The Fearless Mind

I want to recommend The Fearless Mind, a new book by Craig Manning, PHD.  Craig is a sports psychologist at Brigham Young University and this is a quick read for anyone who wants to live a high performance life… 5 essential steps to higher performance.  These steps can be applied to any type of business practice, sports practice and even overcoming addictions.  Here is the link to purchase on Amazon.  BUY IT

The Fearless Mind

Had a great conversation today with Alida Schuyler from Crossroads Coaching. I was happy to spend a few minutes talking about the important role of a recovery coach in the recovery plan of an addict or alcoholic.  It is something I am very committed to as my own experience and expertise has been focused on applying personal development to the aftercare for both the addict and the family.

Alida has been providing training for recovery professionals from all walks of expertise and describes this coaching practice as follows:

“Recovery Coaching is an ongoing professional relationship that helps people who are in or who are considering recovery from addiction to produce extraordinary results in their lives, careers, businesses, or organizations while advancing their recovery from addiction.

Recovery Coaches affirm that there is an innate health and wellness in each of our clients. We hold our clients creative and resourceful. We do not promote or endorse any single or particular way of achieving or maintaining sobriety, abstinence, or serenity or of reducing suffering from addiction. Our focus is on coaching our clients to create and sustain great and meaningful lives.”

If you are interested in applying the recovery coach model to your business you can connect with Alida for her training program

The paradigm in recovery treatment is shifting ( ever so slowly) to acknowledge that intervention – detox and then traditional treatment is not enough to imprint a pattern of healthy behaviors in the life of the recovering addict and their family.

With billions of dollars invested by government agencies dedicate to substance abuse issues the question remains; “why are relapse rates so high?”  Obviously there are no guarantees to an individual healing from addiction.  The investment in  recovery always remains the responsibility of the addict but those dedicated to working in the field of addiction must also accept responsibility for improving methods, modalities and practices as we become more enlightened to what works and what doesn’t.  Coaching opens a huge door to improve those success statistics for the individual and their family…because it embraces aftercare.

We can change the community culture regarding the treatment of dependency on substances and how we help those with process addiction by stepping outside the language of “therapy” and the academic world to see that families just need help – it’s simple.  Talk plainly and lovingly to uplift them and engage in a process that they can understand.  You can’t see the solutions when they hide in the shadows along with the disease.  LET’S TALK OUTLOUD… get a coach, refer a coach ..even the greatest athletes in the world keep their coaches for a reason.  That is High Performance and even a recovering addict can live a life of high performance once again.

Visit the website for Crossroads Coaching

web page update

Check out the changes Matt has made to the web site.  I just love the scrolling header !!!   WISE CONSULTING we are making room for more endorsements, our coaching updates, a place for the links and banners for companies that are in our resource directory as well as the books and articles we write.  Booyah.

Don’t be a sock monkey

Sock Monkeys and Brain Damage

Reasoning with addicts is like talking to a sock monkey.  My lips are moving and words are coming out, trying not to sound like a lecture but it doesn’t matter because I am talking to a sock monkey.  You are made of a sock, your lips are a sock heel, your eyes are buttons and is that an empty vodka bottle hiding behind your sock tail?  Just look at the blank stare….

Misusing a substance – drugs, pills, booze creates an injury to the brain.  The addict cannot hear you… he/she is the sock monkey.  You cannot “reason” with an addict – especially when they are under the influence.

BUT Normies can be Sock Monkey’s in their own liar liar pants on fire dance.  Normies refuse to acknowledge their own dishonesty, denial, bad behavior, hidden addictions and resentments if it means they can deflect attention away from themselves to the red monster

I am convinced that a person can heal their brain from addiction, bad habits, and false beliefs. But to be successful in recovery and restoration of your life to be a whole, productive, loving, noble human being – part of that process must embrace personal development.  You gotta do the homework, the self work to grow.

My dear friend Stephen Hager has been in the brain business for many years.  His website is www.thehadrongroup.com.  They are performance management consultants.  Stephen has developed tools to use to help determine how your brain works.Check out the Brain Pathways website here and take the assessment for yourself.

Neuroscience has always been fascinating to me and I was anxious to take the new assessment that he uses to help people discover how they think, how they learn.  For addicts and their families this assessment could be a real eye opener and tool to help rebuild neuropathways and heal damaged communication.  Take the assessment yourself and see how you could make a difference in your personal development by knowing how your brain works

Families who are suffering are quick to judge and point fingers, to blame and be angry but are at a loss to know how to heal those wounds.  The odds for a successful recovery from an addiction will be greatly increased when the family participates in that recovery process for themselves as well.  Normies need rehab too and they can be pretty big sock monkeys!

