Stage 4 Thor

You may have noticed in some of my pictures that I have a bump on my chest. This bump, or port, is how they have administered chemotherapy and checked my blood over the past 3 years. While it might look painful it is actually a luxury to have one. The number of pokes in the arm that they would have to do over the years while receiving various treatments would be far too many, and my veins would eventually be damaged.  It is painful to have put in and removed, but the alternative was 1000 pokes.  The port connects a direct line through my chest up to the main artery in my neck.  Literally a direct line! Yesterday I had it taken out.  I was awake for the procedure both times. Both when it went in and yesterday when it came out. While you are numb and the doctors do everything they can to make it painless, there is this tug in your neck.  It feels awkward and you know they are pulling on some pretty important stuff in there but ultimately no pain.  Just pressu...

I am still determining where most of the world's problems lie, but if I had to take a guess, my first choice would be the breakdown of interpersonal communication.   Ineffective communication has hampered me throughout my life, and while my intentions were often good, the way I communicated them to others fell short.  I would be willing to bet that if you consider any argument or disagreement you have had with an employer, spouse, or friend, you would find that the breakdown of interpersonal communication was likely the crux of the issue.   Ironically, before I reevaluated this, I would have considered myself a good, if not great communicator.  I have been a successful salesperson and my ability to articulate my thoughts isn't too shabby.  With all that said, I was, and am still at times, a poor communicator. For starters, communication is a whopping 93% non-verbal.  So whatever delusions I had about my proficiency with the English language it was...

As I have mentioned in the past, our emotions are based on our thoughts which are based on our beliefs, experiences, values, etc.  Emotions are difficult to control, so I am not going to suggest that you simply “get over it” or “snap out of it”.  Emotions feel very real to us, and therefore are real.  What you CAN control are the thoughts that propagate those feelings.   I know many self-help professionals focus on emotional discipline and control, but what I am trying to do is acknowledge that your emotion(s) are absolutely real, but I also want to challenge the thought that triggers it/them. Our thoughts are in our domain of control. Most of us make critical thinking errors every day, which cloud our emotions and hurt us. Worse still, can lead to bad decisions. Some of these decisions can be more costly than others, but if you are in any decision-making business, it is vital that you operate on all the information available. When you have a bad feeling wr...

The only thing that makes life unfair, is the delusion that it should be fair"  --Dr. Steve Maraboli-- I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but while sick and unable to do too much other than exercise my brain, I did a lot of studying and reading.   One of the things that I think helped me to recover was, instead of working my brain overtime worrying about what was going to happen to me devoting whatever time I had left, to helping others in ways that I most needed at my darkest points.   This led me to take classes in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and neurolinguistic programming (NLP)  Over 100+ hours of classes later, I became a Certified CBT Therapist and a Master NLP Practioner.  (who could imagine?)   I took some other courses on nutrition, exercise, and meditation (I had a whole lot of time), but these two certificates were closely aligned with my Christian Stoic philosophy, and really put me in the best position to help ...

Bad joke, I know, I know. While I was sick I had a lot of time to read, learn and take classes that I hoped would allow me to help people if I was to get out of that situation, and I haven't stopped.  Some of that reading and research was pertinent to my situation and some of it was outside of it.  One of the best things about learning and expanding your purview is that you will learn things that might not be useful to you but may be useful to others.  Luckily for me, my parents are aging gracefully and seem to be healthier than most people my age, but dementia is a real threat to everyone eventually, and losing your mind while staying healthy is a whole other struggle that is hard to even imagine.   Alzheimer's (the most common form of dementia)  was one of the things that I came across by mistake.  While I am still young enough that I do not need to concern myself with Alzheimer's...yet, what I do live with and have experienced is "chemo brain" which...

“Most people are as happy as they make their minds up to be” --Abraham Lincoln. Every year it seems that hurricanes and tornados hit the same spots, damage the same people’s homes, and occur almost like clockwork every couple of years. While it is always sad to see people lose everything, I always wonder "Why wouldn't they just move?". The same might could be said for why I still live in NY with a giant crime rate, ridiculous taxes, and politicians that do not reflect my values. For me, the answer is, (as I guess the answer for the people subject to natural disasters would be) “because it is home”. I do not have a good logical answer other than familiarity, friends, family, and attachment. We have familiarity and attachment to our "emotional homes" as well. This is the place we go to emotionally when we are triggered by external events. It is important to be aware that we have an emotional home and what our emotional home is.  Only then you can begin to g...

