Use Changemaker to Start Your Own Groups

"It is the courage to be open and loving which is the manifestation of underlying strength and power. And it is only in embracing the possibility that you have a Higher Self that knows how to love, that knows truth within, that is truly powerful, that you can begin to face and dismantle the false beliefs of the protected self, the ego. You can't begin to look at these and deal with them if you don't believe there's anything else. You can never move into the feeling of personal power until you recognize truly that there's a peaceful place within you that is already there, that doesn't have to be fixed."
Jordan and Margaret Paul

The Changemaker basic beliefs are:
(1) Anyone can get on the wrong road in human growth,
(2) Getting on the right road takes patience and exploration,
(3) Small groups are an invaluable support in human growth,
(4) Healing comes from accepting spiritual guidance and direction,
(5) Everyone involved in helping others to grow needs his/her individual path of growth and is free to share it with others,
(6) Letting go and letting God means stepping out into an emotional void,
(7) As well as an individual growth program, each healer needs compassion and understanding.
(8) No healer can help guide beyond his/her individual path of growth.
(9) There is neither hierarchy in spiritual growth nor any ladder to climb or rank to achieve. We are each pilgrims with our own life issues.
(10) Life issues are with us throughout our earthly existence. That is why they are called life lessons. However, they do get slightly less painful if we do the necessary work.

Technorati Tags : beliefs, labels, healer, God, growth, self-discovery

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want." Margaret Young

On your road to self-discovery, remember to look for guidance among persons that are on their individual path of growth. If anyone wants to tell you who to be, that person is not growing but is trying to avoid growth by "changing" you. Some people call this codependency.

Yet we all are probably codependent at one time or another. It is the nature of love to sometimes be giving more than we are receiving from another. But the codependent uses concern to gain power over others in the classic position of "top-dog". Shared power is the only ingredient in relationships that determines how healthy the union is.

When You Find the Buddha in the Middle of the Road--Kill Him is the wise title of a good book by Sidney Kopp. No one knows what is better for anyone but that person. We each have our own answers. Even those trained in counseling techniques can only see what is revealed. Tendencies may be seen and certainly personality indicators will be there. But the work of change is a person's individual choice.

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want." Margaret Young

"Change occurs when you become what you are, not when you try to become what you are not...change seems to happen when you have abandoned the chase after what you want to be (or think you should be) and have accepted--and fully experienced-what you are." Janette Rainwater

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places. Robert Frost

Everyone has many personality labels yet most of us resist being labeled. Over a lifetime, we each will have hundreds of labels because we each have unique life experiences. The main way we learn our labels is from others. We generally resist these learnings as it feels that the labels have a negative connotation. Yet most of our labels are positive and negative at the same time.

We each love to learn about ourselves. But we pretend that we don't want to know. It is the same maneuver we use to view a group picture that includes us. While oohing and aahing over all the other group members, we are secretly gazing at ourselves.

Personality labels are personality indicators. Labels can be positive and negative at the same time. Understanding ourselves and what motivates each of us can be a powerful tool towards meeting life's challenges and personal dreams.

The Changemaker Test, which is meant as a vehicle for self-discovery, includes the labels used in NLP (neurolinguistic programming), birth order, family roles, emotional energies, and MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator).

Welcome to Changemaker Family of Blogs. Changemaker is committed to the basic belief that each person has the opportunity for self-discovery and the potential for self-healing. As individuals, we sometimes choose paths that may be harmful to us. To get off that path and onto a new road takes exploration and experimentation.

The Changemaker Test offers education for self-discovery as we believe that the change within a person involves the courage to see (insight) and the courage to act (action). The test will teach anyone 10 or more labels about themselves.

Therefore, by using the labels to change themselves, the changemaker is the person who decides to learn and make the change happen.

In advocating the self-discovery model for understanding ourselves and others, Changemaker believes that the Changemaker Test can be used to help groups of persons interested in learning about themselves.

Healing begins when, in spite of all the negative self-talk going on inside a person, that person feels someone caring and loving them for no apparent reason. This unconditional love comes in spite of attempts to search for a motive.

The Changemaker Family of Blogs includes five blogs that each includes one of the basic topics from our main site, kathyberman.com.

1) answersbyemail.com -I wrote the Changemaker Test in 1990 and have only recently included it in my work. As a counselor and teacher, I realized that most of the self-discovery labels were only known by counselors. So I took the 5 major personality indicators and arranged a "test" that anyone can use to find 10 of his/her labels.

