What You Actually Do Matters Most of All...

Since your self, reputation, name, and identity are stories you and others tell about you, what you actually do matters.

What you actually do, your actions, matter more than your appearance, beliefs, opinions, education, IQ, career, income, or anything else.

What you do changes things. It affects others. It affects the world, the entire universe. 

Others remember what you do. That’s what they tell stories about. You are the story you and others tell about what you actually do. 

Your Identity, Part 7: You Don’t Have One…

Truthfully, you do not have one, single identity. No one does. Everyone who knows you, knows you differently. They see you from their own unique points of view. 

Everyone who knows you identifies you in their own unique ways. They tell different stories about you. They have different names for you. They identify you by different outstanding physical features, personal characteristics, and possessions.

Everyone who knows you, including yourself, knows a different you. You have multiples identities. 

Your Identity, Part 6: Your Possessions and Setting

In addition to your reputation, name, outstanding physical features, or personal characteristics, your identity (how others identify you) might include your outstanding material possessions and setting.

When you drive a vehicle or own a house that stands out to others, they identify you by it. Likewise, if you live in a community, work in a building or for a company, or participate in a social group that stands out to others, they identify you by it.

In some cultures, an individuals’ possessions are viewed as extensions of them. They are part of the whole individual who owns them. When they die, their possessions go with them. They’re either burned or buried with them. 

Do others identify you by one or more possessions? If so, what? Know how others identify you.

Your Identity, Part 5: Your Outstanding Personal Characteristics

Again, your identity is how others identify you. It’s how they distinguish you from everyone else. It includes your reputation; the stories others repeat about you, as well as your name. Others might identify you by your outstanding physical features. Still others might identify you by your outstanding personal characteristics. 

Your outstanding personal characteristics might be physical, mental, spiritual, or social. Outstanding physical characteristics include, but aren’t limited to, beauty, muscularity, being taller or shorter than most, and weighing more or less than most.

Examples of outstanding mental characteristics include being more or less intelligent than average, having excellent or little memory, being quick or slow witted, having excellent or poor problem-solving abilities, or having a vivid or dull imagination. 

Examples of outstanding spiritual characteristics include such things as having good instincts, being sweet or mean spirited, influential, inspiring, high spirited, reclusive, or the one who brightens the room.

Outstanding social characteristics include such things as having many friends, knowing everyone in town, having many social connections, being on everyone’s guest list, being influential, and leading others.

Know your identity. Do others identify you by one or more outstanding personal characteristics? If you so, which ones?

This is it.

This is it. This is your one opportunity to live your life. You only get one opportunity. There’s no rehearsal. No additional chances.

You are not a “spiritual being having a human experience.” You are a human being. You’re full of spirit and life. You are never more fully human and alive than you are now.

Before you came forth from your mother’s womb, you were less human than you are now. After you die, you will again be less human than you are now. This is it.

Now is not the time to avoid living your life in this world on this planet, Earth. Now is not the time to escape into fantasies about previous lives or a better life in a better place after this one. Now is not the time to distract, drug, transcend, or ascend yourself or be more “spiritual.”

Now is the time to be fully human right where you are. Be your human self, your ego. You have no “Higher Self.” Believing you do only disparages the human self you are. 

It’s not time to annihilate, dissolve, or transcend your ego. That’s self harm. It’s time to fully realize your ego. Your ego is not an abstract, psychological concept. It’s not a problem. It’s who you are. 

You are your life-story from birth to death. You create it. Become your self. Become yourself-as-a-story. Live yourself-as-story. Improvise it. Make it up as you go.

You’re not divine. You’re human. You’re not immortal. You’re mortal. Your life is not eternal. It’s temporary. This is it.

You’re not special because you’re something more than a temporary, mortal, human being. You’re special because you are a unique, once-in-forever, temporary, mortal, human being. 

You’re not just visiting here. You’re not just passing through on your way back to your true home. This is it. This Earth is your true home. This time is the time of your life.

