Healthy Relationships

The number-one predictor of health, happiness, and a long life is creating and maintaining healthy relationships, according to a study going back to the 1930s..

Interacting and doing things with friends, family–and romantic partners if we so choose–is the secret to success in life.

It clicked when I read this week the Internet article quoting research about how having positive relationships inoculates a person from ill health.

Talking with a friend can be better than taking a happy pill.

Having social support in the form of friends, family, and romantic partners is the way to go.

The participants with rock-solid relationships had better health and a lot of them lived to be in their nineties.

Even when I was employed at HealthCentral I made the case for making friends and finding your tribe of kindred spirits.

It’s true that a friend–not a romantic partner–can be a soul mate. And who’s to say we can’t have more than one soul mate linked to different needs each person fulfills in our lives?

After reading the news article about how social support and relationships are linked to better health, happiness, and a longer life I thought: “Sign me up!”

Imagine spending six hours with a true friend and feeling incredibly happy doing so.

I say: Go for It–because emotional riches count more than money.

Beauty is in the Eye

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

I once went on a date with a guy old enough to be my grandpa. I couldn’t get past his eyeglasses–they were cheap cut-rate eyeglasses. (There–you can whack me with a pocketbook for saying this.)

You and I can see the same person and have different reactions. One of us might like that guy and the other isn’t interested.

Readers: I met a guy in person that I’m attracted to. I like looking at his face most of all because he is kind and caring.

Now I don’t care how rich or good-looking a guy is. You might want to date a person who has a good job. I know two women who mercilessly judged guys as “dogs” and wouldn’t date a guy that wasn’t good-looking. That was their criteria.

Throw your diagnosis into the mix and it’s sketchy how a person will respond on a date.

I’m lucky I met a guy I can do things with. He’s aware of the diagnosis yet he’s okay with this. He can hold his own interacting with other people. He’s a Lefty, like I am.

Looking for love is like a numbers game at times: you have to meet a lot of guys or gals before the right one comes along.

Always be hopeful because love is worth the risk.

A roving photographer once asked me “What’s the best way to fight stigma?”

Twelve years later I stand by what I said: “Be brave, and be yourself.”

It’s true: Be brave, and be yourself–and the right person will come along.

America by Heart

I do not like how the media polarizes people. How everyone is lumped into a stereotype. My prime beef with the book The Antidote is that I find it hard to believe every African American acts like the people chronicled in this Reverend’s book.

There’s no room in the media dialogue for differing viewpoints that challenge assumptions and stereotypes about how people act and believe and live. That’s what’s not right in the discourse in American society: if you don’t fit in this or any other box, you’re not written about and not given a say in the media.

I happen to favor Bernie Sanders if you must know. I think healthcare is a right not like Ted Cruz who says it’s a choice.

Try as I might to see how the right wing faction of our government makes sense (and how Conservative Christians make sense) I have a hard time buying what they’re selling.

I’ve been branded a liberal because I speak out in favor of open-mindedness. I was interviewed at Yahoo for an article on dating when you have a mental illness. I was positive and proactive in my quotes. Yet the majority of people who posted comments below the article stigmatized those of us with a diagnosis who just wanted to be loved and love others like everyone else.

I’ve always made the case for treating others with dignity. A friend who was a CEO–even he knew the trickle-down theory doesn’t work in practice. On the face of it evangelical arguments seem plausible yet when you analyze them they don’t make sense. Like Jeanine Pirro claiming on Sirius XM radio that because of waterboarding we’re keeping America safe. Months later there was a terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

Star Jones was quoted that if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. I stand for giving every human being dignity. I stand for stopping these endless no-good wars. I stand for booting out stigma of any kind including racism and homophobia regardless of who’s doing it.

Now that it’s voting season in America I’m a voracious reader of the political news. I’m fascinated with the demographics of the people interviewed in exit polls.

This all leads me to think I’m right in claiming our government can’t fix what ails American society. People are disenfranchised. For decades we’ve been unable to influence the fate of Acts that become Laws.

Who knows: maybe now is the time for more of us to get involved like my political activist guy. I’ve changed my mind: we need to get active in speaking out even though at the end of the day it might not matter who gets elected.

Yet it does matter to me when Republicans co-opt Christianity as a political ploy and blunder what Love Thy Neighbor means.

Only now I feel it’s imperative more than ever that everyone uses our voices to talk about the things that matter to us.