Deadlines approaching

After a bout of food poisoning, I am trying to get the cobwebs out of my head and get back to work.  The directory is filling up – our deadline has been pushed back a bit as we are still waiting for art work and content to find it’s way through cyber space to our art directors desk.

Last week I spent a significant amount of time talking with interventionists across the country and made fast friends with every single person I spoke with.  Interventionists are doing incredible work in every area of addiction and critical care.  I would like to thank those folks who were so generous with their time  last week.

Dr. Judith Landau  Arise Interventions

John Walsh

Kevin Dixon  KD Consulting

Renee Gerger

Jerry Law   InterventionAZ

I will be writing more about these conversations and the power of intervention in the process of helping families and the addict recover.  I had scheduled others who were kind enough to set aside time for me but then I got hammered with the dreaded food posoning after eating chinese food … I had gone to Salt Lake to visit with Jayne Patience who is the program director at Chelsea Street. We will be spending more time there in the future speaking to the residents… love that !  I am impressed that Jayne has for years put people first in creating a place where the Board of Pardons believes in the work being done at Chelsea Street enough that newly released offenders can find a place to parole to and can continue in a recovery plan,re- build skills, learning to  make decisions again in a sober living environment. Great work Jayne and we look forward to a long relationship with Chelsea Street.

I guess I have to give up Chinese food !  Well at least those Chinese buffet places!

Our Directory is almost full and taking shape but we are still a few weeks away from uploading to the printer as our reach kept expanding and getting support from so many organizations .  I just want to remind those providers it is really about healing families not just the addict.

Oh and our coaching group is full.

Coaching Group openings

Visit our Coaching page for information about our 5 openings – they will fill up fast.

Miracle Coaching

If you have recently experienced a detox or are planning to detox from your substance abuse consider joining our group  as place to clean your mind and get ready for your recovery work to turn into restoration and miracles.

Remembering Innocence

more about “Jo – piano prodigy“, posted with vodpod

Sometimes we just need to step back and remember the joy and innocence of discovery and the perfection of childhood. Remember your loved one who suffers now in the grip of addiction is inside an incredible noble spirit – a child of God.  This is the ultimate in High Performance

No one is immune

I am so grateful the alcoholic in my life didn’t drive drunk today.  I am grateful that this State Senator didn’t hurt anyone while driving under the influence today.  Talk about thinking errors – wheeeewww!  When your life is unmanageable – the greatest gift you can recieve is the awareness that you can’t beat the “system”.

State Senator arrested for DUI

It’s easy to talk about drug and alcohol abuse but yikes no one wants to really face the truth about this addiction…no substance abuse but the destruction to the family may indeed be more devastating.

Tiger Woods

The good news is that people are incredibly resilient and when you embrace personal change, abandon the stupid behaviors in your life, stop being selfish and self absorbed you can overcome any adversity in your life.

No one is immune from stupid mistakes in their life.  Some consequences are harder to endure and recover from but you can recover and be restored to the noble spirit that you are.

Treatment and the costs

One of the questions I ask when talking with treatment providers is “what is your number one issues when connecting with families of addicts/alcoholics”?

The answers have been varied:

Families are in denial about the problem

Money issues – they can’t pay for treatment

I don’t work with the family

It’s not my job to babysit hysterical demanding Mothers

Hhhhmmmmm.

It is interesting to note the incredible unavailability of treatment option information to famlies and the enormous costs associated with getting help for addiction.  Here is just a random breakdown of costs.

a 30 day stay at a treatment facility can run anywhere from $15,000 to over $40,000 a month depending on the options.

Intervention is another $1,500 – $ 5,000 depending on tyhpe, severity and location

Detox is typically $3,000+ you have to detox before entering a treatment facility – some include it.

If you are prescribed a specific addiction medication like vivatrol or prometa the cost is about $ 12,000 – yes, that’s right twelve thousand for Prometa, $7,000 for Vivitrol.

Therapy sessions average $120 an hour

Acupuncture $10 to $30 a session

After care – sober living houses average in Utah $700 to $1,200 a month

A trip to the emergency room to detox or wait until they tell you they won’t treat you or prescribe lithium for you about $ 3,500

The insurance coverage is changing with the new mandates from Obama and will increase the amount of coverage and the types of treatment covered but most families by this point either don’t have insurance or cash left….addiction bankrupts families.