You are like a shooting star. You come into being, shine for a while, and disintegrate. This is your time to shine!

Now is the time to invest all you have in becoming who you are here to become. It’s time to fully realize your self and the purpose of your life. It’s time to fulfill the life-affirming desires of your heart. They’re yours alone to fulfill.

That’s what you’re here to do. That’s what you must do before you die. That’s what we all desperately need you to do.

This is it. Live the best life-story you can live. Live a life worthy of being human.

The Core Problem with the Mind/Body Paradigm…

The Mind/Body Paradigm

The mind/body paradigm is a response to viewing you in purely physical terms. It affirms that you are more than physical matter. You are nonphysical stuff too. You have a mind, are a mind in a body, or a mix of mind and body.

It’s also a response to viewing you in purely materialistic terms. It rejects reducing you to matter and viewing you in mechanical terms. It affirms that you are more than a mechanical body with replaceable parts. You have a mind. You are a living human being.

Those who favor the dualistic mind/body paradigm tend to be religious. (They might prefer to say “spiritual.”) As such they often value mind over body.

They value the invisible over the visible, the immaterial over the material, metaphysical over the physical, and the supernatural over the natural. They value your soul.

Materialists reduce you to matter, particles, and natural forces. Mind/body dualists add the nonmaterial element of your mind. Sometimes they deify it to Mind.

The Core Problem 

Here’s the core problem materialists and dualists share: They both deny your spirit.

Materialists believe spirit is a religious belief. It’s supernatural and outside the scope of natural science.

Dualists agree that spirit is a religious belief. They draw on religion as a source. They work hard to rationalize it.

Many argue that your brain is not the generator of your consciousness but the receiver of a consciousness that comes from a higher source.  

Some even push the mind/body dualism into mind-monism and mentalism. It’s all energy. It’s all Mind. It’s all God. You are Divine.

Whether dualists or monists, those who value mind over body conflate your spirit with mind/Mind and deny that your spirit exists in its own right.

Re-Visioning Your Spirit 

My view, rooted in the natural phenomenon called thumos in the Ancient Greek, affirms your spirit. It affirms your experience of being alive and seeing that others are alive too. It also affirms your experience of seeing that living things die.

The difference between being alive or dead is spirit. Your spirit is what makes you alive. It is a natural force like magnetism and static electricity. Like them, it is an invisible natural force and known by experience.

Where did spirit come from? Where did magnetism and static electricity come from? We don’t know. Perhaps all natural forces are inherent to existence. Our lack of knowledge about natural forces doesn’t diminish their reality.

Whatever is alive has its own spirit. When its spirit goes out, when it expires, it dies. Its body decays, its psyche floats free, and its spirit dissipates in the wind.

We have so much to learn about human spirits as well as the spirits of all other living things.

It’s time to stop denying and start affirming again the reality of your spirit and the spirits of every living thing.

Your Identity, Part 4: Your Outstanding Physical Features

In addition to your reputation and name, your identity includes your outstanding physical features. Your outstanding physical features include the natural features of your physical body as well as everything you do to alter your physical appearance.

Your outstanding physical features might be one or a combination of what you were born with: your hair color and style, eyes, nose, mouth, body shape, breasts, arms, hands, butt, genitals, legs, and feet.

What outstanding physical features are natural to you? Have any been altered by an injury? Have you permanently altered any of your physical features?

You alter your physical features temporarily by what you do with your hair, face, clothing, and décor. How do you style your hair? Do you color it? Is your hair one of your outstanding physical features? What does it say about you?

What about your face? Do you give it outstanding features? Do you have a clean shaved face or facial hair? If you have a beard or mustache, how do you trim them? Do you wear face paint or not? Does your face paint draw attention to your eyes, lips, or both? 

Do you wear clothes that make you stand out from others? What does your clothing say about you?

