Creative Blogs

There is nothing better for self-esteem than building self-esteem. As strange as that sounds, it is that simple.

Many feel that a person is born with it, or maybe was popular in grade school and held onto that for the rest of their lives, always succeeding at whatever due to public support. If only that were so, we’d all have an excuse to frown and be depressed most the time.

In many cases the opposite happens. The slim-trim blonde high-school cheerleader who maybe relied totally on looks for self-esteem later marries, has children and stretch marks, not to mention her hair turned gray from dealing with the children and possibly irate husband and she gained a good bit of weight from the extra bon-bons passed around at her literary club.

It doesn’t necessarily help to be raised in a family that is considered highly-esteemed in their community. Though this can be a positive, it can also be a negative. Often the child rebels as a teen or even before that. And even more often than not, never grows out of it, finding him or herself estranged from the rest of the family well into adulthood.

So, once again, self-esteem can do wonders for your self-esteem. That might not make sense if you feel your self-esteem has diminished for whatever reason. My point is, it can be learned for the first time, or be established maybe for the first time in a whole new lifestyle. We have the right to reinvent ourselves.

Were you the star-wrestler in high school with rippling muscles and worked out regularly and was applauded every time flexed? Did you make good grades and were used to positive feedback? Maybe this enhanced yoru esteem early in life. But now life is different. Perhaps you have a big money-making business that does not interest you and you want to sell it. The pay all goes to an ungrateful wife who spends it on fashions and takes vacations with her girlfriends. Look around now. Did the self-esteem go down?

The truth is, as adults, we more often than not, have to create our own self-esteem. And the closer we get to knowing our real selves, the closer we get to higher self-esteem. We no longer get all the unconditional love, attention, and acknowledgment of our deeds we did when we were younger. It builds by the little things we do. Try it, keep a journal, and look at it next year. Read the whole year and see how dramatically you have changed for the better.

Even on a depressing day, drive yourself to a soup kitchen and volunteer. Visit a shut-in; run an errand for someone wheelchair-bound. Tutor a childwith his/her homework. Do something positive to get outside of yourself. You will not get back your self-esteem most likely in one day. But if you find yourself making it a habit of helping others, you will slowly find your self-esteem rising. It is a natural consequence of helping others and getting outside oneself. Maybe it’s physics. The universe works in this fashion. We can fight it or join it.

Iwith depression and low-self-esteem since my teen years (even when I was a popular kid). I always felt alone, even with people. Then I grew up. I became an adult. All of a sudden I was in my late forties. How did it all happen so fast. It was a blur. But now, I’d had a major heart attack and I was keenly aware of my mortality. Heart attack? That was what other people had, not me. I guess everyone thinks that. So I took a week and analyzed my life. I took, (as Richard Dreyfus’ book in ‘What About Bob?’, baby steps. I studied. I researched. I learned. I even went back to college online. Online colleges lured some of them and they continue to study.

Adulthood has been my first stab at self-esteem. I never could manage to do it in my youth. Now I have a few tools.

Many people have had it much rougher than me. I have endured much in my life including homelessness, and I am certain there are many others who have even meaner stories, so if I can do it, anyone can. I just take a little time out of each day and do something positive, or create something, work on one of my projects, write a story like this one, to build my self-esteem. I may miss the mark some of the time, but I try to learn to do it right the next time, and still, I take time for myself to do just a little something positive for me or someone else, or both, for no pay, even if they insist.

I’m a slow learner, but in ten years, I’ve accomplished a thousand times more than I did in my first forty-three years.

Londons Times Cartoons was my first stab at building self-esteem. It helps other people people laugh, hence help build their own self-esteem which is contagious. I get emails often and that helps my own self-esteem. In addition to my main cartoo site I own stores like LTSuperstore, RickLondonCollection, Justfunnygreetingcards,Justfunnycoffeemugs, Justfunnyaprons, Mirthgirthbirth, RickLondonwear, Justfunnymousepads, Justfunnyhoodies, etc. Business is brisk. People love to laugh and build their self-esteems, or give gifts to others to help build theirs. I am a very grateful person and a lucky one too.

Exposing ourselves to humor helps us be more light-hearted. We learn to “wear the world like a loose-fitting garment”. If you do not feel you are a funny person, no problem. Just try to expose yourself to something or someone humorous as often as you can.In time dramatic changes can happen and you will like them. I know that I did and I’m a very slow student. Eventually, even for me, it happened and is happening still.

