development & Transformation

Should bloggers cite sources in their posts similar to journalists citing their sources when writing a magazine article or students writing research papers? As a blogger I try to cite, as best as I can, sources of information. Sometimes, because I’m lazy or careless or both, I fail to do so. Because there really isn’t a proper procedure to “blog” there seems to exist a laissez-faire attitude (myself included) when blogging.

On a daily basis, I read blogs on personal development (e.g., motivation, happiness, productivity, etc.) that oftentimes do not cite any sources of information. Either a tremendous amount of information flows out of the writers’ [click to continue...]

When I started blogging (www.stevenguyenonline.com) back in February 2006, I originally started with Joomla CMS. But it was just too tedious to post blog entries and the various “modules” became too confusing. So, a year later I switched to a new domain name (www.beyondbehaviors.com) and a new content management system, Wordpress.

Today, 10 months into using Wordpress and having a refocused blog, I’m much happier.

In looking back on what I’ve done through blogging and thinking about what I would like to do here are some goals for 2008:

1. Improve my blog design - Beyond anything else this has been and continues to be my biggest struggle. I really love the design style of Collis Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch. There’s just something really cool about his designs. Sadly, I cannot afford to pay for a web designer like Collis to do a custom designed theme for Beyond Behaviors. I can afford free though so if any designer is interested please let me know. Alas, I’m just a tiny fish in a big blogosphere with a few visitors (me and my wife).
2. Improve my blog ranking on search engines (Google) & Technorati and increase my site links to social bookmarking sites (StumbleUpon & Tumblr) - Having a higher Google ranking and site links to StumbleUpon and Tumblr will enable visitors and those interested in personal development and emotional health to find my blog easier. I believe that Beyond Behaviors offers quality contents with a psychological and crisis management perspective that isn’t offered anywhere else.
3. Increase the number of daily visitors and RSS subscribers - When I started blogging, I didn’t care about visitors. Who cares about visitors when you have a blog or website, right? Wrong. I have since realized just how important having visitors are to my blog and how much more visitors can bring to a site.
4. Increase the number of comments per post - Along with (hopefully) an increase in visitors, I’d love to have much more interactions and dialogues with my visitors and readers. I think that my refocused blog will help to keep readers engaged and contribute their voices and perspectives. So PLEASE leave comments (constructive, engaging, and insightful ones are best).
5. Post more comments on fellow bloggers’ sites (e.g., Zen Habits, ThinkSimpleNow, Life Optimizer, Skelliewag, lifehack, DailyBlogTips, NorthxEast, ProBlogger, and CopyBlogger).
6. Maintain quality content about Personal Development, Emotional Health, and Transformation on Beyond Behaviors - Just a little over one month ago, I decided to shift gears and talk more about uplifting topics like achieving your best, emotional well-being, and transforming your life. I plan on sticking to this new focus and hope that visitors will find the site more positive and more infused with energy and excitement to help them achieve emotional health and be their best.

If you enjoy Beyond Behaviors, please subscribe, link to this site from your blog, Stumble it or Tumblr it, stop by and post comments, and tell your friends.

Last of all, thank you to everyone who has visited, commented, and offered feedback and suggestions. A special thanks to those who have linked to me. It has been a wonderful 2007, with lots of changes sprinkled here and there, most notably that I started Beyond Behaviors in February 2007, my wife and I left Saipan in July 2007 and moved back to Dallas, Texas to be closer to family, and I found a great job in September 2007 working for Collin County Community College.

resilient |riˈzilyənt|
(of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed. (of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions

Some time ago, I met a woman* who shared with me her life story. She grew up very poor and was working and supporting herself by the time she was 15 years old. As a child, she lived in a constant state of fear from a family member who physically abused her. She recounted stories of her being kicked, slapped, and punched in the body, face, and head, with scars to show for it. When she was in her mid-40’s, she was involved in a car accident that almost left her paralyzed. The firefighters had to cut the roof of her car and then hoisted her broken body out.

Multiple surgeries and weeks of rehabilitation later, she finally learned to walk.

As she sat in front of me, she shared about her secret to appreciating and living a happier life. She told me that letting people know that she was “just happy to be here” no matter what the life or work environment was like helped put perspective on things. When she would hear others complain about their jobs, she’d chuckle and say “I’m just happy to be here.”

This amazing woman taught me the true meaning of appreciating and loving life. Through the trauma and challenges (poverty, abuse, auto accident) she made a conscious decision to influence how her life would turn out. Today, she’s happily married with children of her own.

