Emotional Freedom Part 16 of 17: Steps to Emotional Freedom, Overcoming Fear
August 7, 2009 by dr. lam · 8 Comments
The second half of Dr. Orloff’s book covers paths to emotional liberation in exquisite detail, which she entitles “Your Tools for Liberation”. In deference to not just copying her book here, I would like to only discuss a handful of her ideas so as to encourage you to buy the book and read her ideas for yourself. As you would imagine, a blog series in no way can capture the rich detail that a book can or give you the ideas in a way that does the author complete justice.
The first step that Dr. Orloff discusses is overcoming fear. I think that is a big one. Especially considering our current economic and political climate, we oftentimes are gripped with uncertainty that dooms and glooms us in most cases unjustifiably so. When we live in fear we drain our cortisol levels as our amygdala is in a constant state of overdrive (read an earlier blog in this series entitled the biology of emotions to understand this concept better). We need to take steps to free ourselves from the clutches of fear and we can take baby steps to do just that:
1. Stop reading depressing news about the world and the economy.
2. Stop hanging out with downers: people who zap your emotional energy (see emotional vampires, the section we just finished).
3. Learn to find your sources of fear and overcome them by focusing beyond them toward solutions and toward positivity.
4. Look at your fears as a way for you to be spiritually free from them: ”How can this fear help me develop courage, become freer?”
Emotional Freedom Part 11 of 17: Emotional Vampire Type 1, The Narcissist
July 30, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
I found this section of Judith Orloff’s book the most fascinating, as many readers have. She featured emotional vampires in her previous book, Positive Energy, and is now planting the same theme in her current book. Emotional vampires in short drain you, make you feel bad about yourself, make you binge eat, etc. There are certain types of emotional vampires. Understanding which type you are encountering will save you from peril.
Besides recognizing when you are in the presence of an emotional vampire, we should recognize if we are being one ourselves. Self awareness is a critical attribute for anyone, and that is what these blogs are about. Rather than punish yourself and feel self pity, just make a concerted effort to change. As you read these blogs on different types of emotional vampires, try to see if you fit the bill to any degree. If so, just be honest with yourself and make the change.
The first type of emotional vampire she talks about is the narcissist. The narcissist is hard wired to see himself/herself as special, a guru, and simply put better than you. The narcissist is self-absorbed and manipulative and incapable of deep emotion. He/she can be charming or not charming, but usually is motivated by self interest. When dealing with a narcissist, do not try to talk down to them, or you will fail. Stroke the ego and that way you can get around the personality fault. Instead of saying, “Let’s go to the party”, you can say, “everyone likes you, they’ll miss you if you were not there.” Do not get emotionally attached to a narcissist because the narcissist will most likely not provide deep emotional support for you since they are more interested in themselves. Although the best option with an emotional vampire is to escape his or her presence, the second best is to recognize what type of emotional vampire he/she is and work to circumvent the personality faults so as not to trigger any more flagrant behavior.
Lessons from a Navy SEAL Part 2 of 4: The Weakest Link
July 1, 2009 by dr. lam · 5 Comments
Luttrell continued his story by talking about his selection process to become a Navy SEAL, a torturous journey known as “BUD/S” (Basic Underwater Demotion/SEAL). The inhuman tactics to which these men were subjected were painstakingly detailed by Luttrell during his speech. He talked about men who had to stay for hours in arctic chill of ocean water, running miles on end, having no sleep, verbally abused, continuing their training despite broken bones.
The thing that struck home for me was his idea that the reason for this much torture was to weed out the weak. He said that when someone failed, the team would go out and beat him up. The second time the infraction occurred the guy was out of the training and sent home. I thought about this from a business standpoint, and I have had to make hard decisions about my team when it comes to the weakest link, letting go people that just did not have the acumen, work ethic, culture, and personality to fit my organization. I am not Donald Trump and never like letting someone go, but I realized that over and over again the individual in question was destroying the organization’s morale and credibility. Luttrell says that the weakest link in a team will oftentimes get the team killed. I believe that is true for almost any organization. That may be a hard statement but it is actually quite truthful in my experience.
When I was in residency, we always had The A Team and The B Team. I remember having some residents that I was frightened to be on-call with, not for my sake but for the patients’ sake. I have made it a point to cull the best talent and keep that talent so that every player is an A Team, is reliable, and is talented. I like to use the example of hair restoration. I only have one team to do hair because quality varies too much when there are rotating teams. Not every team member actually makes it through our version of BUD/S. It takes a very special, dedicated, meticulous individual, who can withstand our SEAL team leader, Emina’s rigorous scrutiny. I think when we even select friends sometimes we have “dead weight”. Individuals who cripple our energy and spirit or who drive us toward something that we wouldn’t or shouldn’t do. We should streamline everything in life so that we have no weakest links on any of our teams.
