Archive for the ‘Bipolar Disorder’ Category
Thursday, September 20th, 2007
Many bipolar sufferers out there in the world find themselves homeless at some point in their lives. The challenges of the illness combined with the pressures of life can be too much at times. Bills pile up, depression sets in, family difficulties result and you end up on the street.
Though it’s common among those who suffer from mental illness, homelessness is still heavily stigmatized in our society and often results in a vicious cycle of poverty that makes it difficult to get back on your feet. While I have news for you!
Though there may be a societal divide that makes homelessness tough to rebound from, the digital divide doesn’t discriminate.
A Wired.com article, “Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless“, written by Jacob Ogles detailed some of the success stories that easy access to technologies have allowed the homeless to achieve. Check it out for some inspiration! In the meantime, here are 10 steps to achieving success as a homeless person (by the way, this post is not meant to humorous in any way for those of you who are wondering. Utilizing technology is one route to successfully get back on your feet):
- Set up an email account at your local library or another location where you should be able to access the internet for free. This will allow you to maintain contact with your friends and family, and also gives you a place to be contacted by potential employers if you don’t have a cell phone.
- Start a blog. Just write about whatever you choose too. Kevin Barbieux, featured in the above mentioned article has maintained The Homeless Guy for 5 years now. At one time it was mentioned as one of the top 10 new and notable sites by Yahoo. This is a great way to express yourself, work through your emotions, and if done right, give yourself online exposure that could lead the way to future successes.
- At first, unless you’re incredibly innovative, your blog will be your key to getting exposure for your talents rather than your lack of accomodations. Set up a social networking account on a site such as Facebook and then link your blog to it. Everyone from Bill Gates on down has a Facebook account these days and you can connect with people you’d never think you could.
- Spend some time figuring out what contributed to your current situation.Â
- Determine what steps you have to take to overcome those contributing factors. I currently use public transportation for my mobility needs. Being in public, often downtown, has given me the opportunity to talk with the odd homeless person and I’ve found that often they don’t know how they got to where they are. I wonder how they’re supposed to fix their bind if they don’t know how they got there in the first place.Â
- If the last 2 steps aren’t working for you, then determine the steps you need to take to get off the street, and then find the problems for those solutions. Basically you’re working backwards in order to find out what issues you need to deal with to avoid the street life in the future.
- If you suffer from a mental illness, take your medication and stay in contact with your medical support team. Do not drink or use drugs! I don’t care how cold it is outside, you’ll be much colder when you’re dead! Also avoid the crowd. I don’t mean this in any sort of condescending way, but the street isn’t the best place to develop positive, supportive relationships.
- Set some goals and develop a plan to work towards them once you’re back on your feet.
- Take others with you. If you’re trying your best to cross that societal divide back into regular life (regular is subjective; I’m using that word from the point of view of the majority of members of our society), take some well-chosen people with you on the path to recovery. Service and helping others will be fundamental in feeling like you have your dignity back.
There is a such thing as a successful homeless person. With the digital divide taking down barriers everywhere, it’s much easier for someone without a home to have one in no time. I would also advise you to Google “bootstrapping”, especially if you feel you have a great business idea but not the money to make it a reality.
Posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, Effectiveness, Entrepreneurship, Goal Setting And Prioritizing, Money, Passive Income, Productivity, Relationships, Time Management, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
Money is an interesting topic in productivity circles. There are those that love money, think money is the key to a happy, lengthy life, and the solution to all of the world’s problems. Then there are those that literally think that money is the root of all evil and giving it all away to those in need will truly make you happy.
Web Worker Daily writer Anne Zelenka wrote a guest post today for Zen Habits about putting your so-called hedonic treadmill in reverse gear. The theory of the hedonic treadmill states that “humans rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted. The more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to boost our level of happiness”. And it is true isn’t it? The more money you have, the more money you spend, the more things you have…and your happiness? It’s in the same place and you still feel you need more stuff to be happier.
Since Zelenka’s husband returned to grad school, the couple has had to cut down on their spending. She’s found that it is possible to put the treadmill in reverse by gradually cutting down spending in increments which allows your happiness level to stay constant. While this is all great in principle, Zelenka is misguided in linking money and material possessions to happiness. While I agree that having enough money to meet your basic needs is essential to being happy, buying nice things is only connected to a surface-level happiness in those who rarely go beyond themselves in service of others.
Sufferers of mood disorders such as depression and bipolar illness often have all sorts of financial difficulties throughout their lives. Time is required off of work quite often for some as they adjust to new medications or just become to sick to function. Being in such a situation gives you a whole new perspective on the meaning of happiness and the place of money in contributing to that happiness. My finding has been that there is very little direct relation.
Back in July, Gretchen Rubin from The Happiness Project posited that money actually can buy you happiness. However, she doesn’t link money directly with happiness. Money can buy happiness only if it’s spent in such a way to support your happiness goals. Interestingly, the 8 tips for buying happiness with your money have absolutely nothing with material possessions and everything to do with spending your money on others, investing in relationships, and investing in your health. Service, relationships, and health…all keys to living a truly happy life.