But don’t do it all at once. Remember, baby steps, a little bit each day, and in a year, you’ll look back wondering who that sad person was (that was once you).

A female friend sent me a private message not long ago and asked me my secret to happiness. There was a long pause. She typed the sound (in text) of the “Jeopardy” theme song in between final jeopardy as if I were running out of time for the answer.

As a kid, the medical community considered me dysthymic and without much motivation. Actually, that was a symptom of my boredom, and didn’t have a lot to do with my brain chemistry. I had a relatively high IQ in (Mississippi) in their public schools, and very little could attract my attention; except when girls started wearing shorter skirts.

Because all people and families have issues and problems, same as me, I cannot deem myself any happier than anyone else. I am just happier when I do things that are healthy for me. Little things often do it. Calling or visiting a sick friend. Getting on the floor and playing with my pet. Working on my cartoons or cartoon products. Knowing a wonderful woman loves me, possibly for the first time ever. All these things add up, even knowing, as the song says “Dust in the wind”. So I learn to live in the moment, for today. Projecting is painful and not very productive for me.

Happiness, to me, if there is such a thing, is really getting down to basics. By basics I mean go as far back as The U.S. Constitution “…and the pursuit of happiness” which is actually written by these stern men with no smiles, at least not in their renderings, but they knew the importance of it.

To go back some centuries before that, even Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true”.

Given Shakespeare’s famous saying, let’s why not list how often we mess with our own well-being happiness, or make certain it does not happen. We take jobs which are terrible but pay well. We spend with our credit cards like their is no tomorrow to feel a gaping hole. We do not like our co-workers and they do not like us. We do not like our boss and he does not like us either. We marry too young and have kids. Maybe a good friend did the same first so we followed suite. We were not ready, or the opposite. We decided not to get married as we grew up in an unhappy home, and we would “show our parents with sweet revenge” (That was my modus operandi for many years). Suddenly it occurred to me they didn’t care what I did as long as I was in the pursuit of happiness. Both my parents have been dead over a decade. I miss them. I do not live for them, but I cherish their memories, the good and the bad.

The list goes on and on and I do not list them to be judgemental. I have tried my share of them. Especially the career one. I took on the career that was expected of me in my family early on in my adulthood, hated it, and paid the price. But I learned something powerful.

“It’s a process, Doc!”, explaimed gangster Robert DeNiro to Billy Crystal in the hilarious movie “Analyze That”. He was talking about recovery from a bad childhood (Crystal was the psychiatrist who ended up getting more help from DeNiro). It is a movie worth seeing, not just because of the great comedy, but because of the analogies they represent regardingreal life and painful growth and change.

As trite as it sounds K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, stupid) makes perfect sense. The simpler the better. In the complex world in which we live it is not easy, but we eventually find ourselves to be a beacon in which others reach out and want to be with.

As far as work, life is too short to do work you hate. We do not live in our parent’s generation. The opportunities are endless in the workplace. Yes, at times to find the job we really want, we may have to start at lower pay, but doing what we love attracts the kind of income that suits us.

Working in the field of humor, comedy, or cartooning is not the answer necessarily. It may be if that is what you desire. Whatever field you choose, expose yourself to it. It has been proven that it becomes a part of us. Before you know it, if you’ve watched enough comedy films, seen enough funny Internet or newspaper cartoons, read enough jokes, etc., you find your mind thinking in funnier ways. It really has that effect.

Dr. Bernie Siegel who wrote a best-seller in the 1980’s, Love, Laughter, And Healing helped me a great deal when my mother was dying of cancer. I called him. He claims in his book that he had incurable brain cancer and exposed himself to many comedy movies, videos, cartoons, and sitcoms. He had no idea if it would help heal him, he just felt his mortality and wanted to laugh a bit. Within a few years, his brain cancer was in remission and he still is alive and writing two decades later. I have discussed this with him on several occasions and he offered up some of the greatest advice I ever had, expose your mom to humor. I went to the video store daily and found a different comedy film every day and we watched it together. It also brought me closer to my mom. She lived about four years longer than they expected.

Dr. Seigel’s advice became paramount in my life and still is. It had a monumental effect on me. The only other such event was a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit at the Smithsonian in the mid-1980’s. I saw just how important humor and cartooning really is in our culture. I never knew it at the time, that I would enter the world of cartooning, but my fans and friends insist it has a calming and healing effect. That adds to my happiness.