I’ve written my congressperson and senators about the mental health Acts that should be voted into Law. In this way it’s true we’ve had to wrestle the government to the mat to do the right thing.

The right of everyone living in America to recover–the chance to have a full and robust life when you’re diagnosed with a mental illness–that’s what matters to me the most.

I say this because without mental health what does a person really have?

It might just be time to get involved as citizen activists.

Thinking Positively

I’ve found an effective solution to dwelling in the past: focus on the positive instead of the negative. Yes: it is easier to do this

Think: what was good about your past life even though most of it wasn’t great? A New York Times article revealed that people who rewrote their history to frame it in a positive way healed better and had better health.

Anais Nin wrote in one of her diaries: “You have the right to select your perception of the world.”

I think of this after reading an interview with Ice Cube in Rolling Stone. He founded NWA and now stars in movies. If you ask me he has a poor attitude: He in effect told the reporter: “I’m black so of course no one likes me.”

I’m not going to attack and judge a person for believing what they do. It’s just that as I read the Ice Cube interview and thought about it I realize each of us has a specific worldview. In this way the truth is always elastic depending on who’s doing the stretching.

If that’s what a person believes, it’s true for them. It’s their truth regardless of whether something really happened or didn’t happen.

I’ve been thinking about this also as it relates to stigma and how a lot of consumers perceive that stigma is pervasive and having a diagnosis is shameful because other people think they’re crazy.

I say: get over it.The more pressing concern is that blaming stigma or blaming other people–regardless of who or what you’re hating or blaming and why you’re hating or blaming–is not a healthy way to live.

The fear of stigma will hold a person back even when there’s no actual stigma.

I do wish Ice Cube would get over himself. He’ll certainly get Rolling Stone to sell thousands of copies of the magazine.

My stroke of insight was that focusing on the positive is the way to go. I have long railed against the time I spent in the community mental health system. This week when I chose to focus on the positive everything changed for the better.

Focusing on the positive–choosing to think positively–is all too rare in a society where people like Ice Cube and others make polarizing statements.

I say: find the good in your life and in other people. Keep an open mind that good people exist in the world. Take back control by deciding to focus on the positive.

If you ask me, focusing on the positive is the best use of our time and of our mental energy. To this end I will focus on the good when I post blog entries here.

I’ll branch out in this blog to write things that no traditional publisher or mainstream Internet website is going to publish. No other outlet wants to publish what I write because there’s nothing shocking or sensational about what I propose.

I’ll start by writing about right here right now because today more than ever it’s a great time to be living in recovery.

Spring Cleaning in Winter

The first article I had published in a newspaper was titled Time to Spring Clean in January, 1990 in the Staten Island Advance.

It recommended doing spring cleaning now to beat the winter blues and blahs. The article talked about how the cobwebs of our minds and residual negative thoughts need to be cleaned out too.

More than this I recommend not accumulating clutter in cabinets and drawers and closets and on the visible surfaces in your apartment or house. I have not ever understood the attraction to displaying knickknacks on every inch of a coffee table or end table or dresser or elsewhere in a home.

Clearing out the old, the unwanted, the things that bring back painful memories should be done at the start of every season if you ask me. If you’re not currently using an item or won’t resume using it in the next season, you shouldn’t keep it on a closet shelf or anywhere in your apartment.

I make an exception for things you do love and do use not often yet every so often. Yet if something is broken, torn or otherwise unusable it shouldn’t be kept at all.

With clothes I’ve always recommended keeping on hand only the items that fit and flatter us. Go out and buy new clothes if you gain or lose weight. I kid you not I had to replace every pair of pants and all my skirts when I lost weight. This was no joke yet I did it rather than walk around in baggy clothes.

Living in our homes should be a celebration of our lives that we take joy in. Not a museum stuffed with artifacts or items from the past or shabby furniture. It’s true that the Salvation Army, Housing Works in New York City, and Goodwill all sell decent secondhand furniture if you can’t afford Raymour & Flanigan or Ashley Home Store.

Spring will return in two months. I say: start now to clean up and clear out and to think about the goals you want to achieve. Have a goal instead of setting a resolution.

Spring is the perfect time to start something new.

I find that clearing out an apartment and cleaning up in the winter is often the prelude to making other positive changes in our lives.

Try it: clear out and clean up and see if something magical happens.

