Is social inclusion the answer? I’m fascinated by a whole field of research that I’m just learning about, (it’s new to me but I feel like I know it b/c lived it) …
“Sociologists have observed that excluded classes of persons in many societies exhibit various undesirable patterns of behavior, including aggression, poor intellectual or academic performance, lack of pro-social behavior, self-destructive indulgences, and poor self-control. Our research suggests that these are not necessarily inner traits of society’s downtrodden, so much as normal reactions that all sorts of people exhibit when they find themselves to be excluded by others.” (Baumeister et al. 2007)
Passing the bar is great, but I continue to wonder whether and when I will feel like I “fit in” with “them” but now “them” is “me” and I still don’t really find myself wanting to belong.
What I’m realizing is that this is an old feeling. We all need acceptance. When we are not accepted, when we are not allowed access, when basic rights are denied, we have no motivation to participate. I have been wondering myself lately what would make the office, and the comforts of a full-time job worth it? Those who love me are urging me to take part in a system that I don’t fully buy into. But why don’t I buy into it?
Maybe if I knew that I could have it and not give up who I really am? Maybe if I knew that I would be accepted…not left behind or looked down upon for being different? The answer for most innovators, for those that feel like acceptance in the status quo is impossible is entrepreneurship. We do it our own way. This has been the informal approach I have been taking — and now it’s time to formalize it. I am forming a start up.
Practicing social entrepreneurship is a way to participate without needing to be accepted by a system that I have not fully bought into yet. More to come about this venture in the next month or two…
“SWEET!!!” — is what my nephew said when I sent him a text to say that I passed the California Bar Exam. Remember when I took it in July 2008??? I just found out at 6 PM tonight that I passed — thanks to my baby brother for checking the results for me. We printed them and we’re going to celebrate!
The official list will be public on Sunday! www.calbar.ca.gov/exam/
The WhyTry Program is a strength-based approach to helping youth overcome their challenges. It is now changing lives in over 5,000 schools, youth centers, and social service agencies. The Program improves outcomes in the areas of truancy, conduct disorders, and academic failure — while giving youth their own answer to the question “Why Try?”
If you work with at-risk populations, or know someone who does, then please spread the word. WHY TRY will not only change the way we do our jobs, but it will also change the way we think about our jobs. I’m looking forward to the first ever 2-day in-depth WHY TRY certification training in Fresno on December 1 & 2.
If you mention The Carissa Project when you sign up you’ll get a discount!
If you would like to set up your own group training please contact Lee McNeil at the number below to schedule a time to talk about your specific goals, or email lee@whytry.org and let him know what additional information he can provide to support you.
You can also get more information, including a preview of the visual analogies, at www.whytry.org.
* Experiential Activities - See the experiential activities demonstrated and get first hand training and ideas on how you can increase participation and learning for everyone involved.
* Surrendering the “One-up” Relationship with Individuals and in Group or Classroom Settings - This is perhaps the most important addition to the program. Research shows that over 80% of change in an individual results from interpersonal relationships. We will show you some powerful techniques and tools to help you build trusting relationships and motivate those you work with.
* WhyTry Music Applications - Hear the WhyTry music, learn ways to teach using the music, and see demonstrations on how to process the music.
* Basic Training - We will also be covering all the basics on how to use the program including the workbook, the motivation formula, the visual analogies, group applications, individual interventions, classroom curriculum and more.
* Teaching A WhyTry Class - We have received some great feedback and ideas from several of you who have been using the program in a classroom environment. As a result we have compiled an outline for setting up and running a class using the WhyTry Program.
* Observe it in practice - If you have been to one of our presentations or training sessions before, you have probably heard us explain how to use the program. This time you will see it and experience it for your self. We will include several live demonstrations as well as opportunities for you to participate
* WhyTry Certification - Be one of the first to be trained and certified in the WhyTry program. Certified individuals will get access to new materials before they are released. They will also become part of our valued feedback team, become involved in pilot programs and will be invited to participate in our WhyTry.org Discussion Groups. (coming soon)
* Continuing Education Units – You can receive up to 10 continuing education units for this training.
During Yoga my instructor shared this quote…then she even photocopied it for me! THANKS!
“As we are all human beings living on earth among [6.7 billion] other human beings, our happiness is intimately connected to that of others. It is hard to imagine personal happiness detached or separate from the happiness of others. For it is certain that if we aspire to happiness, we must be deeply concerned about the happiness of all humankind.”