  This week, I got a call from my son Hunter, who is currently stationed in Texas with the Air Force: "Dad I am signed up for the Norwegian Ruck March , and I maybe shouldn't have told anyone" "Why?" "Well they are giving me a little bit of a hard time saying I won't be able to finish it, and I think I should have just kept it to myself, last year only 31 guys on base completed it." "How many guys are going to do it in your squadron?" "2" "Do you know the other one? What does he say?" "Oh, he is doing it with me and he says we'll do it" There it was.   More often than not the brave ones are pushing you to come along with them and the people who are telling you cannot do something, or laughing at your efforts aren't even signing up! This was a valuable lesson for him and a reminder for me at the same time. Too often we wait for things to be just right.  Maybe to prevent failure or to avoid judgment fro...

  For the folks that follow me on Facebook, they are probably sick and tired of me posting about how much sleep I get and how close it is to 8 hours on the nose most nights.  I originally started doing this to keep myself in line and well-trained in getting sleep.  I was working on my sleep habits because it was generally good advice from any doctor or health specialist, but it wasn't until I dove deeper did I understand why.  I don't know about you but understanding why something works the way it does is a far greater motivator for me to do it than simply being told to do it because "it is good for you" Sleep is important and good for your health.  That's it.  End of blog .   If that is all you need, then I just saved you a lot of time.  If not, here are some interesting ideas and facts: If you consider evolution, sleeping is counterproductive.  We cannot eat, hunt, reproduce, while sleeping, and all of this while completely at the merc...

I can imagine that people are sick of hearing me talk about cancer and dying, but one of the benefits of it is that it leads me to read and research all sorts of information on how to live longer and healthier. I was given a second chance and I am not trying to blow this one. Hopefully, we can learn together before you have to have the same awakening. I was never too badly out of shape in my life, but this journey has really pushed me into seeing how much healthier we can all be, and how long we can all live. Medical technology is improving at such a rapid pace, that it is not unheard of to think that our children will live past 120, and if that isn't shocking...most of those years can be younger healthier years. Someday 80 will be the new 50. So, we are not just looking to live longer, but live longer and better! I was one of the fortunate 22,000 people in the US to receive a successful stem cell transplant. 10 years ago when, my son, Axel was born, we were given the option...

su·per·flu·ous /so͞oˈpərflo͞oəs/ Learn to pronounce adjective unnecessary, especially through being more than enough. I have seen this word begin to pop up more and more in reading and researching, and like I mentioned before, there are no coincidences.  When words and thoughts continue to reoccur, you are receiving a message, and I have to be honest, I had to look it up myself.   Continuing that flow of thinking I came across this quote from Cato the Elder:  "Nothing is cheap...if it is superfluous"  For most of my life, I had a lot of "things".  Not one of which I wouldn't give up again for the experience and understanding I have now.  I was younger and had a much different perception of time vs money.  They say "time is money" but in reality, time is much more valuable than money because time is finite.  Money isn't.  Before I got sick I made different choices based on my different perspective, and while you might not have almost died...

  The words a speaker uses to communicate are only a small part of his overall efforts. The pitch and tone of his voice, the speed and rhythm of his spoken words, and the pauses between those words may communicate more than words alone. Furthermore, his gestures, posture, pose, and expressions typically convey a variety of subtle messages. These nonverbal elements can provide important clues to the speaker's thoughts and feelings, substantiating or contradicting the speaker's words. Prof. Albert Mehrabian of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted the most frequently and casually cited study on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages in personal communication. His studies in the 1970s suggested that we overwhelmingly deduce our feelings, attitudes, and beliefs about what someone says based on the speaker's body language and tone of voice rather than the actual words were spoken. Prof. Mehrabian calculated that words, tone of voice, and body lan...

My last post got a lot of positive feedback but left a lot of questions as to how... How does one eliminate the noise and distractions in their life? Being overwhelmed might be more of a problem for organized, focused people than you would think. In my case, I started with a focused purpose, but as my resources increased, more opportunities and options came my way, making it harder to stay on task and ultimately diluting me in any one area. The minute you start to be the "go-to" guy for people, the more demand for your time exists. From there, you can easily become distracted from what your priority was or should be. You can see how this can be a slippery slope for people with the best of intentions. How can you begin to discover your priorities and/or get refocused on what is important? I was jettisoned into a desperate situation where I was quickly... continue reading