Therapy is the study of personality but it has been high-jacked by the mental health field to define mental illness. I say high jacked because most people need information/education and not therapy. I don't believe you can help anyone negatively. I have always pictured a person in denial as sitting out in the cold wrapped up in a thin blanket called denial. Many times people want to "help" by yanking off the blanket. How does that help anyone except the "helper's ego"?

2) changemakergroups.com - Changemaker Groups provide short-term specialized direction and solutions to help others to better understand themselves and us. With this direction and self-knowledge others will learn to implement techniques designed to lead to greater self-mastery. These groups are started by lay persons interested in self-discovery and helping others. Anyone with compassion for others and the humility to know that he/she doesn't have the answers for anyone's life except his/her own life.

Groups are the recognized best method for people to gain information and acceptance from others. One of the main underpinnings of AA is that all members are peers. Anyone has the opportunity to share and to be heard. The Changemaker Groups can be started at several free online community sites and/or in person.

3) cmlibrary.com -In 2005, I began selecting and defining the books I felt were the best for ten main topics developed in Changemaker. The topics are core (basic selection of 4 books that could be the foundation for life change), creativity, exercise, food, health, meditation, peace of mind, personal development, spiritual direction, and stress reduction. The core books are comprehensive and may be all the books someone needs. I have included several books I've used as my "textbooks" for my personal growth.

4) healingforyou.com -This blog will include all the topics needed for healing mentally, physically and emotionally. It also includes many links to tools to help you in your spiritual journey. I believe that each of us has a soul and our main life quest is the discovery and growth of our soul. I also believe that our soul is awakened by our creativity and that maturity is becoming that joyful, playful child that God created in us.

5) highenergygoals.com-I quit drinking alcohol in 1976, smoking in 1988, but I had gained weight. For over 10 years, I tried eating different ways with no weight loss. Then in 2006, I developed my basic weight loss plan. I lost 20 pounds which I have kept over for over a year. I am now beginning my Phase 2-20 more pounds. The High Energy plan includes food suggestions, exercise suggestions, and emotional and mental techniques needed for stress reduction. The plan is created by you to include the food, exercise, and techniques that you most enjoy. I know that a total life plan has to be enjoyable to be used.

Addiction treatment by the medical model means that an addict is "sick" and that someone else knows how to get that addict "well". In reality, each person has a part of themselves that is perfect and was given to them at birth.

The basic problem with the medical model of addiction recovery is that the medical field calls someone "well" by sending them to take classes about symptoms and this determines the level of "help" that the "well" person will be able to give.

The reality of any emotional/mental help is that the healer can't help beyond his/her level of recovery. We are all wounded healers but growth only happens after surrender to the need for recovery.

What other field of medicine focuses mainly or only on the symptoms? I mean, where is the cure?

Certainly a label can help by identifying what information is needed to lead to a cure. But how does telling someone that they are in denial help that person to understand that their thinking is faulty?

Denial is not about lying but about someone not knowing the truth. Isn't it more helpful to say that an addict is someone using a learned pattern of behavior to deal with uncomfortable feelings? If there are problems because of the addiction, then the learned pattern has to be given up and a new pattern of behavior has to be chosen for the energy used to be a positive for the addict.

In other words, some of the main issues in addiction treatment are maturity issues. The age at which a person started drinking, using, eating, buying, being overpowering to others, using sex, etc. is the emotional age he/she still is. If he/she started at age 15, which is pretty normal, then he/she is age 14 emotionally.

So recovery is generally about growing up. Another main issue of why people are addictive is to continue to live life in their head or in their imagination. No one knows reality--we only have a perception of reality.

According to Wikipedia, "not all doctors agree on what addiction or dependency is, because traditionally, addiction has been defined as being possible only to a psychoactive substance (for example alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) which ingested cross the blood-brain barrier, altering the natural chemical behavior of the brain temporarily.

Many people, both psychology professionals and laypersons, now feel that there should be accommodation made to include psychological dependency on such things as gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, work, exercise, cutting, and shopping / spending.

However, these are things or tasks which, when used or performed, cannot cross the blood-brain barrier and hence, do not fit into the traditional view of addiction. Symptoms mimicking withdrawal may occur with abatement of such behaviors; however, it is said by those who adhere to a traditionalist view that these withdrawal-like symptoms are not strictly reflective of an addiction, but rather of a behavioral disorder.

In spite of traditionalist protests and warnings that overextension of definitions may cause the wrong treatment to be used (thus failing the person with the behavioral problem), popular media, and some members of the field, do represent the aforementioned behavioral examples as addictions.