A relationship is perhaps the most difficult challenge we have to face as human beings.  This is because we are initially attracted externally but we must interact internally.  We meet at the body or physical level, whether that is determined by appearance, connections, possessions, or established interests.  Then we attempt to relate by how we think, aspire, feel, respond, or display our intelligence.  People do not lose interest in a significant other because of a lost attraction but because of an inability to connect existentially.  In fact couples stay together even if one or other has been physically damaged or disfigured if there is an existential connection - in spirituality, feelings, intelligence, aspirations.

Division and discord, therefore, are inevitable parts of life.  Each one of us functions with thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that are hidden within us.  Thus, no matter how much we believe we understand the other person or that they do or should understand us, we still have to interpret their expressions with our feelings and perceptions.  If, however, you manage the mental strength to see beyond your feelings and your perspective, you will be more considerate without compromising yourself in any relationship.

Hence, the challenge in relating lies in being able to understand, appreciate, respect, embrace what the other represents in that aspect of their existence that is the mind, the soul, the essence, the invisible, specific definition of who they are and what they wish to be.   Each person has to learn to see that in the other.  Sometimes it is worth knowing so that a mutually satisfying relationship can be nurtured.  Other times, it can reveal a determinant that can encourage a decision to leave.  We can and should learn to explore those personal traits and determinants so we can grow from each other or discover where such growth is unreachable.

​Many parents will rather send a troubled youth to a strict educational facility or a structured treatment center than have them refocused while functioning in their community.  This is not the best option because a troubled youth has a much more sophisticated problem than the overt behaviour.

Parents think that getting them away from peer influence is important as they believe that the influence may have caused the behaviour.  If we examine this constructively we may see that peer influence may have contributed by endorsing or supporting it.  We may also see that the initiation is a natural consequence of having to rely on instinctual support systems because there is turmoil between what they see as their challenges and what they see as their capacity for facing them.  Their friends make them feel comfortable and are empathetic to their needs – because they are going through the same turmoil, not because they have a better answer.

Note that youth are still building the experience, understanding, and clarity that form their capacity for being independent adults.  Therefore, it is, by definition, insufficient.  Conversely, the reality they have to face is more tumultuous, more expansive, and more oppressive than ever before.  So it is natural to feel the pressure from what they call “the noises” and to revert to instinctual behaviour to the degree they need it and the ease with which it works (even temporarily).

Thus, we cannot succeed by removing their only strength, even if it is unhealthy.  We must first show or help them to build a personal strength and show them how to let that take over.  Our service aims to provide this guidance through intelligent discussions they can verify and apply naturally.  They accept them because they make sense.  We do not impose a religious or quasi-religious view (but we do not oppose those your youth may have accepted already).

Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." You see? A person is best equipped to do their best if that is driven from within. You may already know more then they. Your job, then, is to empower them to know more.  .

Raising a family or managing or a team, therefore, is not a simple exercise.  A human being is not just a physical life force that can be trained like a robot or one of the lower animal species.  Each person is a self-directed individual.  Though we may have some measurable characteristics that may be determined by genes or familial traits, these are simply related to the body or some function of one of its organ systems.  Each person, however, develops a personality, character, or attitude that is determined by the way they are exposed to life, encouraged to develop their own insights and embrace the discipline to build and own those insights.  That is an evolution, not an inherited trait .

Therefore, to lead a team or family (especially evident during adolescence and beyond) is to first respect each person as the autonomous individual.  Then we must be able to recognize what that person is fearing, that is, what are the unknowns in that person's experience that can be filled.  Then we show them  how to fill it.  We do not fill it but encourage each person to reveal their perspective for doing it, knowing that each person will reveal a different understanding from the other.  It requires patience, a desire to know, and a respect, not for the knowledge or physical characteristics (age, training, genetic, social, or financial status), but for the desire to grow existentially, purposefully, and responsibly.  Let these tools guide you to use that power within the soul of everyone and empower it so your charges will do because they believe in themselves, not because they can follow your instructions.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." You see? A person is best equipped to do their best if that is driven from within. You may already know more then they. Your job, then, is to empower them to know more.  .

Raising a family or managing or a team, therefore, is not a simple exercise.  A human being is not just a physical life force that can be trained like a robot or one of the lower animal species.  Each person is a self-directed individual.  Though we may have some measurable characteristics that may be determined by genes or familial traits, these are simply related to the body or some function of one of its organ systems.  Each person, however, develops a personality, character, or attitude that is determined by the way they are exposed to life, encouraged to develop their own insights and embrace the discipline to build and own those insights.  That is an evolution, not an inherited trait .

Therefore, to lead a team or family (especially evident during adolescence and beyond) is to first respect each person as the autonomous individual.  Then we must be able to recognize what that person is fearing, that is, what are the unknowns in that person's experience that can be filled.  Then we show them  how to fill it.  We do not fill it but encourage each person to reveal their perspective for doing it, knowing that each person will reveal a different understanding from the other.  It requires patience, a desire to know, and a respect, not for the knowledge or physical characteristics (age, training, genetic, social, or financial status), but for the desire to grow existentially, purposefully, and responsibly.  Let these tools guide you to use that power within the soul of everyone and empower it so your charges will do because they believe in themselves, not because they can follow your instructions.