Have you met people with life-changing stories? Do you have a story of your own? Please share with our readers.

*Note: This woman is a fictional person who represents true stories from real-life survivors of trauma and abuse.

In face-to-face human interactions, people talk or communicate using three (and sometimes a combination of) different modes. Oftentimes, not being aware of the subtleties that exist among the different types can cause embarrassment (at best) or end up being really offensive leading to (sometimes) physical altercations.

The three types of face-to-face “talks” are:

1. Verbal: what we say (the words we speak)
2. Paraverbal: how we say it (tone, pitch, cadence)
3. Nonverbal: our body language (kinesics) & personal space (proxemics)

When someone is anxious, upset, hostile/aggressive, always use supportive, empathic skills first. Crisis situations can oftentimes be defused using verbal de-escalation skills before reaching the point where physical intervention becomes necessary. Good verbal interventions skills reduce the need for physical intervention.

Empathic Listening Skills: Active process to discern/understand what the other person is really saying.

1. Listen Carefully
2. Give Them Undivided Attention
3. Be Nonjudgmental
4. Use Silence
5. Restate/Paraphrase to Clarify (Reflection)

Do NOT give advice and Do NOT question. Why?

1. It takes the burden off you. Leave the advice-giving to Oprah. You’re there to support, not to play talk show host.
2. It’s ok to give suggestions/ideas/options for a better way.
3. It helps people talk through their problem and vent their frustrations.
4. It helps people feel understood.

self-im·por·tance (sělf’ĭm-pôr’tns)
n. Excessively high regard for one’s own importance or station; conceit.

Years ago, I met a woman who was always “so busy.” It didn’t matter what time of the day, month or year - she was always really busy. In fact, it was difficult to imagine just how “busy” her life was considering where she lived and what she did (and didn’t do).

This woman would always find herself “volunteering” for jobs or projects and then would inevitably turn right around and lament to everyone else, “I’m so busy. I’ve got so much to do.”

One year, she volunteered for a local event and was “in charge” of something I forgot but it was like handing out water bottles or some similarly “important” task. It was amazing to see how serious she took this job and how upset she was that others didn’t understand the significane of handing out water bottles. While other volunteers were smiling and having a great time volunteering, this poor woman was running around all wound up and in distress.

As I watched her, I thought about how much she had to work to prove to others just how hard she worked. Here she was volunteering for a job and feeling that others didn’t really appreciate her contributions. The problem was that she didn’t realize that the harder she “worked” and the more “serious” she became, the more she turned people off.

This resulted in the never-ending and often vicious cycle of push-pull or pursuer-distancer dance. In other words, the more she sought attention for her role (i.e. the more she saw herself as important), the more her actions distanced others. So she works harder at getting their attention and they work harder at avoiding her. It’s a terribly sad game. But the saddest part was that she never saw herself as an active participant in this game.

Have you ever known anyone like this? If so, did you do or say anything to him/her? Why or why not?

Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around.  ~Buddy Buie and J.R. Cobb, “Rock Bottom” (song)

In Part 1, I asked the readers to think about several questions:

• “Am I controlling my life or is my life controlling me?”
• “Do I want to steer my way through life or let it steer me?”

In this “answers” (part 2) post, I’ll ask 2 more questions:

• “How badly do I want to change?”
• “What am I waiting for?

Thus, from those questions, the “how” to control your life would go like this:

1. Life is not a spectator sport. Jump in and take control of it.
2. Only you and you alone can influence how your life will turn out.
3. You have to want to change.
4. Take action. Do it now.

In a previous post, I wrote about George Badillo and “Inside Outside,” a documentary about eight people with mental illness who were institutionalized. The film follows their transition from nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals into the community. George shared, both in the documentary and to me personally, that the catalyst that spurred him to change was him wanting a better life. He was walking around the grounds of the mental hospital when it hit him that he’s wasting his life away. So, following the 4-Steps to Taking Control of Your Life, this is how George did it:

1. He realized that he was not in control of his life, that he was watching it unfold but not the one in control.
2. He then acknowledged that he and only he can influence how his life would turn out.
3. He told himself that he wanted to change, that he had to change.
4. Finally, he took actions: exercising daily, working with his doctors to lower his dependence on medications, taking classes offered, and doing whatever it took to get himself up and out of that hospital.

This is a man who had been institutionalized 17 times! He took control of his own life instead of letting it control him. The key, and perhaps the most difficult step, is to transfer the “wanting to change” into “doing the change (taking action).”

