Sunday: Mother's Day, The Power of Grey Skull & Being Present. Updated: 5/9 @ 2:27 PM

It's Sunday! Sunday fun day with your mother cause it's also Mother's Day! It's the one day of the year most people try and remember the one person that brought them into the world (...and may still claim they can take you back out of it when you misbehaved..) and tell her, "Thank you. I appreciate you and all you did for me!" Hopefully you do this regularly, but some of us need a little help from Hallmark from time to time to keep us on track! LOL. We need reminders as people to be more social, thoughtful, and hopefully sincere about the people that are most important to us. It's good to have one day, but I think the everyday things carry some weight over time. A smile to a stranger. Laughing at a joke one of your friends tells you. Maybe listening to someone tell you what just made their day or, in some instances, ruined it. You don't really know what people are picking up on the 'every day' interactions, but they add up in the recesses of their minds and in their beings, and this I will call the Power of Presence. So, without any further chit chat, it's time for another weekly installment of Rants From A Midwest Guy In The Land Of Milk and Honey!

The week has been busy with work catch up and getting back to a normal routine as it is for my life. You wouldn't believe how much more efficient you can be by following a routine, but it's also good to step away from it now and then and make sure you're not missing anything! LOL. On that thought, I had made it home and grabbed the MIC a couple of nights and sang with a couple of old school buddies I know from the Minnesota karaoke scene. In the picture to the left, I talked the karaoke host to sing a Righteous Brothers tune with me, and as it turns out, it fit the TOP GUN kick i'd been on the last couple of weeks. The song went over really well, and one of my local chic friends got it on video. I'm still trying to figure out how to share a direct video from Instagram, but when I do you'll get to see it here or on IG! Till then, you'll just have to believe me that it was fun, not too awful, and no animals or trees were injured in the process of it all!

On the topic of routines, I managed to make it to a 'Pirates of the Caribbean' pool party last night. The place had props, food, people dress as pirates, and dogs running around. There was rum and hot dogs and hamburgers and other random food. I was told the party went till 4:00 AM. I mention I was told because somewhere between 11:00 PM and Midnight, I went out to get a sweater and passed out in the passenger seat of my buddy's truck. Hahahaha. All I remember was, "Ahh. My sweater feels warm. Why don't I just warm up a bit," and I was out. This was not from drinking too much; I had only had a couple of rum drinks and a couple of burgers with them. It was that I was still off from my normal routine from the week, and the intense work out sessions I put myself thought to 'catch up' from my off time.

It's been a good long while since I've been pain-free in the left ass-cheek, but the new combination of therapy that I've been doing for it (...and applying to my patients with similar complaints) has been working in lowering the pain's debilitating effects. The difference between have pain and not is dramatic!! I mean when I have ass-pain, it's an all encompassing thing. It changes my outlook on life. It changes how I relate with people new and old, and it-the ass-pain-challenges my resolve to achieve.. anything productive.

What's the difference between having ass pain or not? Well it's not as noticeable when you see me after I've taken some Advil and just moving around the house or the office because those movements generally are easy and don't require me to do much bending or flexing my butt. However, when I have ass-pain (sciatic), even on OTC pain meds, it dramatic. Let me explain what I mean by that. Let's say I have pain, maybe less with some meds, and I walk into the gym. I don't want to be noticed. I make my move to the locker room and try not to notice anyone and get ready to actually just work on my hips, low back and gluts to get the muscles to tone down and hopefully the pain go down with it. I try and blend in and not be seen by the people there to 'work' on themselves. Sure there are people there working out, but by and large those people are just trying to stay in shape and feel good about their effort or NY's resolution. It's the other group of people I'm avoiding. Those people look like their on steroids or are body building models with butts you can bounce quarters off of and details in places in their bodies you didn't know you could have. It's those people that I'm avoiding. LOL. When I have ass-pain, I'm so much more polite than I might normally be because they might be able to knock me over cause I'm off balance, and I can't move very quickly or in fighting kind of styles. I can walk. I can mostly bend, and I can stretch...some.