So don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of money. There is no happiness in it anyways. And if you have a lot and can’t seem to put that hedonic treadmill in reverse, look beyond yourself and your things. Find somebody in need or a good cause to invest in. Forget about putting the hedonic treadmill in reverse and buy yourself a real one instead, put it in forward motion and make an effort to improve your health for the benefit of your wife and kids.
Good luck!
Posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, Exercise And Health, Goal Setting And Prioritizing, Money, Productivity, Relationships, Tips And Tricks, Values | Comments Off
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
I’ve discussed both information consumption and selective ignorance on this blog, so to avoid confusion I thought I’d compare the two. They both have their uses depending on what your goals are. Timothy Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” coined the term selective ignorance and he definitely takes it to the extreme. He basically eliminates any non task-related info from his life in order to be more productive, and it has worked well for him and his business. This is a man that really doesn’t read books, watch the news, check his email 100 times per day, or spend hours pouring over his RSS feed subscriptions. I’m not going to go into a full detailed study of his process here; I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of his book, check out his blog, or read his ChangeThis manifesto on The Low-Information Diet. Instead I will point out some of the benefits of utilizing selective ignorance in your working life followed by the benefits of info consumption.
Pros of Selective Ignorance
- Saved Time-you will save a ton of time using this approach which can be used for important rather than urgent tasks or just plain old rest and relaxation.
- Minimized Distractions-by setting specific times to complete tasks such as checking and answering emails and utilizing auto-responders and similar tools, you won’t have the constant info glut in your head that takes you away from important tasks. This goes for other sources of information as well. Remember opportunity cost and the phrase “time is money”.
- Increased Productivity-you can see by now that the pros of selective ignorance all kind of fall into the same category. Don’t waste time consuming information and filling your head with all kinds of non-task-relevant info and you’ll get more important, income-generating tasks done quicker.
- Simplicity-there is definitely a freedom in ignorance. Less to think about, better sleep, less stress. Believe it or not, reading all those RSS feeds are probably driving you slowly insane. Simplicity breeds sanity in our fast-paced society.
- Increased income-if would make sense that if you’re spending the majority of your time once you’ve eliminated all of the time spent consuming information working on income-generating tasks that your income will rise. Probably the key benefit to be found in selective ignorance coming as a result of the previously listed benefits.
Pros of Information Consumption
- Synthesis of ideas-in Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind”, he tells us that symphony is one of the aptitudes required for success in the coming Conceptual Age. Those that can integrate disparate ideas from seemingly different realms and come up with something totally new and innovative will be tomorrow’s success stories. The wider the breadth of information that you consume, the more opportunity for this type of synthetic thinking you will have.
- Higher creativity-now I don’t mean this in the strictest sense of the word creativity because not everyone that reads a whole pile is creative. What I mean is that the wide range of information consumed by the consumer can lead to interesting applications in the business environment. Look at Steve Jobs reading the classics or Eric Reynolds, founder of Nau studying the lives of great leaders such as Gandhi and then applying those lessons into developing innovative business models.
- Ease of networking-now some may say I’m going out on a limb here, but being well-read and being able to converse on a wide range of topics makes the networking process so much easier. How do you have a conversation when you have no idea what’s going on anywhere but within your own business? Not everyone wants to hear you talk about yourself.
- Idea generation-reading, whether it be the newspaper, a book, or your Google Reader allows you to brainstorm and generate ideas that could be relevant to your business and personal life. Ideas don’t just pop out of nowhere.
- Relaxation-there is nothing more relaxing than sitting outside on a nice day and reading a good old fiction book for fun. May not be goal or task-oriented but you need to relax once in a while.
Both schools of thought have their upsides. It really depends on what works best for you. If you find by limiting information and thus stimuli in your bipolar brain, you’re able to be more productive, than the low-information diet may be for you. I myself value learning and growth very much and am constantly reading something new. I will say however that most of what I read is related to my important tasks at the time. Try both methods out for a few weeks each and compare your productivity and stress levels and see what works for you.
Posted in Bipolar Disorder, Career And Education, depression, Effectiveness, Productivity, Selective Ignorance, Time Management, Tips And Tricks | Comments Off
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
Jay White at Dumb Little Man pointed to a great site that you should definitely check out. Diethack, written by a medical student, is full of great tips for healthy eating, exercise hacks, and ways to shed the pounds. Click the Diethack link to check it out.
Posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, Exercise And Health, Productivity, Tips And Tricks | Comments Off
Monday, September 17th, 2007
Bipolar disorder would take a toll on the self-confidence of the strongest of us. Here is an older article from PickTheBrain.com that outlines 10 ways to instantly improve your self-confidence.
Posted in Bipolar Disorder, Tips And Tricks | Comments Off