Happiness is for everyone. It’s better than money because (1) there’s plenty to go around; and (2) we assign our own value to it!!! If you believe in happiness then it makes sense that you’d want to give others a chance at it to.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE CARISSA PROJECT?
I am working with youth that are constantly rejected by society. It’s so bad that when they try to get jobs they get turned down. When they apply themselves they’re told they are just not good enough! It’s not just because they lack skills, but because they have “attitude problems” or they don’t dress or speak “appropriately.”
Would you be able to achieve happiness if your best efforts were rejected???
I love programs that give everyone a chance at happiness — they accept & meet people where they are. If we need to prepare young people before they apply themselves then let’s do it. It’s amazing how much more young people will grow when you accept them where they’re at.
Remember not to expect miracles from anyone, unless you apply miracles!
Here are two miracle workers that meet young people where they are at:
THERE IS SPACE AVAILABLE FOR A SIMILAR PROGRAM TO SERVE YOUNG WOMEN IN FRESNO, CA.
Last week I realized that there is not a specific program for work readiness for young women in Fresno. I hear GREAT things about Hope Now for Youth, so I’d like to borrow from their model, as well as Homeboys, and start something for young women. There is a need! I was mentoring a young woman at a transitional living center when I realized the need!
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO ENSURE YOUNG WOMEN IN FRESNO ARE NOT “ON THEIR OWN”?
Make a major contribution or help with time or efforts on this project! If you’re interested in the success of young women in Fresno please email me at: hopenowforgirls@gmail.com
{that’s just the idea not the name of the org! we’ll probably leave the name more open so that boys that want to join feel welcomed.}
If you can’t do a lot then buy “On My Own” or share this link. 100% of proceeds go to helping kids that are/were in situations like mine:
3) Sleep better tonight knowing you helped keep a young person off the streets.
All proceeds from “On My Own” will be used to provide services and shelter to homeless and runaway children, who have been bought, sold & raped, while looking for a better life on the streets of America.
More to do when you’re broke…
RALLY YOUR FRIENDS
The 10 by 10 effect — is when 10 friends donate $10 each. Choose any multiple and feel how good it will make everyone feel to give to a single cause as a group.
GET THE FACTS
Children of the Night can’t run at full capacity without donations — they’re having to turn away children that are in desperate need of services & shelter. COTN is a unique program, and is one of only a few shelters for prostituted children in the U.S. It is privately funded, and it is going to have trouble staying open without donations.
Check out Jennifer York’s interview with myself & Dr. Lois Lee. Lois runs Children of the Night, and in this interview she talks about her work with the shelter, and my work in Fresno. http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/462222.aspx
3) Sleep better tonight knowing you helped keep a young person off the streets.
All proceeds from “On My Own” will be used to provide services and shelter to homeless and runaway children, who have been bought, sold & raped, while looking for a better life on the streets of America.
MY THOUGHTS IN RESPONSE TO BOTH STUDIES ON CONCENTRATED POVERTY IN FRESNO…
According to the Brookings Institution, Fresno was indeed cut in half by a freeway — and so were its people! The California Highway 99 is the most traveled road in California, it has transformed the state in many positive ways. However, did anyone ever stop to think that the transformation wasn’t all good???
(Follow the link to the study. Fresno begins on page 25.)
The freeway cut through Fresno, and not long after that discriminatory lending cut what they would lend to people on the west side of the 99, ultimately slicing through their earning power. The result today is that the value of life on Fresno’s west side has become worth less than life on the other side of the 99.
I know this story all too well, as I was taken to the west side of 99 to be bought and sold at the age of 12. It was clear to me then, almost 20 years ago, that it wasn’t just one person that was responsible for me being able to be bought and sold on the streets.
There was a culture on the west side among the victims, the helpers (police, service providers), and the innocent (store owners, and community members), which allowed for it. This report highlights the environment where exploitations of all sorts flourish. We should all do what we can to stop it.
My favorite picture of me is a school picture. My hair is messy. My tooth is sticking out. But my eyes are shining because I am so proud that I remembered it was picture day, and I wore my favorite shirt!
I love math! And the amazing thing is that math has loved me back. When there were no answers, no reasons, no explanations, a problem could still be solved. A solution was present, you just had to work hard to find it.
