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Third graders on field trip discover Earthlings' unique approach to climate change... 
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 Text introducing Dr. Makover Looking to maximize profit on your house-flip investment? You’ve put in literally thousands of hours transforming an ugly wreck of a house into an enviable property, no doubt the most gorgeous in the neighborhood. Now is not the time to rest on your laurels (whatever those are!), as the crucial “showing phase” begins. It is well known that prospective buyers make their decision yea or nay within two minutes of crossing the threshold of a new listing. Your challenge is to create an overwhelmingly positive impression from the get-go. If you’re reading this, you are in luck! I recently pioneered a new technique I call “Found Object Art Simulation.” Follow these simple and straightforward directions and you will raise the number and price of your offers by 25% or more. First, find a collection of objects in a nook or cranny of your home that catches your eye. (If you are one those inveterate multi-taskers so prevalent today who never pays much attention to anything, I recommend You Are Here by the celebrated Buddhist leader Tikh Nhat Han.) Next, manipulate a few objects, changing their position or even removing and adding a few, till the color and composition look good. For maximum effect set up a red velvet rope in front of the designated area and tack a white plastic label with embossed black lettering on the closest wall at eye height, giving your display an imaginative title that captures its special essence, much like a real artist does. Three to five displays are optimal. Now the real fun begins. When your prospective buyer walks through the door, whisk him or her around past all your “exhibits” as fast as you can. With strategic placement and a rapid pace, hitting them all under two minutes should be no problem. The technique is particularly effective with first time buyers and shoppers with a flair for design. What’s that? You think you and your home lack potential? Think again! All it takes is a little imagination to make the most out of the available materials, no matter how prosaic they appear in their usual habitats. Intimidated? Check out the simple displays below that turned a run-of-the-mill American Craftsman kit-built bungalow into a heart stopping irresistible manse, and see how easy it is to add value while exercising creative impulses you never thought you had!
Would you believe these compelling, museum quality exhibits were set up in less time than it took you to commute to work this week and for less money than your monthly utility bill? If you get stuck, ask a special friend for help, or even a spouse. Double the fun and square the creativity when you share the fun with others. Remember it’s your pockets those extra dollars will be filling. Get the picture(s)? Now what are you waiting for?!
 Dr. Motley needs no introduction to those of you who have been faithfully watching his long-running series on the Self and Other Improvement channel (SOI) these past many years, or who have read his many published works, including Thrilling Low-Risk Life Adventuresand Away with All Worry: Fast Track Therapy for Generations X ,Y ,Z and Beyond. Dr. Motley has an uncanny ability to distill digestible nuggets of practical import from his thirty years of practice as a psychotherapist and educator. He can’t name any names, but the list of people who have consulted him reads like a veritable Who’s Whoof Movers and Shakers. We are beyond pleased to offer the good doctor’s wisdom in the form of contributions to Boomspring Blog. Dr. Motley makes his debut with a stirringly upbeat approach to one of life’s most trying experiences: Loss Without StressHave you ever noticed when you stop people on the street at random, especially the ones who aren’t smiling*, and ask what’s on their minds, they are likely to tell you they lost some thing or person? After a day or two of this you might think the condition is rather common. Well, trust your intuition. You would be absolutely right! The results just in from NIMH sponsored studies at two reputable institutions of higher learning have found the condition to be downright ubiquitous! But not to worry! We have distilled the hard won insights of some of history’s greatest thinkers (including my fellow clinical researchers) for your perusal below. Incorporate them into your Mental Transformations(MT) practice today! In almost no time at all you will inoculate yourself against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Many people have trouble after they lose. Losses may be medium, like losing your wallet or a bet on your favorite sports team; small, like losing your keys; very small, like losing a receipt you need for your tax filing; large, like losing your car; very large, like losing your brand new car; or extremely large, like losing a loved one:   Losing is really not that difficult. Your car is probably insured, with a small deductible, say $3000. You can copy your spouse’s car key, with the exception of most keys to models built after 2010, which contain miniature electronic devices connected to the “internet of things,” things such as your downstairs thermostat, which requires remote adjustment to keep the pipes from freezing if the temperature drops below 9 degrees. Your pharmacy receipt—well, the chance of getting audited is less than 0.3% unless the GOP loses control of Congress. Most lost things can be recovered, replaced or proven insignificant:   However, exceptions do occur:  Mental Transformation (MT) is a successful new therapy that can reduce the stress associated with extremely large or resistant losses. To get started, focus your unquiet mind on one or more of these time-tested comforting cognitions (cognitions are something like thoughts, only more sophisticated): 10 Cognitions to Stop Obsessing about that Thing You Lost
Concentrate as hard as you can, performing five sets of five reps on each item in succession. Repeat as often as needed. ** You choose the number of cognitions, but remember, the more the better. Rigorous testing has revealed exactly how stress varies as the inverse of that number. Here is an example of the results in the case of your loss of Aunt Bess:  If you are at all glum after 5 X 5 reps, you can purchase my best selling Loss Without Stress at a surprisingly affordable price on the web or at your favorite big box bookstore (if it’s still in business). Loss Without Stress is money-back guaranteed to produce the following results:  Enough said. Now, GO TO IT, LOSERS! It’s really not that hard, once you get the hang of it.*** *In the Midwest where everybody smiles you may choose people at random.  ** ADD sufferers, please take your Adderall with a small glass of orange juice 20 minutes prior to beginning this exercise
*** Occasionally you may experience a loss resistant to multiple reps of all 10 cognitions and even to several close readings of my best-selling book. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in such cases, talking to another human, e.g. a friend or relative, may be of some use. If all else fails, you might even consult a professional who deals with unremitting feelings. “Feelings” are kind of like thoughts with a little color added. Alright, I admit it, I’ve consulted other humans myself, but really very rarely. I have nothing but the greatest respect for Dr. Motley (see 5/1/16, Loss Without Stress) but occasionally after trying all of his suggestions I still can’t stop thinking about losing someone. Someone like Tom, who passed out of my life nearly three years ago, which seems like yesterday. Maybe telling you our story will help. HE WAS JUST THE MAN WHO DID THE NUMBERS—UNTIL HE WASN’T  There are some people you don’t know you know. Tom was one of those. I’ve never found a way around struggling with tense when someone dies. After his church service cut flowers from his garden were displayed in the basement receiving room. Tom liked to garden. Tom likes to garden. I knew liked was technically correct, but I kept thinking it’s okay that Tom isn’t here because if he still likes to garden maybe he’s planting some lilies and just couldn’t make it today.
