A Regifting For The New Year
By
Leonard Zwelling
I have never hidden the fact that I have a therapist. Now, I have been in therapy on and off since 1982 when I was really struggling as a new father and felt I had a very uncertain future in academic medicine. Since then, I have been in therapy a few other times—for serious anxiety, clinical depression, and most recently for work-related burnout. The latter occurred at the beginning of the Employee Assistance Program at MD Anderson. If you ever saw the early data presented there was always one vice president listed (not by name) among those utilizing the EAP. That was me!
The therapist I worked with in the EAP has been someone I have seen on and off for almost 20 years. Most recently I needed to discuss some personal matters with him and after a session or two, which is all we usually need to address any new problem, he sent me a gift.
The gift he called Mantras for Leonard. There are seven and I printed out two copies. One is up in my closet where I dress and the other is on the refrigerator to share with others. I read them every day. Today, I am going to regift these to my readers.
- My worth is not measured by awards or approval—it already lives within me.
- I can acknowledge my anger without letting it define me.
- I release resentment and choose understanding, even when it hurts.
- I turn inward for peace and outward for love.
- Gratitude grounds me—I breathe in what I have, not what I have lost.
- I connect my head and heart—thinking clearly, feeling deeply, and living fully.
- Validation begins with me—I see myself, I value myself, I am enough.
I read these seven mantras every morning and may read them again during the day. Here is what they mean to me, but if you choose to include them in your daily routine, I suspect you will find your own meanings.
- This is a big issue for a Gold Star addict like myself who cannot collect enough external accolades to satisfy an inner ache. I work hard now to do what I do for its own sake, not to gain approval from the outside, this blog notwithstanding.
- One of the things my therapist and I worked hard on was getting to the reasons behind my anger when it occurs. If you understand the true source of your anger, you can be with it rather than giving in to it. Then you are not the anger. It is just there for you to understand, to analyze, to let go of.
- When you are hurt by someone, you resent them, but as first attributed to Bert Ghezzi in The Angry Christian and later used by Carrie Fisher, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Like anger, resentment is something to confront and go beyond. Resentment, like anger, is something to understand.
- These things I discuss above are paths to inner peace, but love comes from outside of yourself. Nonetheless, having a good relationship with your inner self is useful as well.
- Gratitude is something I dwell on a great deal. I still cannot believe that after by-pass surgery at age 54 for severe coronary artery disease and on-going cardiac electrical problems, I am still here. As the late, great Rabbi Sam Karff said as he aged and neared death well into his eighties, “I feel sad, but I do not feel cheated.”
- Clear thinking is something that I rarely encounter in my business transactions publishing my books. I find it very rare everywhere else as well. I try not to add to the problem of muddleheadedness. Feeling things is not so easy for me. I spent so much of my life focusing on my thinking not my feeling. I didn’t start writing seriously until I was 60, so feelings were not in my repertoire for most of my life. I try to find them within me as often as I can now and then ponder them with my thinking, and meld them into a life.
- I think this one is particularly germane to those of us who have spent lifetimes getting A’s in school. You don’t really need all that stuff anymore. You are you and all you can try to do is be is the best version of you.
I found these mantras extremely helpful in my life. I am regifting them to you. Happy new year.