Here’s an experiment for people who can sometimes feel like a swinging mass on a wire has a lot in common with their emotional life.
Do you know how pendulums work? It seems simple enough when you look at a clock, but did you know that the pendulum swings faster (with greater frequency) when the wire it hangs from is shorter? Did you also know that the weight of the pendulum does not determine how fast it will swing?
Instructions:
Step 1: SCROLL DOWN TO CHANGE LENGTH
Step 2: HIT START
Step 3: NOW CUT THE LENGTH TO .5 (HALF THE ORIGINAL LENGTH)
Step 4: HIT START AGAIN See how fast it moves when you decrease your support network.
Step 5: INCREASE THE LENGTH TO 2 (TWICE THE ORIGINAL LENGTH)
Step 6: HIT START AGAIN You can slow the emotional pendulum down by increasing your support network.
ANALYSIS
How you describe and relate the pendulum to your life is up to you.
If you did the experiment you understand why I say that my wire is what keeps me connected. It’s my friends, my family, and the activities that make me feel grounded. I know that the shorter my wire is the faster my emotional pendulum will swing.
HOW MY SCIENCE EVOLVED
In the past I’ve found comfort in knowing that the degree of pain that I experienced would provide an equal degree of happiness — I thought when the pendulum would swing toward the positive (happiness) it would hit a super high point to counteract the negative (pain). It’s true that the mass swings the same distance in the opposite direction — BUT the damn thing swings back too!
Just as life goes on after our defining moments, the pendulum keeps swinging. And even though “my science” meant I would have a great upside — the downside was that I risked going back to that deep painful place.
PAIN
I kinda figured out that feeling sad is inevitable, but I did not want to feel like I was going to swing back to where I started. So I did what every great scientist does — I changed the axioms — the self-evident truths, so that I had a better outcome.
Now I define pain as the mass, the weight of the pendulum, instead of the degree that the pendulum is pulled back. You see the mass of the pendulum does not determine frequency, but without some mass we can’t feel anything. Pain is necessary. It’s almost a requirement to life.
My new axiom: I exist therefore I must feel pain. But the degree of pain I experienced in the past does not have to be experienced again and again in order to live a fulfilling life.
SWINGING
The solution to an emotional life that is swinging with high frequency is to: (1) add reliable friends, (2a) connect with family or (2b) if your family is swinging out of control, build a support network that acts like a family, and (3) increase activities that make you feel grounded, like walking around a lake or visiting the ocean, or hiking, or laughing.
WHAT GROUNDS ME
Even though my science wasn’t perfect, I began lowering the frequency of my emotional pendulum a long time ago.
First with Barbara, who taught me what a home was, and became a strong mother figure in my life. Giving me the support I needed to get grounded. Next, I added friends. Long lasting ones. There were only one or two, but they changed my life. Today I know the value of friendship because of that friend that (for two decades) has never judged and always let me be me. Thanks Melisa!!!
The steps I take now are incremental to keep the pendulum steady. Over the last decade I’ve seen a lot change in my life that might have hit me like a tornado, but I was always able to get back to the basics. To laugh with my friends, to get support from my family (the one I was granted and the one I created)…the point is that I had steady people that I could connect to when life started feeling a little out of control.
I’ve also been able to build new friendships. My best friend in Los Angeles inspired me to write this blog in the first place! He might look like an unlikely match for me, an Italian producer with a great family and a wonderful happy childhood. Riccardo grew up in Milan, Italy and his life experience reminds me that life is a blessing. He has a great frequency and I enjoy being near him — he acts like a force to center my life and he also increases the length of my emotional wire.
THE LESSON
The lesson that I’ve been learning over my lifetime is that I don’t have to act or re-act based on my past experiences. I can slow down my emotional responses and even reset the degree of ups and downs that I feel. I’m sharing because I think some of us feel like the pendulum is out of our hands.
It is in fact in our hands — we live life by our own science — our own axioms, rules, and definitions.
We can all get back to the center, if we know what to add and what to take back AND all that means is GETTING BACK TO THE BASICS!
WHEN AXIOMS FAIL
Sometimes our science fails us, and things don’t make that much sense (like the video below). It’s usually our minds playing tricks on us, but it could be serious. I’ve seen too many kids reject therapy (and even evaluations) because there is still a social stigma among our street culture to not admit that we need some help — my only advice is that we all need a wire — and the tougher things get the more you need safe (grounded) people you can talk to.