Typically the option then is to get the addict into a County program which is subsidized and will provide detox, inpatient and outpatient programs… they also can provide access to the medical treatments when enough funding is in place to cover the costs.  These programs are well intentioned but understaffed and under funded and the waiting list is months long.  Usually the addicts who are in these programs have been court ordered and it can really only accommodate 30 at a time. Utah County charges $80 for an evaluation and then charges based on the clients ability to pay – a sliding scale.

The jails and prisons are full of addicts and alcoholics who have broken the law and they do have access to treatment programs during their incarceration and that is certainly better than nothing but really all that is happening is a “punish me for drinking or drugging” program – because I am BAD… no real therapy is undertaken and the medical care is insufficient to address the physical injuries caused by the addiction….. and taxpayers are left with the funding the incarceration @ about $35,000 a year.  Which interestingly enough is cheaper than a typical stay in treatment… but you do get what you pay for.

It is obvious that the prohibitive cost of treatment for addiction ( any kind of addiction ) makes these services unavailable to many, literally thousands who need treatment.

Rudy Anoop debuts on you-tube

One of my weakness’s is that I am a techno dilettante’.  I really get fixated on learning a new thing – addicts would call that tweaking… yep I’m a techno tweaker.  Last night I finally figured out how to upload a video.  Dr. Olsen and I have been working on getting a video posted about the resource directory so it could be a quick click with instant information.

High Performance Video Channel check it out…  There you will see Rudy Anoop our Irish Setter puppy in his video debut as my test subject.

I tried to add it here but couldn’t figure that out so instead it shows to your right in our Vodpod widgety thing .

One week into a new decade

Just some quick notes and comments about my first week into the new decade.

I am hooked on technology and when my cell phone lost it’s programming and the internet went down I was a mess.  The worst 12 hours of the week.

The dog got a candy cane stuck in his fur and it took several hours of licking his foot until it finally disappeared.

It is still unusually cold here in Utah and the haze is irritating.

Whales Wars got ugly this week with boats crashing into each other and Bob Barker committing  millions of new dollars to the cause.  Mr. Barker is a patriot.  Not only does Mr. Barker support social causes  like Whale Wars which has a pretty visible presence in the news but for many, many years he has had a business interest that produces products used in prisons.  Products that do make a difference in the lives of inmates for the better.

I continue to get comments on the Conveyor Belt of Love post and the radio broadcast about the “lowering of the bar” evidenced by that show.  Hollywood continues to lead the way in throwing poor quality programming in our faces.  The overwhelming hedonism really gets old and boring and does a real disservice to our young adult population and is dangerous to our youth.

With all the news about the underpants bomber ( idiot ) I would like to say the greatest danger we face as a country really is not terrorism ( although that is very bad and is number 2 threat ) is the destruction of the family.  Families are the foundation of growth and prosperity.  Families continue to be under attack by progressive politics, morally corrupt entertainment practices found in music, art and media, and the breakdown of traditional family values.  Oh and I am not for full body scanning.

I watched a Wildlife Fund commercial with Noah Wylie as a spokesperson and I really like him as an actor BUT – the commercial made my eyes bleed.  I just have to say, the polar bears are not in danger of extinction.  The bears are thriving and populations growing, as are the caribou herds and the wolves across Alaska.  The global warming nonsense is a “for profit” hoax .  I have no problem with supporting the protection of wildlife from abuse or bad practices… but lets not tell LIES.

Texas and Mexico border weather prediction for today is below freezing – Florida crops are in danger ( I love my oranges ).  North Dakota still in the grips of 50 below weather.  hhhmmmm global warming ???? bundle up friends

There is no question the world has it’s share of morons and idiots but the good news is we are surrounded by good people with good hearts who want to love and be loved.  They want to do the right thing, they want to be successful in their work , they love their God, their country and their families.  They care about others and want to make a difference every day in someone else’s  life.  They live with honor even though they still make mistakes and struggle with overwhelming adversity. They will beat the odds and overcome, they will buck the status quo to excel.

BYU ended up 12th in the football polls, so that is good.  Boise State beat TCU and Texas had a disappointing end to their bowl game last night.  College football is officially over for the year but it is the beginning of the indoor track and field season so I will be supporting my son in his professional debut this weekend as an elite polevaulter.

Building programs for high performance, personal development and helping addicts/alcoholics  and their families find some peace in their recovery is my priority for the year.

I don’t really want to look back at the last decade – I want to continue to look forward in this new decade to help others ( and myself) find better. wiser ways to live a good life.

Happy Friday