What about your body décor? Do you wear hats, bags, jewelry, shoes, piercings, tattoos, a weapon, a phone, ear buds, or other accessories that make you stand out from others? If so, what does your body décor express about you?

Your postures and gestures might stand out to others and be how they identify you. Do you have outstanding postures and gestures others know you by? What do they say about you?

Take an inventory of your physical features. Do others identify you by one or more of your physical features that standout to them. What do your outstanding physical features say about you?

Your Identity, Part 3: What’s in Your Name?

One way others identify and distinguish you from others is by your name. Your name is more than a label. It’s also more than its dictionary definition and numerological meaning.

Your name is your reputation.  It’s the stories of your outstanding deeds condensed. 

Once others know your reputation, your name evokes it. Their opinion of your reputation is all they need to know about you.

Reflect on the name you have made for yourself up to this point in your life. What story does your name condense? Are you pleased with the name you’ve made for yourself so far? 

What do you want your name to evoke in the hearts and minds of others? What outstanding deeds do you need to perform to create the name you want?

Your Identity, Part 2: Your Reputation

Your reputation is central to your identity. It’s the combination of two things:

1.    The story of your outstanding deeds

2.    Opinions formed about your outstanding deeds

First, your reputation is what others repeat about you. Others talk about you. They tell stories of your outstanding deeds. 

Some stories they tell about you, they witnessed. Others they heard others tell about you. Either way, they do not repeat your entire life-story. They can’t. They only tell the stories that made an impression on them.

They made an impression because they were interesting to them. The deeds a person picks to tell others say as much about the person who picks them as you.

More important than what others say about you is what you actually do and tell others about yourself. You are the author of your reputation. No one knows better than you what you did that was outstanding.

You were there. You did the deeds. You live with the consequences of your deeds.

Secondly, there are opinions of your outstanding deeds. Whether others are witnesses of or gossipers about your outstanding deeds, they form opinions about them. They judge them in either favorable or unfavorable ways. 

Their opinions of your outstanding deeds are their opinions of you. They are your public reputation.

More important than other’s opinions of your deeds, is your opinion.

Always interpret your outstanding deeds in the most favorable light. Be truthful and honest; that is, tell the truth about what you did in a way that honors you.

Give yourself an honorable reputation. Share it with others so they have favorable stories about you to tell.

Goal of Life Therapy: A Process

The goal of Life Therapy is to engage in the therapeutic process.Therapy is the process of attending to, serving, and taking care of. It’s not healing; it facilitates healing.

Healing is the natural process of becoming an integrated whole. It happens with and without therapy. 

Physical Therapy is the process of attending to, serving, and taking care of your physical body. Psychotherapy is the process of attending to, serving, and taking care of your psyche, your mind. Life Therapy is the process of attending to, serving, and taking care of your life.

As Physical Therapy nurtures physical integrity, and psychotherapy nurtures psychological integrity, Life Therapy nurtures the integrity of your life. 

Unfortunately, religiosity has restricted the meaning of integrity to moral integrity. Moral integrity is about complying with an externally imposed moral code. It’s about living up to someone else’s expectations.

In therapy, integrity means “sound, whole, complete.” Integrity in physical therapy is about the wholeness of your body. In psychotherapy, it’s about the soundness of your mind. In Life Therapy, integrity is about the soundness, wholeness, and completeness of your life.

A life of integrity is an integrated life. It’s when your heart, hands, homies, and head harmonize as a whole.

“Heart” refers to your spirit, that which makes you alive. “Hands” refers to your body and what you do. “Homies” refers to your relationships and social groups. “Head,” intentionally listed last, refers to your mind, your mental processes.

When your spiritbodymind and relations harmonize, your life is integrated. You are integrated, whole, and healthy.

Change is the essence of life. As your life is ever-changing, so is your life’s integrity/ wholeness/health. It’s fluid. It’s more or less healthy. 