 Every few months he would deliver some papers to my house or I to his, and we would chat for a while, especially around tax time. That’s how I found out he had Crohn’s disease and that one of his daughters ran away and he didn’t know where she was for a while. That he was a tax preparer who thought taxes would be the death of America. He said he was trained in every aspect of finance and he was absolutely certain he was right about taxes. I was surprised to hear this intensity coming from a man so slightly built and good-natured, but there it was. Most of the time we communicated by phone, fax and email. He taught me how to use an Excel spreadsheet, how to email my bank statement by making it into a pdf file using a printer dialog box, and how to avoid filling out 5500 forms by converting my Keogh into an IRA.  I sent him a basket of chocolate for the holidays and he sent me a sampler box of Usinger’s sausages. I never had the heart to tell him we don’t eat red meat. He sent it every Christmas and every Christmas I put it in the garage to keep the sausages cold and preserved, thinking I would pass them on to someone who liked them. But I could never think of anyone, so after a few weeks they ended up in the trash. I felt a little guilty about that.  Tom loved the Packers. I love the Packers, too, but we never talked about them. I would append little messages to my emails like “Go Packers!” and he would respond, “Beat those Bears!” We never saw a game together. I don’t know why we didn’t talk about them. We could have discussed the draft, or Clay Matthews’ ferocious charges, or the miracle of Aaron Rogers succeeding Brett Favre. It just didn’t come up. Tom sent me an email to let me know he was going into the hospital Monday for treatment of his Crohn’s. That was like Tom, to apologize for being unable to start on my accounting right away, just after I had belatedly sent him the quarterly data he’d been bugging me about for weeks. “Out until Friday.” I answered asking for details. He replied he was having a small piece of his distal intestine removed, no big deal. When I called him Wednesday morning he sounded a bit weak but otherwise chipper, complaining only that the TV didn’t have enough channels. I could hear his wife Amy in the background  The next day she left a message that he was dead. My wife and I brought her a casserole that evening. She told us that his doctor had come in that morning and found him sitting up in bed without a pulse and with a smile on his face. Nobody knew what had happened. Amy told us when to look for his obituary. It was short and succinct. It said, “Tom was a Green Bay Packer enthusiast”. It also said, “He was blessed with many wonderful clients who were dear to him.” That was really unexpected. I felt the gentle pressure of an incipient tear behind my eyes, where I hadn’t known there was anything to feel. I tore out the obituary and put it on my desk to have the address of the church handy. I don’t know if I can call Tom a friend, but I do know that I miss him. He was an essential person in my life. At the funeral service his minister said that Tom never worried about dying because he knew he was going to another place and another life far more glorious than the one he knew here on earth. I hope he was right about that, too.  Warning: This post contains tongue in cheek material. Future posts under this category will be marked TIC.  PUE occasionally provides updates for members of the general public trying to keep up with the latest developments in the worlds of animate and inanimate objects. You may wonder why this kind of aid falls under the purview of a psychoanalytically oriented blog. First, we find that lack of up-to-date information often acts as a trigger for what is known as "Insufficient Knowledge Anxiety,” or IKA. The condition of IKA may lead to frank Panic Attacks when sufferers are trying to meet production deadlines and to states of Depression when untreated for periods longer than six weeks. Second, passivity with regard to updating knowledge may in itself a symptom of a serious condition, e.g. narcissistic personality disorder marked by delusions of omniscience.
PUE's first ever update is on the subject of a sub-disorder of IKA known as Insufficient Digital Knowledge Anxiety, or IDKA. Armed with the following reprint from the DSM-PUE (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Pyschiatry, PUE edition) you should be able to diagnose yourself and take remedial action if necessary: Insufficient Digital Knowledge Anxiety Five or more of the following symptoms have been present during the same three month period.
 I’m sure there has been a great deal written about the wonderful French movie Amour, (2012), the story of an old man taking care of his wife whose function deteriorates after a series of strokes. The film impressed critics and audiences alike (Rotten Tomatoes: critics 92; audience 83) and won the 2013 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Having not read any commentary, I feel free to respond without being inhibited by those with more authorial cachet. This is something like succeeding in avoiding any news about a Packer game that has already been played so that I can enjoy watching it play out through my DVR as if it were all happening in my own real time. So herewith, my response to the film recently seen on the small screen at home:
First: No American would make a movie like this. It is too focused on the ordinary, on conversation. It is the anti-Silver Linings Playbook (which I enjoyed in a wholly different way), another movie about a problem-ridden family, with a literally manic protagonist driving a manically melodramatic story to an improbable and sensational conclusion. Amour slows down to look carefully at the commerce of everyday experience and lets the drama reside there. It reveals that experience in a leisurely yet serious way, with scenes of people just talking and brief close-ups of parts of paintings in the couple’s apartment that convey visually a deeper look into the scenery of the heart, the picture within the picture that emerges through the patience of focusing in on detail. In fact these close-ups for me are one of the most memorable parts of the movie. |