Here was a man who had, and still lives with, mental illness. He was in the mental hospital 17 times during much of his adult life. He then made a conscious decision to turn his life around. He took the steps necessary to ensure his success and then took a giant step from wanting to change into taking proactive actions toward that change.

“My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible. All are of no value unless they are followed by action. I will act now.” —Og Mandino

“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.” —Susan Polis Schutz

In mental health, therapists sometimes use the term “locus of control” to get a picture of how a person views the causes of life events. There are two types of locus of control, internal and external. A person with an internal locus of control sees himself as having more control over life events. A person with an external locus of control, on the other hand, sees life dictating control. Internal locus of control is you paddling your boat down the river of life. External locus of control is letting the river of life push and carry you.

As a Disability Services Advisor and Psychotherapist I often see this in students and clients. But beyond the school and clinical settings, I see this in people in general.  Perhaps more than anything else, what I often hear goes something like this:

• “I’m so stressed out because I have so much going on.”
• “I’m so tired because X, Y, and Z happened to me!”
• “I’ll never get things done because I need to do A, B, and C.”

The role of counseling is to help people gain or regain their perspective and give them back their sense of control. Most people don’t need a counselor to help them gain perspective, they need good friends or family members to, first of all, be supportive and then, secondly, to share insights and ideas about realistic goals.

As we enter this holiday season, why don’t you take a closer look at your “locus of control” and honestly ask yourself this question:

“Am I controlling my life or is my life controlling me?”

After you answer this question, the next step is to then determine:

Do I want to steer my way through life or let it steer me?

* One visitor (SDC) pointed out the obvious, that although I’ve posted questions, I never really provided answers. I’ll do that in my next post.

We’ve all come to a certain point in our lives when we’ve asked ourselves questions like: “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” or “Should I Quit or Keep Chugging Along?”

None of us is spared this dilemma and the older we get, the more “forks in the road” we face. Joan Borysenko shared a few things about “When to Call It Quits.” Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

“Am I riding a dead horse?”
Basically, this says when the horse is dead, get off. While I am a big advocate for following your dreams (see my sidebar), I am also a firm believer in realistic optimism. For instances, I can study day and night and yet somehow the theories of Calculus and Organic Chemistry escape me. This was the case with me struggling while a pre-med major at Baylor University. It didn’t dawn on me that my strengths just weren’t in the pure math and sciences because even though it came easier to my friends, it didn’t to me.

It took running out of mental steam or literally riding the horse until it died until I finally had to face the fact that I was not good with advanced math or pure science like chemistry.

In Vietnamese, when people describe a student as “smart” they would say “học giỏi” meaning “study well” as in he/she studies well. They would use the word “thông minh” to describe a person who is “intelligent” but not when talking about a “good student.” Vietnamese believes that if you studied hard enough that you could learn anything. The problem, however, is that it fails to differentiate between skill deficits and performance deficits. Skill deficits involve an inability to perform the appropriate behavior. For example, Ashley does not have the social problem-solving skills to interact appropriately with her peers on the playground. Thus, even if Ashley wanted to interact appropriately, she does not possess the required skills to do so. Performance deficits, on the other hand, is where a person is able to engage in the behavior but fails to do so.

“No one likes to admit failure or that a cherished dream is over, but letting go of what isn’t working frees up energy that’s better spent on something else.” —Joan Borysenko, PhD

“Is the life I’m living the one I really want?”
We’re told to color inside the line in grade school. We’re instructed to stand in the lunch line in junior high. We try to copy the popular kids’ fashion in high school. And we’re expected to follow what society or our families demand of us in college and beyond.

When I was in Japan, I saw hundreds of men in black suits heading to work (called “salarymen”) everyday. Then I would see another group of salarymen coming home after work similar to that scene from the movie, “The Matrix.” It’s as if they wake up, wear the same outfits, head to work, work, and then return home. Everyday.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” —Henry David Thoreau

“What am I afraid of?”
When I wasn’t sure about how I would break the news to my parents how much I hated law school, my biggest fear was the look of disappointment on their faces. It’s amazing because to some of you reading this, that might sound ludicrous. We each have our own fears, things that we’re afraid of, things that we dread facing. For me, it’s letting my parents down. It’s something that has plagued me. Years later, after facing my inner demons, it now serves to inspire me.

I first had to admit to myself that I was afraid. Then I had to face that fear - head on.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

“I believe the only reason we’re here is to find out what we love…and get about the business of living it!” —Oprah