Burnout, stress, exhaustion are physical symptoms that can be quite devastating.  They are physical.  Yet they often seem mental.  There is a good explanation for that.  Mentally, we function on inputs from the body's senses and past experiences.  These are processed by the brain to allow mental consideration.  When we are required or we choose to contemplate and solve conditions that are outside our comfort zones mentally, we may compensate by driving the body to exhaustion and even burnout attepting either to solve the challenge with insufficient insight or to accumulate more insight at a pace faster than we can acquire it.  We are exhausted by both the process and the attempts to manage through greater physical exertion.  This exhaustion, either in the biochemical or physiological function of the body as a whole, or of the neuronal pathways that bring information to the min can so stagnate mental function that we attribute the failure to occur there.  Just remember that the insufficiency of btreathing through a straw is not a lung problem; it is a problem of the pathway to the lung.

If you can look at the above summary, you will see that, whatever the urgency of the demand on us, at that time we are unable to apply ourselves intelligently to the problem.  That is okay.  The logical strategy for management is to first restore physical function, then know how to examine both our insight limitations and the demands of the situation.  In other words, we must release the urgency so we regain the strength to address our challenges, not with a repetition of the previous method, with an ability to reassess both conditions - ourselves and the object - rationally. It is a gratifying proposition when done with deeper understanding and logic.

Every human being is born weak and fragile, toally incapable of fending for ourselves no matter what is our background or legacy.  Every human being has a right to be enabled and allowed to build ourselves to the level we are able to grow... mentally, intellectually, existentially.  And we need the guidance, the discipline, and the opportunity to do so.  Opportunity is sometimes taken away when we are seen to be insecure, unsure, or afraid. Taking away opportunity from any other human being is an abuse, and the person suffering that indignity, the abused.

No one should be held that way by another human being, but it happens, not necessarily as the perpetration of abuse, but also as a defensive reaction from someone else who feels threatened or who is establishing their authority to be above being vulnerable.  The solution is not only to stop the imposition, but to build the personal strength of the abused.  This may not be because the abused is devoid of intelligence or capability.  It may also, and often, be because "we do not consider that we are able to manage independently, even when we are". Thus, the solution is not always the provision of resources.  It may be that of helping the person to believe in the power of the resources they already have, that is, build self-esteem, not just protect it or treat the symptoms that emerge from its weakness.

Fear, anxiety, insecurity can not only impede us from doing; it can cause severe existential pain.  Mood swings, depression, inability to get out (degrees of agoraphobia), and a serious halt in our emergence as a mature, self-assured, happy or contented person.  It can be the shackles on our progress no matter how much we may want to move forward.  What causes this?

Perhaps we can answer that by stating that it is not caused.  Rather it is a remnant.  Think of it.  Every baby comes into the world with fear, anxiety, insecurity.  We know and accept that and we protect the baby from the conditions that will evoke them.  Yet, it is the ability to confront these challenges that lets us feel comfortable in those we know.  It is the exposure and guidance and encouragement to move  progressively through those challenges that allows us to feel comfortable or capable when they arise.  You see?  The unknowns we have to face can become the knowns we are comfortable with... if we have been shown and encouraged to face them.  That builds self-esteem.  If that was not given or encouraged we can lack self-esteem because we do not kmnow what we feel we should know.

The solution? not to treat these feelings because they are real and natural.  It is to show you how to build self-esteem by catching up to the things you don't know.  Only then can you believe in yourself and appreciate yourself because you know and know how to know.  THAT! is self-esteem.

Depression can be a severely devastating experience so it cannot be taken lightly.  Those who experience it want treatment urgently.  Those who treat it want to relieve their patients as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.  But that urgent undertaking is addressed at treating the emergence, the effect of depression.  These are the feelings of pain, loneliness, self-loathing, fear, etc. What, however, is the condition? What is the cause? Unless we can define and reach that, the emergence will come back repeatedly.  All we will have done is to temporarily subdue the symptoms.

Let us, therefore, examine and analyze the underlying condition that emerges with the severe symptoms of depression.  First, let's define it.  Depression is a feeling of emptiness, a chasm in the reality of self, manifested as a complete shutdown of being, no matter how the symptoms emerge, that is what drives them. Yet, we can ask, how can a person feel so empty some of the time? What drains it? What fills it? The answer is that, in a person with depression, nothing does.  Nobody is ever completely empty.  Nobody can be completely full.  So there is a partial filling in the integrity and realization of self.  What we tend to do is compensate most of the time by inflating it using coping systems of one sort or another.    When that coping system is removed, lost, or exhausted, the partial emptiness hits with a bang... suddenly and harshly.  We are left feeling embarrassingly less than what we displayed and too physically weak to rebound.  The emptiness stays and even becomes more profound, unless we are able to restore the physical strength to engage the coping systems - with support, time, or medications.  And we resume the cycle again.

The real solution is to know self, know how to expand on that partial emptiness and build a steady, strong, self-generated sense of self.  It is to build mental strength through self-realization and self-actualization.

Grief is the experience of loss of something or someone that played an important part of your life, your personality, your self-image and self-esteem.  The loss leaves you with a hole in your state of being.  You may see it as a hole in the heart referring to your emotions, but it goes deeper, to your very being.  It can even destroy your raison d'être, reason for being.  Yet life, your life, must go on.  How do you do it?

We cannot return the lost item, lost relationship, or the life of another.  We can, however, show you how to rebuild your life independent of but still mindful to that past attachment.  First, we must show you why it is necessary and logical and purposeful to have as an objective the desire to know yourself and build yourself as a mind-force, an essence with a mandate to grow and expand yourself to the best you can be.  Then we show you how to use this loss or disconnection as a catalyst to initiate that objective.  We use the same logic to explain to you the similar objective of the other if that loss is another person.  We show you why a loss or disappointment is not a punishment of you or a collapse of your life but is an invitation for you to discover parts of you that may have been neglected while you had that attachment.