It’s your ride! In this picture things are out of control. There are actually hidden magnets that make the pendulum swing out of control. When life feels like this first identify the energy forces (peers or even family) that are throwing you off…then decide if you should distance yourself from them by saying “goodbye” to bad friends, or when it’s family you might want to increase the length of your wire by getting better friends and building a stronger support network.
Kids aren’t the only ones that have a stigma about getting help. If a doctor recommends more to get your emotional pendulum in order then consider it. I could see that sometimes when we’re swinging out of control it could be necessary to take a pill. BUT remember the goal is to get back to a regular frequency, so let the meds help you get back to the basics.
Regular maintenance is necessary, so when life is just a little out of control try thinking about the pendulum. Think about who or what increases the length of your wire, and remember that no matter how heavy it all seems you’ll get through it — in my science the weight of what I went through in the past does not determine what I experience today!
Wednesday September 3, 2008 — I’m back to blogging b/c it works for me!
There is a divide between those with homes and those who are without a home. There is even a name for those without a home we call them our “homeless” – we introduce them as “homeless.” This does not seem strange to us, but if we began to call everyone by their housing status we would see the obvious error in our label. Imagine someone introducing me as Carissa Phelps, she is “3-bedroom 2-bath.” Does my house really have anything to do with me? This is Carissa Phelps, she is “with home.”
The labeling is an indication of what we understand implicitly. We know without thinking about it that being homeless is important enough to go to the core of a human being. That’s why we feel the need to announce that a person is “homeless.”
Take it a step further and think about what we expect of those we label “homeless.”
A. Nothing. Maybe it’s because we understand how crippling being without a home really is.
B. To leave those of us “with homes” alone and stay out of our way. We want to avoid seeing the effects of homelessness up close. And maybe that’s simply because we’re so afraid of the realities of homelessness.
My point is that the devastation of being “homeless” only begins with a label then it goes much deeper. The label dismantles the core that makes up a person. Being labeled as “homeless” can instantly erase (1) who a person is now, (2) who they were in the past, and (3) who they will be in the future.
I’m sorry that I’ve ever called someone “homeless” – I don’t want to say that anymore, but is it even avoidable?
I want to change the way I see people and say, this is “Al.” He recently lost his wife, who he loved deeply. Last I knew Al was living along the 99, he moved nightly. Sometimes if he was lucky he only had to move weekly. He had a poor paying job asking for donations at the freeway on-ramp in his neighborhood. Al is a person. He’s a person right now. Al has a past, a present, and a future, but when he is just another “homeless person” he does not.
I totally understand that most of us “with homes” cannot imagine being “without homes.” We have some trouble with empathy. That is completely understandable. But it is not acceptable.
I’m thinking about what it means to be homeless. I’m remembering what it was like when I was without a safe home and I was running away. People took advantage of me and I was in a lot of pain. I was also alone a lot. I’m thinking about being homeless again as an adult, in this poor economy. With current housing trends, it seems like it’s a possibility for even more of us to be without a home — or with a shared home — or back at a parent’s home.
What if you didn’t have friends? What if you didn’t have your parents? What if your elderly parents didn’t have you? Would you want to be called homeless? Or by our name? Would you want to hold onto your past, your present, and your future or let them all go for a label?
I think most of us would be devastated with losing our housing, but we’d be even more devastated if we lost our identity.
Think about what it means to be without a home, or without a safe home, or living on the streets — moving nightly or weekly — finding another friend’s couch, staying in a shelter, or a tool shed. All of that is somewhat doable in a mechanical sense, but then imagine losing your identity and trying to do it. I think what hurt me the most on the streets was becoming a label, and losing who I was (or who I was becoming) as a person.
How I know that labels hurt and they don’t tell the whole story…
My label when I was 12 began as “601.” (601 is the number of the truancy code that I broke when I ran away.) Quickly my label changed to “602.” (602 meant I had actually broken an adult law, and also meant I was on formal probation.) The 601 said nothing about what I was running away from. And the 602 label did not let anyone known that I had to shoplift to survive — for basic necessities because I was too young to work.
These two labels put me in a category of people that were socially foul. No one wanted to hear about my excuses or my reasons, and definitely not a word about my hopes or dreams — and that is how what it is like to be without a past, present, or future.
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