So please, give the gift of laughter today, whether its a joke, a book, a cartoon gift, or comedy video. Pass It Forward, as they say.

I remember walking into the counseling center over three decades ago at the University Of Southern Ms. I told them I was feeling “down” a lot and was certain I had depression. So were they. Hence I did.

I entered therapy and went to a number of sessions. Things were getting worse, not better. I decided I may have made a wrong diagnosis, that maybe I was overracting to the regular stresses of life. I was very very wrong.

Then I decided that if I could land a decent job with a great salary, all my maladies would suddenly disappear I landed a job as chief writer and editor at a major network in Washington, D.C. At age thirty six. By age thirty seven, I had read enough about depression to know I had it. I immediately took action and visited a local psychologist who brought a psychiatrist aboard to try a combination of talk and medicine therapy. Year after year I religiously attended my therapy meeting and took my myriad of pills, combinations of pills, changing pills, increasing dosages of pills, etc. Nothing worked yet the medical community continued to applaud me for doing so much better. I begged to them that nothing had changed (I knew how I felt inside my body a lot more than they did), but they insisted the changes were so subtle, I would surely notice if I stopped taking my medicines and discontinued therapy. I did just that. No difference whatsoever. By then, I could barely work much less get out of bed. I made myself do it. I still don’t know how, but felt I needed to.

I moved to L.A. in 1994 thinking that if I could write a blockbuster screenplay, my life would turn around and I would no longer have this monkey on my back. I was now on a new class of drugs called SSRI’s (or Prozac) and the doctors told me that if these didn’t help, nothing would. The new drug did not help. I felt I was doomed forever to live like this.

Then the Northridge Earthquake happened and ruined almost all my possessions. That same week, my mother called from Mississippi ill with cancer. I returned to care for her.

Though I rarely had time to read magazines, one afternoon whil etaking mom to the doctor, I picked up a New Yorker in the waiting room. There was an article about a new experimental treatment called VNS (Vagus Nerve Stimulation) for something called TRD (treatment resistent depression). It was more common than once thought. The symptoms were explained and they were identical to mine. Though it had been available on the market for TRE (treatment resistent epilepsy) it was not yet available for TRD. But a small manufacturer, Cyberonics in Houston, the manufacturer of it, was in battle with the FDA and other powers that be.

I started getting more and more curious and spent a great many hours on the Internet following the studies. It came close to FDA approval several times, but the powerful AMA and pharmaceutical lobbyists continued to “find fault” in the studies and kept it off.

The battle raged on between Cyberonics and some very powerful medical and pharmaceutical lobbyists that kept finding fault in the studies. It would be delayed another several years. I simply had to wait and hang on by the skin of my teeth.

Since I continued to “be punished” in my hometown (was very disenfranchised by then), I started to research. My search was focused on towns with low cost of living, high quality of life, and an advanced medical community. I was not finding any of that at home. Surprisingly Hot Springs, Ar became a top choice. The major medical community was in Little Rock, less than an hour away and UALR Medical Campus was considered one of the most advanced in the country (to my surprise). It’s name was and is up there with many more familiar names like Sloan-Kettering, M.D. Anderson, and Johns Hopkins.

In September of 2005, I finally heard that VNS therapy had been approved by the FDA for treatment of TRD. To my knowledge, it was the only medical modicum that had been approved for such.

Now the problem was how to “get my name on the list”. So I called Cyberonics and they turned me over to a nurse/caseworker, who got right on the case. She found the (very few) surgeons who performed this one hour procedure, and she had to talk my insurance into covering it based on my medical history of years of no results.

On January 25, 2006, almost nine years after I first started following the news of the VNS implant, I received the procedure in Little Rock, Ar. at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

I remember waking up and feeling very light. Something had happened, but I was not sure what. I knew almost immediately that I’d gotten the procedure. I asked a nurse if “it was in” and she assured me it was.

For the first time since I was about twelve years old, I felt no depression? I still had some anxiety but it was based on thinking “my mood is about to swing any minute and there is not a damned thing I can do about it”. Minutes passed by and then hours. No mood swing. I felt like a child playing in the sandbox in kindergarten My worries and stresses were minimal.

Every month, I continued to go to Little Rock for a computerized non-invasive “tune up”; the doctor merely turns up the frequency another notch. It is at a point now where it is every three months and by the end of the year, the depression will be in total remission.