As you attend to, serve, and take care of your life, your life naturally becomes sound, whole, and complete.

Your Identify, Part 1: It’s Not What You Think…

Your identity is not some mysterious psychological concept. Neither is it a transcendent, metaphysical Higher Self.

Your identity is not some it-object apart from you. It’s not within or above you to seek and find.

Your identity is everything that distinguishes you from others. It’s a whole with many parts: your reputation, name, outstanding personal features, and outstanding material possessions.

What’s your reputation? Have you made a name for yourself? 

Do others identify you by you outstanding personal features? Do they identify you by what you own? 

Work, Part 3: What is Your Unique Work to Do?

Your work is both everything you do and the body of what you produce. As a unique individual, living a once-in-forever life, you have work to do.

Only you can do it. If you don't do your work, it won't get done. And we all lose.

What is your unique work? What is your unique body of work? If you know, how is it going?

If you don’t yet know, what are you doing to know it?

In Life Therapy, knowing your unique work and creating your unique body of work are essential. 

In Life Therapy, your self-as-story is your primary work. It is the most important work in your entire body of work.

How do you like your life-story so far?

How much longer do you have to work on it?

Work, Part 2: It’s What You Produce

Work is everything you do. It’s also what you produce by what you do. You produce a body of work. Your body of work is everything your work has produced to this point in your life.

Your body of work is far more than physical items. You produce emotions, moods, thoughts, mental images, vocalizations, memories, words, gestures, actions, meals, decorative arrangements, birthday parties and other social rituals, as well as the community, city, state, nation, world, and universe you live in.

Hobbyists, laborers, business professionals produce all kinds of things every day. Parents produce new human beings and release them to the world.

Whether or not you believe you’re creative, you are. Everything you do creates something. You cannot not create. The question is what.

What are you creating? What’s in your body of work so far?

Work, Part 1: It’s What You Do

Work. It’s what you do. In Life Therapy, work is everything you do, not just what you get paid for. Your job is work you get paid for. You do much more work than that.

Work is not just physical labor. Sadly, we Westerners still give almost exclusive recognition to physical labor. We feel, but rarely recognize, emotional, mental, and social labor. They do not produce tangible, measurable, sellable products.

The physical, emotional, mental, and social work you do influences everything else. Everything you do changes the world. It changes the entire universe.

Since you’re always doing something, you’re always changing the world. You do not choose to change the world. You cannot not change the world. 

The question is how.How is your work changing the world? How is it changing the universe?

Ego as Story

In Life Therapy your self, your ego, is not an abstract psychological concept. It’s not your psyche. Neither is it your soul or a metaphysical Higher Self. Most important of all, your ego is not a bad thing. It’s not a problem to eliminate. 

Your ego is a narrative. It’s your life-story. You don’t have a life-story. You are a life-story. You have no invisible self apart from your life-story.

You are “live and in progress” right now. You are creating your self, your life-story, with every action you take.

You’re making your self up as you go. Like a musician improvising music never played before or again, you’re improvising your life. Like improvised music, you’re a once-in-forever, here-and-gone, creation in time. 

From this point forward, be aware of your self-as-story.

You are Your Primary Health Care Provider

You are your own expert. No one knows you and your life better than you. No one knows your physical, mental, emotional, and social wellness and dis-ease better than you. No one has taken more care of you than you.

You are your primary health care provider. Everyone else gives a second opinion. You are able to gather information, make decisions, and do what’s best for you.

You usually know what’s wrong. When you don’t, you get help. You get help because you want to get to better place in life. You know what that better place looks like and just need some help getting there. 

Your Personal Power to Respond

Life Therapy affirms your personal power. You aren’t helpless. You’re empowered with life. You own your life. You are in charge of acting in your best interests without violating other’s. 

As an adult, you are responsible for yourself and your life. Being responsible is not about being held accountable and scolded for not meeting other’s expectations.

You aren't here to live up to other's expectations. You're here to live your life your way.