In the very few and growing number of instances that I haven't had pain, I hear the thunder in the sky! I hear my heart beating along with everyone else's in the room as if my sense of sound has become super acute. I smell anxiety in the room by a few of the other 'feel good' work out people because they don't want to get in the way of other people. I smell the fear that comes with having any level of insecurity about what you might need to do if it came down to a show down. When I'm not in pain, I remember my purpose in the circle of life,and all things and events are sharp and clear to me. It's like I grabbed my sword much like the old T.V. cartoon HE-MAN and raised it into the sky yelling, "By the power of grey skull...I have the power!" It's intense. It's in these very few moments that I have to remember to be polite and not stare other gym guys down as they look at me or they see me talking to their 'women'. I have to remember I need to share and not take more than I need. It's stupidly true and a very powerful feeling. This is why the Almighty likely sent me the ass-pain so that I might remember I'm not that only one that can give or take with the same hand. I remember to hold myself back from over-doing it so that I don't end up in the pain corner again just trying to get by. It's a hard balance for sure!

What's worse is people instinctively or maybe by just plain observation notice the difference, and that difference is something that changes their behavior towards you and me. It's true. People are more agreeable when your attitude towards the world is positive, you seem to know something they don't, and it exudes from your being-power. Pain is a deal breaker when it comes to how you relate and how people relate to you. It's like survival of the fittest is always at work in the background of our conscious minds. It's interwoven in the nature of our behavior, and it dictates what the outcome of most our interactions are, and the only thing that can change that is your ability to control your thoughts. You can only control your thoughts when you're not distracted, and pain will distract you when it is strong enough. So has been my experience the last few weeks of having sciatic/ass-pain! LOL.

All the above contributes to another social phenomenon largely known as the 'presence' principle. This is what happens between people when they share the same environment on a regular basis. It could be a work space. It could be the gym. It could be the place you walk into and grab coffee out of in the morning, where you get your happy hour drink, or wherever you have contact with someone-directly or indirectly-that this phenomenon is happening. In fact, it's happening all of the time in our unconscious and conscious mind. In short, the principle states that if I see someone on some regular basis, whatever number of filters you might normally use to determine if you should talk to someone, what you can or 'should' not talk to them about begin to diminish. Over time and enough frequency, your brain begins to take on the sensation that you actually know these people or person that you interact with. Remember, most communication is non-verbal, so just because you're not talking to someone you see or see you doesn't mean you're not communicating...you just haven't had a need to articulate what it is that you're thinking, and that can be any number of things in the unconscious mind.

Before you know it, you start having some interactions with those people or person, and those transactions begin to add up as either positive or negative or maybe even neutral. What your mind doesn't know the difference is which of the three categories is building. The unconscious mind is busy at work attempting to tell your conscious mind that it likes this person or it doesn't like that person. It's busy with whatever you're concentrating on from the night before or the meeting you have later that day, but it's too busy--you conscious mind--to handle all of the signals it's picking up. In fact, it's waiting for your unconscious mind to tell it what, for whatever amount of distraction it may need, you should focus on, and this is where the person you see across the counter or next to you in line or across the hallway at work becomes someone you had no idea was going to be...wait for it.. your friend. When someone is your friend you usually trust them more than you might someone you don't really know, but because they're your friend, you believe them with a little less question especially if they fit the social programmed archetypes you're supposed to believe and trust; ya know...the good guys. So why is this important?! Why does this matter?!

It matters because when we create, by the very nature of our own need for routine, presence anywhere, we've essentially opened a door for other people, including ourselves in the opposite direction, to walk into your life that you may or may not want. The part where you're not sure is highly dependent on how that person interacts with you. Are they interest in you? Do they perk up when they see you? Are they pleasant?! You never know, but I bet you if someone perks up when they see you and are pleasant over any extended period of time, the day they're not there to see you or you see them, you're day just went a little more blah than it might have if you had seen that person or place. It's true, but that's the stuff of psychotherapist and social behavior experts. What do I know!? I'm just a dude that enjoys people watchin....kinda!

Well folks! You did it again. You just wasted a chunk of your time reading what will likely not make sense to you in the morning or later this afternoon. So, till next time, "Be well. Do good work, and come on back next time." G. Keiller.

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