Lessons from a Navy SEAL Part 1 of 4: 4:30 means 4:15
June 30, 2009 by dr. lam · 14 Comments
A few months ago I attended a business symposium in Houston that featured ex-Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell, and I thought, “What is a Navy SEAL doing here at this conference?” That is what Luttrell pondered as well, as he said, “I don’t know why I’m here.” After his hour and a half “lecture”, which was really a story of his life, there was no question. He was the most inspiring, mesmerizing speaker of the entire weekend. He culminated his talk with an excruciating recounting of how he was the only survivor in Afghanistan where his entire SEAL team was killed in front of him in his search for Osama’s right-hand man, Ahmad Shah, the story of which was documented in his New York Times bestseller, Lone Survivor. He talked of how he was riddled through his legs with 11 bullets through-and-through, bit his tongue half off, had his back shot through, interrogated (read tortured) by the Taliban in a small Afghani village, how he made hard decisions, and how he was eventually saved by merciful locals.
During his speech, I thought what lessons could I cull from this remarkable man who had such remarkable experiences that make my meager existence pale in comparison. I wanted to take some key lessons of his life and see if I could put my own personal spin on them to help my readership. So that is what I am doing here.
He started his talk with how he grew up in a small Texas town of Huntsville and his father telling him, “Boy, before you take from this country, you better serve it first.” With that exhortation, Marcus and his brother decided to become Navy SEALS. He had not even heard what that was exactly, but he knew he wanted to do it. He trained with this ex-Green Beret, Billy Shelton, from the Vietnam era who had that always “crazy look in his eyes.” Marcus said that when he walked up to his door the first time he interrupted the man’s dinner and was so petrified he couldn’t remember why he was even there. Shelton told Marcus, “If you want to train with me, we start tomorrow at 04:30.” Marcus sheepishly showed up precisely at 4:30 am the next morning to begin his pre-military exercises. Shelton responded, “Boy, you are late. When I say 04:30, I mean 04:15. 04:30 is when we roll not when you arrive. Don’t let that happen again.”
I thought that was a great piece of wisdom. When I was undergoing moderator training for my EO forum group, I was told not to get there at 3:30 pm when we would start our meeting. That means at 3:30 pm, I’m still flustered by just arriving. I’m trying to open all of my papers to start figuring out the agenda. I am not really ready until 3:35 or 3:40 pm. Instead, I try to arrive 10 to 20 minutes in advance so that I am ready to roll at the appointed time. I think when we have an important meeting, we should consider getting there a few minutes early to prepare for the meeting so that we are ready to roll both psychologically and emotionally at the appointed time.
LFP v 3.0: A New Facelift
June 23, 2009 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Today, I am proud to announce a tiring (for me at least) 2-month adventure trying to rebuild a 3,000+ page website from scratch. Okay, frankly, I did not do the work. My great web team did it. However, I did have to look through a lot of it, guide it, edit it and write new material. I am most proud of one element that is completely functionless, which is my home page, featuring 25 rotating branding messages that declare what I stand for and what LFP is all about. I combined elements of nature that had compelling color, graphic quality, and relevance to the message. I actually got the idea when searching through the Ritz-Carlton spa when I saw a beautiful leaf (I chose a different leaf for the image in question), as I almost never get ideas from other plastic surgery websites. The blue color of the top navigation I pulled from the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong spa. I love the regal bluish-green to it. I was thinking of a lighter blue but you could not read the wording well in the navigation bar. The rebranding of my color emanated from the repeated protestations a couple of years ago during my web contest to change my brown color scheme. Accordingly, I have listened. Come on, it only took 2 years! The design (ahem) is all Apple. Sorry Steve Jobs, but I love Apple so this is my homage to Apple.
The function (thanks Adam and George) of this website is so much better. My website became increasingly cluttered like a closet overstuffed with new shoes and old shoes that don’t fit. (My webmaster, Adam, said he need both valium and propecia before he could undertake the task of redoing the site. I thought that was hilarious.) Here’s another analogy. I kept adding new rooms to an old house so that nothing worked or matched. That is the problem with a restlessly creative mind always seeking a better solution for my customers. So, in short, I tore down the house, razed it to the ground, and rebuilt it from scratch. I have had a lot of compliments with my past website but I certainly knew where it fell far short. I like what Steve Jobs said when he was introducing the iPod Nano, “The iPod Mini is the world’s best-selling iPod and MP3 machine ever. Today, we get rid of it.” That is how I view my old site. It worked (sort of). It was good but this new site is so much better.
What didn’t work with the old site was its navigation. It was impossible to find anything. Now, if you are interested, for example, in fat grafting, you go the expandable menu item under “procedures” and you have all the major videos and related information related to that topic. If you want to learn more about chin augmentation, I have all my video diaries and journeys linked to from the chin augmentation page (well, we have a few videos that still need linking to that hopefully adam will be done with in the next few days). If you are just searching the videos section itself, all of my 400 plus videos are organized, suborganized, and suborganized so that they are more easily cataloged and thereby found. I hope you enjoy this behemoth labor of love and value your feedback to making it better (or if you find any glitches, which I am sure there are plenty). Thanks for your continued patronage and support of LFP (and patience during this web transition phase)!