How is my progress? Amazing. I can remember like yesterday that I could not get out of bed, it was a huge chore to clean my home, studying was a brutal task as was work, and all that changed. I love what I do, I do it well, and do it joyfully. Today I am a cartoonist and etailer and full time student, have a wonderful girlfriend, and all kinds of doors opening that were closed, due to my having a undiagnosed disease, and at that, one that was not only socially-unnacceptable but one that a lot of people do not believe exists.

My faith has been renewed in both a higher power, people, and the medical community. It had been long-gone for a good many years.

VNS, for me, is the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever experienced. It is not a cure-all, yes I still occasionally get the blues. I guess medicine offers no panaceas. But this is the closest thing to one I’ve ever experienced.

Many friends encouraged me to stay hush-hush about this story, that it might come back to slap me in the face.

My reply is “So what? Let them use it. If one person reads this with TRD and learns about it, and is fortunate enough to receive the implant, people can use it against me all they want. Doesn’t matter in the least. Let one person get well from this most dreadful disease and it’s all worth telling the story. Really. Well, back to work. Have a great day!

Each day we are challenged by various situations such as the copy machine jamming, getting stuck behind a slow driver or a call from your kid’s teacher. When you have a rough encounter or crisis you can often feel at your worst. It is easy then to fall into old reactions.

We have knee-jerk reactions when we are angry and on edge. This makes it easy for us to fall into an unconscious reaction with others. We end up saying what we regret later and feeling mad at ourselves for being out of control.

When driving, uncontrolled anger can be deadly. It can result in both obnoxious and unsafe behavior including cutting off a person, excessive honking and obscene gestures. Other drivers then react to this and they can end up being also impatient, angry and wreckless.

If you see someone in the midst of an emotional outburst while you are driving don’t get in their way. They are not in control of themselves and this is not someone you want to bait . Accept that they at this point in time aren’t able to deal with their own frustrations and don’t escalate it for them.

On the road it’s good to not make eye contact with someone who is acting aggressively and to keep safety as your highest priority. If someone is tailgating just let them do it and don’t try to retaliate or get into an ego battle.

The science of anger management enables someone to learn ways to stay calm in the midst of rough situations. Breathing, relaxation and visualization all are means to not be a yo-yo going up and down. There are ways to master your mind and emotions so you don’t just act like a leaf in the wind.

What is wonderful is that these skills can be implemented in many situations such as traffic jams, waiting on line, dealing with a difficult boss or having a challenging family situation. It does take practice but it is rewarding as you feel this new calmness enter into many aspects of your life instead of distress or rage. Winning back your self and your freedom is a terrific gift.

Set your eye on the goal of self-control and you will be half the way there. By remembering this is your highest priority it won’t make the immediate reactions as important. You won’t even see those people again that are on the highway. Is it worth it to lose your cool?

You can now have the solutions to your child’s behavior problems.

In spite of your child’s defiance and impossible to live with behavior, you can alter that behavior. You can have an enjoyable life with your child as an integral part of your family.

Have you ever been embarrassed by your children’s behaviors? Did you ever wish they would just do as they are told? Do you want to cut out all the screaming, hollering and shouting at home? DO YOU EVER WISH FOR JUST FIVE MINUTES OF PEACE AND QUIET? You can have that time and much more — you can actually begin to enjoy being a parent.

Dr. Noel Swanson, M.D., and Consultant Child Psychiatrist, has written a widely acclaimed manual “The Good Child Guide” based on his expertise and his experience while working with literally thousands of families in both North America and England. All of these families want the same thing: More FUN and LESS STRESS as a family.

Among the children in those families were those with: learning disabilities, ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome, autism and obsessive compulsive disorders. Some thought they owned the world, some threw temper tantrums and beat up their brothers and sisters. There were those who refused to do as they were told and those who thought only of themselves and wanted everything NOW!

Many of those parents felt hopeless and like complete failures. Maybe you feel that way too.

There is truly hope for you. Dr. Swanson’s book - The Good Child Guide - can be read in just two hours. You will then be prepared to deal with your children’s behavior. During the reading of that book you will learn the secrets for ending those temper tantrums, the disobedience, rudness, lying and stealing. You will also learn how to restore peace, quiet, and harmony and how be begin having FUN in your family life.

After three full months, if you give The Good Child Guide a fair try, Dr. Swanson guarantees that you will be satisfied or he will return your money with no questions!

If you order The Good Child Guide now, those moments of peace, quiet and harmony as a family will soon be yours.