Threat of Loss

At the same time, some people at her work turned out to be less-than-positive influences on what the organization was doing. Things got so bad that the founder had to take a step back to figure out the organization's next moves. This combination of things put Brandy in a tough place. She was very worried about her son, and her work had become such an important part of her life that the possibility of it being in trouble was devastating to her. Brandy had already shown that she had a championship level of faith just to get to this point in her life, but now she had to double down. At that moment, instead of me being knocked down and staying down, instead of me giving in to everything that was going to take me out, I decided that I was going to get in the game. Listening to a full album can pay off in other ways, too. It's often the only way to discover deep cuts--the songs that might not make it on to the radio as singles but are still great in their own right. You can gain a better understanding of the songs you already love when you hear them in the context of the full album, and you can hone your critical listening skills by giving yourself a chance to really absorb the work and its impact on you. Good art often takes time to make, and it often takes time to understand, too, writes The New Yorker's music critic Amanda Petrusich. Who hasn't lived with a record for weeks, only to wake up one morning and find that it has suddenly unlocked a whole new suite of rooms deep in one's subconscious? The more time and attention you give to an album, the greater your reward. Go retro with a record. With the rise of digital music, CD sales are down . These days, a number of companies are producing lightweight and affordable turntables, and most current records come with a digital download code so that collectors can also take their music on the go. Why is everyone going crazy for vinyl again? I coined the term ANTs in the early 1990s after a hard day at the office. I had seen four suicidal patients, two teens who had run away from home, and two couples who hated each other, and then that evening, when I arrived home and walked into the kitchen, I was greeted by an ant infestation. There were thousands of the pesky invaders marching in lines on the floor and crawling in the sink, on the countertops, and in the cabinets. Construction in our neighborhood had disturbed the earth, and the ants were looking for a new residence.

As I wetted paper towels and began wiping up the horde of ants, the acronym ANT--automatic negative thought--just came to me. As I thought about my patients that day, I realized that, just like my kitchen, they were also infested with ANTs that were robbing them of their joy and stealing their happiness, and a bizarre image came to me of ANTs crawling on top of their heads and out of their eyes, noses, and ears. The ANTs were literally setting up residence inside my patients' minds. The next day, I brought a can of ant spray to work and placed it on my coffee table. As I started to talk about the concept with my patients, they understood it right away. Think of automatic negative thoughts as you would the ants that might bother a couple at a romantic picnic. Imagine the best solution for all parties involved. Relax in each direction at least several minutes until you feel that the essential answers to your questions from these four directions have become clear to you, and that it is enough at this time. If this is too vague, set a time for each direction; After the last position, you can now say good-bye to your friend the tree. Give the tree a small personal gift, for example, a pinch of tobacco (the traditional gift of Native Americans in such rituals in nature) or a few of your hairs. Go back to the place where you started. Finish the exercise with a big thank you. Comments and hints: For this exercise it's good to bring along a pen and a notearticle to write down your thoughts. Observe what you encounter from the beginning to the end of the exercise: animals that make their presence known during this meditation, even the smallest ones; Note if any directions around the tree are particularly comfortable or uncomfortable. I don't just theorize about diet and health; Every nutrition expert, and impostor alike, you have ever heard opine on the topic of diet eats too. You should want to know WHAT they eat. You should want to know HOW they translate whatever theory they espouse into practice.

You should want to know IF they practice what they preach, or preach what's most profitable while eating what's most healthful. For what it's worth - I have seen exactly that pattern among my more mercenary colleagues when meal time rolled around at some conference we were attending together. I see no need to tell you who is in that rogue's gallery; I will simply tell you there is one! Rest assured, I am not in it. I have my detractors, of course, but no one can make a valid accusation about me practicing anything other than just what I preach. I didn't want to lay down and die anymore. I didn't want to hide my life anymore, like I had so many times in the past. I didn't know where it was going, but I knew that if there was an entrance, there was an exit. It didn't matter what that thing looked like. It just mattered that we got there. Brandy had faith that there was a better outcome for her story, even when all evidence suggested that this wasn't the case. And her faith--and her complete devotion to that faith--has been rewarded. The organization she works for got over its hurdles and her family is in a very good place too. Both of my sons are well and doing great, and even when we encounter hard times, we know that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. We've learned that sometimes you have to go through places you don't understand to get to the place you need to be. There's something wonderfully interactive about putting on a record, listening to a side, and then flipping it over to hear the other side, writes Gizmodo's Mario Aguilar. It makes the listening experience something in which you are constantly physically and emotionally involved. Consider sound quality. If you'd rather stick to digital files, think about downloading your album rather than streaming it, since Internet speed and connection can impact or interrupt the streaming process.

