Slinkies

I got an e-mail this morning from a client, and it really tickled my funny bone.

Some people are like Slinkies -- not really good for anything but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.

Now, back when I was a criminal, before I had taken 120 hours of anger management courses plus the mandatory refresher course every five months, I was fond of pushing, shoving and punching any idiot who irked me or got in my way. Those were the days!

But of course I've embraced Powerful Positive Change (PPCTM) and have moved into new territory in my life.

These days, when encountering complete retards, I take a deep breath, count to ten -- twice if I have to, and I do my best not to take someone else's rude, stupid behavior personally. Easier said than done! So, as we go into Memorial Day weekend, let's keep our ire in check as our cities are invaded by slow-moving, slack-jawed tourists and as we sit on the highway like it's some kind of parking lot.

Take a deep breath, count to ten, and think of those slinkies!

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you.

He Says The UHO Is Not A Scam

On Monday March 24 I posted a diatribe entitled, “Mr. Hobo The Selfish Bum from The United Homeless Organization.” In that post I called the UHO a scam.

I later received this e-mail from Vonte Vakel Johnson, UHO worker ID# 2747. (Please read the March 24 post and Vonte's very eye-opening and enlightening response to how the UHO is supposed to work.)

Sometimes, in order to improve ourselves, we have to be willing to be wrong. And sometimes we have to sit down and eat a plate of crow. I am doing that right now, and I hope you will have a bite or two with me. A bite of SCAM crow!

Thank you for your e-mail Vonte. I wish you all the best. It's nice to find someone else who is also on the bumpy road to self improvement.

E-mail From Vonte:

I responded to your observation of that uho worker. I beleive in self help only if you are willing to upgade your self. Like i said in your blogger site sandraoday.blogspot.com. I'm a uho worker. if there is no improvement on the part of the worker than and only than is it a F**KING scam, and that is coming from a UHO worker who actually talks with homeless and previously homeless people, AND works the tables.

I'm a worker that is geting back up on my feet. UHO is not long term employment. It is to get us up from the street back into main stream society. If the worker doesn't want to upgrade themselves, DON'T GIVE THAT F**KER S**T. I sure h*ll wouldn't. time and money are one in the same, and if i don't have time to waste; what does that tell you about my money? I work the tables to get enough money to take care of my basic need and to save enough to fully enter back into mainstream society. currently i'm making progress in entering in to mainstream society.

This organization was designed as a self help program and a first step program. if the worker doesn't want to take the steps to remedy his situation, THEN F**K HIM/HER. don't hinder my goals in upgrading myself. I don't have time for BULLS**T when it comes to improving my situation for the better. If an A**HOLE was to F**K up there life, let them go somewhere where they can facility there F**KED UP behavior. Don't facilitate that S**T in a organization that's helping me get up on my feet. I don't blame you for calling it a scam, i'd call it a scam also if i didn't see any improvement on the part of the worker.

It's A**HOLES like "Mr. Hobo the Self Bum" who F**K it up for workers like me who want to change there life for the better. My table is located on 58thstreet and 5th avenue. my name is vonte vakel johnson and my email is vontevakeljohnson@gmail.com and vontevakeljohnson@yahoo.com

please feel free to send you praise and/or critisizmes to my email
or come the the location i'm at to scream at me and/or curse me out. this I'll gladly accept with a humble and meek spirit. and on this note i bid you adui.

sincerly your's

vonte vakel johnson
UHO worker ID# 2747

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .

Ziggy the Cat

I had the luxury of spending the past two weeks up at O’Day Camp. O’Day Camp is a former migrant worker compound that we’re turning into a retreat for my workshops and intensive one on-one-power sessions.

Camp is beautiful in May -- the birds chirp, the flowers bloom and the river is usually non-threatening. We have all kinds of critters zooming around the yard -- chipmunks, bats, goldfinches, even an opossum or two.

Ziggy, our camp cat, loves to sit in the window and watch all the action. He sits up straight and makes all kinds of nutty sounds. He chatters and shakes and cries – like he’s just dying to get outside and kill something. Like he has to get outside really, really bad. Like if he doesn’t get out there he’ll go crazy! So I take him outside. And what does he do? Chase birds? Hunt mice?

No.

He panics. Sometimes he frantically rushes from one green patch of grass to another, chomping like he’s a grazing goat. Then he starts getting spooked by everything, the chirp of a bird or a car door slamming two miles away -- he has a total freak out and runs to the porch and cries to be let back inside. Once back in the house, he cries and yearns to be back outside with the birds.

I think Ziggy likes wanting the birds more than being in a position where he can actually catch them. I think a lot of people are like that, too. They’d rather cry over dreams that didn’t come true rather than hunt them down and tear them to into something new. Those are frightened, lazy people. You might even be one of them.

But you don’t have to be.

I challenge you to move forward through lazy fear into active fear. I challenge you to apply a little determination and a lot of imagination to what your life can become. I believe, through reading my blog and buying my books and signing up for O’Day Camp workshops you could break through your lazy fear to a whole new level of active fear. And, between you and me, active fear is a more fascinating more enjoyable level of fear.

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .

It's Got Nothing To Do With You

Here’s something you hear in New York frequently, “It’s got nothing to do with you.” You hear it on the street all the time, especially from people screaming on their cell phones.

But there is terrific truth to the phrase, “It’s got nothing to do with you.” It just means you shouldn’t take everything so darn personally. Nothing anyone in the world does has anything to do with you. Even if someone is doing something really terrific, or even something really crappy to you at the moment, it has nothing to do with you. What someone else is doing, saying, thinking or feeling has everything to do with them, and nothing to do with you.

Try to take comfort in that.

The one thing we all have in common is that we’re always thinking of ourselves. Our actions, viewpoints and words have everything in the world to do with us and what we want and how we want others to see us.

It has nothing to do with you. And that’s a good thing.

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .

E-mail Sandra at PowerofSandra@aol.com

Treat Yourself

Oh, I just worked really hard today ...

Oh, my boss was such a hard-nose today ...

My kids are driving me nuts ...

I am so completely stressed out ...

I deserve a treat! A cookie. A box of candy-covered popcorn. A mocha-frappuccino hazelnut vanilla bean latte with whipped-cream and caramel butterscotch sauce on it.

People, we all deserve treats, but that doesn’t mean we should have them.

Oh, but my day was so hard. I’ll feel deprived if I don’t indulge!

Oh, you’ll feel deprived like all those people who don’t live in the top 1% of wealth in the world? Like those people “over there” who don’t have clean drinking water, let alone butterscotch? You’ll feel deprived like they do, and that would be bad, right?

People, we don’t fill ourselves up with treats to keep ourselves happy. We fill ourselves up with treats to help us maintain distance from reality.

Walk down any Main Street U.S.A. into super-mall America and you’re walking into one of the biggest, most mass-marketed soul pacifier factories in existence. Banners and signs waving in Red White and Blue that read, “Make today special, try a new latte.”

Make today truly special, folks. Don’t buy yourself that treat for a change and see where that takes your imagination. Stop pacifying your spirit, set it on fire.

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .

Be Yourself

Be who you know you are, not who they say you are.

Lots of my younger clients, most in their early 20s, are immediately flummoxed when I tell them this. Because they don’t know who they are yet. They’re finally out in the big world, finally on their own, but they’ve spent their entire lives up to this point being told what to do, what to believe and how to behave. They’ve never had to figure those things out for themselves.

Those kids are trying to run forward into life but they keep looking back to check to make sure they’re doing OK. To see if they’re doing it “right.” To keep their eyes on the shore of approval.

Set sail, my friends. You’re never the same person when you journey and then return home. Go on the journey, and stop checking the horizon.

And for the rest of us setting sail on yet another adventure in our lives -- don’t worry about who you were yesterday. Stop trying to fix that person in the past. Your life can’t set sail when you’re dragging an anchor around. Cut yourself free and enjoy the ride.

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .

The United Homeless Organization is a SCAM

Last week I was walking down the street past this guy who was soliciting money for The United Homeless Organization. (Google it, folks. It’s a scam.) The guy was sitting beside one of those giant water cooler water bottles begging for change “for the homeless”. I walked by with my coffee from Starbucks, a short coffee, which costs a $1.73, and this glorified beggar starts heckling me, ”Come on lady, seriously? You’ve got five bucks for a coffee from Starbucks but you can’t donate to the homeless?”

Not a good move on his part.

1) The United Homeless Organization keeps only $15 of the money each “volunteer” begs. The “volunteer” keeps the rest.

2) I donate to the Coalition For The Homeless, an actual charity that helps homeless people. I donate by writing a large check and not by throwing a hand full of pennies in a stolen water cooler bottle.

3) I am able to donate because I WORK a JOB. I don’t beg on a corner and ask for chump change. But then again, this guy is clearly a still-practicing bum, as I witnessed when one person was walking by and Mr. Hobo said, “If you’re not going to help the homeless can you at least donate a cigarette to me?”

4) Cigarettes are $7.50 a pack in Manhattan. But the bum didn’t harsh on the cigarette-giver for spending that money on smokes. I guess if I had brought Mr. Hobo a cappuccino he wouldn’t worry about how much I spent on my coffee and not on his “charity work”. (The primary charity clearly being himself.)

5) Sitting on the corner begging for change while wearing a red UHO T-shirt does not make it a higher-level of begging. It is still begging, especially when you’re begging for cigarettes.

6) The hobo told me, “I’m the top-earner for UHO.” No, dude, you give the UHO $15 so you can legally beg. You’re the top earner for YOU, hobo, not for the organization. You are a bum.

7) There are better ways to separate people from their money than by insulting their choice of coffee. We get insults for free here in New York City.

8) After being heckled by Mr. Hobo, a nice young guy came up to me and said, “That was really rude of him. There’s nothing wrong with drinking Starbuck’s coffee. Starbucks is the best place I’ve ever worked. I love it there. The company donates to lots of charities, too.”

9) Not every homeless person is a bum, but every free-loading bum is a low-life who is too lazy to keep a job.

And, after laying out my opinions for “Mr. Hobo the selfish bum” I realized:

10) You don’t need to explain yourself to a bum. He doesn’t care about you. He just wants your money.

I look forward to hearing your stories of immense personal struggle, and will continue to inspire you .