Time Moves On

I was tasked with cleaning out an office. It was like I was an expert called on to intervene on an episode of Hoarders. I kid you not a neat freak wrangled nearly a decade of clutter.

Living in and living with a mess is no way to live. Most of all I think having a cluttered apartment can affect a person’s mental health.

I recommend reading the Marie Kondo book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Like this Japanese clutter-control expert with a mile long waiting list and no clients that ever rebound: doing it all at once is something to consider. Kondo’s method seems perfect to me.

It’s a way to live life Left of the Dial when your home is NOT a mess, is NOT cluttered and chaotic. Often: to live in hope and harmony the first step is to clear the clutter to make room for the new and better.

My mantra is: for every one thing you bring into your apartment one old thing has to be removed. I’ve had this ethic for over a decade now.

The absolute best and truly effective tidying method is a variant on Marie Kondo’s method. I’ll tell you how I found out how to do this via a Google search.

Place the sweater face down on the bed. Fold the left sleeve across the back and then fold the right sleeve across the back. Fold the hem up from the bottom about 1/3 up. Keeping rolling the hem another third or so up until you have a sweater like a loose jelly roll. (You might have to fold it in quarters.)

Store the sweaters in rolls sideways across the length of the drawer.

Voila: you can store more sweaters in less space.

Best of all when you’re able to easily see them to take out one sweater the sweater will not be wrinkled after you take it out. If it’s lightly wrinkled you can use a steamer to get the wrinkles out.

I’m all for making our lives simpler.

Why have to use up tons of storage space and drawers for sweaters that can compactly now fit into one drawer instead of two or three? Why have to struggle and take time to remove all the sweaters on the top to get to the one on the bottom?

Perfetto if you ask me.

Time moves on. One day our loved ones will not be here. Cleaning up and cleaning out should not only be done after a person is gone. We should do it while we’re alive so that we don’t saddle other people with cleaning up our messes in the event we’re not here.

Yet most of all we should be neat and tidy for ourselves: to have a clear mind and a fitter body and stop from being overwhelmed with the choices we have to make or want to make.

Neat is sweet.

Life Cycles

Christine DeLorey in her book Life Cycles: Your Emotional Journey to Freedom and Happiness states that an emotional imbalance is often the root of physical illness.

At the center of Left of the Dial was using your gifts to heal an imbalance and gain a sense of freedom from dis-ease.

I recommend this Christine DeLorey book. It uses the principles of numerology as a guide.

Numerology can be a practical tool to help a person. I have found it to be accurate.

The author suggests that a person loves all their feelings. And that self-expression springs from using our feelings.

I have written before that the goal is to feel what we feel, express it and deal with it in constructive and productive ways.

Not by drinking alcohol or using street drugs, or chowing down on comfort food to feel better.

At the end of the book DeLorey talks about the 2000s and the new female energy and what is going on with our earth. She talks about how we can heal ourselves and heal our planet.

The author makes the case that climate change is the earth’s response to how we are treating the world we live in.

I realize a lot of people are going to be skeptical about numerology. Take it with a grain of salt if you want. Yet even just reading the last chapter of the book might help.

I’ll report back in the future about other things DeLorey wrote in this book.

Year-End Rear-End Review

I counted down to 1987 at the radio station where the disc jockeys played the top 120 or so songs from 1986 in a “Year-End Rear-End Review of 1986 Record Picks.”

To this day I still listen to music. You can listen to The Alternative Project radio station on the iHeartradio website. In New York City if you have an HD radio receiver you can listen to K-Rock at 92.3 FM HD2.

Over the years my brother has given me exorbitant gift cards for Christmas. One year I used one to buy an HD radio/iPod dock/alarm clock. You can set the alarm clock to wake you up to the radio or to music from your iPod.

I also used one of those gift cards to buy an iPod that holds something like 100,000 songs or something outrageous like that. Of course I doubt it contains anything near that amount of music.

My contention is that often what gave a person joy when they were younger can give them joy as an adult.

From the time I was a young kid I always listened to music on the radio. It’s a free source of happiness.

All you need is the money to buy a radio. And if you’re content to listen to Taylor Swift or any regular Top 40 music played on average stations you don’t need an HD radio receiver just any old cheap radio whose frequency comes in clearly.

At the time I was a disc jockey in the 1980s a listener had called in and told me he was miraculously able to tune into WSIA, Staten Island from all the way up in Boston. This cheered me.