And if you're playing music off your computer, it's worthwhile to connect to external speakers, which will give you better sound quality than what's built into your laptop. Host a listening party. Celebrate a new album release--or show love for an old favorite--by inviting friends over to listen to an album out loud in its entirety. Learning what your friends love about an album can help you to hear and appreciate the music in a whole new way. Put on headphones and take a long walk. Studies show that walking outside can help us concentrate, so for a more focused listening experience, consider putting on headphones and taking your album out for a stroll. One negative thought, like one ant at a picnic, is not a big problem. Two or three automatic negative thoughts, like two or three ants at a picnic, become a bit more irritating. Twenty or thirty automatic negative thoughts, like twenty or thirty ants at a picnic, may cause the couple to pick up and leave. The more you allow the ANTs to stick around in your head, the more they will mate with other ANTs and produce offspring that drive anxiety, depression, anger, and relationship turmoil. As the discussions about ANTs continued in my office, I eventually replaced the can of ant spray with a black ant puppet and an adorable, furry anteater puppet. I then developed a simple exercise to help my patients eliminate the ANTs: Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down your automatic negative thoughts and talk back to them. When you have a negative thought without challenging it (I'm worthless), your mind believes it and your body reacts to it. But, if you can correct negative thoughts (I was made in the image of God. I bring value and joy to my spouse's life, my children's lives, and my friends' lives), you take away their power. Learning how to direct, question, and correct your automatic negative thoughts is not a new concept. The clearer we are about where we want to go, the clearer our thoughts and subsequent actions will be to bring us there. To educate ourselves and to act continuously to achieve the desired goal requires a workout. This is the subject of the next article. Our body has two halves, a right side and a left side that under optimal conditions operate in balanced interaction.

Bringing the two into harmony is a lifelong task. The fact of having two sides in our physical being also has a deeper meaning: different, complementary forces work within us, striving for inner and outer balance. Different cultures also consider this dualism. In China this principle is expressed by the yin-yang symbol. In the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America, two intertwined snakes symbolized it. We also find this principle in the caduceus, the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology, around which is intertwined two snakes. I needn't review what I preach - that's what the hundreds of articles up until here have been all about. So, let's talk about practice. That, in turn, warrants talking about Catherine. Catherine was born in Oran, Algeria, to a French-speaking family of Jewish Europeans. Although they wound up French in North Africa, where they came to be known as pied noir (defined as: a person of European origin who lived in Algeria during French rule, especially one who returned to Europe after Algeria was granted independence . The term translates to black foot, and refers to the shoes worn by Europeans in North Africa, which presumably contrasted with the sandals, or nothing, worn by the indigenous population. Of note, the term Sephardic, which distinguishes Jews who populated Southern Europe from those who went farther north and east, called Ashkenazi Jews. In Hebrew, the original word adapted for Sephardic means Spain, and the word adapted for Ashkenazi refers to Germany. Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program. Catherine was born in Algeria, but was relocated to Southern France at the age of two, when her family was forced to flee the revolution that engulfed Algeria from 1954 to 1962, which resulted in independence from French colonial rule. Dr Tony Evans says that faith is in your feet. What he means is that faith isn't about saying you believe in your dreams; Prayer and confession are great things, and they can have an important place in our lives, but when we take confident steps toward our journey, we're making real strides toward those dreams. If you're going to have a championship mind-set, you need to have a dream that you want to pursue with everything you have, and then you need to maintain the faith that you can get there, even when things go wrong, even when people start telling you it isn't going to work out, and even when you question whether you can succeed.