Being responsible is an expression of your personal power. It’s an ability. You have that ability. It’s your response-ability. You are able to respond for yourself.

You respond to others. In fact, you are the only one who can respond for you. No one else speaks for you unless you give them permission.

Live your ability. Live in your power to respond.

More about What Life Therapy is Not

Life Therapy is not-

Medication therapy. It is not about prescribing pharmaceutical medications to treat symptoms.

It is about collaborating with your Life Therapist and deciding whether or not medications will help you. Sometimes, they do.

Psychotherapy or Behavioral Health Counseling. It is not about identifying and treating mental health or behavioral issues with medications and talk therapy.

It is about collaborating with your Life Therapist and deciding whether or not psychotherapy or behavioral health counseling will help you. Sometimes, they do.

Life Therapy is not about a professional fixing you. It isn’t about diagnosing and keeping you in compliance with the provider’s treatment plan. Neither is it about your Life Therapist answering your questions and solving your problems for you.

Neither is Life Therapy-

Mentoring: Your Life Therapist is not an older, wiser, more experienced person you imitate to become a better person or professional. Rather your Life Therapist is one with whom you attend to, serve, and take care of your unique life.

Consulting: It’s not about bearing your soul to an expert who knows better than you how best to live your life, tells you what you’re doing wrong, and exactly what you need to do to fix it.

In Life Therapy, you are the expert of your life. No one knows it better than you. And no one knows better than you the life affirming desires of your own heart.

Life Coaching. It doesn’t require to you be healthy, have a clearly defined performance improvement goal, and realize more of your potential.

Coaching is part of it, but Life Therapy is focused more on the process of living your life. It about the process of realizing the life-affirming desires of your heart and fulfilling the purpose of your unique life.

How Life Therapy Began

Life Therapy is a new type of therapy that I developed. It’s based on both my personal and professional life experience. 

Personally, I’ve survived and thrived in spite of several Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs.) My ACEs included a dysfunctional family, pathological religiosity, emotional neglect, physical and verbal abuse, near-death at 12, agreeing to an unhappy tacitly arranged marriage, and being miserable in careers that duplicated my dysfunctional family.

Now I am out of the dysfunctional family, religion, marriage, and jobs that were so harmful to me. I’m very happily married to the love of my life and best friend and enjoying my life and work more than ever. I’m confidently optimistic about the rest of my personal life, however long or short it is.

Professionally, I succeeded in three careers and failed in one. I was mostly miserable in all four. All four had unhappy endings. (I was unhappy.)

I succeeded as a classical musician, ordained minister, and hospice clinician. I failed as a professional fundraiser. 

Even though my careers ended unhappily, I gave and received much of value. I gave myself and cared deeply for my audiences, students, members, patients, family members, employees under my supervision, and clients. I’m deeply appreciative of and grateful for the rich and rewarding professional opportunities I had.

Now I draw on my professional education, training, and experience to realize the purpose of my life. My purpose is to help myself and others fulfill the life-affirming desires of our hearts. I do this by providing Life Therapy, writing, and teaching. I’m confident my professional life will end well.

Your Life-Story, Part 5: Preview Your Future

Where are you going? Are you in control of your life? 

If you keep living as you do now, where will you take your life-story? What will you be doing?

Why are you taking your life-story there?

How are you going there? What does your time line look like? Who will be influential characters in the future of your life-story? 

Is that the direction you want to take your story? Are you sure? Are you on track to go there?

If not, then what do you really want as the plot of your future life-story? 

It’s your life. It’s not a rehearsal. It’s a live improvisation. You’re creating it as you go.

Are you going in the direction of fulfilling the life-affirming desires of your heart?

If so, who and what do you need to get there?

-      People

-      Knowledge

-      Skills

-      Attitudes

-      Physical resources

-      Life zone

These are a few questions you and your Life Therapist ask and answer as you preview the future of your life.