I make the case for listening to music. Or reading books. Or cooking or baking from recipes. Or if it’s your thing watching TV. These simple pleasures can be enjoyed from your own apartment or house.

In the coming season with the encroaching arctic freeze of late I recommend staying inside and doing things like listening to music or cooking.

You really don’t need a lot of money to be happy.

I make the case for installing iTunes on a computer and listening to music to cheer up our spirits in the coming gloomy cold weather.

I’ll end here by saying that gratefulness goes a long way in feeling good when parts of your life are not so good.

And face it: when it’s cold outside baby who wants to trudge outdoors in the snow.

Music can be a companion to our days. It can lift us up. It can take us to a better place.

It’s said that “travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.”

I say: finding what gives you joy (whether music or something else) and going and doing that makes us richer too.

Thank You

I want to thank everyone who has read this blog over the years.

Thank you for buying Left of the Dial or for reading the memoir excerpts here if you didn’t buy the book.

I’m trying to line up a featured reader gig for the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) in May. I will tell everyone the information about this if I’m able to get the green light to do this.

2016 is the 25th anniversary of IAWA.

Everyone should take pride in their heritage if you ask me. A few bad apples shouldn’t spoil it for everyone else in this ethnicity.

I once saw a young teen wear a hoodie with bold letters proclaiming: “Proud to be Muslim.” I would like to have a tee shirt that proclaims: “Proud to be Italian.”

You don’t have to be Italian. You can have a different ethnicity. Either way taking pride in where you come from matters if you ask me.

A lot of the customs have gotten lost in translation. I say there’s a beauty in keeping traditions alive.

I wrote years ago at HealthCentral about the recovery strategy of establishing a tradition. I’ll talk about this in detail on Thursday.

Enjoy your day.

Countdown to 2016

The end of the year can be blue for a lot of people who feel they have nothing to celebrate.

Again I’m reminded of the lyrics to the All-American Rejects song “Move Along.” It’s true that when it seems like all hope is gone a person has to just move along.

The future can be better. Today is what it is and tomorrow can be different. We do have the power to shift the needle to have an organic and balanced life. It might not all happen at once. It might happen in increments.

I firmly believe that we’re given only what we can carry. And that the goal is to carry our cross with dignity.

I align as a Christian. Though I don’t attend any church and I’m not a member of any organized religion: I align as a Christian.

Faith in a higher power can carry us through when we don’t have faith in our lives turning around any sooner.

In a book I wrote that I’m no longer going to publish I wrote that an act of faith can simply be walking in a park or around greenery and getting in tune with nature.

I was referred to the Greenpoint Church Hunger Program as a reputable non-profit so I donated money to this effort. The Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn, NY serves a weekly dinner to anyone who shows up and runs a food pantry with minimal requirements when you go to pick up the food.

Elsewhere I’ve written that buying organic produce and frequenting a food pantry makes sense for a lot of people living on a limited income. Or buying mostly fruits and vegetables and getting other food from a pantry.

One selling point when I was referred to this church was that two married women run it. As in married to each other. I told the person who referred me that I would’ve liked to become a priest if the Catholic Church allowed me to. She told me not to hold my breath.

I was born into a Catholic family and was the only one who attended church often until I went to college. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 I turned away from organized religion for good.

Today I’m still not a fan of the bigotry and violence committed in the name of God or Allah. I don’t think any human being should be standing in judgment of another human being because you think they’ve sinned in the eyes of your God. Jesus loves everyone.

I tend not to judge people and I try my best to refrain from doing this. It’s true “all you need is love” and two people loving each other shouldn’t be looked down on.

There’s far too much hate and anger and violence and bigotry (including racism and discrimination) that’s still ongoing in the world.

I gave up wanting to be normal in a society where competing against other people in a “rat race” is the norm.

In this holiday season I say: be grateful for what you do have instead of bemoaning or being jealous of what you don’t have.

At HealthCentral years ago I wrote about the recovery strategy of establishing a tradition. So if you don’t have family to celebrate with do something on your own. Be kind to yourself.

Make a charitable donation if you’re able. Or in the New Year see about volunteering your time instead of money to a non-profit whose mission you endorse.

Thank you for reading this blog. I’m grateful for all the readers who tune in. I hope that in the end like the famous quote tells us you don’t think anything is impossible you think: “I’m Possible.”